Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute by Jonathan L. Howard

expressions on the faces of the others. Whether they were shocked at the admission or perhaps at the possibility that Cabal was losing his mindhardly mattered. Whatever the reason, their faith in him and his abilities was as shaken as he was. ‘Satan was nothing,’ Cabal muttered to himself. ‘I spat in his eye.’ There was a short pause. ‘Figuratively. I figuratively spat in his eye. I couldn’t really spit in his eye.’ Another pause. ‘He was too tall.’
    Mercifully for his unwilling audience, any further memoirs of supernatural entities into whose eyes he had expectorated, figuratively or otherwise, were curtailed by the discovery of a path through the wood. It was not much of a path, but it was the first time they had seen anything approaching a cleared route and it heartened them, as surely such a thing would only exist close to the wood’s edge.
    After a moment’s quiet discussion as to whether they should follow the path this way or that, then a quiet argument, then a quiet flip of one of Shadrach’s golden coins, they went
this
way, and hoped that Fortune would favour them. Fortune seemed a much better travelling companion than, say, Nyarlothotep.
    But even Fortune may behave wilfully on a slow day when she is looking for amusement. They followed the path in as much silence as they could manage, listening for the distant cry of babies. None came. There was only the oppressive quiet, punctuated frequently by their own poor efforts not to punctuate it.
    The path turned sharply to one side and suddenly they found themselves in a clearing, a
true
clearing in the forest, not just one of the patches of slightly lower tree density that had been all of their previous experience. It was not, however, unoccupied.
    With the expenditure of great effort, sections of fallentrees, anything from three to six yards long, had been dragged from elsewhere and placed on their sides. Then the cores of the logs had been patiently removed, apparently by many hours of gnawing. The result was crude but effective dwellings, a whole village of perhaps fifty or so. Each log was swathed with sheets of some organic substance that at first glance appeared to be webbing but that, seen close to, must have been extruded as great flat sheets, addled and crazed with imperfections.
    The explorers were just wondering what sort of creature could have made such a place when they noted evidence at their feet which answered that question. The stunted grass and weeds were dusted with thin grey powder of a shade and consistency they had seen all too recently.
    ‘It’s their village,’ said Corde, his sword never having left his hand since they had discovered the clearing. ‘Those creatures, this is theirs.’
    ‘They are all dead,’ said Shadrach, strictly unnecessarily, yet it still needed underlining. He peered inside a slightly more complex structure of two tree sections that had been bound together to create a small hall. Inside, football-sized egg sacs hung from the walls. Within every one, there was no movement. They dangled dry and flaccid, half filled with grey dust. ‘Even the unborn,’ he whispered.
    As he stepped back, his shoulder brushed the rough lintel. With a loud crack, a great section fell away, dropping to the hard-packed soil and smashing to dust. As if the sound had been all that was required to start the collapse, the roof fell in, breaking into greyness as it tumbled down. The men instinctively clustered together as the destruction spread. Hut after hut came crashing down, the sound of destructionstarting harsh, but ending soft. Inexpressibly disturbed, they withdrew to watch the creatures’ village vanish as suddenly as any baker abducted by a snark.
    ‘They are all dead,’ said Shadrach again, looking at Cabal with fascinated repulsion as if he were a cobra. ‘They, their kin and their homes are destroyed.’
    Bose was watching the last of the tree huts become nothing very much with childish amazement. ‘I