Reaper Man

In the dark cupboard in the cellar, a whole shelf was already full.

There was exactly as much Windle Poons as one body could contain, and he steered it carefully along the corridors.

I never expected this, he thought. I don’t deserve this. There’s been a mistake somewhere.

He felt a cool breeze on his face and realised he’d tottered out into the open air. Ahead of him were the University’s gates, locked shut.

Suddenly Windle Poons felt acutely claustrophobic. He’d waited years to die, and now he had, and here he was stuck in this — this mausoleum with a lot of daft old men, where he’d have to spend the rest of his life being dead. Well, the first thing to do was get out and make a proper end to himself —

‘’Evening, Mr Poons.’

He turned around very slowly and saw the small figure of Modo, the University’s dwarf gardener, who was sitting in the twilight smoking his pipe.

‘Oh. Hallo, Modo.’

‘I ’eard you was took dead, Mr Poons.’

‘Er. Yes. I was.’

‘See you got over it, then.’

Poons nodded, and looked dismally around the walls. The University gates were always locked at sunset every evening, obliging students and staff to climb over the walls. He doubted very much that he’d be able to manage that.

He clenched and unclenched his hands. Oh, well …

‘Is there any other gateway around here, Modo?’ he said.

‘No, Mr Poons.’

‘Well, where shall we have one?’

‘Sorry, Mr Poons?’

There was the sound of tortured masonry, followed by a vaguely Poons-shaped hole in the wall. Windle’s hand reached back in and picked up his hat.

Modo relit his pipe. You see a lot of interesting things in this job, he thought.

In an alley, temporarily out of sight of passers-by, someone called Reg Shoe, who was dead, looked both ways, took a brush and a paint tin out of his pocket, and painted on the wall the words:

DEAD YES! GONE NO!

… and ran away, or at least lurched off at high speed.

The Archchancellor opened a window on to the night.

‘Listen,’ he said.

The wizards listened.

A dog barked. Somewhere a thief whistled, and was answered from a neighbouring rooftop. In the distance a couple were having the kind of quarrel that causes most of the surrounding streets to open their windows and listen in and make notes. But these were only major themes against the continuous hum and buzz of the city. Ankh-Morpork purred through the night, en route for the dawn, like a huge living creature although, of course, this was only a metaphor.

‘Well?’ said the Senior Wrangler.^{10} ‘I can’t hear anything special.’

‘That’s what I mean. Dozens of people die in Ankh-Morpork every day. If they’d all started coming back like poor old Windle, don’t you think we’d know about it? The place’d be in uproar. More uproar than usual, I mean.’

‘There’s always a few undead around,’ said the Dean, doubtfully. ‘Vampires and zombies and banshees and so on.’

‘Yes, but they’re more naturally undead,’ said the Archchancellor. ‘They know how to carry it off. They’re born to it.’

‘You can’t be born to be undead,’ the Senior Wrangler[3] pointed out.

‘I mean it’s traditional,’ the Archchancellor snapped. ‘There were some very respectable vampires where I grew up. They’d been in their family for centuries.’

‘Yes, but they drink blood,’ said the Senior Wrangler. ‘That doesn’t sound very respectable to me.’

‘I read where they don’t actually need the actual blood,’ said the Dean, anxious to assist. ‘They just need something that’s in blood. Hemogoblins, I think it’s called.’

The other wizards looked at him.

The Dean shrugged. ‘Search me,’ he said, ‘Hemogoblins. That’s what it said. It’s all to do with people having iron in their blood.’

‘I’m damn sure I’ve got no iron goblins in my blood,’ said the Senior Wrangler.

‘At least they’re better than zombies,’ said the Dean. ‘A much better class of people. Vampires don’t go shuffling around the whole time.’

‘People can be turned into zombies, you know,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, in conversational tones. ‘You don’t even need magic. Just the liver of a certain rare fish and the extract of a particular kind of root. One spoonful, and when you wake up, you’re a zombie.’

‘What type of fish?’ said the Senior Wrangler.

‘How should I know?’

‘How should anyone know, then?’ said the Senior Wrangler nastily. ‘Did someone wake up one morning and say, hey, here’s an idea, I’ll just turn someone into a zombie, all I’ll need is some rare fish liver and a piece of root, it’s just a matter of finding the right one? You can see the queue outside the hut, can’t you? No. 94, Red Stripefish liver and Maniac root … didn’t work. No. 95, Spikefish liver and Dum-dum root … didn’t work. No. 96—’

‘What are you talking about?’ the Archchancellor demanded.

‘I was simply pointing out the intrinsic unlikelihood of—’

‘Shut up,’ said the Archchancellor, matter-of-factly. ‘Seems to me … seems to me … look, death must be going on, right? Death has to happen. That’s what bein’ alive is all about. You’re alive, and then you’re dead. It can’t just stop happening.’