Hogfather

     'Yes,' said Susan, and added to herself, I bet you did.

     'And where's our Davey gone?'

     'Er... somewhere else, Banjo.'

     'Somewhere nice?' said the huge man hesitantly.

     Susan  grasped with  relief  the opportunity to tell  the  truth, or at least not definitely lie.

     'It could be,' she said.

     'Better'n here?'

     'You never know. Some people would say the odds are in favour.'

     Banjo   turned   his  pink  piggy  eyes   on  her.  For   a  moment   a thirty-five-year-old   man   looked  out  through  the  pink  clouds   of  a five-year-old face.

     'That's good,' he said. 'He'll be able to see our mam again.'

     This much conversation seemed to exhaust him. He sagged.

     'I wanna go home,' he said.

     She  stared at  his big, stained face, shrugged  hopelessly,  pulled  a handkerchief out of her pocket and held it up to his mouth.

     'Spit,' she commanded. He obeyed.

     She  dabbed the  handkerchief over the  worst  parts and then tucked it into his hand.

     'Have a good  blow,'  she suggested,  and then carefully  leaned out of range until the echoes of the blast had died away.

     'You can keep the hanky. Please,' she added, meaning it wholeheartedly.

'Now tuck your shirt in.'

     'Yes, miss.'

     'Now, go downstairs and sweep all the teeth out  of the circle. Can you do that?'

     Banjo nodded.

     'What can you do?' Susan prompted.

     Banjo concentrated. 'Sweep all the teeth out of the circle, miss.'

     'Good. Off you go.'

     Susan watched  him plod  off, and then looked at the white doorway. She was sure the wizard had only got as far as the sixth lock.

     The room beyond the door was entirely white, and the mist  that swirled at knee level deadened even the sound of her footsteps.

     All there was was a bed. It was a large fourposter, old and dusty.

     She thought it was unoccupied and then she saw the figure, lying among the mounds of pillows. It  looked very much like a frail old lady in a mob cap.

     The old woman turned her head and smiled at Susan.

     'Hello, my dear.'

     Susan  couldn't remember  a  grandmother. Her  father's mother had died when she was young and the other side of the family... well, she'd never had a grandmother. But this was the sort she'd have wanted.

     The kind, the nasty realistic  side of her mind said, that hardly  ever existed.

     Susan  thought  she heard  a  child laugh.  And another  one. Somewhere almost  out  of  hearing, children were at play. It  was  always a pleasant, lulling sound.

     Always provided, of course, you couldn't hear the actual words.

     'No,' said Susan.

     'Sorry, dear?' said the old lady.

     'You're not the Tooth Fairy.' Oh, no... there was even a damn patchwork quilt...

     'Oh, I am, dear.'

     'Oh, Grandma, what big teeth you have... Good grief, you've  even got a shawl, oh dear.'

     'I don't understand, lovey...'

     'You forgot the rocking chair,' said  Susan. 'I always  thought there'd be a rocking chair...'

     There was a pop behind  her, and then  a  dying creakcreak. She  didn't even turn round.

     'If you've included a kitten playing with a ball of wool it'll go  very hard with you,' she said  sternly, and picked up the candlestick by the bed. It seemed heavy enough.

     'I  don't think you're real,' she  said  levelly. 'There's not a little old woman  in a shawl running this place. You're out of my head.  That's how you defend yourself... You poke around in people's heads and find the things that work...'

     She swung the candlestick. It passed through the figure in the bed.

     'See?' she said. 'You're not even real.'

     'Oh, I am real, dear,' said the old woman, as her outline changed. 'The candlestick wasn't.'

     Susan looked down at the new shape.

     'Nope,' she said. 'It's horrible,  but it doesn't frighten  me. No, nor does that.'  It  changed  again,  and again. 'No,  nor  does my father. Good grief, you're scraping the bottom of the barrel, aren't you? I like spiders. Snakes don't  worry me.  Dogs?  No. Rats are fine,  I  like  rats. Sorry, is anyone frightened of that?'

     She grabbed at the thing and this time the shape stayed. It looked like a small,  wizened  monkey, but with  big deep eyes  under a brow overhanging like  a balcony.  Its  hair was grey and  lank. It struggled  weakly  in her grasp, and wheezed.

     'I  don't  frighten easily,'  said Susan,  'but you'd be amazed at  how angry I can become.'

     The creature hung limp.

     'I... I...' it muttered.

     She let it down again.

     'You're a bogeyman, aren't you?' she said.

     It collapsed in a heap when she took her hand away.

     '... Not a... The...' it said.

     'What do you mean, the?' said Susan.

     'The  bogeyman,'  said the bogeyman. And she saw how rangy it was,  how white and  grey streaked  its  hair,  how the skin  was stretched  over  the bones...

    'The first bogeyman?'

     'I...  there were...  I  do remember when the land  was different. Ice. Many  times  of...  ice.  And the...  what do  you call  them?' The creature wheezed. '... The lands, the big lands... all different...'

     Susan sat down on the bed.

     'You mean continents?'