Reaper Man

Belief sloshes around in the firmament like lumps of clay spiralling into a potter’s wheel. That’s how gods get created, for example. They clearly must be created by their own believers, because a brief résumé of the lives of most gods suggests that their origins certainly couldn’t be divine. They tend to do exactly the things people would do if only they could, especially when it comes to nymphs, golden showers, and the smiting of your enemies.

Belief creates other things.

It created Death. Not death, which is merely a technical term for a state caused by prolonged absence of life, but Death, the personality. He evolved, as it were, along with life. As soon as a living thing was even dimly aware of the concept of suddenly becoming a non-living thing, there was Death. He was Death long before humans ever considered him; they only added the shape and all the scythe and robe business to a personality that was already millions of years old.

And now he had gone. But belief doesn’t stop. Belief goes right on believing. And since the focal point of belief had been lost, new points sprang up. Small as yet, not very powerful. The private deaths of every species, no longer united but specific.

In the stream, black-scaled, swam the new Death of Mayflies. In the forests, invisible, a creature of sound only, drifted the chop-chop-chop of the Death of Trees.

Over the desert a dark and empty shell moved purposefully, half an inch above the ground … the Death of Tortoises.

The Death of Humanity hadn’t been finished yet. Humans can believe some very complex things.

It’s like the difference between off-the-peg and bespoke.

The metallic sounds stopped coming from the alley.

Then there was a silence. It was the particularly wary silence of something making no noise.

And, finally, there was a very faint jangling sound, disappearing into the distance.

‘Don’t stand in the doorway, friend. Don’t block up the hall.^{21} Come on in.’

Windle Poons blinked in the gloom.

When his eyes became accustomed to it, he realised that there was a semi-circle of chairs in an otherwise rather bare and dusty room. They were all occupied.

In the centre — at the focus, as it were, of the half circle — was a small table at which someone had been seated. They were now advancing towards him, with their hand out and a big smile on their face.

‘Don’t tell me, let me guess,’ they said. ‘You’re a zombie, right?’

‘Er.’ Windle Poons had never seen anyone with such a pallid skin, such as there was of it, before. Or wearing clothes that looked as if they’d been washed in razor blades and smelled as though someone had not only died in them but was still in them. Or sporting a Glad To Be Grey badge.^{22}

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I suppose so. Only they buried me, you see, and there was this card—’ He held it out, like a shield.

‘’Course there was. ’Course there was,’ said the figure.

He’s going to want me to shake hands, Windle thought. If I do, I just know I’m going to end up with more fingers than I started with. Oh, my goodness. Will I end up like that?

‘And I’m dead,’ he said, lamely.

‘And fed up with being pushed around, eh?’ said the greenish-skinned one. Windle shook his hand very carefully.

‘Well, not exactly fed—’

‘Shoe’s the name. Reg Shoe.’

‘Poons. Windle Poons,’ said Windle. ‘Er—’

‘Yeah, it’s always the same,’ said Reg Shoe bitterly. ‘Once you’re dead, people just don’t want to know, right? They act as if you’ve got some horrible disease. Dying can happen to anyone, right?’

‘Everyone, I should have thought,’ said Windle. ‘Er, I—’

‘Yeah, I know what it’s like. Tell someone you’re dead and they look at you as if they’ve seen a ghost,’ Mr Shoe went on.

Windle realised that talking to Mr Shoe was very much like talking to the Archchancellor. It didn’t actually matter what you said, because he wasn’t listening. Only in Mustrum Ridcully’s case it was because he just wasn’t bothering, while Reg Shoe was in fact supplying your side of the conversation somewhere inside his own head.

‘Yeah, right,’ said Windle, giving in.

‘We were just finishing off, in fact,’ said Mr Shoe. ‘Let me introduce you. Everyone, this is—’ He hesitated.

‘Poons. Windle Poons.’

‘Brother Windle,’ said Mr Shoe. ‘Give him a big Fresh Start welcome!’

There was an embarrassed chorus of ‘hallos’. A large and rather hairy young man at the end of the row caught Windle’s eye and rolled his own yellow eyes in a theatrical gesture of fellow feeling.

‘This is Brother Arthur Winkings—’

‘Count Notfaroutoe,’^{23} said a female voice sharply.

‘And Sister Doreen — I mean Countess Notfaroutoe, of course—’

‘Charmed, I’m sure,’ said the female voice, as the small dumpy woman sitting next to the small dumpy shape of the Count extended a beringed hand. The Count himself gave Windle a worried grin. He seemed to be wearing opera dress designed for a man several sizes larger.

‘And Brother Schleppel—’

The chair was empty. But a deep voice from the darkness underneath it said, ‘Evenin’.’