Reaper Man Read online

  HA. HA. HA. WILL YOU HARK AT THE CHILD.

  “Why are you walking around, then?”

  Bill Door looked at the old men. They appeared engrossed in the sport.

  I’LL TELL YOU WHAT, he said desperately, IF YOU WILL GO AWAY, I WILL GIVE YOU A HALF-PENNY.

  “I’ve got a skelington mask for when we go trickle-treating on Soul Cake Night,” she said. “It’s made of paper. You get given sweets.”

  Bill Door made the mistake millions of people had tried before with small children in slightly similar circumstances. He resorted to reason.

  LOOK, he said, IF I WAS REALLY A SKELETON, LITTLE GIRL, I’M SURE THESE OLD GENTLEMEN HERE WOULD HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT IT.

  She regarded the old men at the other end of the bench.

  “They’re nearly skelingtons anyway,” she said. “I shouldn’t think they’d want to see another one.”

  He gave in.

  I HAVE TO ADMIT THAT YOU ARE RIGHT ON THAT POINT.

  “Why don’t you fall to bits?”

  I DON’T KNOW. I NEVER HAVE.

  “I’ve seen skelingtons of birds and things and they all fall to bits.”

  PERHAPS IT IS BECAUSE THEY ARE WHAT SOMETHING WAS, WHEREAS THIS IS WHAT I AM.

  “The apothecary who does medicine over in Chambly’s got a skelington on a hook with all wire to hold the bones together,” said the child, with the air of one imparting information gained after diligent research.

  I DON’T HAVE WIRES.

  “There’s a difference between alive skelingtons and dead ones?”

  YES.

  “It’s a dead skelington he’s got then, is it?”

  YES.

  “What was inside someone?”

  YES.

  “Ur. Yuk.”

  The child stared distantly at the landscape for a while and then said, “I’ve got new socks.”

  YES?

  “You can look, if you like.”

  A grubby foot was extended for inspection.

  WELL, WELL. FANCY THAT. NEW SOCKS.

  “My mum knitted them out of sheep.”

  MY WORD.

  The horizon was given another inspection.

  “D’you know,” she said, “d’you know…it’s Friday.”

  YES.

  “I found a spoon.”

  Bill Door found he was waiting expectantly. He was not familiar with people who had an attention span of less than three seconds.

  “You work along of Miss Flitworth’s?”

  YES.

  “My dad says you’ve got your feet properly under the table there.”

  Bill Door couldn’t think of an answer to this because he didn’t know what it meant. It was one of those many flat statements humans made that were really just a disguise for something more subtle, which was often conveyed merely by the tone of voice or a look in the eyes, neither of which was being done by the child.

  “My dad says she said she’s got boxes of treasure.”

  HAS SHE?

  “I’ve got tuppence.”

  MY GOODNESS.

  “Sal!”

  They both looked up as Mrs. Lifton appeared on the doorstep.

  “Bedtime for you. Stop worrying Mr. Door.”

  OH, I ASSURE YOU SHE IS NOT—

  “Say goodnight, now.”

  “How do skelingtons go to sleep? They can’t close their eyes because—”

  He heard their voices, muffled, inside the inn.

  “You mustn’t call Mr. Door that just because…he’s…very…he’s very thin…”

  “It’s all right. He’s not the dead sort.”

  Mrs. Lifton’s voice had the familiar worried tones of someone who can’t bring themselves to believe the evidence of their own eyes. “Perhaps he’s just been very ill.”

  “I should think he’s just about been as ill as he can be ever.”

  Bill Door walked back home thoughtfully.

  There was a light on in the farmhouse kitchen, but he went straight to the barn, climbed the ladder to the hayloft, and lay down.

  He could put off dreaming, but he couldn’t escape remembering.

  He stared at the darkness.

  After a while he was aware of the pattering of feet. He turned.

  A stream of pale rat-shaped ghosts skipped along the roof beam above his head, fading as they ran so that soon there was nothing but the sound of the scampering.

  They were followed by a…shape.

  It was about six inches high. It wore a black robe. It held a small scythe in one skeletal paw. A bone-white nose with brittle gray whiskers protruded from the shadowy hood.

  Bill Door reached out and picked it up. It didn’t resist, but stood on the palm of his hand and eyed him as one professional to another.

  Bill Door said: AND YOU ARE—?

  The Death of Rats nodded.

  SQUEAK.

  I REMEMBER, said Bill Door, WHEN YOU WERE A PART OF ME.

  The Death of Rats squeaked again.

  Bill Door fumbled in the pockets of his overall. He’d put some of his lunch in there. Ah, yes.

  I EXPECT, he said, THAT YOU COULD MURDER A PIECE OF CHEESE?

  The Death of Rats took it graciously.

  Bill Door remembered visiting an old man once—only once—who had spent almost his entire life locked in a cell in a tower for some alleged crime or other, and had tamed little birds for company during his life sentence. They crapped on his bedding and ate his food, but he tolerated them and smiled at their flight in and out of the high barred windows. Death had wondered, at the time, why anyone would do something like that.

  I WON’T DELAY YOU, he said. I EXPECT YOU’VE GOT THINGS TO DO, RATS TO SEE. I KNOW HOW IT IS.

  And now he understood.

  He put the figure back on the beam, and lay down in the hay.

  DROP IN ANY TIME YOU’RE PASSING.

  Bill Door stared at the darkness again.

  Sleep. He could feel her prowling around. Sleep, with a pocketful of dreams.

  He lay in the darkness and fought back.

  Miss Flitworth’s shouting jolted him upright and, to his momentary relief, still went on.

  The barn door slammed open.

  “Bill! Come down quick!”

  He swung his legs onto the ladder.

  WHAT IS HAPPENING, MISS FLITWORTH?

  “Something’s on fire!”

  They ran across the yard and out onto the road. The sky over the village was red.

  “Come on!”

  BUT IT IS NOT OUR FIRE.

  “It’s going to be everyone’s! It spreads like crazy on thatch!”

  They reached the apology for a town square. The inn was already well alight, the thatch roaring star-ward in a million twisting sparks.

  “Look at everyone standing around,” snarled Miss Flitworth. “There’s the pump, buckets are everywhere, why don’t people think?”

  There was a scuffle a little way as a couple of his customers tried to stop Lifton from running into the building. He was screaming at them.

  “The girl’s still in there,” said Miss Flitworth. “Is that what he said?”

  YES.

  Flames curtained every upper window.

  “There’s got to be some way,” said Miss Flitworth. “Maybe we could find a ladder—”

  WE SHOULD NOT.

  “What? We’ve got to try. We can’t leave people in there!”

  YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND, said Bill Door. TO TINKER WITH THE FATE OF ONE INDIVIDUAL COULD DESTROY THE WHOLE WORLD.

  Miss Flitworth looked at him as if he had gone mad.

  “What kind of garbage is that?”

  I MEAN THAT THERE IS A TIME FOR EVERYONE TO DIE.

  She stared. Then she drew her hand back, and gave him a ringing slap across the face.

  He was harder than she’d expected. She yelped and sucked at her knuckles.

  “You leave my farm tonight, Mr. Bill Door,” she growled. “Understand?” Then she turned on her heel and
ran toward the pump.

  Some of the men had brought long hooks to drag the burning thatch off the roof. Miss Flitworth organized a team to get a ladder up to one of the bedroom windows but, by the time a man was persuaded to climb it behind the steaming protection of a damp blanket, the top of the ladder was already smouldering.

  Bill Door watched the flames.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out the golden timer. The firelight glowed redly on the glass. He put it away again.

  Part of the roof fell in.

  SQUEAK.

  Bill Door looked down. A small robed figure marched between his legs and strutted into the flaming doorway.

  Someone was yelling something about barrels of brandy.

  Bill Door reached back into his pocket and took out the timer again. Its hissing drowned out the roar of the flames. The future flowed into the past, and there was a lot more past than there was future, but he was struck by the fact that what it flowed through all the time was now.

  He replaced it carefully.

  Death knew that to tinker with the fate of one individual could destroy the whole world. He knew this. The knowledge was built into him.

  To Bill Door, he realized, it was so much horse elbows.

  OH, DAMN, he said.

  And walked into the fire.

  “Um. It’s me, Librarian,” said Windle, trying to shout through the keyhole. “Windle Poons.”

  He tried hammering some more.

  “Why won’t he answer?”

  “Don’t know,” said a voice behind him.

  “Schleppel?”

  “Yes, Mr. Poons.”

  “Why are you behind me?”

  “I’ve got to be behind something, Mr. Poons. That’s what being a bogeyman is all about.”

  “Librarian?” said Windle, hammering some more.

  “Oook.”

  “Why won’t you let me in?”

  “Oook.”

  “But I need to look something up.”

  “Oook oook!”

  “Well, yes. I am. What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Oook!”

  “That’s—that’s unfair!”

  “What’s he saying, Mr. Poons?”

  “He won’t let me in because I’m dead!”

  “That’s typical. That’s the sort of thing Reg Shoe is always going on about, you know.”

  “Is there anyone else that knows about life force?”

  “There’s always Mrs. Cake, I suppose. But she’s a bit weird.”

  “Who’s Mrs. Cake?” Then Windle realized what Schleppel had just said. “Anyway, you’re a bogeyman.”

  “You never heard of Mrs. Cake?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t suppose she’s interested in magic…Anyway, Mr. Shoe says we shouldn’t talk to her. She exploits dead people, he says.”

  “How?”

  “She’s a medium. Well, more a small.”

  “Really? All right, let’s go and see her. And…Schleppel?”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s creepy, feeling you standing behind me the whole time.”

  “I get very upset if I’m not behind something, Mr. Poons.”

  “Can’t you lurk behind something else?”

  “What do you suggest, Mr. Poons?”

  Windle thought about it. “Yes, it might work,” he said quietly, “if I can find a screwdriver.”

  Modo the gardener was on his knees mulching the dahlias when he heard a rhythmic scraping and thumping behind him, such as might be made by someone trying to move a heavy object.

  He turned his head.

  “’Evening, Mr. Poons. Still dead, I see.”

  “’Evening, Modo. You’ve got the place looking very nice.”

  “There’s someone moving a door along behind you, Mr. Poons.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  The door edged cautiously along the path. As it passed Modo it pivoted awkwardly, as if whoever was carrying it was trying to keep as much behind it as possible.

  “It’s a kind of security door,” said Windle.

  He paused. There was something wrong. He couldn’t quite be certain what it was, but there was suddenly a lot of wrongness about, like hearing one note out of tune in an orchestra. He audited the view in front of him.

  “What’s that you’re putting the weeds into?” he said.

  Modo glanced at the thing beside him.

  “Good, isn’t it?” he said. “I found it by the compost heaps. My wheelbarrow’d broke, and I looked up, and there—”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it before,” said Windle. “Who’d want to make a big basket out of wire? And those wheels don’t look big enough.”

  “But it pushes along well by the handle,” said Modo. “I’m amazed that anyone would want to throw it away. Why would anyone want to throw away something like this, Mr. Poons?”

  Windle stared at the trolley. He couldn’t escape the feeling that it was watching him.

  He heard himself say, “Maybe it got there by itself.”

  “That’s right, Mr. Poons! It wanted a bit of peace, I expect!” said Modo. “You are a one!”

  “Yes,” said Windle, unhappily. “It rather looks that way.”

  He stepped out into the city, aware of the scraping and thumping of the door behind him.

  If someone had told me a month ago, he thought, that a few days after I died I’d be walking along the road followed by a bashful bogeyman hiding behind a door…why, I’d have laughed at them.

  No, I wouldn’t. I’d have said “eh?” and “what?” and “speak up!” and wouldn’t have understood anyway.

  Beside him, someone barked.

  A dog was watching him. It was a very large dog. In fact, the only reason it could be called a dog and not a wolf was that everyone knew you didn’t get wolves in cities.

  It winked. Windle thought: no full moon last night.

  “Lupine?” he ventured.

  The dog nodded.

  “Can you talk?”

  The dog shook its head.

  “So what do you do now?”

  Lupine shrugged.

  “Want to come with me?”

  There was another shrug that almost vocalized the thought: why not? What else have I got to do?

  If someone had told me a month ago, Windle thought, that a few days after I died I’d be walking along the road followed by a bashful bogeyman hiding behind a door and accompanied by a kind of negative version of a werewolf…why, I probably would have laughed at them. After they’d repeated themselves a few times, of course. In a loud voice.

  The Death of Rats rounded up the last of his clients, many of whom had been in the thatch, and led the way through the flames toward wherever it was that good rats went.

  He was surprised to pass a burning figure forcing its way through the incandescent mess of collapsed beams and crumbling floorboards. As it mounted the blazing stairs it removed something from the disintegrating remains of its clothing and held it carefully in its teeth.

  The Death of Rats did not wait to see what happened next. While it was, in some respects, as ancient as the first proto-rat, it was also less than a day old and still feeling its way as a Death, and it was possibly aware that a deep, thumping noise that was making the building shake was the sound of brandy starting to boil in its barrels.

  The thing about boiling brandy is that it doesn’t boil for long.

  The fireball dropped bits of the inn half a mile away. White-hot flames erupted from the holes where the doors and windows had been. The walls exploded. Burning rafters whirred overhead. Some buried themselves in neighboring roofs, starting more fires.

  What was left was just an eye-watering glow.

  And then little pools of shadow, within the glow.

  They moved and ran together and formed the shape of a tall figure striding forward, carrying something in front of it.

  It passed through the blistered crowd and trudged up the cool dark road toward t
he farm. The people picked themselves up and followed it, moving through the dusk like the tail of a dark comet.

  Bill Door climbed the stairs to Miss Flitworth’s bedroom and laid the child on the bed.

  SHE SAID THERE WAS AN APOTHECARY SOMEWHERE NEAR HERE.

  Miss Flitworth pushed her way through the crowd at the top of the stairs.

  “There’s one in Chambly,” she said. “But there’s a witch over Lancre way.”

  NO WITCHES. NO MAGIC. SEND FOR HIM. AND EVERYONE ELSE, GO AWAY.

  It wasn’t a suggestion. It wasn’t even a command. It was simply an irrefutable statement.

  Miss Flitworth waved her skinny arms at the people.

  “Come on, it’s all over! Shoo! You’re all in my bedroom! Go on, get out!”

  “How’d he do it?” said someone at the back of the crowd. “No one could have got out of there alive! We saw it all blow up!”

  Bill Door turned around slowly.

  WE HID, he said, IN THE CELLAR.

  “There! See?” said Miss Flitworth. “In the cellar. Makes sense.”

  “But the inn hasn’t got—” the doubter began, and stopped. Bill Door was glaring at him.

  “In the cellar,” he corrected himself. “Yeah. Right. Clever.”

  “Very clever,” said Miss Flintworth. “Now get along with the lot of you.”

  He heard her shoo them down the stairs and back into the night. The door slammed. He didn’t hear her come back up the stairs with a bowl of cold water and a flannel. Miss Flitworth could walk lightly, too, when she had a mind to.

  She came in and shut the door behind her.

  “Her parents’ll want to see her,” she said. “Her mum’s in a faint and Big Henry from the mill knocked her dad out when he tried to run into the flames, but they’ll be here directly.”

  She bent down and ran the flannel over the girl’s forehead.

  “Where was she?”

  SHE WAS HIDING IN A CUPBOARD.

  “From a fire?”

  Bill Door shrugged.

  “I’m amazed you could find anyone in all that heat and smoke,” she said.

  I SUPPOSE YOU WOULD CALL IT A KNACK. “And not a mark on her.”

  Bill Door ignored the question in her voice.

  DID YOU SEND SOMEONE FOR THE APOTHECARY? “Yes.”

  HE MUST NOT TAKE ANYTHING AWAY.

  “What do you mean?”

  STAY HERE WHEN HE COMES. YOU MUST NOT TAKE ANYTHING OUT OF THIS ROOM.