Hogfather

Chickenwire reached the top of the stairs, panting.

‘There's people down there, Mister Teatime!’ he wheezed. ‘Dave and the others've gone down to catch them, Mister Teatime!’

‘Teh-ah-tim-eh,’ said Teatime, without taking his eyes off the wizard.

‘That's right, sir!’

‘Well?’ said Teatime. ‘Just… do away with them.’

‘Er… one of them's a girl, sir.’

Teatime still didn't look round. He waved a hand vaguely.

‘Then do away with them politely.’

‘Yes, Mister… yes, right…’ Chickenwire coughed. ‘Don't you want to find out why they're here, sir?’

‘Good heavens, no. Why should I want to do that? Now go away.’

Chickenwire stood there for a moment, and then hurried off.

As he scurried down the stairs he thought he heard a creak, as of an ancient wooden door.

He went pale.

It was just a door, said the sensible bit in front of his brain. There were hundreds of them in this place, although, come to think of it, none of them had creaked.

The other bit, the bit that hung around in dark places nearly at the top of his spinal column, said: But it's not one of them, and you know it, because you know which door it really is…

He hadn't heard that creak for thirty years.

He gave a little yelp and started to take the stairs four at a time.

In the hollows and corners, the shadows grew darker.

Susan ran up a flight of stairs, dragging the oh god behind her.

‘Do you know what they've been doing?’ she said. ‘You know why they've got all those teeth in a circle? The power… oh my…’

‘I'm not going to,’ said the head waiter, firmly.

‘Look, I'll buy you a better pair after Hogswatch—’

‘There's two more Shoe Pastry, one for Puree de la Terre and three more Tourte a la Boue,’ said a waiter, hurrying in.

‘Mud pies!’ moaned the waiter. ‘I can't believe we're selling mud pies. And now you want my boots!’

‘With cream and sugar, mind you. A real taste of Ankh-Morpork. And we can get at least four helpings off those boots. Fair's fair. We're all in our socks—’

‘Table seven says the steaks were lovely but a bit tough,’ said a waiter, rushing past.

‘Right. Use a larger hammer next time and boil them for longer.’ The manager turned back to the suffering head waiter. ‘Look, Bill,’ he said, taking him by the shoulder. ‘This isn't food. No one expects it to be food. If people wanted food they'd stay at home, isn't that so? They come here for ambience. For the experience. This isn't cookery, Bill. This is cuisine. See? And they're coming back for more.’

‘Yeah, but old boots… ’

‘Dwarfs eats rats,’ said the manager. ‘And trolls eat rocks. There's folks in Howondaland that eat insects and folks on the Counterweight Continent eat soup made out of bird spit. At least the boots have been on a cow.’

‘And mud?’ said the head waiter, gloomily.

‘Isn't there an old proverb that says a man must eat 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—’