Cabal’s motivation was high: every day he found it a little harder to remember things or to carry out mental calculations. He was heading towards average human intelligence, and he found the experience stifling and claustrophobic. On the one hand it appalled him that people were content to live with such small intellects, although on the other it went a long way to explaining so many things about society that otherwise defied belief. At least the ghouls seemed as highly motivated as he: he had only to suggest that an item might be useful for a gang to run off and return anywhere from hours to a couple of days later with it in paw. That at least was one less thing to worry about, but the narrow window of opportunity the elixir presented and the impossibility of securing further supplies of some of the reagents needed meant that he had little latitude for supporting experimentation. The few tests he was able to conduct were highly encouraging – it seemed that Culpins’s obsessions with werewolves, plumbing and naked ladies had actually borne fruit – but there could only be a single acid test, and as much as he wanted to hold it off until he could be sure he was doing the right thing, its time was growing inexorably closer.
At last, Johannes Cabal ran out of excuses for himself. Time was short, the principles of his work were already beginning to escape him, and he knew he must act now or for ever be trapped in the Stygian places beneath the Earth and its close neighbours in dream and out of it. He carried out the last reactions, filtered away an unnecessary precipitate, added another reagent drop-wise until the contents of his test-tube went from sepia to colourless and clear. He added the powdered bone, marking the elixir with a trace of his own former humanity, and shook it vigorously for ten minutes until the bone had entirely dissolved. Then he neutralised the remaining solution, and distilled it. He was left with perhaps a fluid ounce of clear, slightly oily liquid, which he gathered in a small test-tube. He allowed it to cool, and then stoppered it. It was so small, little more than an ampoule, yet everything rested upon it. He gathered his faculties, arose from his laboratory stool – obligingly stolen from a Brazilian university by the ghouls – and went out into the main cavern.
He stood before them, straining to stand upright as a man stood, instead of the slight crouch that the ghoul form encouraged, and held up the elixir. ‘Friends,’ he meeped, and it was true that he had rarely felt so friendly towards anybody or anything. ‘Friends, I come before you today to thank you for your aid in my work.’ The ghouls were already scampering over on all fours to be close and catch his every word. ‘This transformation clearly suits many of you, and is, I think, a more honourable and honest career than, say, the judiciary. It is not, however, a career suited to everyone.’ Cabal could see the ghoul leader standing nearby, nodding slightly in silent appreciation of these sentiments. ‘I have found my stay with you highly educational, and a wide expansion of my horizons, and as I have come to know the gravefolk, I have also come to understand you, and to respect and appreciate you. When I return to the world above, I will never forget you. Indeed, I believe that we may combine our forces in many mutually advantageous ways.’ Cabal had learned to see expression and emotion in the muzzled grey rubbery faces, and he could see sadness there now. They were sad to see him go, he knew, and probably sad that all the justified thieving had to stop. Despite himself, he felt quite fond of them.
‘Now?’ asked one to his right.
‘Well, let me get home first, and then . . .’ began Cabal, but the ghoul was not speaking to him.
‘Now,’ said the leader, quietly but firmly.
Suddenly Cabal was being held down, his arms and legs pinioned. ‘What?’ he shouted. ‘What are you doing?’ He thrashed in their grip, but there were too many of them, and they were far too strong. Then he felt his paw being gently but inexorably forced open. He could only swear and damn them as the elixir was taken from him. ‘No! Get off me, you verdammt animals! It’s no use to you! It’s too late for you!’
He fought until he was exhausted and weeping with anger and fear of his certain future. The ghouls continued to keep him still as their leader stood before him. He held up the small glass tube that held all Cabal’s hopes and said, ‘I am sorry, Johannes Cabal. I am sorry as you will be sorry, too. But not yet.’
‘It’s useless to you,’ rasped Cabal, through a larynx grown unused to human speech. ‘You cannot use it. You are fully transformed.’
‘Yes. Full transformation. Sorry again. I lied.’
Cabal looked up suddenly at him. ‘You did what?’
‘Body change, yes, six . . . eight weeks. Mind change, much longer.’ Still looking thoughtfully at the elixir in its right paw, it batted self-referentially at itself with its left. ‘Mind finally going but not gone yet. Not too late for me.’ He looked at Cabal. ‘Long as you fight it, not too late for you either.’
‘If you take that away from me,’ said Cabal looking at the test-tube, ‘then it is too late for me.’
‘No,’ said the leader. ‘You do not understand yet. You will understand.’ It started to turn away and paused, looking back guiltily at Cabal. ‘I am sorry, Johannes Cabal. Wish there was other way.’ And suddenly it was off at a bound, running into one of the tunnels and, from there, to anywhere and anytime.
‘No!’ Cabal called weakly after it. ‘It won’t work for you. You don’t understand. It wasn’t formulated for you, it isn’t keyed to you. Please. Come back.’
The leader did not, and the other ghouls held Cabal prisoner until pursuit became hopeless. Then they released him, and slunk away, ashamed.
Cabal sat alone, unable to take in the enormity of what had just happened to him. No, that isn’t quite correct. Cabal was a man who had bandied words with gods and devils, and had yet to experience anything of sufficient enormity to prevent him functioning. It wasn’t the scale of the disaster that distressed him so, vast though it was. It was the irrationality of it. The ghouls might be childlike sometimes, but they were no fools, their leader least of all. Cabal had made no secret of the elixir’s specificity, so what did the ghoul leader hope to gain? To crush Cabal’s spirit? Possibly, but everybody – everything – had seemed almost as upset about it as he did. He tried to visualise the ghoul leader stopping in some lightless tunnel to open the phial and gulp down the contents, waiting for several minutes while nothing at all happened, then looking faintly put out. Cabal could not understand it. It made no sense at all.
Until the slowing mechanisms of his mind stumbled upon an idea, and he considered it and found it was not wanting in any respect, and realised that it was therefore likely enough to be the truth. He sat frozen by the idea as its ramifications rippled out and illuminated his ignorance like a flare down a pit. It was at first breathtaking, and his breath was duly taken. Then he started to laugh. It was an open, full-throated laugh, with an air of relief so strong in it that it occasionally tended a little to hysteria, but was reined back whenever it did so. It was an honest laugh, and it was the laughter of a man, not that of a ghoul.
When finally he was able to bring it under control and it quietened to sobbed chuckles, he said, loudly enough that anyone nearby would hear it, ‘Oh, I won’t forget. I won’t forget what I am. I will never forget who I am.’ Then he stood and bellowed into the empty darkness. ‘I am Johannes Cabal! Necromancer! Mildly infamous in some quarters! Rise up, ghouls, and come to me! There is work to be done! There are preparations to be made!’
From every corner, every tunnel they crept and slunk and crawled and scampered to form a great mass of a corpse-eating audience before him. They were no longer filled with guilt and regret at what they had done, because they knew he now understood. They grinned their mad-dog grins, happy again.