Terry Pratchett: Johnny And The Dead

'Did he? I meant Solomon Einstein. He was a famous taxidermist in Cable Street. Stuffing dead animals, you know. I think he invented some kind of machine for making glass eyes. Got knocked down by a motor car in nineteen thirty-two. But a very keen thinker, all the same.'

'I never knew that,' said Johnny. He looked around.

It was getting darker.

'I think I'd better be getting home,' he said, and began to back away.

'I think I'm getting the hang of this,' said the Alderman, moonwalking back across the path.

Til ... er ... I'll see you again. Perhaps,' said Johnny.

'Call any time you like,' said the Alderman, as Johnny walked away as quickly yet politely as possible. 'I'm always in.'

'Always in,' he added. 'That's something you learn to be good at, when you're dead. Er. Eeeeyooowh, was it?'

Johnny raised the subject of the cemetery after tea.

'It's disgusting, what the Council are doing,' said his grandfather.

'But the cemetery costs a lot to keep up,' said his mother. 'No-one visits most of the graves now, except old Mrs Tachyon, and she's barmy.'

'Not visiting graves has nothing to do with it, girl. Anyway, there's history in there.'

'Alderman Thomas Bowler,' said Johnny.

'Never heard of him. I was referring,' said his grandfather, 'to William Stickers. There was very nearly a monument to him. There would have been a monument to him. Everyone round here donated money, only someone ran off with it. And I'd given sixpence.'

'Was he famous?'

'Nearly famous. Nearly famous. You've heard of Karl Marx?'

'He invented communism, didn't he?' said Johnny.

'Right. Well, William Stickers didn't. But he'd have been Karl Marx if Karl Marx hadn't beaten him to it. Tell you what ... tomorrow, I'll show you.'

It was tomorrow.

It was raining softly out of a dark grey sky.

Grandad and Johnny stood in front of a large gravestone which read:

William Stickers

1897-1949

Workers of the

World Unit

'A great man,' said Grandad. He had taken his cap off.

'What was the World Unit?' said Johnny.

'It should have been unite,' said Grandad. 'They ran out of money before they did the "E". It was a scandal. He was a hero of the working class. He would have fought in the Spanish Civil War except he got on the wrong boat and ended up in Hull.'

Johnny looked around.

'Um,' he said. 'What sort of a man was he?'

'A hero of the proletariat, like I said.'

'I mean, what did he look like?' said Johnny. 'Was he quite big with a huge black beard and gold-rimmed spectacles?'

'That's right. Seen pictures, have you?'

'No,' said Johnny. 'Not exactly.'

Grandad put his cap back on.

'I'm going down to the shops,' he said. 'Want to come?'

'No, thanks. Er ... I'm going round to Wob- bler's house.'

'Righto.'

Grandad wandered off towards the main gate.

Johnny took a deep breath.

'Hello,' he said.

'It was a scandal, them not giving me the "E",' said William Stickers.

He stopped leaning against his memorial.

'What's your name, comrade?'

'John Maxwell,' said Johnny.

'I knew you could see me,' said William Stickers. 'I could see you looking right at me while the old man was talking.'

'I could tell you were you,' said Johnny. 'You look ... um ... thinner.'

He wanted to say: not thin like in thick. Just... not all there. Transparent.

He said, 'Um.' And then he said, 'I don't under- stand this. You are dead, right? Some kind of... ghost?'

'Ghost?' said dead William Stickers angrily.

'Well ... spirit, then.'

'There's no such thing. A relic of an outmoded belief system.'

'Um, only... you're talking to me ...'

'It's a perfectly understandable scientific phenomenon,' said William Stickers. 'Never let superstition get in the way of rational thought, boy. It's time for Mankind to put old cul- tural shibboleths aside and step into the bright socialist dawn. What year is it?'

'Nineteen ninety-three,' said Johnny.

'Ah! And have the downtrodden masses risen

up to overthrow the capitalist oppressors in the glorious name of communism?'

'Um. Sorry?' Johnny hesitated, and then a few vague memories slid into place. 'You mean like ... Russia and stuff? When they shot the Tsar? There was something on television about that.'

'Oh, I know that. That was just the start. What's been happening since nineteen forty-nine? I ex- pect the global revolution is well established, yes? No-one tells us anything in here.'

'Well ... there's been a lot of revolutions, I think,' said Johnny. 'All over the place ..."

'Capital!'

'Um.' It occurred to Johnny that people doing quite a lot of the revolutions- recently had said they were overthrowing communist oppressors, but William Stickers looked so eager he didn't quite know how to say this. 'Tell you what ... can you read a newspaper if I bring you one?'

'Of course. But it's hard to turn the pages.'

'Um. Are there a lot of you in here?'

'Hah! Most of them don't bother. They just aren't prepared to make the effort.'

'Can you ... you know ... walk around? You could get into things for free.'

William Stickers looked slightly panicky.

'It's hard to go far,' he mumbled. 'It's not really allowed.'

'I read in a book once that ghosts can't move much,' said Johnny.

'Ghost? I'm just ... dead.' He waved a trans- parent finger in the air. 'Hah! But they're not

getting me that way,' he snapped. 'Just because it turns out that I'm still ... here after I'm dead, doesn't mean I'm prepared to believe in the whole stupid nonsense, you know. Oh, no. Logical, rational thought, boy. And don't forget the newspaper.'

William Stickers faded away a bit at a time. The last thing to go was the finger, still demonstrating its total disbelief in life after death.

Johnny waited around a bit, but no other dead people seemed to be ready to make an appearance.

He felt he was being watched in some way that had nothing to do with eyes. It wasn't exactly creepy, but it was uncomfortable. You didn't dare scratch your bottom or pick your nose.

For the first time he really began to notice the cemetery. It had a leftover look, really.

Behind it there was the canal, which wasn't used any more, except as a rubbish dump; old prams and busted televisions and erupting settees lined its banks like monsters from the Garbage Age. Then on one side there was the crematorium and its Garden of Remembrance, which was all right in a

gravel-pathed, keep-off-the-grass sort of way. In front was Cemetery Road, which had once had houses on the other side of it; now there was the back wall of the Bonanza Carpet (Save .....11) Warehouse. There was still an old phone box and a letter box, which suggested that once upon a time this had been a place that people thought of as home. But now it was just a road you cut through to get to the bypass from the industrial estate.

On the fourth side was nothing much except a wasteground of fallen brick and one tall chimney - all that remained of the Blackbury Rubber Boot Company ('If It's a Boot, It's a Blackbury' had been one of the most famously stupid slogans in the world.)

Johnny vaguely remembered there'd been some- thing in the papers. People had been protesting about something - but then, they always were. There was always so much news going on you never had time to find out anything important.

He walked round to the old factory site. Bull- dozers were parked around it now, although they were all empty. There was a wire fence which had been broken down here and there despite the notices about Guard Dogs on Patrol. Perhaps the guard dogs had broken out.

And there was a big sign, showing the office building that was going to be built on the site. It was beautiful. There were fountains in front of it, and quite old trees carefully placed here and there, and neat people standing chatting outside it. And the sky above it was a glorious blue, which was pretty unusual for Blackbury, where most of the time the sky was that odd, soapy colour you'd get if you lived in a Tupperware box.