The Death of Me

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Johannes Cabal:
The Fear Institute

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Chapter 1

IN WHICH THE FEAR INSTITUTE VISITS AND CABAL IS CONFRONTED BY THE POLICE

It was not such a peculiar house in and of itself. A three-storey townhouse – four, if you counted the attic – Victorian in design, tall and thin and quite deep. To the fore, a short path ran from the door (to the left of the frontage) perhaps ten feet past what might have been intended as a rose garden in some long-past year. Now it was overgrown, but in a strangely artful way, as if chaotic minds had planned a new and not entirely wholesome horticulture for the little garden. Indeed they had, but we shall return to that aspect of the house shortly.

Although at one point it had clearly been a middle terrace house, its neighbours were no longer in evidence but for broken half-bricks protruding from the end gables. A single house, the lone survivor of a terrace, marked darkly with the smoke of nearby industrial chimneys, a short front garden and a somewhat longer back one, the former bounded by a low wall, the latter by a tall one. Not a common sight, but neither one to excite much comment in the normal run of things. If, that is, it were sited within an industrial town or city. It was not.

The house rose solitary and arrogant on a green hillside some few miles from the next dwelling. The nearest factory chimney capable of layering the soot on the house was further still. If one were to see the house in its rural location, apparently scooped up by some Goliath and deposited far from its proper place, one might feel inclined to investigate, to climb the pebble and earth trail that leads to the garden gate, to walk up the flagstoned path beyond it, and to knock upon the door. After all, somebody must live there. The building is well maintained and smoke curls from its chimney.

This is an inclination to be fought at all costs, for this is the house of Johannes Cabal, the necromancer. There are all manners of unpleasantness about the place, but the front garden is the foremost.

Johannes Cabal was sitting in his study, making notes in the small black book that he customarily carried in the inside pocket of his jacket. They were pithy to the point of acerbity – Cabal was not in a good mood. That in itself was no rarity, but he was particularly ill-tempered today as his latest attempt to secure – which is to say, steal – a rare copy of de Cuir’s very useful Enquêtes interdites had failed. Cabal was used to his frequent necessary descents into criminality coming to nothing, but it especially galled him on this occasion.

‘Verdammt kobold,’ he muttered, as he crossed a ‘7’ with unnecessary vigour. He had faced many horrors in his life, many ghastly supernatural guardians, but this was the first time he’d been bested by a blue goblin, especially one with poor diction.

The blue goblin (specifically – as may be understood from Cabal’s mutterings – a Germanic form known as a kobold), had acted as a guardian of sorts for an unusual library. Where most libraries are content to sit by or near a road, this one had occupied a pocket existence of its own, slotted neatly between the world of men and the world of the Fey. It was an extensive and useful library, but it did not encourage lending or even browsing. After a few bruising encounters with heavy volumes flung at him from shelf tops, Cabal had discovered the book he sought and made a hasty but victorious retreat. His victory lasted exactly until the moment he had had the time and leisure finally to examine the looted book and found that it had unaccountably become a small manual on the subject of waterproofing flat roofs. He belatedly thought of the Fey’s ability to alter appearances, and then he thought of a kobold vivisection, which cheered him up a little.

So absorbed in his writing and muttering was he that the pebble that bounced off the window failed to draw his attention. The second, thrown vigorously enough to threaten the glass, succeeded. Cabal sighed, put down his pen, took up his revolver and went to the window. Given that it was pebbles rather than bricks, and given that nobody who lived within ten miles would be so stupid as to irritate Cabal, who was not only a necromancer but, in the vernacular, ‘an utter bastard’, it seemed likely that the thrower was a child on a dare. Cabal intended to shoot to miss, albeit narrowly. He was therefore surprised when he saw three soberly dressed men standing on the other side of the garden gate. One looked like an undertaker and Cabal, who had had a similar experience once before, checked his pulse just to be sure. Pleased to find he wasn’t dead again, he went to the front door.

The three men, who had been watching the house with polite if slightly distant attention, now turned it upon Johannes Cabal. They saw a clean-shaven man with short blond hair, physically in his late twenties though he carried an air of cynicism and worldliness that would have seemed premature in a man twice his age. They saw his black trousers, black waistcoat, thin black cravat, white shirt, tartan slippers, and they saw his enormous handgun.

The last time Cabal had been to the gunsmiths’ in town to buy more cartridges for it, the man behind the counter had told him that the pistol, a Webley .577 Boxer, was ‘guaranteed to stop a charging savage’, according to the literature. Cabal had replied he didn’t know about that, but it could stop a Deep One with its dander up and that was good enough for him. The man behind the counter had considered this, and then talked about the weather. It was, in short, a fierce and unfriendly gun, and its very appearance was usually enough to cause nervous shuffling among spectators. The three men, however, seemed no more put out by it than by Cabal’s slippers, and those hadn’t caused any obvious consternation either.

Cabal considered. He did not encourage visitors, he had no colleagues per se, he had no friends, few acquaintances, and his family were all either dead, or had disowned him – or were dead and had disowned him. Occasionally other necromancers turned up to try to steal his researches in much the same way that he tried to steal theirs, or assorted self-elected paragons of virtue arrived to slay him as if he were a dragon. He was not a dragon; he was a much better shot than most dragons and the paragons’ last sight was of the fierce and unfriendly Webley .577 Boxer and Cabal’s irked face sighting over the wide muzzle at them. The three men seemed to fit none of the categories. ‘Who are you?’ asked Cabal. ‘What do you want?’

One of the party, a short middle-aged man with receding hair, snowy mutton chops, and the open, sanguine air of a defrocked priest spoke up: ‘We wish to make you a proposal, Herr Cabal.’

‘A proposal?’ Cabal pushed his blue-glass spectacles back up his nose and regarded the trio suspiciously. ‘What sort of proposal?’

‘That,’ interrupted the tall man in the top hat, who looked like an undertaker, ‘is better discussed in private.’ He pursed lips that looked well used to it. ‘Our immediate concern is to reach your front door.’

‘My front…? Oh!’ Cabal understood and laughed. He looked down. Just over the tile-ridged edge of the garden alongside the path was a faded circular for patios and conservatory extensions. There had probably been others, but they had blown away long since, this one staying only because it was trapped beneath a discarded human femur. The surface of the bone was pocked with tiny bite marks. He looked back up at the men, a sardonic smile on his face. ‘You’re concerned about the denizens of this little plot. Gentlemen! They are only pixies and fairies! You’re not afraid of them, are you?’

‘Yeah! We’re harmless!’ piped a tiny voice from beneath a hydrangea, until it was shushed by other tiny piping voices.

For his answer the tall man stepped back and read the notice on the gate out loud: ‘No circulars, hawkers or salesmen. Trespassers will be eaten. We are not afraid, sir. We are showing rational caution.’

‘Yes,’ conceded Cabal. ‘Put like that, I see your point. Very well.’ He spoke to the garden. ‘Let these men by.’ There was a muted chorus of dismay from the hidden watchers, but the three were allowed to walk up the path unmolested. By the time they reached the doorstep, Cabal had already gone inside.

He was waiting, seated, in his study when the three men caught up with him. They stood gravely clustered around the door, unable or unwilling to sit without their host’s invitation. Cabal was entirely unaware of a host’s duties, and contented himself by sitting with one leg crossed over the other and the pistol held idly in his lap. He looked at the men and they looked back at him for several uncomfortable moments. ‘Well?’ he said finally.

‘My card,’ said the funereal gentleman, producing one from his pocket and offering it. Cabal did not rise to take it, but suffered the man to advance, hand it over, and then withdraw in the manner of a priest delivering a votive sacrifice.

‘Mine also,’ added the third man, speaking for the first time. He had, to Cabal’s eye, the air of a recovering alcoholic who now ran a small printing company dedicated to the publication of religious tracts.1 He, too, had mutton chops, but these were black and as lustrous as a dog’s coat. His eyes were quick and dark, and he wore the disreputable shortened form of a top hat known as a ‘Müller’.

‘Mine too!’ added the one with the appearance of a disgraced priest.

Cabal studied the cards casually. ‘So, you are Messrs Shadrach,’ he thumbed the card from the top of the small pile and allowed the funeral director’s card to flutter to the floor, ‘Corde,’ he dropped the former alcoholic’s, ‘and Bose.’

‘It’s pronounced Boh-see,’ said the unfrocked priest, although – disappointingly – it appeared from his card that he was actually a dealer in artworks.

‘You were never a priest, were you, Mr Bose?’ asked Cabal, just to be sure. Mr Bose shook his head and looked confused and that was that.

Mr Corde was – equally disappointingly – a solicitor and not a reformed alcoholic publisher of religious screeds, but Mr Shadrach really was a funeral director. This also disappointed Cabal, whose grave-robbing activities in search of research materials were often complicated by the eccentricities of those who carried out the burials. One doesn’t want to spend all night excavating down to a coffin only to discover that it is lead-lined, sealed with double-tapped screws, and proof against crowbars.

‘All very good, but none of which answers the question that I believe I implied when I said, “Well?” An art dealer, a solicitor, and a funeral director. What business have you with me, sirs? Indeed, what business have you with one another?’

‘We belong to a society, Herr Cabal. A very special society, dedicated to a noble but arcane purpose. It is this purpose that has brought us to your door.’

Cabal looked at them with a raised eyebrow. ‘Grundgütiger! You don’t all want to be necromancers, do you? It’s thankless work, gentlemen. I advise you strongly against it.’ Their blank expressions assured him that, no, this was not the purpose of their visit. ‘Well, what, then?’

‘Let us start from a hypothesis, Herr Cabal,’ said Mr Bose, with wheedling enthusiasm. ‘And let that hypothesis start from a question. Is the human creature as perfect in function as it might be?’

‘Meaningless,’ replied Cabal, ‘with no definition as to what that function might conceivably be. We are good communicators, passable runners, middling swimmers, and poor at flying.’

‘Just so. But even there, we are capable of communications of great subtlety over very long distances, we build locomotives that can outrun the fastest animal, steam launches that can give even dolphins a good run for their money, and aeroships that have formed our conquest of the skies. You see my point, of course. But do you take my greater meaning?’

‘Natürlich. You are suggesting that the function of the human creature, to use your phrase, is to adapt itself to its environment or even to adapt its environment to itself by virtue of its intelligence. Then my answer is no. Humanity is nowhere near perfection even with regard only to its intellect. Have you ever looked at your fellow man? It is not edifying. I have hopes that time and evolutionary forces may improve matters or, failing that, eliminate us and give something else a chance. I think the insects deserve a turn.’

‘But in the shorter term, how may we improve ourselves?’

Cabal shrugged. ‘Eugenics. Kill the lawyers. Vitamins. There have been all manner of suggestions.’

Corde had been growing visibly exasperated with Bose and cut in: ‘Think rather in terms of what limits us, Herr Cabal. What holds us back in our everyday lives? What Mr Bose is trying to say is that our little society seeks to eliminate the most profound of all these limiting factors.’

‘Death,’ replied Cabal, without hesitation. ‘You do wish to become necromancers.’

‘No, sir!’ said Corde, a little heatedly. Gentlemen do not wish to hear themselves described as nascent necromancers, even by a necromancer. ‘I mean the little death that eats away our lives from the moment we are old enough to realise that a final death certainly awaits us.’

Cabal frowned. He was aware of the phrase ‘little death’, as used by the French, but it seemed very much out of context here, where the context consisted of Messrs Bose, Corde and Shadrach. ‘I am bemused.’

‘I mean, Herr Cabal,’ and here Mr Corde took an unconsciously dramatic step closer to Cabal, ‘fear!’ Satisfied that he had made his point with sufficient emphasis, he stepped back again. ‘Every waking moment of our lives we spend as hostages to the terrible “perhaps”. We dread the unnameable that lurks beyond our doors. We collapse into ridiculous phobias with the most fleeting provocation. Clowns! Birds! The number thirteen! Each one a nail driven into the fabric of our lives, limiting our movement, hemming us in, draining our futures of possibilities. How many better tomorrows have been lost because of natural human timidity? How many wonders have never seen the light because those who dared dream them could never dare build them?’

Cabal laughed: a humourless sound. ‘You wish courage, gentlemen? I believe it may be found in any public house, by the pint. Good day.’ He rose to escort the men out, but then Mr Shadrach spoke, and Cabal listened.

‘We have considered long and carefully before coming to you, Herr Cabal. You are quite right. A sufficient measure of liquor will drive out fear from any man, but it will take all rationality with it too. My companions have not perhaps made our aim quite as clear as they might. We understand the role of fear as a safeguard, but we dispute its effect on a higher creature such as the human being. A rational man should be able to look upon a situation and weigh its dangers – physical, moral or financial – as coldly as if weighing tea on a scale. That is denied us because fear is essentially irrational. We seek nothing more or less than to remove it. Our dream is that one day the human race will walk this good Earth, free from the invisible tethers of fear, subject only to the kindly effects of rational caution.’

Cabal sighed and sat down again. ‘You mentioned a society. What sort of society? Do you hold annual general meetings, raise funds by selling cakes, and all go on a charabanc holiday together with funds raised by subscription?’

‘We do not,’ replied Shadrach, a little icily.

‘Ah,’ said Cabal. ‘Yours is the other sort of society, then. The type with impractical handshakes.’

Shadrach also regarded their society’s secret handshake as unnecessary, infantile and not even very secret, as it looked like the first shakee was attempting to put the second into a half-nelson. Thus, he did not dispute Cabal’s description, but said, ‘Our numbers are relatively few, but contain men and a few women of influence and insight. Scientists, logicians, entrepreneurs. Our resources, both intellectual and monetary, run as deep as our ambitions.’

‘No churchmen, I notice. Of course not. What use have they for a world without irrational fear? And how did an undertaker, an art dealer and a solicitor happen to join such a society?’

‘Irrelevant,’ said Corde, a little snappily.

Shadrach, however, was happy to elucidate. ‘My own interest was founded in the lack of fear of the dead that I feel, a lack created by my long familiarity with the practicalities of dealing with the recently departed. One cannot do such business without wondering at the fear the public hold for a population that can offer them no harm.’

Cabal, whose experience with that population indicated that they were perfectly capable of offering harm in the right circumstances, held his silence.

‘Mr Corde, if I may speak on your behalf?’ Corde jerked his head in an impatient affirmation, so Shadrach continued: ‘Mr Corde deals with people every day who make bad decisions based upon fear and not logic, whether to create a fund here, or a trust there, even fear of writing a will in case it should tempt Fate in some ill-imagined way. In both our cases, you see, we watch people blunt their lives with silly fears, fears that offer them nothing, not even safety. And Mr Bose…’ here, Shadrach did not ask permission ‘… is fascinated by the deeper mysteries, of life, of death.’

‘I meet all sorts in my job,’ smiled Bose, as if discussing the vagaries of collecting matchbox labels. ‘One of my clients told me about the society, and I said, “Oh, that sounds like fun!” So here I am.’

Shadrach looked at Bose for a long moment, unsure how to proceed. Cabal filled the silence a little impatiently by saying, ‘Yes, it’s all very laudable I’m sure, but I am still at a loss to understand my part in all this. How do you intend to achieve your goal? Brain surgery?’

Bose grimaced. ‘Tried that. It didn’t work,’ he said, before being shushed by Corde.

‘We have conducted much research, Herr Cabal,’ said Shadrach, ‘both experimental,’ here he shot a sideways glance at Bose, who looked suitably abashed, ‘and theoretical. It is the latter that has led us to a possible – indeed probable – solution. What we intend is nothing less than to isolate the very spirit of fear and, thence, to focus our energies on finding its anathema. The antibody to fear, if you will.’

Cabal smiled or, at least, his face creased in a manner only suitably described as a smile, but there was little warmth there. ‘You wish to isolate fear. Ah, well, if only I’d realised your ambitions were so simple. Perhaps we can work up to it by capturing faith, bottling hope, and presenting love to the world as a commodity, available by the pound, wrapped in greaseproof paper and topped with a bow.’ He sighed. ‘How can you possibly hope to isolate the incorporeal? If it were a true spirit, you could amuse yourself with salt and pentagrams, but fear, sirs? You waste your time and mine.’

Surprisingly, the three men did not seem at all put out or taken aback by Cabal’s response and he realised that they’d anticipated it. Indeed, they seemed to relish it. ‘Sir, our researches are conclusive. We are certain, absolutely certain, that fear may manifest and be captured. But not, sir, in this world.’

‘There is another place, Herr Cabal,’ said Bose, ‘another world where things are not as they are here. Where the most fanciful concepts may prove sterling truth, and the incorporeal take form.’

Cabal straightened a little in his chair, interested despite himself. ‘You speak of the Dreamlands.’

The name notwithstanding, the Dreamlands are neither a retailer of mattresses, a retirement home nor a particularly nasty permanent funfair in a rundown coastal resort. Neither are they where our minds go when they sleep. Those are merely dreams, and the Dreamlands are too strange and, in their own curious way, too noble to trouble themselves with endless variations on wandering the corridors of one’s old school on the first day, alone, lost, naked, and having just discovered that an exam nobody told one about had started ten minutes ago. No, the Dreamlands were formed by dreams, but are not a dream themselves. They are a world of curious and exotic sights, a collision of myths, of lands as ancient as thought and oceans as deep as imagination. They are home to those who have abandoned their waking bodies, or been abandoned by them. But, as the Dreamlands are true and material even though they hide behind the veil of sleep, there have been other immigrants from other realities, and here lay Cabal’s interest. One of those immigrants was a fierce and protean magic that might, just might, carry a spark of itself back into the waking world, should it be brought by somebody strongly willed enough to shade it from the mundanities of the everyday. Somebody like a well-motivated necromancer.

‘Yes, I researched them exhaustively myself years ago. But they are beyond reach.’

‘They are not, sir.’

‘To trained or talented dreamers, no. To the users of certain highly dangerous and unreliable drugs, no. To the holder of the Silver Key, no. I am none of these things, meine Herren, and neither are you. The Dreamlands, while an interesting destination, are beyond the reach of any of us.’

Alarmingly, the three men still seemed splendidly unconcerned and, indeed, rather smug. Cabal ran the alternatives through his head rapidly and settled on the most likely, though staggeringly unlikely it was. ‘You … have the Silver Key?’

It was Shadrach who spoke. ‘We do, sir. We have the Silver Key of the Dreamlands. We may enter and leave as we will.’

Cabal tried to keep the quiver out of his voice. ‘You … How … did you come by it?’

‘As a bequest. An explorer of that world learned of our endeavours and, I’m delighted to say, passed it on to us.’

‘As a bequest,’ Cabal echoed. ‘How did he die?’

‘Oh, he may not be dead. He was simply declared deceased by the coroner’s court. He’d been missing for some time and, well, I’m sure you know how these things work.’

Cabal, who was very familiar with the workings of all the institutions that dealt with death, grunted. ‘It does not worry you that this gentleman probably died in the Dreamlands?’

‘Worry,’ said Corde, evenly, ‘is a product of fear. We will not submit to it. Instead, we will add this datum to the rational caution that such an enterprise must engender.’

Ah, thought Cabal, now we come to it.

‘There are many possibilities, many things that may go awry in the Dreamlands,’ said Shadrach. ‘This may be the only opportunity that we of the Institute will ever have to venture there. We must maximise our chance of success in every way that we can.’

‘And this, I would guess, is why you have come to me,’ said Cabal. Although he showed no sign of it, he was impressed by their methodology. If irrational fear had something approaching a physical form, then it could surely survive only in a world formed from dreams where the rules of existence were intuitive rather than scientifically rigorous. From there it could leak its influence back into the sleeping minds of the mundane world to soak into their waking lives and colour every decision with delicate shades of uncertain terror. It all sounded very interesting, Cabal was sure. There was, however, a problem. ‘I’m afraid that I must disappoint you. I have no experience of the Dreamlands. I have never been there.’

‘We know,’ said Corde. ‘You’re alive and sane. It seemed very unlikely that you’d ever visited.’

‘So, why…?’

‘Because we have little use for a dead or insane guide. You may not have immediate experience of the Dreamlands, Herr Cabal, but you do have plentiful experience of the, ah, occult,’ he said apologetically, ‘and the unusual. You also have a reputation for formidable sang-froid, which will come in useful given the stressful environment.’

Cabal smiled, a little less humourlessly this time. It always amused him that, when you wished to flatter somebody, you would describe them as possessing sang-froid, whereas if you wished to sting or insult them, they were simply cold-blooded.

‘Our proposal is that you should lead an expedition into the Dreamlands, Herr Cabal,’ said Shadrach, ‘to seek out, capture and bring back into this world the archetype of fear, its principle, the very phobic animus itself.’

‘And if it refuses to come quietly?’

‘Then it will be put down.’

There was a heavy silence after that for some seconds. Then Cabal said, ‘You are asking me to risk my life and sanity. What am I to gain from this?’

Bose coughed. ‘The Silver Key, Herr Cabal. Once we have the animus, we shall have no further need of the Key. Indeed, rational caution dictates that it is never used without good cause, and our cause would already be fulfilled. We think that you, however, would have cause to use it again, in future, in the continuance of your own field of research.’

Cabal considered. Then he spoke: ‘Gentlemen, your proposition is not without interest. I should like to think upon it. You will make your way back to the village and, if you have not already done so, take rooms there. I would suggest that you don’t tell them you have any dealings with me or the standard of service will suffer. I shall send word of my decision to you some time tomorrow. Good day.’ And so saying, he shooed his visitors from his house, ensuring first that they successfully negotiated the path without being ambushed from the tea roses.

* * *

Later that evening, Cabal was to be found at the table, the contents of a box file labelled ‘Dreamlands’ spread out before him. He had been accruing data on the place for years, although never as a definite piece of research. After all, while the usefulness of the Dreamlands in his work was beyond dispute, accessing it in a safe and reliable way had always been little more than … well, a dream.

Others had attempted it, and some had even done so successfully. As a group, however, they were a bunch of arty sorts – Orientalists and sensualists, who could be depended upon to be undependable, sitting around in silken robes with a book of poetry in one hand and a hookah pipe in the other. They disgusted Cabal for their practical rather than moral shortcomings; if Cabal was to go exploring, he would be inclined to do so with a sola topi on his head and an elephant gun loaded for tyrannosaur in his hands.

Practicality, however, was the enemy of the Dreamlands explorer. He would be standing around in the mundane world until his sola topi bleached and his elephant gun rusted, while in the meantime the disgusting woolly-minded artistic types were off writing bad sonnets by the lake at Sarnath, having wandered into the Dreamlands by the very virtue of being woolly-minded artistic types. It was as intolerable as, for example, the British Library suddenly enforcing a ‘Monkeys Only’ rule, leaving serious scholars fuming outside while, within the sacred walls, macaques made merry with the Magna Carta, and capuchins defecated on the Gutenberg. It galled Cabal beyond belief that those of analytic mind who could make most use of the strange resources of the Dreamlands were, by their very nature, denied entrance.

There was one way through, however: the Silver Key – always capital S, capital K because it truly was that important and that unique. There may be only one Holy Grail, but it is part of an entire junk shop’s worth of similar relics – fragments of the One True Cross, the Spear of Destiny, the Burial Shroud in Turin, and more miraculous bits of dead saints than bear thinking about. The Silver Key, however, was truly unique – the only artefact that allowed physical rather than psychic entry into the Dreamlands, and the only artefact that could be used by absolutely anyone with the will to do so, regardless of opium consumption.

Finding it, however, was the natural prerequisite to using it, and finding it had proved impossible. It seemed to have an irrational fondness for ending up in the hands of the very wastrels who could just as easily have reached the Dreamlands by the narcotic route, and as drug-addled wastrels make poor documenters, the trail of hands through which the Key had passed was as ephemeral as footprints by the low-tide mark.

And now, having been dismissed as, at best, unfindable and, at worst, non-existent, the Silver Key of myth and legend was almost in his hands, certainly within his reach. Cabal considered walking to the village in the night, murdering the men in their beds and stealing the Key, but discarded the notion. After all, they might not have it with them. Besides which, the idea of leading a funded expedition into the Dreamlands appealed to him. He could use the hunt for this ‘Phobic Animus’ of theirs as an opportunity to scout out the land, and gather intelligence for his own subsequent explorations. He did not even mind having three unctuous men following him around: he agreed with their aims and if, wonder of wonders, they succeeded, the mortal world would be that much more rational, and therefore personally bearable to Cabal. Also, he was confident that he could outrun any of them, and if the party ended up being pursued by one or other of the Dreamlands’ many horrors, it was good to know that there were three alternative meals that he could leave in his wake.

* * *

The village – it had a name, but Cabal rarely used it – lay some four miles away from where his house stood in its sheltered little valley, a location calculated to prevent the slightest tone of a church bell reaching it even with a tailwind. Four miles is also, incidentally, an awkward distance for a torch-bearing mob to cover: torches gutter, pitchforks grow heavy, and the length of the walk robs a lynching of its necessary spontaneity. Not that the villagers did very much of that, not after the last time.

Cabal kept his visits there to the bare minimum, and for their part, the villagers tolerated him with a forced civility that said as much for their Englishness as for any fear of him. The grocer would take his order in polite silence, only speaking to make the mandatory opening conversational gambit of greeting and comment upon the weather, then to clarify any ambiguities as he transcribed Cabal’s list of requirements, and finally to bid him a sincere and relieved goodbye. People on the street ignored him. Even the most wilful teenager knew the stories and avoided eye contact.

The only individual who sought Cabal out when he visited was Sergeant Parkin, the senior officer of the village’s police force, consisting of Parkin, two unambitious constables, and an ageing Alsatian called ‘Bootsy’. People liked Sergeant Parkin and were grateful for the calm way in which he dealt with the Cabal problem. ‘He knows better than to throw his weight around here,’ Parkin would say, while drinking on duty in the saloon bar of The Old House at Home. ‘We treat him polite, like, and he’s here and gone, and good riddance.’ The villagers might have been less pleased to know that Parkin’s public-relations efforts were entirely focused upon them, as Parkin himself was in Cabal’s employ. In return for a suitable emolument in a brown envelope every Christmas, Parkin kept the village in a state of delicate uncertainty, as a Swiss village might be beneath a mountainside deep in snow: providing they remained calm and quiet, no avalanche would descend upon them. Parkin saw no clash between his role and his actions. After all, his primary concern was to keep the peace, and this he did.

Parkin was talking football in the pub when Mr Jeffries, whose home overlooked the dusty and rarely travelled road that ran by Cabal’s house, entered, approached the sergeant directly, spoke quietly and calmly in his ear, and left again.

Parkin frowned and looked at the calendar hung behind the bar. Beneath a gaudy McGill painting of an exasperated judge and a smirking divorce case co-respondent (‘You are prevaricating, sir. Did you or did you not sleep with this woman?’ ‘Not a wink, my lord!’), the date caused him some mild consternation.

He buttoned up his uniform tunic, put on his helmet, said, ‘Duty calls,’ to the landlord, slung the last inch of his pint down his throat, and went out to face the dreadful Herr Cabal.

Cabal was unsurprised to see Sergeant Parkin waiting by the pump, trough and rarely used well on the village green, his arms crossed, his expression vexed. He walked directly to the policeman, aware that every busybody in the place was watching them. It did not help Cabal to undermine Parkin’s authority, so he exhibited enough deference to maintain the sergeant’s standing, and just enough coldness to remind the onlookers just who they were dealing with here.

‘Funny time of the month for you to be out of your bailiwick, isn’t it, Mr Cabal?’ said Parkin, loudly enough to be heard by the watchers. Then, more quietly, he added, ‘Bugger me, chum, a word of warning would have been nice.’

‘Of course, Parkin,’ replied Cabal, also quietly. ‘I should have sent a member of my extensive household to tell you. The under-butler, perhaps, or a footman, or possibly one of the many grooms.’

Parkin, who knew that Cabal was the only inhabitant of his house, or at least the only living human inhabitant, grunted, and let the point go. ‘All right, so you’re here now. What is it you’re after? You only had your groceries last week. You haven’t run out, have you?’

‘No. I have had visitors. I believe they are staying at the tavern. I wish to speak to them.’

‘What?’ Parkin shot a glance at the Old House at Home. ‘The undertaker, the unfrocked priest and the bloke who looks like an alky? I knew all that codswallop about butterfly hunting was bollocks, but I didn’t know they were anything to do with you. I don’t recall you having any visitors before, Cabal.’

‘I have visitors, just not often, and they don’t normally stop here.’ Cabal was aware of hostile eyes upon him, and of the delicate status quo of the relationship between the villagers and himself seesawing dangerously. ‘Is this a problem, Sergeant?’

‘If you go blundering into the pub, yes. That’s sacred ground, Cabal. Don’t ever go in there. That’s somewhere safe where they can whine about you to their hearts’ content, safe knowing you’ll never show your face in the place. Going in would be … provocative. No, I’ve got a better plan.’

The villagers watched the doughty Sergeant Parkin and the vile Johannes Cabal negotiate quietly until, with dangerous anger showing clearly in his body language, the necromancer turned and strode back out of the village in a cold fury. Parkin stood, arms crossed and haughty, and watched Cabal go until he was past the post office. Then, duty done and the village once more safe, he strolled back to the pub to be bought a pint on the house, a suitable reward for a conquering hero. While the landlord pulled the pint, Parkin made his way into the snug and there found Messrs Shadrach, Corde and Bose eating lunch and muttering to one another in conspiratorial tones until Parkin’s entrance plunged them into an embarrassed silence.

‘Afternoon, gentlemen,’ he said jovially. ‘If you wouldn’t mind eating up smartish, like, packing your bags, and pissing off out of it, the parish would be grateful.’

There was a shocked silence. Shadrach made as if to say something, but Parkin leaned down and said, close enough to Shadrach’s face that he was momentarily overcome by pipe tobacco and beer fumes, ‘It’s not a request, sir. It’s not a request.’ Then, dropping easily to a penetrating whisper, he added, ‘You gentlemen have an appointment,’ and quickly pressed a folded piece of paper into Shadrach’s hand. ‘I wouldn’t be late if I were you, squire.’ Parkin rose, shot them a cynical salute, and went off to claim his beer.

* * *

They found Cabal sitting on a fence by the road a mile out of the village, shying stones at a crow. He didn’t appear to be working very hard to hit it, which was just as well since the crow was remarkably good at dodging, and indeed seemed to regard having lumps of rock cast at its head as a show of affection on Cabal’s part. ‘Kronk!’ it cawed joyfully, as a lump of flint the size of a baby’s fist hissed by the tip of its beak.

‘You received my communication, I see,’ said Cabal, as they approached. He climbed down and went to meet them. As he did so, the crow belatedly realised the game was over and flew up to land on Cabal’s left shoulder. He shot it a glance from the corner of his eye that it chose to ignore.

‘You have a crow for a pet, Mr Cabal?’ asked Corde.

‘Hardly that. More a fellow traveller. You want my decision?’ The three men nodded, more or less gravely. ‘I agree to your proposition. I shall guide you into and through the Dreamlands. I emphasise that the knowledge on the Dreamlands I bring to this enterprise is based upon the writings of others, and can only be considered as reliable as they are.’

‘Of course,’ said Shadrach.

‘So, if we get lost, I do not wish to hear a single solitary word that the failing is mine. If I do, I shall feed the complainant to the nearest gug.’

‘What is a gug?’

‘Exactly my point. I know, and you do not. My knowledge of the Dreamlands may be flawed, but it is still magnitudes greater than yours. With that caveat, do you remain committed to this undertaking?’

‘We do,’ they chorused, a little shakily.

‘You are sure?’ said Cabal, smiling slightly at their quavering voices. He fed the crow an aged macadamia he had found in his jacket pocket. ‘I ask merely because I have a sense that the Phobic Animus is here with us now, for some reason.’

Not trusting themselves to speak, the three men nodded their assent.

‘Good. Well, now. I assume you have easy access to your institutional funds, as I shall be spending a lot of them immediately. Equipment is by the bye: the Dreamlands will provide what we need, at least to begin with. We shall need to travel, however.’

‘Travel, Mr Cabal?’ said Bose. ‘But surely the Dreamlands are coterminous with all space and time? We can enter them as easily from here as from Timbuktu.’

‘I do not recall suggesting Timbuktu,’ said Cabal. ‘Yes, you are right, but simply standing beside a boundary does not allow you to move through that boundary. A high wall allows no access, not until you find the door. I cast lots before I came out today, and I have found a place where the veil between this world and the Dreamlands is suitably fine that the Silver Key will make short work of it. That is where the Gate of the Silver Key lies, gentlemen, and we should make haste before it decides to relocate to the heart of the Sahara, or the depths of the Antarctic, or – gods forfend – Wolverhampton.’

‘And where does it lie now, Mr Cabal?’

‘Somewhere beneath the sagging gambrel rooftops and behind the crumbling Georgian balustrades of Arkham, in the state of Massachusetts. Arkham, that lies upon the darkly muttering Miskatonic. I have not been there since…’ He paused, remembering, and that faint ironic smile twitched across his mouth. ‘Since for ever. Witch-cursed, legend-haunted Arkham. Ah, how I’ve missed it. Oh, and the university library has a copy of Enquêtes interdites. I must remember to steal it, time permitting. That is for later, however. Can your organisation foot the bill for our travel and accommodation?’

‘It can, Mr Cabal,’ said Shadrach, with encouraging firmness. ‘Ever since its creation some thirty years ago, the Institute has been saving its resources for this great endeavour. We shall have all we need, and more.’

‘Good, good,’ said Cabal, distractedly shooing the crow from his shoulder.

‘We will alert the treasurer of the Fear Institute by telegram immediately, and…’

He paused: Cabal was holding one index finger up in a gesture of enquiry. ‘The Fear Institute?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it named after a Mr Fear?’

‘No.’

Cabal laughed, a dry, cynical noise that stirred and died in his throat. ‘There is nothing mealy-mouthed about you, is there, gentlemen? Good. I approve.

‘To the Fear Institute, then, I offer my services.’