Hogfather Part 39

Medium Dave got to the door just in time to see the body of Mr. Brown the locksmith tumble past, moving quite fast and not at all neatly. A moment later his bag somersaulted around the curve of the stairs. It split as it bounced and there was a jangle as tools and lock picks bounced out and followed their late owner.

He'd been moving quite fast. He'd probably roll all the way to the bottom.

Medium Dave looked up. Two turns above him, on the opposite side of the huge shaft, Banjo was watching him.

Banjo didn't know right from wrong. He'd always left that sort of thing to his brother.

"Er...poor guy must've slipped," Medium Dave mumbled.

"Oh, yeah...slipped," said Peachy.

He looked up, too.

It was funny. He hadn't noticed them before. The white tower had seemed to glow from within. But now there were shadows, moving across the stone. In In the stone. the stone.

"What was that?" he said. "That sound..."

"What sound?"

"It sounded...like knives sc.r.a.ping," said Peachy. "Really close."

"There's only us here!" said Medium Dave. "What're you afraid of? Attack by daisies? Come on...let's go and help him..."

She couldn't couldn't walk through the door. It simply resisted any such effort. She ended up merely bruised. So Susan turned the doork.n.o.b instead. walk through the door. It simply resisted any such effort. She ended up merely bruised. So Susan turned the doork.n.o.b instead.

She heard the oh G.o.d gasp. But she was used to the idea of buildings that were bigger on the inside. Her grandfather had never been able to get a handle on dimensions.

The second thing the eye was drawn to were the staircases. They started opposite one another in what was now a big round tower, its ceiling lost in the haze. The spirals circled into infinity.

Susan's eyes went back to the first thing.

It was a large conical heap in the middle of the floor.

It was white. It glistened in the cool light that shone down from the mists.

"It's teeth," she said.

"I think I'm going to throw up," said the oh G.o.d miserably.

"There's nothing that scary about teeth," said Susan. She didn't mean it. The heap was very horrible indeed.

"Did I say I was scared? I'm just hung over again...Oh, me me..."

Susan advanced on the heap, moving warily.

They were small small teeth. Children's teeth. Whoever had piled them up hadn't been very careful about it, either. A few had been scattered across the floor. She knew because she trod on one, and the slippery little crunching sound made her desperate not to tread on any more. teeth. Children's teeth. Whoever had piled them up hadn't been very careful about it, either. A few had been scattered across the floor. She knew because she trod on one, and the slippery little crunching sound made her desperate not to tread on any more.

Whoever had piled them up had presumably been the one who'd drawn the chalk marks around the obscene heap.

"There're so many many," whispered Bilious.

"At least twenty million, given the size of the average milk tooth," said Susan. She was shocked to find that it came almost automatically.

"How can you possibly know that?"

"Volume of a cone," said Susan. "Pi times the square of the radius times the height divided by three. I bet Miss b.u.t.ts never thought it'd come in handy in a place like this."

"That's amazing. You did it in your head?"

"This isn't right," said Susan quietly. "I don't think this is what the Tooth Fairy is all about. All that effort to get the teeth, and then just to dump them like this? No. Anyway, there's a cigarette end on the floor. I don't see the Tooth Fairy as someone who rolls her own."

She stared down at the chalk marks.

Voices high above her made her look up. She thought she saw a head look over the stair rail, and then draw back again. She didn't see much of the face, but what she saw didn't look fairylike.

She glanced back at the circle of chalk around the teeth. Someone had wanted all the teeth in one place and had drawn a circle to show people where they had to go.

There were a few symbols scrawled around the circle.

She had a good memory for small details. It was another family trait. And a small detail stirred in her memory like a sleepy bee.

"Oh, no no," she breathed. "Surely no one would try to-"

Someone shouted, someone up in the whiteness.

A body rolled down the stairs nearest her. It had been a skinny, middle-aged man. Technically it still was, but the long spiral staircase had not been kind.

It tumbled across the white marble and slid to a boneless halt.

Then, as she hurried toward the body, it faded away, leaving nothing behind but a smear of blood.

A jingle noise made her look back up the stairs. Spinning over and over, making salmon leaps in the air, a crowbar bounded over the last dozen steps and landed point first on a flagstone, staying upright and vibrating.

Chickenwire reached the top of the stairs, panting.

"There's people down there, Mister Teatime!" he wheezed. "Dave and the others've gone down to catch them, Mister Teatime!"

"Teh-ah-tim-eh," said Teatime, without taking his eyes off the wizard.

"That's right, sir!"

"Well?" said Teatime. "Just...do away with them."

"Er...one of them's a girl, sir."

Teatime still didn't look round. He waved a hand vaguely.

"Then do away with them politely politely."

"Yes, Mister...yes, right..." Chickenwire coughed. "Don't you want to find out why they're here, sir?"

"Good heavens, no. Why should I want to do that? Now go away."

Chickenwire stood there for a moment, and then hurried off.

As he scurried down the stairs he thought he heard a creak, as of an ancient wooden door.

He went pale.

It was just a door, said the sensible bit in front of his brain. There were hundreds of them in this place, although, come to think of it, none of them had creaked.

The other bit, the bit that hung around in dark places nearly at the top of his spinal column, said: But it's not one of them, and you know it, because you know which door it really is...

He hadn't heard that creak for thirty years.

He gave a little yelp and started to take the stairs four at a time.

In the hollows and corners, the shadows grew darker.

Susan ran up a flight of stairs, dragging the oh G.o.d behind her.

"Do you know what they've been doing?" she said. "You know why they've got all those teeth in a circle? The power power...oh, my..."

"I'm not going to," said the head waiter, firmly.

"Look, I'll buy you a better pair after Hogswatch-"

"There's two more Shoe Pastry, one for Puree de la Terre Puree de la Terre and three more and three more Tourte a la Boue Tourte a la Boue," said a waiter, hurrying in.

"Mud pies!" moaned the waiter. "I can't believe we're selling mud pies. And now you want my my boots!" boots!"

"With cream and sugar, mind you. A real taste of Ankh-Morpork. And we can get at least four helpings off those boots. Fair's fair. We're all in our socks-"

"Table seven says the steaks were lovely but a bit tough," said a waiter, rushing past.

"Right. Use a larger hammer next time and boil them for longer." The manager turned back to the suffering head waiter. "Look, Bill," he said, taking him by the shoulder. "This isn't food. No one expects it to be food. If people wanted food they'd stay at home, isn't that so? They come here for ambiance. For the experience. This isn't cookery, Bill. This is cuisine cuisine. See? And they're coming back for more."

"Yeah, but old boots old boots..."

"Dwarfs eat rats," said the manager. "And trolls eat rocks. There's folks in Howondaland that eat insects and folks on the Counterweight Continent eat soup made out of bird spit. At least the boots have been on a cow."

"And mud?" said the head waiter, gloomily.

"Isn't there an old proverb that says a man must eat a bushel of dirt before he dies?"

"Yes, but not all at once."

"Bill?" said the manager, kindly, picking up a spatula.

"Yes, boss?"

"Get those d.a.m.n boots off right now, will you?"

When Chickenwire reached the bottom of the tower he was trembling, and not just from the effort. He headed straight for the door until Medium Dave grabbed him.

"Let me out! It's after me!"

"Look at his face face," said Catseye. "Looks like he's seen a ghost!"

"Yeah, well, it ain't ain't a ghost," muttered Chickenwire. "It's a ghost," muttered Chickenwire. "It's worse'n worse'n a ghost-" a ghost-"

Medium Dave slapped him across the face.

"Pull yourself together! Look around! Nothing's chasing you! Anyway, it's not as though we couldn't put up a fight, right?"

Terror had had time to drain away a little. Chickenwire looked back up the stairs. There was nothing there.

"Good," said Medium Dave, watching his face. "Now...What happened?"

Chickenwire looked at his feet.

"I thought it was the wardrobe," he muttered. "Go on, laugh..."

They didn't laugh.

"What wardrobe?" said Catseye.

"Oh, when I was a kid..." Chickenwire waved his arms vaguely. "We had this big ole wardrobe, if you must know. Oak. It had this...this...on the door there was this...sort of...face." He looked at their faces, which were equally wooden. "I mean, not an actual face, there was...all this...decoration round the keyhole, sort of flowers and leaves and stuff, but if you looked at it in the...right way...it was a face and they put it in my room 'cos it was so big and in the night...in the night...in the night-"