Reaper Man (18 page)

Then he lowered the blade.

T
HAT’S
SHARP
.

His grin faded, or at least faded as much as it was able to.

Miss Flitworth turned, following the line of his gaze until it intersected a faint haze over the cornfields.

It looked like a pale gray robe, empty but still somehow maintaining the shape of its wearer, as if a garment on a washing line was catching the breeze.

It wavered for a moment, and then vanished.

“I saw it,” said Miss Flintworth.

T
HAT WASN’T IT
. T
HAT WAS THEM
.

“Them who?”

T
HEY’RE LIKE
—Bill Door waved a hand vaguely—S
ERVANTS
. W
ATCHERS
. A
UDITORS
. I
NSPECTORS
.

Miss Flitworth’s eyes narrowed.

“Inspectors? You mean like the Revenoo?” she said.

I
SUPPOSE SO
—

Miss Flitworth’s face lit up.

“Why didn’t you
say?
”

I’
M SORRY
?

“My father always made me promise
never
to help the Revenoo. Even just thinking about the Revenoo, he said, made him want to go and have a lie down. He said that there was death and taxes, and taxes was worse, because at least death didn’t happen to you every year. We had to go out of the room when he really got started about the Revenoo.
Nasty
creatures. Always poking around asking what you’ve got hidden under the woodpile and behind the secret panels in the cellar and other stuff which is no concern whatsoever of anyone.”

She sniffed.

Bill Door was impressed. Miss Flitworth could actually give the word “revenue,” which had two vowels and one diphthong, all the peremptoriness of the word “scum.”

“You should have said that they were after you right from the start,” said Miss Flitworth. “The Revenoo aren’t popular in these parts, you know. In my father’s day, any Revenooer came around here prying around by himself, we used to tie weights to their feet and heave ’em into the pond.”

B
UT THE POND IS ONLY A FEW INCHES DEEP
, M
ISS
F
LITWORTH
.

“Yeah, but it was fun watching ’em find out. You should have said. Everyone thought you were to do with taxes.”

N
O
. N
OT TAXES
.

“Well, well. I didn’t know there was a Revenoo Up There, too.”

Y
ES
. I
N A WAY
.

She sidled closer.

“When will he come?”

T
ONIGHT
. I
CANNOT BE EXACT
. T
WO PEOPLE ARE LIVING ON THE SAME TIMER
. I
T MAKES THINGS UNCERTAIN
.

“I didn’t know people could give people some of their life.”

I
T HAPPENS ALL THE TIME
.

“And you’re sure about tonight?”

Y
ES
.

“And that blade will work, will it?”

I
DON’T KNOW
. I
T’S A MILLION TO ONE CHANCE
.

“Oh.” She seemed to be considering something. “So you’ve got the rest of the day free, then?”

Y
ES
?”

“Then you can start getting the harvest in.”

W
HAT
?

“It’ll keep you busy. Keep your mind off things. Besides, I’m paying you sixpence a week. And sixpence is sixpence.”

Mrs. Cake’s house was also in Elm Street. Windle knocked on the door.

After a while a muffled voice called out, “Is there anybody there?”

“Knock once for yes,” Schleppel volunteered.

Windle levered open the letter-box.

“Excuse me? Mrs. Cake?”

The door opened.

Mrs. Cake wasn’t what Windle had expected. She was big, but not in the sense of being fat. She was just built to a scale slightly larger than normal; the sort of person who goes through life crouching slightly and looking apologetic in case they inadvertently loom. And she had magnificent hair. It crowned her head and flowed out behind her like a cloak. She also had slightly pointed ears and teeth which, while white and quite beautiful, caught the light in a disturbing way. Windle was amazed at the speed at which his heightened zombie senses reached a conclusion. He looked down.

Lupine was sitting bolt upright, too excited even to wag his tail.

“I don’t think
you
could be Mrs. Cake,” said Windle.

“You want mother,” said the tall girl. “Mother! There’s a gentleman!”

A distant muttering became a closer muttering, and then Mrs. Cake appeared around the side of her daughter like a small moon emerging from planetary shadow.

“What d’yew want?” said Mrs. Cake.

Windle took a step backward. Unlike her daughter, Mrs. Cake was quite short, and almost perfectly circular. And still unlike her daughter, whose whole stance was dedicated to making herself look small, she loomed tremendously. This was largely because of her hat, which he later learned she wore at all times with the dedication of a wizard. It was huge and black and had things on it, like bird wings and wax cherries and hat-pins; Carmen Miranda could have worn that hat to the funeral of a continent. Mrs. Cake traveled underneath it as the basket travels under a balloon. People often found themselves talking to her hat.

“Mrs. Cake?” said Windle, fascinated.

“Oim down ’ere,” said a reproachful voice.

Windle lowered his gaze.

“That’s ’oo I am,” said Mrs. Cake.

“Am I addressing Mrs. Cake?” said Windle.

“Yes, oi know,” said Mrs. Cake.

“My name’s Windle Poons.”

“Oi knew that, too.”

“I’m a wizard, you see—”

“All right, but see you wipes your feet.”

“May I come in?”

Windle Poons paused. He replayed the last few lines of conversation in the clicking control room of his brain. And then he smiled.

“That’s right,” said Mrs. Cake.

“Are you by any chance a natural clairvoyant?”

“About ten seconds usually, Mr. Poons.”

Windle hesitated.

“You gotta ask the question,” said Mrs. Cake quickly. “I gets a migraine if people goes and viciously not asks questions after I’ve already foreseen ’em and answered ’em.”

“How far into the future can you see, Mrs. Cake?”

She nodded.

“Roight, then,” she said, apparently mollified, and led the way through the hall into a tiny sitting room. “And the bogey can come in, only he’s got to leave ’is door outside and go in the cellar. I don’t hold with bogeys wanderin’ around the house.”

“Gosh, it’s ages since I’ve been in a proper cellar,” said Schleppel.

“It’s got spiders in it,” said Mrs. Cake.

“Wow!”

“And you’d like a cup of tea,” said Mrs. Cake to Windle. Someone else might have said “I expect you’d like a cup of tea,” or “Do you want a cup of tea?” But this was a statement.

“Yes, please,” said Windle. “I’d love a cup of tea.”

“You shouldn’t,” said Mrs. Cake. “That stuff rots your teeth.”

Windle worked this one out.

“Two sugars, please,” he said.

“It’s all right.”

“This is a nice place you have here, Mrs. Cake,” said Windle, his mind racing. Mrs. Cake’s habit of answering questions while they were still forming in your mind taxed the most active brain.

“He’s been dead for ten years,” she said.

“Er,” said Windle, but the question was already there in his larynx, “I trust Mr. Cake is in good health?”

“It’s okay. Oi speaks to him occasional,” said Mrs. Cake.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Windle.

“All right, if it makes you feel any better.”

“Um, Mrs. Cake? I’m finding it a little confusing. Could you…switch off…your precognition…?”

She nodded.

“Sorry. Oi gets into the habit of leavin’ it on,” she said, “what with there only bein’ me an’ Ludmilla and One-Man-Bucket. He’s a ghost,” she added. “Oi knew you was goin’ to ask that.”

“Yes, I had heard that mediums have native spirit guides,” said Windle.

“’Im? ’E’s not a guide, ’e’s a sort of odd-job ghost,” said Mrs. Cake. “I don’t hold with all that stuff with cards and trumpets and Oo-jar boards, mind you. An’ I think ectoplasm’s disgustin’. Oi won’t have it in the ’ouse. Oi
won’t
. You can’t get it out of the carpets, you know. Not even with vinegar.”

“My word,” said Windle Poons.

“Or wailin’. I don’t hold with it. Or messin’ around with the supernatural. It’s unnatural, the supernatural. I won’t have it.”

“Um,” said Windle cautiously. “There are those who might think that being a medium is a bit…you know…supernatural?”

“What?
What?
Nothing supernatural about dead people. Load of nonsense. Everyone dies sooner or later.”

“I do hope so, Mrs. Cake.”

“So what is it you’d be wanting, Mr. Poons? I’m not precognitin’, so you have to tell me.”

“I want to know what’s happening, Mrs. Cake.”

There was a muted thump from under their feet and the faint, happy sound of Schleppel.

“Oh, wow! Rats, too!”

“I went up and tried to tell you wizards,” said Mrs. Cake, primly. “An’ no one listened. I knew they weren’t going to, but I ’ad to try, otherwise I wouldn’t ’ave known.”

“Who did you speak to?”

“The big one with the red dress and a mustache like he’s trying to swaller a cat.”

“Ah. The Archchancellor,” said Windle, positively.

“And there was a huge fat one. Walks like a duck.”

“He does, doesn’t he? That was the Dean,” said Windle.

“They called me their good woman,” said Mrs. Cake. “They told me to be about my business. Don’t see why I should go around helpin’ wizards who call me a good woman when I was only trying to help.”

“I’m afraid wizards don’t often listen,” said Windle. “I never listened for one hundred and thirty years.”

“Why not?”

“In case I heard what rubbish I was saying, I expect. What’s happening, Mrs. Cake? You can tell me. I may be a wizard, but I’m a dead one.”

“Well…”

“Schleppel told me it was all due to life force.”

“It’s buildin’ up, see?”

“What does that
mean
?”

“There’s more’f it than there should be. You get”—she waved her hands vaguely—“when things are like in a scales only not the same on both sides…”

“Imbalance?”

Mrs. Cake, who looked as though she was reading a distant script, nodded.

“One of them things, yeah…see, sometimes it just happens a little bit, and you get ghosts, because the life is not in the body anymore but it hasn’t gone…and you get less of it in the winter, because it sort of drains away, and it comes back in the spring…and some things concentrate it…”

Modo the University gardener hummed a little tune as he wheeled the strange trolley into his private little area between the Library and the High Energy Magic
*
building, with a load of weeds bound for composthood.

There seemed to be a lot of excitement around at the moment. It was certainly interesting, working with all these wizards.

Teamwork, that’s what it was. They looked after the cosmic balance, the universal harmonies and the dimensional equilibriums, and he saw to it that the aphids stayed off the roses.

There was a metallic tinkle. He peered over the top of the heap of weeds.

“Another one?”

A gleaming metal wire basket on little wheels sat on the path.

Maybe the wizards had bought it for him? The first one was quite useful, although it was a little bit hard to steer; the little wheels seemed to want to go in different directions. There was probably a knack.

Well, this one would be handy for carrying seed trays in. He pushed the second trolley aside and heard, behind him, a sound which, if it had to be written down, and if he could write, he would probably have written down as: glop.

He turned around, saw the biggest of the compost heaps pulsating in the dark, and said, “Look what I brought you for your tea!”

And then he saw that it was moving.

“Some places, too…” said Mrs. Cake.

“But why should it build up?” said Windle.

“It’s like a thunderstorm, see? You know how you get that prickly feelin’ before a storm? That’s what’s happening now.”

“Yes, but why, Mrs. Cake?”

“Well…One-Man-Bucket says nothing’s dying.”

“What?”

“Daft, isn’t it? He says lots of lives are ending, but not going away. They’re just staying here.”

“What, like ghosts?”

“Not just ghosts. Just—it’s like puddles. When you get a lot of puddles, it’s like the sea. Anyway, you only get ghosts from things like people. You don’t get ghosts of cabbages.”

Windle Poons sat back in his chair. He had a vision of a vast pool of life, a lake being fed by a million short-lived tributaries as living things came to the end of their span. And life force was leaking out as the pressure built up. Leaking out wherever it could.

“Do you think I could have a word with One—” he began, and then stopped.

He got up and lurched over to Mrs. Cake’s mantelpiece.

“How long have you had this, Mrs. Cake?” he demanded, picking up a familiar glassy object.

“That? Bought it yesterday. Pretty, ain’t it?”

Windle shook the globe. It was almost identical to the ones under his floorboards. Snowflakes whirled up and settled on an exquisite model of Unseen University.

It reminded him strongly of something. Well, the building obviously reminded him of the University, but the shape of the whole thing, there was a hint of, it made him think of…

…breakfast?

“Why is it happening?” he said, half to himself. “These damn things are turning up everywhere.”

The wizards ran down the corridor.

“How can you kill ghosts?”

“How should I know? The question doesn’t usually arise!”

“You exorcise them, I think.”

“What? Jumpin’ up and down, runnin’ on the spot, that kind of thing?”

The Dean had been ready for this. “It’s spelled with an ‘O,’ Archchancellor. I don’t think one is expected to subject them to, er, physical exertion.”