Terry Pratchett - Johnny and the Dead

TERRY PRATCHETT

Authors Note

Johnny never knew for certain why he started seeing the

Johnny raised the subject of the cemetery after tea.

There was the Alderman, and William Stickers, and an old

It was later that morning.

Johnny went home. He didnt dare go back to the

The Pals swung up the road, keeping perfectly in step.

The Frank W. Arnold Civic Center meeting room was about half

There is a night that never comes to an end.

This fuss over the cemeterys certainly breathed a bit of

Bigmac bounded over the rubble, an enraged skinhead skeleton.

As Tommy Atkins had once said, things arent necessarily over

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Ive bent history a little bit. There really were such things as Pals Battalions, just as described here, and they really were a horribly innocent device for wiping out a whole generation of young men from one particular area with one cannon shell. But the practice died out by the summer of 1916, when the first Battle of the Somme took place. Nineteen thousand British soldiers died on the first day of the battle.

Thomas Atkins really was the name used on documents in the British Army in the way that people would now use A.N. Other, and Tommy Atkins did become a nickname for the British soldier.

There were certainly a number of real Tommy Atkinses in the war. This book is dedicated to themwherever they are.

J ohnny never knew for certain why he started seeing the dead.

The Alderman said it was probably because he was too lazy not to.

Most peoples minds dont let them see things that might upset them, he said. The Alderman said he should know if anyone did, because hed spent his whole life (18221906) not seeing things.

Wobbler Johnson, who was technically Johnnys best friend, said it was because he was nuts.

But Yo-less, who read medical books, said it was probably because he couldnt focus his mind like normal people. Normal people just ignored almost everything that was going on around them, so that they could concentrate on important things like, well, getting up, going to the lavatory, and getting on with their lives. Whereas Johnny just opened his eyes in the morning and the whole universe hit him in the face.

Wobbler said this sounded like nuts to him.

Whatever it was called, what it meant was this: Johnny saw things other people didnt.

Like the dead people hanging around in the cemetery.

The Aldermanat least the old Aldermanwas a bit snobby about most of the rest of the dead, even about Mr. Vicenti, who had a huge black marble grave with angels and a photograph of Mr. Vicenti (18971958) looking not at all dead behind a little window. The Alderman said Mr. Vicenti had been a Capo di Monte in the Mafia. Mr. Vicenti told Johnny that, on the contrary, he had spent his entire life being a wholesale novelty salesman, amateur escapologist, and childrens entertainer, which in a number of important respects was as exactly like not being in the Mafia as it was possible to get.

But all this was later. After hed gotten to know the dead a lot better. After the raising of the ghost of the Ford Capri.

Johnny really discovered the cemetery after hed started living at Granddads. This was Phase Three of Trying Times, after the shouting, which had been bad, and the Being Sensible About Things (which had been worse; people are better at shouting). Now his dad was getting a new job somewhere on the other side of the country. There was a vague feeling that it might all work out, now that people had stopped trying to be sensible. On the whole, he tried not to think about it.

Hed started using the path along the canal instead of going home on the bus, and had found that if you climbed over the place where the wall had fallen down, and then went around behind the crematorium, you could cut off half the journey.

The graves went right up to the canals edge.

It was one of those old cemeteries you got owls and foxes in and sometimes, in the Sunday papers, people going on about Our Victorian Heritage, although they didnt go on about this one because it was the wrong kind of heritage, being too far from London.

Wobbler said it was spooky and sometimes went home the long way, but Johnny was disappointed that it wasnt spookier. Once you sort of put out of your mind what it was once you forgot about all the skeletons underground, grinning away in the darkit was quite friendly. Birds sang. All the traffic sounded a long way off. It was peaceful.

Hed had to check a few things, though. Some of the older graves had big stone boxes on top of them, and in the wilder parts these had cracked and even fallen open. Hed had a look inside, just in case.

It had been sort of disappointing to find nothing there.

And then there were the mausoleums. These were much bigger and had doors in them, like little houses. They looked a bit like garden sheds with extra angels. The angels were generally more lifelike than youd expect, especially one near the entrance who looked as though hed just remembered that he should have gone to the toilet before he left heaven.

The two boys walked through the cemetery now, kicking up the drifts of fallen leaves.

Its Halloween next week, said Wobbler. Im having a party. You have to come as something horrible. Dont bother to find a disguise.

Thanks, said Johnny.

You notice how theres a lot more Halloween stuff in the shops these days? said Wobbler.

Its because of Bonfire Night, said Johnny. Too many people were blowing themselves up with fireworks, so they invented Halloween, where you just wear masks and stuff.

Mrs. Nugent says all that sort of thing is tampering with the occult, said Wobbler. Mrs. Nugent was the Johnsons next-door neighbor, and known to be unreasonable on subjects like Madonna played at full volume at three A.M.

Probably it is, said Johnny.

She says witches are abroad on Halloween, said Wobbler.

What? Johnnys forehead wrinkled. LikeMarjorca and places?

Suppose so, said Wobbler.

Makessense, I suppose. They probably get special out-of-season bargains, being old ladies, said Johnny. My aunt can go anywhere on the buses for almost nothing, and shes not even a witch.

Dont see why Mrs. Nugent is worried, then, said Wobbler. It ought to be a lot safer around here, with all the witches on vacation.

They passed a very ornate mausoleum, which even had little stained-glass windows. It was hard to imagine whod want to see in, but then, it was even harder to imagine whod want to look out.

Shouldnt like to be on the same plane as em, said Wobbler, whod been thinking hard. Just think, praps you can only afford to go on vacation in the autumn, and you get on the plane, and theres all these old witches going abroad.

Singing Here we go, here we go, here we go? said Johnny. But I bet youd get really good service in the hotel.

Yeah.

Funny, really, said Johnny.

What?

I saw a thing in a book once, said Johnny, about these people in Mexico or somewhere, where they all go down to the cemetery for a big fiesta at Halloween every year. Like they dont see why people should be left out of things just because theyre dead.

Yuck. A picnic? In the actual cemetery?

Yes.

Reckon youd get green glowing hands pushing up through the earth and swiping the sandwiches?

Dont think so. Anywaythey dont eat sandwiches in Mexico. They eat tortsomething.