Terry Pratchett - Johnny And The Dead

'We do!'

The dead looked at him.

'We do,' Johnny repeated. 'We ... need it to be there.'

The diesel engine chugged. The machine vi- brated. The dead, if that's what they still were, seemed to be thinking.

Then Solomon Einstein nodded.

'This iss of course very true,' he said, in his excited squeaky voice. 'It all balances, you see. The living have to remember, the dead have to forget. Conservation of energy.'

The bulldozer's engine stuttered into silence.

Mr Vicenti held up a hand. It glowed like a firework.

'We came back to say goodbye. And thank you,' he said.

'I hardly did anything.'

'You listened. You tried. You were there. You can get medals just for being there. People forget the people who were just there.'

'Yes. I know.'

'But, now ... we must be somewhere else.'

'No ... don't go yet,' said Johnny. 'I have to ask you—'

Mr Vicenti turned.

'Yes?'

'Urn ...'

'Yes?'

'Are there ... angels involved? You know? Or ... devils and things? A lot of people would like to know.'

'Oh, no. I don't think so. That sort of thing ... no. That's for the living. No.'

The Alderman rubbed his spectral hands. 'I rather think it's going to be a lot more interesting than that.'

The dead were walking away, some of them fading back into shining smoke as they moved.

Some were heading for the canal. There was a boat there. It looked vaguely like a gondola. A dark figure stood at one end, leaning on a pole that vanished into the water.

'This is my lift,' said William Stickers.

'It looks a bit ... spooky. No offence meant,' said Johnny.

'Well, I thought I'd give it a try. If I don't like it, I'll go somewhere else,' said William Stickers, stepping aboard. 'Off we go, comrade.'

RIGHT said the ferryman.

The boat moved away from the bank. The canal was only a few metres wide, but the boat seemed to be drifting off a long, long way...

Voices came back over the waters.

'You know, an outboard motor on this and it'd go like a bird.'

I LIKE IT THE WAY IT IS, MR STICKERS.

'What's the pay like?'

SHOCKING.

'I wouldn't stand for it, if I was you—'

'I'm not sure where he's going,' said the Alderman, 'but he's certainly going to reor- ganize things when he gets there. Bit of a traditional thinker, our William.'

There was a click and hum from further along the bank. Einstein and Fletcher were sitting proudly in some sort of - well, it looked partly like an electronic circuit diagram, and partly like a ma- chine, and partly like mathematics would look if it was solid. It glowed and fizzled.

'Good, isn't it,' said Mr Fletcher. 'You've heard of a train of thought?'

'This is a flight of the imagination,' said Solomon Einstein.

' We 're going to have a good look at some things.'

'That's right. Starting with everything.'

Mr Fletcher thumped the machine happily.

'Right! The sky's the limit, Mr Einstein!'

'Not even that, Mr Fletcher!'

The lines grew bright, drew together, became more like a diagram. And vanished. Just before they vanished, though, they seemed to be accelerating.

And then there were three.

'Did I see them waving?' said Mrs Liberty.

'And particling, I shouldn't wonder,' said the Alderman. 'Come, Sylvia. I feel a more down-to- earth mode of transport would be suitable for us.'

He took her hand. They ignored Johnny and stepped on to the black waters of the canal.

And sank, slowly, leaving a pearly sheen on the water which gradually faded away.

Then there was the sound of a motor starting up.

Out of the water, transparent as a bubble, the spirit of the dead Ford Capri rose gently towards the sky.

The Alderman wound down an invisible window.

'Mrs Liberty thinks we ought to tell you some- thing,' he said. 'But ... it's hard to explain, you know.'

'What is?' said Johnny.

'By the way, why are you wearing a pink sheet?'

'Urn—'

'I expect it's not important.'

'Yes.'

'Well—' The car turned slowly; Johnny could see the moon through it. 'You know those games where this ball runs up and bounces around and ends up in a slot at the bottom?'

'Pinball machines?'

'Is that what they're called now?'

'I think so.'

'Oh. Right.' The Alderman nodded. 'Well ... when you're bouncing around from pin to pin, it is probably very difficult to know that outside the game there's a room and outside the room there's a town and outside the town there's a country and outside the country there's a world and outside the world there's a billion trillion stars and that's only the start of it ... but it's there, d'you see? Once you know about it, you can stop worry- ing about the slot at the bottom. And you might bounce around a good deal longer.'

'I'll ... try to remember it.'

'Good man. Well, we'd better be going ...'

Ghostly gears went crunch. The car juddered.

'Drat the thing. Ah ... Be seeing you ...'

It rose gently, turned towards the east, and sped away and up ...

And then there was one.

'Well, I think I might as well be off;' said Mr Vicenti. He produced a top hat and an old-fashioned walking cane out of thin air.

'Why are you all leaving?' said Johnny.

'Oh, yes. It's Judgement Day,' said Mr Vicenti. 'We decided.'

'I thought that was chariots and things.'

'I think you'll have to use your own judgement on that one. No point in waiting for what you've already got. It's different for everybody, you see. Enjoy looking after the cemetery. They're places for the living, after all.'

Mr Vicenti pulled on a pair of white gloves and pressed an invisible lift button. He began to rise. White feathers cascaded out of his sleeves.

'Dear me,' he said, and opened his jacket. 'Go on, away with you! All of you! Shoo!'

Half a dozen ghostly pigeons untangled them- selves and rocketed off into the dawn.

'There. That proves it. You can escape from anything, eventually,' he called down. Johnny just managed to hear him add, ' ... although I will admit that three sets of manacles, twenty feet of chain and a canvas sack can present a considerable amount of difficulty in certain circumstances ...'

The light glinted off his hat.

And then there was ... one.

Johnny turned around.

Mr Grimm was standing neatly in the middle of the path, with his neat hands neatly folded. Darkness surrounded him like a fog. He was watching the sky. Johnny had never seen such an expression ...

He remembered the time, many years ago, when Bigmac had a party and hadn't invited him. He'd said afterwards, 'Well, of course not. I knew you'd come, you didn't have to be asked, you didn't need to be asked, you could just have turned up.' But everyone else was going to go, and was talking about going, and he'd felt like a pit had opened up in his life! That sort of thing was pretty awful when you were seven.

It looked much, much worse when you were dead.

Mr Grimm saw Johnny staring at him.

'Huh,' he said, pulling himself together. 'They'll be sorry.'

'I'm going to find out about you, Mr Grimm,' said Johnny.

'Nothing to find out,' snapped the ghost.

Johnny walked through him. There was a chilly moment, and then Mr Grimm was gone.

And then there were none.

Real night flowed back in. The sounds of the town, the distant hum of the traffic, filled the space taken up by the silence.

Johnny walked back along the gravel path.

'Wobbler?' he whispered. 'Wobbler?'

He found him crouched behind a gravestone with his eyes shut.

'Come on,' said Johnny.

'Look, I—'

'Everything's OK.'

' It was fireworks, right?' said Wobbler. His Count Dracula make-up was streaked and smudged, and he'd lost his fangs. 'Someone was letting some fireworks off, yes?'