Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch Read online

  “Well, you know all those teachers that left Atlantis when it sunk?”

  They nodded again.

  “Well, some of them went to Tibet and now they run the world. They’re called the Secret Masters. On account of being teachers, I suppose. An’ they’ve got this secret underground city called Shambala and tunnels that go all over the world so’s they know everythin’ that goes on and control everythin’. Some people reckon that they really live under the Gobby Desert,” he added loftily, “but mos’ competent authorities reckon it’s Tibet all right. Better for the tunneling, anyway.”

  The Them instinctively looked down at the grubby, dirt-covered chalk beneath their feet.

  “How come they know everything?” said Pepper.

  “They just have to listen, right?” hazarded Adam. “They just have to sit in their tunnels and listen. You know what hearin’ teachers have. They can hear a whisper right across the room.”

  “My granny used to put a glass against the wall,” said Brian. “She said it was disgustin’, the way she could hear everything that went on next door.”

  “And these tunnels go everywhere, do they?” said Pepper, still staring at the ground.

  “All over the world,” said Adam firmly.

  “Must of took a long time,” said Pepper doubtfully. “You remember when we tried digging that tunnel out in the field, we were at it all afternoon, and you had to scrunch up to get all in.”

  “Yes, but they’ve been doin’ it for millions of years. You can do really good tunnels if you’ve got millions of years.”

  “I thought the Tibetans were conquered by the Chinese and the Daily Llama had to go to India,” said Wensleydale, but without much conviction. Wensleydale read his father’s newspaper every evening, but the prosaic everydayness of the world always seemed to melt under the powerhouse of Adam’s explanations.

  “I bet they’re down there now,” said Adam, ignoring this. “They’d be all over the place by now. Sitting underground and listenin’.”

  They looked at one another.

  “If we dug down quickly—” said Brian. Pepper, who was a lot quicker on the uptake, groaned.

  “What’d you have to go an’ say that for?” said Adam. “Fat lot of good us trying to surprise them now, isn’t it, with you shoutin’ out something like that. I was just thinkin’ we could dig down, an’ you jus’ have to go an’ warn ’em!”

  “I don’t think they’d dig all those tunnels,” said Wensleydale doggedly. “It doesn’t make any sense. Tibet’s hundreds of miles away.”

  “Oh, yes. Oh, yes. An’ I s’pose you know more about it than Madame Blatvatatatsky?” sniffed Adam.

  “Now, if I was a Tibetan,” said Wensleydale, in a reasonable tone of voice, “I’d just dig straight down to the hollow bit in the middle and then run around the inside and dig straight up where I wanted to be.”

  They gave this due consideration.

  “You’ve got to admit that’s more sensible than tunnels,” said Pepper.

  “Yes, well, I expect that’s what they do,” said Adam. “They’d be bound to of thought of something as simple as that.”

  Brian stared dreamily at the sky, while his finger probed the contents of one ear.

  “Funny, reely,” he said. “You spend your whole life goin’ to school and learnin’ stuff, and they never tell you about stuff like the Bermuda Triangle and UFOs and all these Old Masters running around the inside of the Earth. Why do we have to learn boring stuff when there’s all this brilliant stuff we could be learnin’, that’s what I want to know.”

  There was a chorus of agreement.

  Then they went out and played Charles Fort and the Atlantisans versus the Ancient Masters of Tibet, but the Tibetters claimed that using mystic ancient lasers was cheating.

  THERE WAS A TIME when witchfinders were respected, although it didn’t last very long.

  Matthew Hopkins, for example, the Witchfinder General, found witches all over the east of England in the middle of the seventeenth century, charging each town and village nine pence a witch for every one he discovered.

  That was the trouble. Witchfinders didn’t get paid by the hour. Any witchfinder who spent a week examining the local crones and then told the mayor, “Well done, not a pointy hat among the lot of them,” would get fulsome thanks, a bowl of soup and a meaningful goodbye.

  So in order to turn a profit Hopkins had to find a remarkable number of witches. This made him more than a little unpopular with the village councils, and he was himself hanged as a witch by an East Anglian village who had sensibly realized that they could cut their overheads by eliminating the middleman.

  It is thought by many that Hopkins was the last Witchfinder General.

  In this they would, strictly speaking, be correct. Possibly not in the way they imagine, however. The Witchfinder Army marched on, just slightly more quietly.

  There is no longer a real Witchfinder General.

  Nor is there a Witchfinder Colonel, a Witchfinder Major, a Witchfinder Captain, or even a Witchfinder Lieutenant (the last one was killed falling out of a very tall tree in Caterham, in 1933, while attempting to get a better view of something he believed was a satanic orgy of the most degenerate persuasion, but was, in fact, the Caterham and Whyteleafe Market Traders’ Association annual dinner and dance).

  There is, however, a Witchfinder Sergeant.

  There is also, now, a Witchfinder Private. His name is Newton Pulsifer.

  It was the advertisement that got him, in the Gazette, between a fridge for sale and a litter of not-exactly dalmatians:

  JOIN THE PROFESSIONALS. PART TIME

  ASSISTANT REQUIRED TO COMBAT THE FORCES OF

  DARKNESS. UNIFORM, BASIC TRAINING PROVIDED.

  FIELD PROMOTION CERTAIN. BE A MAN!

  In his lunch hour he phoned the number at the bottom of the ad. A woman answered.

  “Hello,” he began, tentatively. “I saw your advert.”

  “Which one, love?”

  “Er, the one in the paper.”

  “Right, love. Well, Madame Tracy Draws Aside the Veil every afternoon except Thursdays. Parties welcome. When would you be wanting to Explore the Mysteries, love?”

  Newton hesitated. “The advert says ‘Join the Professionals,”’ he said. “It didn’t mention Madame Tracy.”

  “That’ll be Mister Shadwell you’ll be wanting, then. Just a sec, I’ll see if he’s in.”

  Later, when he was on nodding terms with Madame Tracy, Newt learned that if he had mentioned the other ad, the one in the magazine, Madame Tracy would have been available for strict discipline and intimate massage every evening except Thursdays. There was yet another ad in a phone box somewhere. When, much later, Newt asked her what this one involved, she said “Thursdays.” Eventually there was the sound of feet in uncarpeted hallways, a deep coughing, and a voice the color of an old raincoat rumbled:

  “Aye?”

  “I read your advert. ‘Join the professionals.’ I wanted to know a bit more about it.”

  “Aye. There’s many as would like to know more about it, an’ there’s many … ” the voice trailed off impressively, then crashed back to full volume, “. . . there’s many as WOULDN’T.”

  “Oh,” squeaked Newton.

  “What’s your name, lad?”

  “Newton. Newton Pulsifer.”

  “LUCIFER? What’s that you say? Are ye of the Spawn of Darkness, a tempting beguiling creature from the pit, wanton limbs steaming from the fleshpots of Hades, in tortured and lubricious thrall to your Stygian and hellish masters?”

  “That’s Pulsifer,” explained Newton. “With a P. I don’t know about the other stuff, but we come from Surrey.”

  The voice on the phone sounded vaguely disappointed.

  “Oh. Aye. Well, then. Pulsifer. Pulsifer. I’ve seen that name afore, maybe?”

  “I don’t know,” said Newton. “My uncle runs a toy shop in Hounslow,” he added, in case this was any help.

 
; “Is that sooo?” said Shadwell.

  Mr. Shadwell’s accent was unplaceable. It careered around Britain like a milk race. Here a mad Welsh drill sergeant, there a High Kirk elder who’d just seen someone doing something on a Sunday, somewhere between them a dour Daleland shepherd, or bitter Somerset miser. It didn’t matter where the accent went; it didn’t get any nicer.

  “Have ye all your own teeth?”

  “Oh, yes. Except for fillings.”

  “Are ye fit?”

  “I suppose so,” Newt stuttered. “I mean, that was why I wanted to join the territorials. Brian Potter in Accounting can bench-press almost a hundred since he joined. And he paraded in front of the Queen Mother.”

  “How many nipples?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Nipples, laddie, nipples,” said the voice testily. “How many nipples hae ye got?”

  “Er. Two?”

  “Good. Have ye got your ane scissors?”

  “What?”

  “Scissors! Scissors! Are ye deaf?”

  “No. Yes. I mean, I’ve got some scissors. I’m not deaf.”

  THE COCOA HAD NEARLY ALL SOLIDIFIED. Green fur was growing on the inside of the mug.

  There was a thin layer of dust on Aziraphale, too.

  The stack of notes was building up beside him. The Nice and Accurate Prophecies was a mass of improvised bookmarks made of torn strips of Daily Telegraph.

  Aziraphale stirred, and pinched his nose.

  He was nearly there.

  He’d got the shape of it.

  He’d never met Agnes. She was too bright, obviously. Normally Heaven or Hell spotted the prophetic types and broadcast enough noises on the same mental channel to prevent any undue accuracy. Actually that was rarely necessary; they normally found ways of generating their own static in self-defense against the images that echoed around their heads. Poor old St. John had his mushrooms, for example. Mother Shipton had her ale. Nostradamus had his collection of interesting oriental preparations. St. Malachi had his still.

  Good old Malachi. He’d been a nice old boy, sitting there, dreaming about future popes. Complete piss artist, of course. Could have been a real thinker, if it hadn’t been for the poteen.

  A sad end. Sometimes you really had to hope that the ineffable plan had been properly thought out.

  Thought. There was something he had to do. Oh, yes. Phone his contact, get things sorted out.

  He stood up, stretched his limbs, and made a phone call.

  Then he thought: why not? Worth a try.

  He went back and shuffled through his sheaf of notes. Agnes really had been good. And clever. No one was interested in accurate prophecies.

  Paper in hand, he phoned Directory Enquiries.

  “Hallo? Good afternoon. So kind. Yes. This will be a Tadfield number, I think. Or Lower Tadfield … ah. Or possibly Norton, I’m not sure of the precise code. Yes. Young. Name of Young. Sorry, no initial. Oh. Well, can you give me all of them? Thank you.”

  Back on the table, a pencil picked itself up and scribbled furiously.

  At the third name it broke its point.

  “Ah,” said Aziraphale, his mouth suddenly running on automatic while his mind exploded. “I think that’s the one. Thank you. So kind. Good day to you.”

  He hung up almost reverentially, took a few deep breaths, and dialed again. The last three digits gave him some trouble, because his hand was shaking.

  He listened to the ringing tone. Then a voice answered. It was a middle-aged voice, not unfriendly, but probably it had been having a nap and was not feeling at its best.

  It said “Tadfield Six double-six.”

  Aziraphale’s hand started to shake.

  “Hallo?” said the receiver. “Hallo.”

  Aziraphale got a grip on himself.

  “Sorry,” he said, “right number.”

  He replaced the receiver.

  NEWT WASN’T DEAF. And he did have his own scissors.

  He also had a huge pile of newspapers.

  If he had known that army life consisted chiefly of applying the one to the other, he used to muse, he would never have joined.

  Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell had made him a list, which was taped to the wall in Shadwell’s tiny crowded flat situated over Rajit’s Newsagents and Video Rental. The list read:

  Witches.

  Unexplainable

  Phenomenons. Phenomenatrices. Phenomenice. Things, ye ken well what I mean.

  Newt was looking for either. He sighed and picked up another newspaper, scanned the front page, opened it, ignored page two (never anything on there) then blushed crimson as he performed the obligatory nipple count on page three. Shadwell had been insistent about this. “Ye can’t trust them, the cunning buggers,” he said. “It’d be just like them to come right out in the open, like, defyin’ us.”

  A couple in black turtleneck sweaters glowered at the camera on page nine. They claimed to lead the largest coven in Saffron Walden, and to restore sexual potency by the use of small and very phallic dolls. The newspaper was offering ten of the dolls to readers who were prepared to write “My Most Embarrassing Moment of Impotency” stories. Newt cut the story out and stuck it into a scrapbook.

  There was a muffled thumping on the door.

  Newt opened it; a pile of newspapers stood there. “Shift yerself, Private Pulsifer,” it barked, and it shuffled into the room. The newspapers fell to the floor, revealing Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell, who coughed, painfully, and relit his cigarette, which had gone out.

  “You want to watch him. He’s one o’ them,” he said.

  “Who, sir?”

  “Tak yer ease, Private. Him. That little brown feller. Mister so-called Rajit. It’s them terrible forn arts. The ruby squinty eye of the little yellow god. Women wi’ too many arms. Witches, the lot o’ them.”

  “He does give us the newspapers free, though, Sergeant,” said Newt. “And they’re not too old.”

  “And voodoo. I bet he does voodoo. Sacrificing chickens to that Baron Saturday. Ye know, tall darkie bugger in the top hat. Brings people back from the dead, aye, and makes them work on the Sabbath day. Voodoo.” Shadwell sniffed speculatively.

  Newt tried to picture Shadwell’s landlord as an exponent of voodoo. Certainly Mr. Rajit worked on the Sabbath. In fact, with his plump quiet wife and plump cheerful children he worked around the clock, never mind the calendar, diligently filling the area’s needs in the matter of soft drinks, white bread, tobacco, sweets, newspapers, magazines, and the type of top-shelf pornography that made Newt’s eyes water just to think about. The worst you could imagine Mr. Rajit doing with a chicken was selling it after the “Sell-By” date.

  “But Mister Rajit’s from Bangladesh, or India, or somewhere,” he said. “I thought voodoo came from the West Indies.”

  “Ah,” said Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell, and took another drag on his cigarette. Or appeared to. Newt had never actually quite seen one of his superior’s cigarettes—it was something to do with the way he cupped his hands. He even made the ends disappear when he’d finished with them. “Ah.”

  “Well, doesn’t it?”

  “Hidden wisdom, lad. Inner mili’try secrets of the Witchfinder army. When you’re all initiated proper ye’ll know the secret truth. Some voodoo may come from the West Indies. I’ll grant ye that. Oh yes, I’ll grant ye that. But the worst kind. The darkest kind, that comes from, um … ”

  “Bangladesh?”

  “Errrukh! Yes lad, that’s it. Words right out of me mouth. Bangladesh. Exactly.”

  Shadwell made the end of his cigarette vanish, and managed furtively to roll another, never letting papers or tobacco be seen.

  “So. Ye got anything, Witchfinder Private?”

  “Well, there’s this.” Newton held out the clipping.

  Shadwell squinted at it. “Oh them,” he said. “Load o’ rubbish. Call themselves bloody witches? I checked them out last year. Went down with me armory of righteousness and a packet of
firelighters, jemmied the place open, they were clean as a whistle. Mail order bee jelly business they’re trying to pep up. Load o’ rubbish. Wouldn’t know a familiar spirit if it chewed out the bottoms o’ their trousers. Rubbish. It’s not like it used to be, laddie.”

  He sat down and poured himself a cup of sweet tea from a filthy thermos.

  “Did I ever tell you how I was recruited to the army?” he asked.

  Newt took this as his cue to sit down. He shook his head. Shadwell lit his roll-up with a battered Ronson lighter, and coughed appreciatively.

  “My cellmate, he was. Witchfinder Captain Ffolkes. Ten years for arson. Burning a coven in Wimbledon. Would have got them all too, if it wasn’t the wrong day. Good fellow. Told me about the battle—the great war between Heaven and Hell … It was him that told me the Inner Secrets of the Witchfinder Army. Familiar spirits. Nipples. All that …

  “Knew he was dying, you see. Got to have someone to carry on the tradition. Like you is, now … ” He shook his head.

  “That’s what we’m reduced to, lad,” he said. “A few hundred years ago, see, we was powerful. We stood between the world and the darkness. We was the thin red line. Thin red line o’ fire, ye see.”

  “I thought the churches … ” Newt began.

  “Pah!” said Shadwell. Newt had seen the word in print, but this was the first time he’d ever heard anyone say it. “Churches? What good did they ever do? They’m just as bad. Same line o’ business, nearly. You can’t trust them to stamp out the Evil One, ’cos if they did, they’d be out o’ that line o’ business. If yer goin’ up against a tiger, ye don’t want fellow travelers whose idea of huntin’ is tae throw meat at it. Nay, lad. It’s up to us. Against the darkness.”

  Everything went quiet for a moment.

  Newt always tried to see the best in everyone, but it had occurred to him shortly after joining the WA that his superior and only fellow soldier was as well balanced as an upturned pyramid. “Shortly,” in this case, meant under five seconds. The WA’s headquarters was a fetid room with walls the color of nicotine, which was almost certainly what they were coated with, and a floor the color of cigarette ash, which was almost certainly what it was. There was a small square of carpet. Newt avoided walking on it if possible, because it sucked at his shoes.