Maskerade

Another thought staggered through Basilica's abused skull. 'M I?” he said. 'S good… “ll look forwa' to that. Ne'er had a chance to hear me befo'…”

He gave a happy little sigh and fell full?length backwards.

Bucket leaned against a pillar for support. Then his brow furrowed and, in the best traditions of the extended double?take, he stared at the fallen tenor and counted to one on his fingers. Then he turned towards the stage and counted to two.

He could feel a fourth exclamation mark coming on any time now.

The Enrico Basilica on stage turned his mask this way and that. Stage right, Bucket was whispering to a group of stage?hands. Stage left, Andre the secret pianist was waiting. A large troll loomed next to him.

The fat red singer walked to centre?stage as the prelude to the duet began. The audience settled down again. Fun and games among the chorus was all very well — it might even be in the plot — but this was what they'd paid for. This was what it was all about.

Agnes stared at him as Christine walked towards him. Now she could see he wasn't right. Oh, he was fat, in a pillow?up?your?shirt sort of way, but he didn't move like Basilica. Basilica moved lightly on his feet, as fat men often do, giving the effect of a barely tethered balloon.

She glanced at Nanny, who was also watching him carefully. She couldn't see Granny Weatherwax anywhere. That probably meant she was really close.

The expectancy of the audience dragged at them all. Ears opened like petals. The fourth wall of the stage, the big black sucking darkness outside, was a well of silence begging to be filled up.

Christine was walking towards him quite unconcerned. Christine would walk into a dragon's mouth if it had a sign on it saying 'Totally harmless, I promise you'… at least, if it was printed in large, easy?to?understand letters.

No one seemed to want to do anything.

It was a famous duet. And a beautiful one. Agnes ought to know. She'd been singing it all last night.

Christine took the false Basilica's hand and, as the opening bars of the duet began, opened her mouth

“Stop right there!”

Agnes put everything she could into it. The chandelier tinkled.

The orchestra went silent in a skid of wheezes and twangs.

In a fading of chords and a dying of echoes, the show stopped.

Walter Plinge sat in the candlelit gloom under the stage, his hands resting on his lap. It was not often that Walter Plinge had nothing to do, but, when he did have nothing to do, he did nothing.

He liked it down here. It was familiar. The sounds of the opera 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 programmes. 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 practised headology — practised, 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 endeavour 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 programmes. 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 him with a mind like a scrambled egg, listening to colours and hearing smells… if I was bad. Oh, yes.” There was another sigh, deeper and more heartfelt. “But I can't do none of that stuff: That wouldn't be Right.”

She gave a deprecating little chuckle. And if Nanny Ogg had been listening, she would have resolved as follows: that no maddened cackle from Black Aliss of infamous memory, no evil little giggle from some crazed vampyre whose morals were worse than his spelling, no sidesplitting guffaw from the most inventive torturer, was quite so unnerving as a happy little chuckle from a Granny Weatherwax about to do what's best.

From the point of her hat Granny withdrew a paper?thin mask. It was a simple face — smooth, white, basic. There were semi?circular holes for the eyes. It was neither happy nor sad.