Johnny And The Dead

Terry Pratchett

Joh

Chapter I

Joh

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

Most people's minds don't let them see things that might upset them, he said. The Alderman said he should know if anyone did, because he'd spent his whole life (1822-1906) not seeing things.

Wobbler Johnson, who was technically Joh

But Yo-less, who read medical books, said it was probably because he couldn't 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 Joh

Wobbler said this sounded like 'mental' to him.

Whatever it was called, what it meant was this. Joh

Like the dead people hanging around in the cemetery.

The Alderman - at least, the old Alderman - was

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 (1897-1958) looking not at all dead behind a little window. The Alderman said Mr Vicenti had been a Capo de Monte in the Mafia. Mr Vicenti told Joh

But all this was later. After he'd got to know the dead a lot better. After the raising of the ghost of the Ford Capri.

Joh

He'd started using the path along the canal in- stead of going home on the bus, and 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 canal's 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 didn't 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 Joh

He'd had to check a few things, though. Some of the older graves had big stone boxes on top, and in the wilder parts these had cracked and even fallen open. He'd 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, like little houses. They looked a bit like allotment sheds with extra angels. The angels were generally more lifelike than you'd expect, especially one near the entrance who looked as though he'd 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.

'It's Halloween next week,' said Wobbler. 'I'm having a disco.- You have to come as something horrible. Don't bother to find a disguise.'

'Thanks,' said Joh

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

'It's because ofBonfire Night,' said Joh

'Mrs Nugent says all that sort of thing is tampering with the occult,' said Wobbler. Mrs Nugent was the Johnsons' next door neighbour, and known to be unreasonable on subjects like Mado

'Probably it is,' said Joh

'She says witches are abroad on Halloween,' said Wobbler.

'What?' Joh

'Suppose so,' said Wobbler.

'Makes ... sense, I suppose. They probably get special out-of-season bargains, being old ladies,' said Joh

'Don't see why Mrs Nugent is worried, then,' said Wobbler. 'It ort to be a lot safer round here, with all the witches on holiday.'

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

'Shouldn't like to be on the same plane as 'em,' said Wobbler, who'd been thinking hard. 'Just think, p'raps you can only afford to go on holiday in the autumn, and you get on the plane,

and there's all these old witches going abroad.'

'Singing "Here we go, here we go, here we go"?' said Joh

'But I bet you'd get really good service in the hotel,' said Joh

'Yeah.'

'Fu

'What?'

' I saw a thing in a book once,' said Joh

'Yuk. A picnic? In the actual cemetery?'

'Yes.'

'Reckon you'd get green glowing hands pushing up through the earth and nicking the sarnies?'

'Don't think so. Anyway ... they don't eat sarnies in Mexico. They eat tort ... something.'

'Tortoises.'

'Yeah?'

'I bet,' said Wobbler, looking around, 'I bet ... I bet you wouldn't dare knock on one of those doors. I bet you'd hear dead people lurchin' about inside/

'Why do they lurch?'

Wobbler thought about this.

'They always lurch,' he said. 'Du

'Why?' said Joh

ii

'Why what?'

'Why push their way through walls? I mean ... living people can't do

that. Why should dead people do it?'

Wobbler's mother was very easy-going in the matter of videos. According to him, he was allowed to watch ones which even people aged a hundred had to watch with their parents.

'Don't know,' he said. 'They're usually very angry about something.'

'Being dead, you mean?'

'Probably,' said Wobbler. 'It can't be much of a life.'

Joh