Hogfather - Page 32/41

Then, as she hurried towards the body, it faded away, leaving nothing behind but a smear of blood. A jingle noise made her look back up the stairs. Spinning over and over, making salmon leaps in the air, a crowbar bounded over the last dozen steps and landed point first on a flagstone, staying upright and vibrating. Chickenwire reached the top of the stairs, panting. 'There's people down there, Mister Teatime!' he wheezed. 'Dave and the others've gone down to catch them, Mister Teatime!'

'Teh-ah-tim-eh,' said Teatime, without taking his eyes off the wizard. 'That's right, sir!'

'Well?' said Teatime. 'Just... do away with them.'

'Er... one of them's a girl, sir.' Teatime still didn't look round. He waved a hand vaguely. 'Then do away with them politely.'

'Yes, Mister... yes, right...' Chickenwire coughed. 'Don't you want to find out why they're here, sir?'

'Good heavens, no. Why should I want to do that? Now go away.' Chickenwire stood there for a moment, and then hurried off. As he scurried down the stairs he thought he heard a creak, as of an ancient wooden door. He went pale. It was just a door, said the sensible bit in front of his brain. There were hundreds of them in this place, although, come to think of it, none of them had creaked. The other bit, the bit that hung around in dark places nearly at the top of his spinal column, said: But it's not one of them, and you know it, because you know which door it really is... He hadn't heard that creak for thirty years. He gave a little yelp and started to take the stairs four at a time. In the hollows and corners, the shadows grew darker. Susan ran up a flight of stairs, dragging the oh god behind her. 'Do you know what they've been doing?' she said. 'You know why they've got all those teeth in a circle? The power... oh my...'

'I'm not going to,' said the head waiter, firmly. 'Look, I'll buy you a better pair after Hogswatch-'

'There's two more Shoe Pastry, one for Purée de la Terre and three more Tourte à la Boue,' said a waiter, hurrying in. 'Mud pies!' moaned the waiter. 'I can't believe we're selling mud pies. And now you want my boots!'

'With cream and sugar, mind you. A real taste of AnkhMorpork. And we can get at least four helpings off those boots. Fair's fair. We're all in our socks--'

'Table seven says the steaks were lovely but a bit tough,' said a waiter, rushing past. 'Right. Use a larger hammer next time and boil them for longer.' The manager turned back to the suffering head waiter. 'Look, Bill,' he said, taking him by the shoulder. 'This isn't food. No one expects it to be food. If people wanted food they'd stay at home, isn't that so? They come here for ambience. For the experience. This isn't cookery, Bill. This is cuisine. See? And they're coming back for more.'

'Yeah, but old boots . . . '

'Dwarfs eats rats,' said the manager. 'And trolls eat rocks. There's folks in Howondaland that eat insects and folks on the Counterweight Continent eat soup made out of bird spit. At least the boots have been on a cow.'

'And mud?' said the head waiter, gloomily. 'Isn't there an old proverb that says a man must eat a bushel of dirt before he dies?'

'Yes, but not all at once.'

'Bill?' said the manager, kindly, picking up a spatula. 'Yes, boss?'

'Get those damn boots off right now, will you?' When Chickenwire reached the bottom of the tower he was trembling, and not just from the effort. He headed straight for the door until Medium Dave grabbed him. 'Let me out! It's after me!'

'Look at his face,' said Catseye. 'Looks like he's seen a ghost!'

'Yeah, well, it ain't a ghost,' muttered Chickenwire. 'It's worse'n a ghost-' Medium Dave slapped him across the face. 'Pull yourself together! Look around! Nothing's chasing you! Anyway, it's not as though we couldn't put up a fight, right?' Terror had had time to drain away a little. Chickenwire looked back up the stairs. There was nothing there. 'Good,' said Medium Dave, watching his face. 'Now... What happened?' Chickenwire looked at his feet. 'I thought it was the wardrobe,' he muttered. 'Go on, laugh...' They didn't laugh. 'What wardrobe?' said Catseye. 'Oh, when I was a kid...' Chickenwire waved his arms vaguely. 'We had this big ole wardrobe, if you must know. Oak. It had this... this... on the door there was this... sort of... face.' He looked at their faces, which were equally wooden. 'I mean, not an actual face, there was... all this... decoration round the keyhole, sort of flowers and leaves and stuff, but if you looked at it in the... right way... it was a face and they put it in my room 'cos it was so big and in the night... in the night... in the night-' They were grown men or at least had lived for several decades, which in some societies is considered the same thing. But you had to stare at a man so creased up with dread. 'Yes?' said Catseye hoarsely. '...it whispered things,' said Chickenwire, in a quiet little voice, like a vole in a dungeon. They looked at one another. 'What things?' said Medium Dave. 'I don't know! I always had my head under the pillow! Anyway, it's just something from when I was a kid, all right? Our dad got rid of it in the finish. Burned it. And I watched.' They mentally shook themselves, as people do when their minds emerge back into the light. 'It's like me and the dark,' said Catseye. 'Oh, don't you start,' said Medium Dave. 'Anyway, you ain't afraid of the dark. You're famed for it. I been working with you in all kinds of cellars and stuff. I mean, that's how you got your name. Catseye. Sees like a cat.'

'Yeah, well... you try an' make up for it, don't you?' said Catseye. "Cos when you're grown you know it's just shadows and stuff. Besides, it ain't like the dark we used to have in the cellar.'

'Oh, they had a special kind of a dark when you was a lad, did they?' said Medium Dave. 'Not like the kind of dark you get these days, eh?' Sarcasm didn't work. 'No,' said Catseye, simply. 'It wasn't. In our cellar, it wasn't.'

'Our mam used to wallop us if we went down to the cellar,' said Medium Dave. 'She had her still down there.'

'Yeah?' said Catseye, from somewhere far off. 'Well, our dad used to wallop us if we tried to get out. Now shut up talking about it.' They reached the bottom of the stairs. There was an absence of anybody. And any body. 'He couldn't have survived that, could he?' said Medium Dave. 'I saw him as he went past,' said Catseye. 'Necks aren't supposed to bend that way-' He squinted upwards. 'Who's that moving up there?'

'How are their necks moving?' quavered Chickenwire. 'Split up!' said Medium Dave. 'And this time all take a stairway. Then they can't come back down!'

'Who're they? Why're they here?'

'Why're we here?' said Peachy. He started, and looked behind him. 'Taking our money? After us putting up with him?'

'Yeah...' said Peachy distantly, trailing after the others. 'Er... did you hear that noise just then?'

'What noise?'

'A sort of clipping, snipping... ?'

'No.'

'No.'

'No. You must have imagined it.' Peachy nodded miserably. As he walked up the stairs, little shadows raced through the stone and followed his feet. Susan darted off the stairs and dragged the oh god along a corridor lined with white doors. 'I think they saw us,' she said. 'And if they're tooth fairies there's been a really stupid equal opportunities policy...' She pushed open a door. There were no windows to the room, but it was lit perfectly well by the walls themselves. Down the middle of the room was something like a display case, its lid gaping open. Bits of card littered the floor. She reached down and picked one up and read: 'Thomas Ague, aged 4 and nearly three quarters, 9 Castle View, Sto Lat'. The writing was in a meticulous rounded script. She crossed the passage to another room, where there was the same scene of devastation. 'So now we know where the teeth were,' she said. 'They must've taken them out of everywhere and carried them downstairs.'

'What for?' She sighed. 'It's such old magic it isn't even magic any more,' she said. 'If you've got a piece of someone's hair, or a nail clipping, or a tooth you can control them.' The oh god tried to focus. 'That heap's controlling millions of children?'

'Yes. Adults too, by now.'

'And you... you could make them think things and do things?' She nodded. 'Yes.'

'You could get them to open Dad's wallet and post the contents to some address?'

'Well, I hadn't thought of that, but yes, I suppose you could...'

'Or go downstairs and smash all the bottles in the drinks cabinet and promise never to take a drink when they grow up?' said the oh god hopefully.

'What are you talking about?'

'It's all right for you. You don't wake up every morning and see your whole life flush before your eyes. Medium Dave and Catseye ran down the passage and stopped where it forked. 'You go that way, I'll-'

'Why don't we stick together?' said Catseye. 'What's got into everyone? I saw you bite the throats out of a coupla guard dogs when we did that job in Quirm! Want me to hold your hand? You check the doors down there, I'll check them along here.' He walked off. Catseye peered down the other passage. There weren't many doors down there. It wasn't very long. And, as Teatime had said, there was nothing dangerous here that they hadn't brought with them. He heard voices coming from a doorway and sagged with relief. He could deal with humans. As he approached, a sound made him look round. Shadows were racing down the passage behind him. They cascaded down the walls and flowed over the ceiling. Where shadows met they became darker. And darker. And rose. And leapt. 'What was that?' said Susan. 'Sounded like the start of a scream,' said Bilious. Susan threw open the door. There was no one outside. There was movement, though. She saw a patch of darkness in the corner of a wall shrink and fade, and another shadow slid around the bend of the corridor. And there was a pair of boots in the centre of the corridor. She hadn't remembered any boots there before. She sniffed. The air tasted of rats, and damp, and mould. 'Let's get out of here,' she said. 'How're we going to find this Violet in all these rooms?'

'I don't know. I should be able to... sense her, but I can't.' Susan peered around the end of the corridor. She could hear men shouting, some way off. They slipped out on to the stairs again and managed another flight. There were more rooms here, and in each one a cabinet that had been broken open. Shadows moved in the corners. The effect was as though some invisible light source was gently shifting. 'This reminds me a lot of your... um... of your grandfather's place,' said the oh god. 'I know,' said Susan. 'There aren't any rules except the ones he makes up as he goes along. I can't see him being very happy if someone got in and started pulling the library apart-' She stopped. When she spoke again her voice had a different tone. 'This is a children's place,' she said. 'The rules are what children believe.'

'Well, that's a relief.'

'You think so? Things aren't going to be right. In the Soul Cake Duck's country ducks can lay chocolate eggs, in the same way that Death's country is black and sombre because that's what people believe. He's very conventional about that sort of thing. Skull and bone decorations all over the place. And this place--'

'Pretty flowers and an odd sky.'

'I think it's going to be a lot worse than that. And very odd, too.'

'More odd than it is now?'

'I don't think it's possible to die here.'

'That man who fell down the stairs looked pretty dead to me.'

'Oh, you die. But not here. You... let's see... yes... you go somewhere else. Away. You're just not seen any more. That's about all you understand when you're three. Grandfather said it wasn't like that fifty years ago. He said you often couldn't see the bed for everyone having a good cry. Now they just tell the child that Grandma's gone. For three weeks Twyla thought her uncle'd been buried in the sad patch behind the garden shed along with Buster and Meepo and all three Bulgies.'