Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute jc-3-1

by Jonathan L. Howard

  ‘What was that?’ squeaked Bose.

  Cabal watched a plume of brick dust blossom out into the wide avenue behind them. ‘Good news, Herr Bose. It definitely wasn’t wamps.’

  Without another word, they ran across the plaza for the temple, passing wamp bones all around.

  Chapter 8

  IN WHICH CABAL HAS A SURPRISINGLY CIVILISED CHAT WITH A MONSTER

  The great size of the temple on the hill confused the eye as they closed on it; they had preconceptions as to the limits of heavy stone construction and therefore the greatest size the temple could realistically be. The Dreamlands, however, was always pleased to squash the preconceptions of the waking world, blithely ignoring building restrictions, health and safety considerations, and – most rudely – physics. The overall effect was to reproduce one of the most common and least enjoyable of dream experiences: running very hard yet barely seeming to get anywhere. The square before the temple simply could not have been that huge, the temple could not have been so vast, yet the square was, and the temple was, and the flagstones beneath their feet seemed never to end as they ran and they ran and they ran.

  And then, as is also the way of dreams, they were suddenly there, so abruptly that there was not even the sense of having covered the last hundred yards. They ran up the steps, all ninety-nine – Cabal counted – and arrived in front of the great entrance into the building.

  ‘Oh, for crying out loud,’ gasped Corde, as he tried to recover his breath. ‘Have you ever seen such enormous doors?’ Behind him, Shadrach and then Bose staggeringly reached the top of the steps and promptly fell down, wheezing pathetically.

  ‘Yes,’ said Cabal, as indeed he had. ‘But they had the decency to have a porter’s door set into them. How is anyone supposed to open these things for worship? Did they have mammoths for ushers?’ He turned and looked out across the square, which, typically, now didn’t seem anywhere near as enormous. The glare from the morning sun on the pale stone made his eyes water, and he instinctively felt for his glasses in his jacket pocket.

  As he did so, something twisted uncomfortably in his mind. Something like déjà vu, except instead of having the sense that he had done all this before, he had an unaccountable sense that he had never, not even once, in all the time that they had been in the Dreamlands, checked his pockets for their contents. It didn’t make sense, and almost immediately small fragments of memory, like ants, clustered around and he thought, perhaps, that he had after all. Yet the scent of an unreliable recollection, a false memory hung around it, and it was with considerable effort that he pulled himself back to the present. He found he had his blue-glass spectacles out, and was staring at them as if he had just noticed that he had eight fingers on that hand. How many fingers did that hand have? Eight. No, five. That was right. Five. Five phalanges; four fingers and an opposable thumb. That was what he had. He counted twice to be sure.

  Shadrach had managed to regain his feet by leaning on one of the massive columns that supported the portico over the temple gates. He was looking at Cabal oddly. ‘Mr Cabal? Mr Cabal, are you well, sir?’

  Cabal put on the glasses quickly, but his hand shook as he did so. ‘I am perfectly well, Mr Shadrach,’ he said, taking care that there was no tremor in his voice. ‘Simply exhausted after the run. I’m sure you can sympathise with that.’ Without waiting for a reply, he turned his attention to the square. It was empty of all but wamp bones and scrub grass forcing its way between the slabs. Of their pursuer, if there was a pursuer, there was no sign. ‘It isn’t showing its face – assuming it has a face – yet,’ he said to Corde. Corde ignored him: he and the mercenaries were at the crack between the great wooden doors, trying to get enough purchase to open them. Normally Cabal would have been happy to watch them scrabble away for a good long while, but as his own survival was also at stake, he decided he should make a few constructive comments.

  ‘Don’t be such verdammt fools,’ he snapped. They turned to him with differing degrees of curiosity and resentment. ‘If this is the correct temple, and I hope for all our sakes that it is, then a lone hermit lives here. I hardly think he manhandles those doors open and shut every time he wishes to dash out for some milk. There must be some other way in. I had hoped it would be at the top of the stairs by the main gates and that we could not see it as we approached because of the curvature of the frontage or the occlusion of the colonnades. A forlorn hope, it appears. The fact remains that a frontal assault on these doors is doomed to failure, and that time may be limited before whatever destroyed the wamps locates and does the same to us.’

  ‘The man’s right,’ said Holk, brushing grime off his hands. ‘We would need a platoon and ropes stapled to the door edge to stand any chance of getting this thing open. If there’s another way in, we have to find it, and soon.’ Without waiting for orders from either moneyman Shadrach or ‘Captain’ Corde, he turned to his men. ‘Right, you two go around widdershins and take Masters Bose and Shadrach with you. The rest of us will go the other way. If anybody finds a door, send a runner immediately to tell the other party. Understood? Then jump to it!’

  Going down ninety-nine steep stone steps in a hurry was less tiring than going up ninety-nine steep stone steps in a hurry, but comfortably made up for it in terms of perceived danger. Hand rails and other such nods to safety had apparently been regarded as somehow heretical, and it was better that some of the faithful should finish as broken lumps of flesh at the bottom with bones sticking out at odd angles than there be any backsliding into being blasphemously careful. After the first few steps taken at a rapid pace, it became obvious that stopping was no longer an option so all eight men found themselves having to apply their full concentration to a descent that was quickly developing an aspect of ‘headlong’. All it took was for one little mincing step inadvertently to be a long, manly one, and the owner of the recalcitrant leg would shortly find himself at sixes and sevens, and possibly eights and nines, depending on how many sharp-edged corners he encountered on the way down.

  They reached the square at a gallop, the more adventurous jumping the last few steps, the less adventurous losing any remaining dignity as they had to keep running while bending their legs to absorb the downward momentum, overall giving the effect of a drunken uncle at a party doing the hilarious going-down-to-the-cellar visual gag, and doing it badly.

  They split off into the teams Holk had suggested and began their circumnavigations of the great round bulk of the temple. ‘You realise that we shall be travelling far faster than the other party, Sergeant?’ said Corde. ‘Shadrach and Bose are exhausted. They’ll have to keep stopping.’

  ‘He knows,’ interrupted Cabal. ‘That’s exactly why he did it. If he’d split Shadrach and Bose between parties, both would be impeded. This way at least one is making decent time.’

  They were indeed making decent time. Cabal had realised some time ago that much in the Dreamlands depended on one’s state of mind. If one expected to be exhausted, one would likely be so that much sooner than somebody with more faith in their own endurance. Similar aspects were equally affected by expectation and, it seemed, aesthetics. Cabal and the Fear Institute expedition had been in the Dreamlands weeks already, yet none of them had had any need to change their clothes. Well, there was Corde and his studded black leather, but that had been by choice, not necessity. If their situation changed to one in which the popular imagination decreed bad smells – if they were taken as galley slaves, for example – then bad smells there would be. But for doughty adventurers, there would be nothing more than the smell of fresh sweat and, when the need arose, blood. Such was Cabal’s observation, his conviction and his expectation.

  All of them now and then looked back at the top of the avenue by which they had reached the square. Cabal found himself half expecting the appearance of some monster rendered in painted latex upon a wire armature, lent life by stop-frame animation and scale by back projection, like a film he had seen when he was young and had time for such nonsense. The
harsh light and hard shadows gave the whole vista an artificial air that chimed with the thought, and Cabal made a conscious effort to suppress it: this world seemed to take far too much notice of one’s inner musings. Or day-dreaming, he reminded himself, which seemed to explain a great deal. As they continued to dogtrot clockwise, the top of the avenue slowly became hidden from view, and not one of them was sure that they preferred it that way.

  When they finally found an entrance, it was not quite of the nature they had been expecting. Something discreet and bijou like a castle’s postern gate, perhaps, or a theatre’s stage door, by which, in days of yore, theological groupies might have clustered in the hope of a glimpse of some superstar preacher. Instead they discovered a great yawning cavern of destruction, a ragged hole in the temple’s rear wall sufficient to provide disabled access for a wheelchair-bound diplodocus. Blocks of stone, Brobdingnagian in scale, lay tumbled about like a child’s toys amid drifts of rubble. The four men had slowed to walking pace when the first pieces of debris had become visible, and now were all but walking on tiptoe. There was no chance that this was a natural collapse: the top of the hole remained firm and the blocks had not simply fallen but had been thrown some distance.

  Cabal moved up first, to peer cautiously around the edge of the breach. Beyond, he could see a trail of demolished internal walls going deep into the building, until all was lost in gloom.

  ‘It got in,’ said Corde, defeat heavy in his voice. ‘It got in and killed him. The whole journey out here has been pointless.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Cabal admonished him. ‘Observe – the rubble from the walls, right from the inside to out. This damage was not caused by something monstrous going in: it was caused by something monstrous coming out.’

  ‘Well . . .’ Corde thought for a moment. ‘Mightn’t whatever did this have gained entrance elsewhere and just created destruction on the way out? For all we know, Shadrach’s party are standing by an equally massive hole, but one in which much of the debris lies inside the line of the wall.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Cabal, impatiently. ‘Look, man! If there is another breach, would we not be able to see light somewhere within?’

  Corde opened his mouth, failed to think of anything more intelligent to refute this argument than an arch, but in this case unsupported, ‘Not necessarily,’ and therefore shut his mouth without saying anything at all.

  ‘There is, of course, a chance that this mysterious colossus has returned here and is lurking deep inside, presumably with one hand over its mouth to stifle its giggles, as it waits for us to stroll in and consequently suffer blunt trauma and detached limbs.’ The others looked at him uncertainly. Cabal shrugged. ‘But it’s unlikely. Well, this represents an entrance, I suppose. Sergeant Holk, we should alert the other group to our discovery.’

  Apparently Holk was still having trouble getting past the image of a snickering colossus waiting to do him harm. ‘Eh? Oh, yes. At once, Master Cabal.’ He turned to the other mercenary and sent him off to continue clockwise around the building at a run until he met the rest coming the other way. He was to make a mental note of any other entrances he passed en route, but the important thing was to reunite everyone as quickly as possible. With a hasty salute, the soldier ran off, his hand on his sword hilt to keep his sword angled up and away from his heels as he went.

  ‘Right,’ said Corde. ‘Very well. Good plan, Sergeant.’ He plainly felt keenly the way he was not being consulted, but was endeavouring not to show it. ‘When the others get here, we shall decide how to proceed.’

  ‘Yes, you do that.’ There was a faint hollow quality to Cabal’s voice that made Corde turn, and then gasp audibly, for Cabal had already climbed over the sill formed by the shattered stone and was advancing into the temple. ‘I shall just have a little wander around while you wait.’

  ‘But!’ Corde realised he’d shouted, and lowered his tone to sotto voce. ‘But, Cabal! What if the – the thing really is still in there?’

  Cabal had just vanished behind the first broken internal wall but he leaned out and put his finger to his lips. ‘Hush, Herr Corde,’ he said. ‘I need to be able to hear a snickering giant if I am to survive this.’ With which he vanished into the shadowed interior, leaving only a faint tang of sarcasm upon the air.

  Once he was out of sight and – longed-for and glorious – by himself, Cabal’s artfully angled flippancy fell away to be replaced by a cool wariness, honed by a hundred unauthorised sorties into other people’s laboratories, other people’s libraries and other people’s graves. He could see that the damage caused by the mysterious Goliath was in no way wanton: it had simply decided that it wished to leave, had had its own reasons for not going by the main door – it was very hard to believe that a creature capable of such destruction would have had any problems with the great gates – and had made a dash for the outside, swatting away several hundred tons’ worth of pesky intervening walls in the process. Cabal could not know why the gates hadn’t appealed to it, but he was inclined to think that it was simply because it had not understood the concept of doors. He was also inclined to think, and here he was very sorry that he did not know, that since it had been so very keen to leave the confines of the great temple, then it would not be in any great hurry to return. This was supposition, however, and supposition could often cause one to die at an inconvenient time and with one’s work left unfinished. Therefore, he backed it with a generous portion of caution.

  He paid little attention to the chambers he climbed through, beyond checking for possible threats: he found none. The light was becoming dim as he clambered through ruined offices, storerooms, subsidiary chapels and libraries, all raised in the honour of a god who seemed to care little enough now, perhaps even the god who had visited the city’s doom upon it. Gods had so much power here, and so little wisdom: like a child with a howitzer, they rained death on those who displeased them, and as for those who did please them, the gods did nothing. It was a poor sort of deal, to be left alone in return for tribute, a bullying sort of worship, but one common in the Dreamlands, and implied often enough on Earth.

  He was just negotiating a route through some sort of chapel of rest, which must have been used on an industrial scale in its heyday, judging by the number of empty funereal biers, when he met with mishap. He stood upon a tumbled pew, and its end seesawed down alarmingly. Too far down: the floor was broken deeply through not just the sombre black tiling but into the very fabric of the Romanesque cement that lay beneath. The floor beneath the pew tipped steeply, pivoted on a structural beam beneath, and Cabal – unable to keep his feet – fell heavily and slid into the dark depths. Without his weight upon it, the floor swung back to equilibrium. Of the gap in the floor where Cabal had vanished, there was no sign but a crack.

  It was not the first time Johannes Cabal had been dumped into darkness, and the experience had lost its dubious allure on his very first outing. He was thus already in a vile mood as he crumpled on to an unseen floor, his right knee driving up hard enough on impact to strike him in the face and to draw blood from where his canine ripped the inner lip. He spat out blood, saliva and invective as he sought to reorientate himself in this new and troublesome environment.

  First, he took in what he could through his available senses. Wherever he was, the floor was even and worked so at least he hadn’t fallen into a cave system or a cavity formed by natural subsidence. This was good: there must therefore be a way out. He could taste dust that had been thrown up by his undignified entrance and, from his extensive experience of long-abandoned places, could tell that it was largely inorganic in nature, indicating that at least he was unlikely to be sharing the space with anything else at that exact moment, a small comfort. The air was cool and musty and, even after standing, he could wave his hand over his head without touching the ceiling, which accorded with the second and a half it had taken him to reach the floor. The light in the room from which he had fallen had been attenuated at best and none of it could m
ake it past the obliquely spalled crack. He listened for a full two minutes before sharply stamping, and listening for the echoes. They confirmed what he had gathered in the moment of poor light as he fell, that he was in a room with hard walls, more likely stone than brick, and that it was no more than forty feet across in any dimension.

  Now it was time to cast a little light on his situation. He had two option: to use a match from the silver matchbox in his pocket – a technological innovation that the Dreamlands were apparently prepared to countenance – or to try out a device he had spotted in an artificer’s shop in Baharna while trying to explain the concepts of percussion caps, powder corning and the special joy of putting a lead ball into any person who presents a nuisance.

  The device consisted of a beautifully filigreed brass cylinder topped with a sphere of solid glass. Into the space beneath the sphere one placed a small capsule in which there was a beetle of a particular species, kept alive but sluggish through the agency of a small quantity of drugged food. The beetles were the Dreamlands’ equivalent of glow-worms or fireflies but, unlike their mundane cousins, they did not generate their light as it was required through a chemical reaction but, rather, stored sunlight during their pupal stage and released it at will through adulthood. Cabal had, at this stage of the artificer’s explanation, pointed out several scientific implausibilities in this explanation, stated a distinct lack of faith in the artificer’s truthfulness, and offered to nail the artificer’s fingers to the counter in full knowledge of the detrimental effect this would have on the artificer’s subsequent livelihood. At this point, the artificer decided that this would be an ideal point to offer a small lagniappe of sorts, in return for good will, future business and not having his fingers nailed to the counter.