Johannes Cabal The Necromancer Read Online Free PDF

embankment. That, he hoped, must be it.

    He set off towards the trees with determination, but after a few steps he was halted by the sound of something falling heavily on the track behind him. He turned and snapped, “Do keep up! We don’t have all day.” Denzil blinked slowly at him and then down at Dennis, who was trying to get up, but his foot had caught under a rotten sleeper. It took a moment for Denzil to realise that he might help by kicking Dennis’s heel repeatedly until it came loose. He took slow, careful aim, swung his leg with great force, missed, and ended up on his back. He blinked uncomprehendingly at the grey sky. It seemed much more difficult to get things done now that he was dead.

    Cabal pulled a little black book from his pocket, drew a pencil from its spine, and made a note. Batch 247 seemed to act quickly, but it certainly didn’t help co-ordination in any practical sense. With hindsight, perhaps he should have made some effort to take their souls on a more formal basis as the first donors of the hundred. That he hadn’t was partially down to not being quite sure how one actually sets about taking souls on a more formal basis, but mainly because they had peeved him. “I’ll be over there.” He pointed towards the trees and put his notebook away. “Catch up when you’re able.” That, he thought ruefully, might be some time.

    As Cabal got closer to the trees, he began to see how long the copse was—perhaps a quarter of a mile. Given the stunted state of everything else in sight, that was suspicious in itself. Nothing else seemed likely to produce much more than toothpicks, while these trees were great twisted brutes that stood on the landscape as if painted in black ink. Leafless branches clutched at the sky, and the convulsed bark of the trunks looked, to a fanciful mind, like human faces twisted in torment. “This,” he said quietly, “must be the place. It’s so melodramatic.”

    In a nearby tree that might have been an elm before being regularly watered with LSD, a carrion crow sat and regarded Cabal keenly. It tilted its head and cawed mockingly at Cabal. Then it saw Dennis and Denzil stumbling along the track a hundred yards behind him and, full of hope and appetite, flew to investigate them.

    Cabal passed the tortured elm, stepped over the roots of a lunatic’s vision of a witch hazel, and came face to face with the Monster.

    Cabal exhaled sharply, and his always pale complexion turned an ugly grey for a second, until he brought himself under control. He didn’t move, tried not to breathe, tried not to let the great black Monster know he was alive. Then he took a deep, shuddering breath, stepped forward, and placed his hand upon its face.

    He had to step on the cowcatcher to reach, though.

    It was the most astounding piece of engineering he thought he’d ever seen, and he’d seen a few. A massive locomotive that even here, dead and neglected, its firebox long cold, demanded and received unthinking respect. It bore some affectations of the Old West—the cowcatcher, the fluted smokestack—but the body seemed more Old World, aggressively squared and not afraid to shunt every carriage ever built from here to Hell. Perhaps it was capable of that. Cabal nodded approvingly: he might not be an engineer by trade, but he knew solid workmanship when he saw it.

    Apparently, so did all nearby creatures. Despite any number of tempting perches for local incontinent birds, the only dirt on it was the coating of curious black rust that came off on his fingers like very coarse soot. Cabal sniffed at it cautiously and was instantly put in mind of energetic evenings down in the cellar, sawing up the evidence and putting it in the furnace before the police arrived. He pushed his tinted spectacles up his nose and blinked thoughtfully behind them. What exactly did this thing run on? He hoped it was wood or coal; it would be much more convenient.

    A commotion made him turn. The crow had