There was a dreadful pause.
The consensus beings that called themselves the Auditors did not believe in anything, except possibly immortality. And the way to be immortal, they knew, was to avoid living. Most of all they did not believe in personality. To be a personality was to be a creature with a beginning and an end. And since they reasoned that in an infinite universe any life was by comparison unimaginably short, they died instantly. There was a flaw in their logic, of course, but by the time they found this out it was always too late. In the meantime, they scrupulously avoided any comment, action or experience that set them apart …
You said ‘me’, said one.
Ah. Yes. But, you see, we were quoting, said the other one hurriedly. Some religious person said that. About educating children. And so would logically say ‘me’. But I wouldn't use that term of myself, of — damn!
The robe vanished in a little puff of smoke.
Let that be a lesson to us, said one of the survivors, as another and totally indistinguishable robe popped into existence where the stricken colleague had been.
Yes, said the newcomer. Well, it certainly appears—
It stopped. A dark shape was approaching through the snow.
It's him, it said.
They faded hurriedly — not simply vanishing, but spreading out and thinning until they were just lost in the background.
The dark figure stopped by the dead carter and reached down.
COULD I GIVE YOU A HAND?
Ernie looked up gratefully.
‘Cor, yeah,’ he said. He got to his feet, swaying a little. ‘Here, your fingers're cold, mister!’
SORRY.
‘What'd he go and do that for? I did what he said. He could've killed me.’
Ernie felt inside his overcoat and pulled out a small and, at this point, strangely transparent silver flask.
‘I always keep a nip on me these cold nights,’ he said. ‘Keeps me spirits up.’
YES INDEED. Death looked around briefly and sniffed the air.
‘How'm I going to explain all this, then, eh?’ said Ernie, taking a pull.
SORRY? THAT WAS VERY RUDE OF ME. I WASN'T PAYING ATTENTION.
‘I said what'm I going to tell people? Letting some blokes ride off with my cart neat as you like… That's gonna be the sack for sure, I'm gonna be in big trouble…’
All. WELL. THERE AT LEAST I HAVE SOME GOOD NEWS, ERNEST. AND, THEN AGAIN, I HAVE SOME BAD NEWS.
Ernie listened. Once or twice he looked at the corpse at his feet. He looked smaller from the outside. He was bright enough not to argue. Some things are fairly obvious when it's a seven-foot skeleton with a scythe telling you them.
‘So I'm dead, then,’ he concluded.
CORRECT.
‘Er… The priest said that… you know… after you're dead… it's like going through a door and on one side of it there's… He… well, a terrible place …?’
Death looked at his worried, fading face.
THROUGH A DOOR…
‘That's what he said…’
I EXPECT IT DEPENDS ON THE DIRECTION YOU'RE WALKING IN.
When the street was empty again, except for the fleshy abode of the late Ernie, the grey shapes came back into focus.
Honestly, he gets worse and worse, said one.
He was looking for us, said another. Did you notice? He suspects something. He gets so… concerned about things.
Yes… but the beauty of this plan, said a third, is that he can't interfere.
He can go everywhere, said one.
No, said another. Not quite everywhere.
And, with ineffable smugness, they faded into the foreground.
It started to snow quite heavily.
It was the night before Hogswatch. All through the house…
…one creature stirred. It was a mouse.
And someone, in the face of all appropriateness, had baited a trap. Although, because it was the festive season, they'd used a piece of pork crackling. The smell of it had been driving the mouse mad all day but now, with no one about, it was prepared to risk it.
The mouse didn't know it was a trap. Mice aren't good at passing on information. Young mice aren't taken up to famous trap sites and told, ‘This is where your Uncle Arthur passed away.’ All it knew was that, what the hey, here was something to eat. On a wooden board with some wire round it.
A brief scurry later and its jaw had closed on the rind.
Or, rather, passed through it.
The mouse looked around at what was now lying under the big spring, and thought, ‘Oops…’
Then its gaze went up to the black-clad figure that had faded into view by the wainscoting.
‘Squeak?’ it asked.
SQUEAK, said the Death of Rats.
And that was it, more or less.
Afterwards, the Death of Rats looked around with interest. In the nature of things his very important job tended to take him to brickyards and dark cellars and the inside of cats and all the little dank holes where rats and mice finally found out if there was a Promised Cheese. This place was different.
It was brightly decorated, for one thing. Ivy and mistletoe hung in bunches from the bookshelves. Brightly coloured streamers festooned the walls, a feature seldom found in most holes or even quite civilized cats.
The Death of Rats took a leap onto a chair and from there on to the table and in fact right into a glass of amber liquid, which tipped over and broke. A puddle spread around four turnips and began to soak into a note which had been written rather awkwardly on pink writing paper.
It read:
Dere Hogfather,
For Hogswatch I would like a drum an a dolly an a teddybear an a Gharstley Omnian Inquisision Torchure Chamber with Wind-up Rack and Nearly Real Blud You Can Use Again, you can get it From the toyshoppe in Short Strete, it is $5.99p. I have been good an here is a glars of Sherre an a Pork pie for you and turnips for Gouger an Rooter an Snot Snouter. I hop the Chimney is big enough but my friend Willaim Says you are your father really.
Yrs. Virginia Prood
The Death of Rats nibbled a bit of the pork pie because when you are the personification of the death of small rodents you have to behave in certain ways. He also piddled on one of the turnips for the same reason, although only metaphorically, because when you are a small skeleton in a black robe there are also some things you technically cannot do.
Then he leapt down from the table and left sherry-flavoured footprints all the way to the tree that stood in a pot in the corner. It was really only a bare branch of oak, but so much shiny holly and mistletoe had been wired onto it that it gleamed in the fight of the candles.
There was tinsel on it, and glittering ornaments, and small bags of chocolate money.
The Death of Rats peered at his hugely distorted reflection in a glass ball, and then looked up at the mantelpiece.
He reached it in one jump, and ambled curiously through the cards that had been ranged along it. His grey whiskers twitched at messages like ‘Wifhin you Joye and all Goode Cheer at Hogswatchtime & All Through The Yeare’. A couple of them had pictures of a big jolly fat man carrying a sack. In one of them he was riding in a sledge drawn by four enormous pigs.
The Death of Rats sniffed at a couple of long stockings that had been hung from the mantelpiece, over the fireplace in which a fire had died down to a few sullen ashes.
He was aware of a subtle tension in the air, a feeling that here was a scene that was also a stage, a round hole, as it were, waiting for a round peg.
There was a scraping noise. A few lumps of soot thumped into the ashes.
The Grim Squeaker nodded to himself.
The scraping became louder, and was followed by a moment of silence and then a clang as something landed in the ashes and knocked over a set of ornamental fire irons.
The rat watched carefully as a red-robed figure pulled itself upright and staggered across the hearthrug, rubbing its shin where it had been caught by the toasting for
k.
It reached the table and read the note. The Death of Rats thought he heard a groan.
The turnips were pocketed and so, to the Death of Rats' annoyance, was the pork pie. He was pretty sure it was meant to be eaten here, not taken away.
The figure scanned the dripping note for a moment, and then turned around and approached the mantelpiece. The Death of Rats pulled back slightly behind ‘Seafon's Greetings!’
A red-gloved hand took down a stocking. There was some creaking and rustling and it was replaced, looking a lot fatter — the larger box sticking out of the top had, just visible, the words ‘Victim Figures Not Included. 3-10 yrs’.
The Death of Rats couldn't see much of the donor of this munificence. The big red hood hid all the face, apart from a long white beard.
Finally, when the figure finished, it stood back and pulled a list out of its pocket. It held it up to the hood and appeared to be consulting it. It waved its other hand vaguely at the fireplace, the sooty footprints, the empty sherry glass and the stocking. Then it bent forward, as if reading some tiny print.
AH, YES, it said. ER… HO. HO. HO.
With that, it ducked down and entered the chimney. There was some scrabbling before its boots gained a purchase, and then it was gone.
The Death of Rats realized he'd begun to gnaw his little scythe's handle in sheer shock.
SQUEAK?
He landed in the ashes and swarmed up the sooty cave of the chimney. He emerged so fast that he shot out with his legs still scrabbling and landed in the snow on the roof.
There was a sledge hovering in the air by the gutter.
The red-hooded figure had just climbed in and appeared to be talking to someone invisible behind a pile of sacks.
HERE'S ANOTHER PORK PIE.
‘Any mustard?’ said the sacks. ‘They're a treat with mustard.’
IT DOES NOT APPEAR SO.
‘Oh, well. Pass it over anyway.’
IT LOOKS VERY BAD.
‘Nah, 's just where something's nibbled it—’
I MEAN THE SITUATION. MOST OF THE LETTERS… THEY DON'T REALLY BELIEVE. THEY PRETEND TO BELIEVE, JUST IN CASE[7]. I FEAR IT MAY BE TOO LATE. IT HAS SPREAD SO FAST AND BACK IN TIME, TOO.
‘Never say die, master. That's our motto, eh?’ said the sacks, apparently with their mouth full.
I CAN'T SAY IT'S EVER REALLY BEEN MINE.
‘I meant we're not going to be intimidated by the certain prospect of complete and utter failure, master.’
AREN'T WE? OH, GOOD. WELL, I SUPPOSE WE'D BETTER BE GOING. The figure picked up the reins. UP, GOUGER! UP, ROOTER! UP, TUSKER! UP, SNOUTER! GIDDYUP!
The four large boars harnessed to the sledge did not move.
WHY DOESN'T THAT WORK? said the figure in a puzzled, heavy voice.
‘Beats me, master,’ said the sacks.
IT WORKS ON HORSES.
‘You could try “Pig-hooey!”’
PIG-HOOEY. They waited. NO… DOESN'T SEEM TO REACH THEM.
There was some whispering.
REALLY? YOU THINK THAT WOULD WORK?
‘It'd bloody well work on me if I was a pig, master.’
VERY WELL, THEN.
The figure gathered up the reins again.
APPLE! SAUCE!
The pigs' legs blurred. Silver light flicked across them, and exploded outwards. They dwindled to a dot, and vanished.
SQUEAK?
The Death of Rats skipped across the snow, slid down a drainpipe and landed on the roof of a shed.
There was a raven perched there. It was staring disconsolately at something.
SQUEAK!
‘Look at that, willya?’ said the raven rhetorically. It waved a claw at a bird table in the garden below. ‘They hangs up half a bloody coconut, a lump of bacon rind, a handful of peanuts in a bit of wire and they think they're the gods' gift to the nat'ral world. Huh. Do I see eyeballs? Do I see entrails? I think not. Most intelligent bird in the temperate latitudes an' I gets the cold shoulder just because I can't hang upside down and go twit, twit. Look at robins, now. Stroppy little evil buggers, fight like demons, but all they got to do is go bob-bob-bobbing along and they can't move for breadcrumbs. Whereas me myself can recite poems and repeat many hum'rous phrases—’
SQUEAK!
‘Yes? What?’
The Death of Rats pointed at the roof and then the sky and jumped up and down excitedly. The raven swivelled one eye upwards.
‘Oh, yes. Him,’ he said. ‘Turns up at this time of year. Tends to be associated distantly with robins, which—’
SQUEAK! SQUEE IK IK IK! The Death of Rats pantomimed a figure landing in a grate and walking around a room. SQUEAK EEK IK IK, SQUEAK “HEEK HEEK HEEK”! IK IK SQUEAK!
‘Been overdoing the Hogswatch cheer, have you? Been rustling around in the brandy butter?’
SQUEAK?
The raven's eyes revolved.
‘Look, Death's Death. It's a full-time job right? It's not as though you can run, like, a window cleaning round on the side or nip round after work cutting people's lawns.’
SQUEAK!
‘Oh, please yourself.’
The raven crouched a little to allow the tiny figure to hop on to its back, and then lumbered into the air.
‘Of course, they can go mental, your occult types,’ it said, as it swooped over the moonlit garden. ‘Look at Old Man Trouble, for one—’
SQUEAK.
‘Oh, I'm not suggestin—’
Susan didn't like Biers but she went there anyway, when the pressure of being normal got too much. Biers, despite the smell and the drink and the company, had one important virtue. In Biers no one took any notice. Of anything. Hogswatch was traditionally supposed to be a time for families but the people who drank in Biers probably didn't have families; some of them looked as though they might have had litters, or clutches. Some of them looked as though they'd probably eaten their relatives, or at least someone's relatives.
Biers was where the undead drank. And when Igor the barman was asked for a Bloody Mary, he didn't mix a metaphor.
The regular customers didn't ask questions, and not only because some of them found anything above a growl hard to articulate. None of them was in the answers business. Everyone in Biers drank alone, even when they were in groups. Or packs.
Despite the decorations put up inexpertly by Igor the barman to show willing,[8] Biers was not a family place.
Family was a subject Susan liked to avoid.
Currently she was being aided in this by a gin and tonic. In Biers, unless you weren't choosy, it paid to order a drink that was transparent because Igor also had undirected ideas about what you could stick on the end of a cocktail stick. If you saw something spherical and green, you just had to hope that it was an olive.
She felt hot breath on her ear. A bogeyman had sat down on the stool beside her.
‘Woss a normo doin' in a place like this, then?’ it rumbled, causing a cloud of vaporized alcohol and halitosis to engulf her. ‘Hah, you fink it's cool comin' down here an' swannin' around in a black dress wid all the lost boys, eh? Dabblin' in a bit of designer darkness, eh?’
Susan moved her stool away a little. The bogeyman grinned.
‘Want a bogeyman under yer bed, eh?’
‘Now then, Shlimazel,’ said Igor, without looking up from polishing a glass.
‘Well, woss she down here for, eh?’ said the bogeyman. A huge hairy hand grabbed Susan's arm. ‘O' course, maybe what she wants is—’
‘I ain't telling you again, Shlimazel,’ said Igor.
He saw the girl turn to face Shlimazel.
Igor wasn't in a position to see her face fully, but the bogeyman was. He shot back so quickly that he fell off his stool.
And when the girl spoke, what she said was only partly words but also a statement, written in stone, of how the future was going to be.
‘GO AWAY AND STOP BOTHERING ME.’
She turned back and gave Igor a polite and slightly apologeti
c smile. The bogeyman struggled frantically out of the wreckage of his stool and loped towards the door.
Susan felt the drinkers turn back to their private preoccupations. It was amazing what you could get away with in Biers.
Igor put down the glass and looked up at the window. For a drinking den that relied on darkness it had rather a large one but, of course, some customers did arrive by air.
Something was tapping on it now.
Igor lurched over and opened it.
Susan looked up.
‘Oh, no… ’
The Death of Rats leapt down onto the counter, with the raven fluttering after it.
SQUEAK SQUEAK EEK! EEK! SQUEAK IK IK ‘HEEK HEEK HEEK’! SQ
‘Go away,’ said Susan coldly. ‘I'm not interested. You're just a figment of my imagination.’
The raven perched on a bowl behind the bar and said, ‘Ah, great.’
SQUEAK!
‘What're these?’ said the raven, flicking something off the end of its beak. ‘Onions? Pfah!’
‘Go on, go away, the pair of you,’ said Susan.
‘The rat says your granddad's gone mad,’ said the raven. ‘Says he's pretending to be the Hogfather.’
‘Listen, I just don't— What?’
‘Red cloak, long beard—’
HEEK! HEEK! HEEK!
‘— going “Ho, ho, ho”, driving around in the big sledge drawn by the four piggies, the whole thing…’
‘Pigs? What happened to Binky?’
‘Search me. O' course, it can happen, as I was telling the rat only just now—’
Susan put her hands over her ears, more for desperate theatrical effect than for the muffling they gave.
‘I don't want to know! I don't have a grandfather!’
She had to hold on to that.
The Death of Rats squeaked at length.
‘The rat says you must remember, he's tall, not what you'd call fleshy, he carries a scythe—’
‘Go away! And take the… the rat with you!’
She waved her hand wildly and, to her horror and shame, knocked the little hooded skeleton over an ashtray.
EEK?
The raven took the rat's cowl in its beak and tried to drag him away, but a tiny skeletal fist shook its scythe.
EEK IK EEK SQUEAK!
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