Hogfather

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.
    C OULD 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!”
    S ORRY .
    “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.”
    Y ES INDEED . Death looked around briefly and sniffed the air.
    “How’m I going to explain all this, then, eh?” said Ernie, taking a pull.
    S ORRY ? T HAT 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…”
    A H . W ELL . T HERE AT LEAST I HAVE SOME GOOD NEWS , E RNEST . A ND, 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.
    C ORRECT .
    “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.
    T HROUGH 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 gray 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.
    S QUEAK , said the Death of Rats.
    And that was it , more or less.
    Afterward, the Death of Rats looked around with interest. In the nature of things his very important job tended to take him to rickyards 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 colored streamers festooned the walls, a feature seldom found in most holes or even quite civilized cats.
    The Déath 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