Hogfather

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 upward.
    “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