Within Cabal, he felt panic as the tightly held reins that had steered him from insanity on so many occasions suddenly flapped loose and useless. He felt his mental discipline turn to water as it bore him to the lip of another abyss. This abyss descended into far darker places than he had ever experienced before, and it was one from which even the most accomplished spelunkers would never return.
And then he heard his own laughter, shrill and humourless, gulping breaths beneath it. He heard those half-swallowed sounds and he recognised them, and the fear blossomed within him like flame. The Fear Institute had been right all along, it seemed. Here truly was the Phobic Animus, or his, at least. Where Nyarlothotep had failed, the ghouls had succeeded.
He dropped his torch and fell to his knees, and then to all fours. His hands were before him, and – would he had worn gloves to save him from that sight! – he saw the fingers were perhaps a little too long, the nails a little too pronounced, the skin a shade too grey. He stared at them, making despairing little barking sounds under his breath, and so was unaware when the leader of the ghouls crept close and sat by him.
‘Do not fear, Johannes Cabal,’ it said, though not in any human tongue. ‘We shall look after you. Now you are family.’
Surviving fragments of Cyril W. Clome’s Manuscript for The Young Person’s Guide to Cthulhu and His Friends: No. 5 An ABC
A is for Azathoth, all mindless in space,
B is for Bugg-Shash, a god with no face.
C is for Cthulhu, the Father of Screams,
D is for Deep Ones, who watch while he dreams.
E is for Elder Things that lived long ago,
F is for Fire Vampire, they don’t like the snow.
G is for Ghouls, who look much the same,
H is for Hastur, but don’t say his name.
I is for Ithaqua, you’ll freeze to the bone,
J is for Juk-Shabb, of whom little is known.
K is for Kadath, lost in cold wastes,
L is for Lloigor, of decadent tastes.
M is for Mi-Go, clever if fungal,
N is for Nyarlothotep, not prone to bungle.
O is for Oorn, a mollusc from Hell,
P is for Pluto, called Yuggoth as well.
Q is for Q’yth-az, a strange deity,
R is for Rhogog, who looks like a tree.
S is for Shub-Niggurath, her prey are dismayed,
T is for Tsathoggua, whose needs are depraved.
U is for Ulthar, cat killers be warned,
V is for Vhoorl, where Cthulhu was spawned.
W is for Witch House, down Old Arkham way,
X is for X’chll’at-aa, which is tricky to say.
Y is for Yog-Sothoth, who’s everywhen and where,
Z is for Zoth-Ommog, Great Cthulhu’s third heir.
Read this right through, and then you may see, That
(The MS halts abruptly at this point. The author remains largely missing, but for his finger- and toenails, and his eyes.)
Chapter 17
IN WHICH CABAL EXPERIENCES OMOPHAGIA, ANNOYS THE VATICAN, AND ENDURES MUCH
The physical transformation was rapid, the mental one slow. More than once, Johannes Cabal wished that the reverse had been true. He sat in the darkness, chewing on the haunch of a newspaper proprietor who had just been buried a day or two before. The meat was rich with avarice and mendacity, rendered salty by the crocodile tears of his heirs. Cabal had balked at eating human flesh at first, despite the rising appetite for it within him. The leader of the ghouls had come to him then and pointed out the obvious truth that most people were little more than dumb animals and that, in any case, this could be regarded as a form of recycling and therefore was terribly sensible as well as delicious. Cabal had still been reluctant, but then they had brought him best joint of archbishop and, after that, he had no problems at all.
If the dietary changes were eventually acceptable, the physical ones were less so, and the inevitable mental degradation concerned him most of all. The ghouls were not stupid – they were about as intelligent as an average human – but their intelligence rarely wavered much higher or lower than that, and the thought of being reduced to merely average human intelligence appalled Cabal. Indeed, if he were to be honest with himself, it terrified him.
Less dismaying than the cannibalism (though, as he rationalised it, he was no longer truly human and therefore no cannibal), but almost as troubling as the imminent collapse of his mental faculties was the nudity. Ghouls had little use for clothes, a mode that Cabal was sure he would not adopt. As time passed – and in the eternal darkness beneath the worlds, he had no idea how much time that meant – his garments grew constrictive and he felt intolerably swaddled and contained within them. He shed them in an isolated tunnel, and left them there, neatly folded, the last memorial to Johannes Cabal.
It should hardly have surprised him, this change. It was not even unknown in the history of his profession. The basic precepts of necromancy involved hanging around graveyards, tinkering with corpses and inevitably having dealings – friendly or otherwise – with ghouls. Given that the triggering events for a ghoulish transformation are psychic rather than material and include an interest in human cadavers, an empathy if not necessarily a sympathy with ghouls, and the ingestion of human remains, Cabal could only conclude that he should have washed his hands more thoroughly between dissections and lunch. Somewhere along the way, he must have inadvertently enjoyed a morsel of meat that had not come from the butcher. It served him right for eating in his laboratory. Still, it could have been worse. He’d only changed species instead of, say, picking up hepatitis.
So, he sat with the others in a lightless cavern, chewing a media tycoon’s thigh and wondering what would become of him. He had failed. It had always been a possibility, but he had imagined the path would be abruptly halted by his death. It had never occurred to him that he might be turned aside from it, watching helplessly as potential success paled into certain failure. He looked at the others scattered around, industriously rationing out parcels of stolen meat among themselves. He didn’t even need visible light to see them. Everything was limned in a strange and beautiful incandescence that showed details in the most mundane things that he had never dreamed might be there. This was a gift of his new physiology and, it was true, this he did not mind so much.
‘But,’ meeped a voice, ‘you are not happy.’
Cabal turned to see the leader squatting nearby, watching him with calm interest. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘I am not happy. I did not complete my work, and soon I will not even be able to remember why it was important to me.’
‘You will,’ laughed the leader, a sound like a choking terrier. ‘You will remember.’
‘But I won’t want to.’
‘You are so sorry for yourself. All your power and knowledge and books, and you are sorry for yourself. We have heard so much about Johannes Cabal. A clever man. A clever man. But sorry for yourself.’
Unused to being chastised, least of all by a creature that used crypts and tombs as All You Can Eat buffets, Cabal snapped, ‘The process is irreversible. Everybody knows that.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said the leader, nodding understandingly. ‘Everybody.’