Maskerade

filtered through. They were muffled, but that didn’t matter. Walter knew all the words, every note of music, every step of every dance. He needed the actual performances only in the same way that a clock needs its tiny little escapement mechanism; it kept him ticking nicely.
    Mrs. Plinge had taught him to read using the old programs. That’s how he knew he was part of it all. But he knew that anyway. He’d cut what teeth he had on a helmet with horns on it. The first bed he could remember was the very same trampoline used by Dame Gigli in the infamous Bouncing Gigli incident.
    Walter Plinge lived opera. He breathed its songs, painted its scenery, lit its fires, washed its floors and shined its shoes. Opera filled up places in Walter Plinge that might otherwise have been empty.
    And now the show had stopped.
    But all the energy, all the raw pent-up emotion that is dammed up behind a show—all the screaming, the fears, the hopes, the desires—flew on, like a body hurled from the wreckage.
    The terrible momentum smashed into Walter Plinge like a tidal wave hitting a teacup.
    It propelled him out of his chair and flung him against the crumbling scenery.
    He slid down and rolled into a twitching heap on the floor, clapping his hands over his ears to shut out the sudden, unnatural silence.
    A shape stepped out of the shadows.
    Granny Weatherwax had never heard of psychiatry and would have had no truck with it even if she had. There are some arts too black even for a witch. She practiced headology—practiced, in fact, until she was very good at it. And though there may be some superficial similarities between a psychiatrist and a headologist, there is a huge practical difference. A psychiatrist, dealing with a man who fears he is being followed by a large and terrible monster, will endeavor to convince him that monsters don’t exist. Granny Weatherwax would simply give him a chair to stand on and a very heavy stick.
    “Stand up, Walter Plinge,” she said.
    Walter stood up, staring straight ahead of him. “It’s stopped! It’s stopped! It’s bad luck to stop the show!” he said hoarsely.
    “Someone better start it again,” said Granny.
    “You can’t stop the show! It’s the show! ”
    “Yes. Someone better start it again, Walter Plinge.”
    Walter didn’t appear to notice her. He pawed aimlessly through his stack of music and ran his hands through the drifts of old programs. One hand touched the keyboard of the harmonium and played a few neurotic notes.
    “Wrong to stop. Show must go on…”
    “Mr. Salzella is trying to stop the show, isn’t he, Walter?”
    Walter’s head shot up. He stared straight ahead of him.
    “You haven’t seen anything, Walter Plinge!” he said, in a voice so like Salzella’s that even Granny raised an eyebrow. “And if you tell lies, you will be locked up and I’ll see to it that there’s big trouble for your mother!”
    Granny nodded.
    “He found out about the Ghost, didn’t he?” she said. “The Ghost who comes out when he has a mask on…doesn’t he, Walter Plinge? And the man thought: I can use that. And when it’s time for the Ghost to be caught…well, there is a Ghost that can be caught. And the best thing is that everyone will believe it. They’ll feel bad about themselves, maybe, but they’ll believe it. Even Walter Plinge won’t be certain, ’cos his mind’s all tangled up.”
    Granny took a deep breath. “It’s tangled, but it ain’t twisted.” There was a sigh. “Well, matters will have to resolve themselves. There’s nothing else for it.”
    She removed her hat and fished around in the point. “I don’t mind tellin’ you this, Walter,” she said, “because you won’t understand and you won’t remember. There was a wicked ole witch once called Black Aliss. She was an unholy terror. There’s never been one worse or more powerful. Until now. Because I could spit in her eye and steal her teeth, see. Because she didn’t know Right from Wrong, so she got all twisted up and that was the end of her.
    “The trouble is, you see, that if you do know Right from Wrong you can’t choose Wrong. You just can’t do it and live. So…if I was a bad witch I could make Mister Salzella’s muscles turn against his bones and break them where he stood…if I was bad. I could do things inside his head, change the shape he thinks he is, and he’d be down on what’d been his knees and begging to be turned into a frog…if I was bad. I could leave