Terry Pratchett - Johnny 2 - Johnny And The Dead(1993)

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TERRY PRATCHETT

JOHNNY AND THE DEAD

Chapter I

Johnny never knew for certain why he started seeing the dead.

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 Johnny's best friend, said it was

because he was mental.

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 Johnny just opened his eyes in the morning and the

whole universe hit him in the face.

Wobbler said this sounded like 'mental' to him.

Whatever it was called, what it meant was this. Johnny saw things other

people didn't.

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 Johnny that,

on the contrary, he had spent his entire life being a wholesale novelty

salesman, amateur escapologist and children's entertainer, which in a number

of important respects was as exactly like not being in the Mafia as it was

possible to get.

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.

Johnny really discovered the cemetery after he'd started living at

Grandad's. This was Phase Three of Trying Times, after the shouting, which had

been bad, and the Being Sensible About Things (which had been worse; people

are better at shouting). Now his dad was getting a new job somewhere on the

other side of the country. There was a vague feeling that it might all work

out, now that people had stopped trying to be sensible. On the whole, he tried

not to think about it.

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 Johnny

was disappointed that it wasn't spookier. Once you sort of put out of your

mind what it was — once you forgot about all the skeletons underground,

grinning away in the dark - it was quite friendly. Birds sang. All the traffic

sounded a long way off. It was peaceful.

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 Johnny.

'You notice how there's a lot more Halloween stuff in the shops these

days?' said Wobbler.

'It's because ofBonfire Night,' said Johnny. 'Too many people were blowing

themselves up with fireworks, so they invented Halloween, where you just wear

masks and stuff'

'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 Madonna played at full volume at 3 a.m.

'Probably it is,' said Johnny.

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

'What?' Johnny's forehead wrinkled. 'Like . . . Marjorca and places?'

'Suppose so,' said Wobbler.

'Makes . . . sense, I suppose. They probably get special out-of-season

bargains, being old ladies,' said Johnny. 'My aunt can go anywhere on the

buses for almost nothing and she's not even a witch.'

'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 Johnny. 'And "Viva a

spanner"?'

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

'Yeah.'

'Funny, really,' said Johnny.

'What?'

' I saw a thing in a book once,' said Johnny,' about these people in Mexico

or somewhere, where they all go down to the cemetery for a big fiesta at

Halloween every year. Like, they don't see why people should be left out of

things just because they're dead.'

'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. 'Dunno why. I've seen them in videos. And

they can push their way through walls.'

'Why?' said Johnny.

'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.'

Johnny thought about this that evening, after meeting the Alderman. The

only dead people he had known had been Mr Page, who 'd died in hospi- tal of

something, and his great-grandmother, who'd been ninety-six and had just

generally died. Neither of them had been particularly angry people. His

great-grandmother had been a bit confused about things, but never angry. He'd

visited her in Sun- shine Acres, when she watched a lot of television and

waited for the next meal to turn up. And Mr Page had walked around quietly,

the only man in the street still at home in the middle of the day.

They didn't seem the sort of people who would get up after being dead just

to dance with Michael Jackson. And the only thing his great-grandmother would

have pushed her way through walls for would be a television that she could

watch without having to fight fifteen other old ladies for the remote control.

It seemed to Johnny that a lot of people were getting things all wrong. He

said this to Wobbler. Wobbler disagreed.

'It's prob'ly all different from a dead point of view,' he said.

Now they were walking along West Avenue. The cemetery was laid out like a

town, with streets. They weren't named very originally — North Drive and South

Walk joined West Avenue, for example, at a little gravelled area with seats

in. A kind of city centre. But the silence of the big Victorian mausoleums

made the place look as though it was having the longest early-closing day in

the world.

'My dad says this is all going to be built on,' said Wobbler. 'He said the

Council sold it to some big company for fivepence because it was costing so

much to keep it going.'

'What, all of it?' said Johnny.

'That's what he said,' said Wobbler. Even he looked a bit uncertain. 'He

said it was a scandal.'

'Even the bit with the poplar trees?'

'All of it,' said Wobbler. 'It's going to be offices or something.'

Johnny looked at the cemetery. It was the only open space for miles.

'I'd have given them at least a pound,' he said.

'Yes, but you wouldn't have been able to build things on it,' said Wobbler.

'That's the important thing.'

'I wouldn't want to build anything on it. I'd have given them a pound just

to leave it as it

is.

'Yes,' said Wobbler, the voice of reason, 'but people have got to work

somewhere. We Need jobs.'

'I bet the people here won't be very happy about it,' said Johnny. 'If they

knew.'

'I think they get moved somewhere else,' said Wobbler. 'It's got to be

something like that. Other- wise you'll never dare dig your garden.'

Johnny looked up at the nearest tomb. It was one of the ones that looked

like a shed built of marble. Bronze lettering over the door said:

ALDERMAN THOMAS BOWLER

1822-1906 Pro Bono Publico

There was a stone carving of - presumably - the Alderman himself, looking

seriously into the distance as if he, too, was wondering what Pro Bono Publico

meant.

'I bet he'd be pretty angry,' said Johnny.

He hesitated for a moment, and then walked up the couple of broken steps to

the metal door, and knocked on it. He never did know why he'd done that.

'Here, you mustn't!' hissed Wobbler. 'Supposing he comes lurchin' out!

Anyway,' he said, lowering his voice a bit, 'it's wrong to try to talk to the

dead. It can lead to satanic practices, it said on television.'

'Don't see why,' said Johnny.

He knocked again.

And the door opened.

Alderman Thomas Bowler blinked in the sun- light, and then glared at

Johnny.

'Yes?' he said.

Johnny turned and ran for it.

Wobbler caught him up halfway along North Drive. Wobbler wasn't normally

the athletic type, and his speed would have surprised quite a lot of people

who knew him.

'What happened? What happened?' he panted.

'Didn't you see?' said Johnny.

'I didn't see anything!'

'The door opened!'

'It never!'

'It did!'

Wobbler slowed down.

'No, it didn't,' he muttered. 'No one of 'em can open. I've looked at 'em.

They've all got padlocks on.'

'To keep people out or keep people in?' said Johnny.

A look of panic crossed Wobbler's face. Since he had a big face, this took

some time. He started to run again.

'You're just trying to wind me up!' he yelled. 'I'm not going to hang

around practising being satanic! I'm going home!'

He turned the corner into East Way and sprinted towards the main gate.

Johnny slowed down.

He thought: padlocks.

It was true, actually. He'd noticed it in the past.

All the mausoleums had locks on them, to stop vandals getting in.

And yet . . . and yet . . .

If he shut his eyes he could see Alderman Thomas Bowler. Not one of the

lurchin' dead from out of Wobbler's videos, but a huge fat man in a

fur-trimmed robe and a gold chain and a hat with corners on.

He stopped running and then, slowly, walked back the way he had come.

There was a padlock on the door of the Alder- man's tomb. It had a rusty

look.

It was the talking to Wobbler that did it, Johnny decided. It had given him

silly ideas.

He knocked again, anyway.

'Yes?' said Alderman Thomas Bowler.

'Er . . . hah . . . sorry. . .'

'What do you want?'

'Are you dead?

The Alderman raised his eyes to the bronze letters over the door.

'See what it says up there?' he said.

'Er . . . '

'Nineteen hundred and six, it says. It was a very good funeral, I

understand. I didn't attend, myself The Alderman gave this some thought.

'Rather, I did, but not in any position where I could observe events. I

believe the vicar gave a very moving sermon. What was it you were wanting?'

'Er.. .'Johnny looked around desperately. 'What ... er ... what does Pro

Bono Publico mean?

'For the Public Good,' said the Alderman.

'Oh. Well . . . thank you.'Johnny backed away. 'Thank you very much.'

'Was that all?'

'Er . . . yes.'

The Alderman nodded sadly. 'I didn't think it'd be anything important,' he

said. 'I haven't had a visitor since nineteen twenty-three. And then they'd

got the name wrongJ They weren't even relatives. And they were American. Oh,

well. Goodbye, then.'

Johnny hesitated. I could turn around now, he thought, and go home.

And if I turn around, I'll never find out what happens next. I'll go away

and I'll never know why it happened now and what would have happened next.

I'll go away and grow up and get a job and get married and have children and

become a grandad and retire and take up bowls and go into Sunshine Acres and

watch daytime television until I die, and I'll never know.

And he thought: perhaps I did. Perhaps that all happened and then, just

when I was dying, some kind of angel turned up and said would you like a wish?

And I said, yes, I'd like to know what would have happened if I hadn't run

away, and the angel said, OK, you can go back. And here I am, back again. I

can't let myself down.

The world waited.

Johnny took a step forward.

'You're dead, right?' he said slowly.

'Oh, yes. It's one of those things one is pretty certain about.'

'You don't look dead. I mean, I thought. . . you know . . . coffins and

things ..."

'Oh, there's all that,' said the Alderman, airily, 'and then there's this,

too.'

'You're a ghost?'Johnny was rather relieved. He could come to terms with a

ghost.

'I should hope I've got more pride than that,' said the Alderman.

'My friend Wobbler'11 be really amazed to meet you,' said Johnny. A thought

crossed his mind. 'You're no good at dancing, are you?' he said.

'I used to be able to waltz quite well,' said the Alderman.

'I meant . . . sort of. . . like this,' said Johnny. He gave the best

impression he could remem- ber of Michael Jackson dancing. 'Sort of with your

feet,' he said apologetically.

'That looks grand,' said Alderman Tom Bowler.

'Yes, and you have to have a glittery glove on one hand—'

'That's important, is it?'

'Yes, and you have to say "Ow!"'

'I should think anyone would, dancing like that,' said the Alderman.

'No, I mean like "Oooowwwwweeeeeah!", with

Johnny stopped. He realized that he was getting a bit carried away.

'But, look,' he said, stopping at the end of a groove in the gravel. 'I

don't see how you can be dead and walking and talking at the same time ..."

'That's probably all because of relativity,' said the

Alderman. He moonwalked stiffly across the path. 'Like this, was it?

Otich!'

'A bit,' said Johnny, kindly. 'Um. What do you mean about relativity?'

'Einstein explains all that quite well,' said the Alderman.

'What, Albert Einstein?' said Johnny.

'Who?'

'He was a famous scientist. He . . . invented the speed of light and

things.'

'Did he? I meant Solomon Einstein. He was a famous taxidermist in Cable

Street. Stuffing dead animals, you know. I think he invented some kind of

machine for making glass eyes. Got knocked down by a motor car in nineteen

thirty-two. But a very keen thinker, all the same.'

'I never knew that,' said Johnny. He looked around.

It was getting darker.

'I think I'd better be getting home,' he said, and began to back away.

'I think I'm getting the hang of this,' said the Alderman, moonwalking back

across the path.

Til ... er ... I'll see you again. Perhaps,' said Johnny.

'Call any time you like,' said the Alderman, as Johnny walked away as

quickly yet politely as possible. 'I'm always in.'

'Always in,' he added. 'That's something you learn to be good at, when

you're dead. Er. Eeeeyooowh, was it?'

Chapter 2

Johnny raised the subject of the cemetery after tea.

'It's disgusting, what the Council are doing,' said his grandfather.

'But the cemetery costs a lot to keep up,' said his mother. 'No-one visits

most of the graves now, except old Mrs Tachyon, and she's barmy.'

'Not visiting graves has nothing to do with it, girl. Anyway, there's

history in there.'

'Alderman Thomas Bowler,' said Johnny.

'Never heard of him. I was referring,' said his grandfather, 'to William

Stickers. There was very nearly a monument to him. There would have been a

monument to him. Everyone round here donated money, only someone ran off with

it. And I'd given sixpence.'

'Was he famous?'

'Nearly famous. Nearly famous. You've heard of Karl Marx?'

'He invented communism, didn't he?' said Johnny.

'Right. Well, William Stickers didn't. But he'd have been Karl Marx if Karl

Marx hadn't beaten him to it. Tell you what . . . tomorrow, I'll show you.'

It was tomorrow.

It was raining softly out of a dark grey sky.

Grandad and Johnny stood in front of a large gravestone which read:

William Stickers

1897-1949

Workers of the

World Unit

'A great man,' said Grandad. He had taken his cap off.

'What was the World Unit?' said Johnny.

'It should have been unite,' said Grandad. 'They ran out of money before

they did the "E". It was a scandal. He was a hero of the working class. He

would have fought in the Spanish Civil War except he got on the wrong boat and

ended up in Hull.'

Johnny looked around.

'Um,' he said. 'What sort of a man was he?'

'A hero of the proletariat, like I said.'

'I mean, what did he look like?' said Johnny. 'Was he quite big with a huge

black beard and gold-rimmed spectacles?'

'That's right. Seen pictures, have you?'

'No,' said Johnny. 'Not exactly.'

Grandad put his cap back on.

'I'm going down to the shops,' he said. 'Want to come?'

'No, thanks. Er ... I'm going round to Wob- bler's house.'

'Righto.'

Grandad wandered off towards the main gate.

Johnny took a deep breath.

'Hello,' he said.

'It was a scandal, them not giving me the "E",' said William Stickers.

He stopped leaning against his memorial.

'What's your name, comrade?'

'John Maxwell,' said Johnny.

'I knew you could see me,' said William Stickers. 'I could see you looking

right at me while the old man was talking.'

'I could tell you were you,' said Johnny. 'You look . . . um . . .

thinner.'

He wanted to say: not thin like in thick. Just. . . not all there.

Transparent.

He said, 'Um.' And then he said, 'I don't under- stand this. You are dead,

right? Some kind of... ghost?'

'Ghost?' said dead William Stickers angrily.

'Well . . . spirit, then.'

'There's no such thing. A relic of an outmoded belief system.'

'Um, only. . . you're talking to me . . .'

'It's a perfectly understandable scientific phenomenon,' said William

Stickers. 'Never let superstition get in the way of rational thought, boy.

It's time for Mankind to put old cul- tural shibboleths aside and step into

the bright socialist dawn. What year is it?'

'Nineteen ninety-three,' said Johnny.

'Ah! And have the downtrodden masses risen

up to overthrow the capitalist oppressors in the glorious name of

communism?'

'Um. Sorry?' Johnny hesitated, and then a few vague memories slid into

place. 'You mean like . . . Russia and stuff? When they shot the Tsar? There

was something on television about that.'

'Oh, I know that. That was just the start. What's been happening since

nineteen forty-nine? I ex- pect the global revolution is well established,

yes? No-one tells us anything in here.'

'Well . . . there's been a lot of revolutions, I think,' said Johnny. 'All

over the place ..."

'Capital!'

'Um.' It occurred to Johnny that people doing quite a lot of the

revolutions- recently had said they were overthrowing communist oppressors,

but William Stickers looked so eager he didn't quite know how to say this.

'Tell you what . . . can you read a newspaper if I bring you one?'

'Of course. But it's hard to turn the pages.'

'Um. Are there a lot of you in here?'

'Hah! Most of them don't bother. They just aren't prepared to make the

effort.'

'Can you . . . you know . . . walk around? You could get into things for

free.'

William Stickers looked slightly panicky.

'It's hard to go far,' he mumbled. 'It's not really allowed.'

'I read in a book once that ghosts can't move much,' said Johnny.

'Ghost? I'm just . . . dead.' He waved a trans- parent finger in the air.

'Hah! But they're not

getting me that way,' he snapped. 'Just because it turns out that I'm still

. . . here after I'm dead, doesn't mean I'm prepared to believe in the whole

stupid nonsense, you know. Oh, no. Logical, rational thought, boy. And don't

forget the newspaper.'

William Stickers faded away a bit at a time. The last thing to go was the

finger, still demonstrating its total disbelief in life after death.

Johnny waited around a bit, but no other dead people seemed to be ready to

make an appearance.

He felt he was being watched in some way that had nothing to do with eyes.

It wasn't exactly creepy, but it was uncomfortable. You didn't dare scratch

your bottom or pick your nose.

For the first time he really began to notice the cemetery. It had a

leftover look, really.

Behind it there was the canal, which wasn't used any more, except as a

rubbish dump; old prams and busted televisions and erupting settees lined its

banks like monsters from the Garbage Age. Then on one side there was the

crematorium and its Garden of Remembrance, which was all right in a

gravel-pathed, keep-off-the-grass sort of way. In front was Cemetery Road,

which had once had houses on the other side of it; now there was the back wall

of the Bonanza Carpet (Save £££££11) Warehouse. There was still an old phone

box and a letter box, which suggested that once upon a time this had been a

place that people thought of as home. But now it was just a road you cut

through to get to the bypass from the industrial estate.

On the fourth side was nothing much except a wasteground of fallen brick

and one tall chimney - all that remained of the Blackbury Rubber Boot Company

('If It's a Boot, It's a Blackbury' had been one of the most famously stupid

slogans in the world.)

Johnny vaguely remembered there'd been some- thing in the papers. People

had been protesting about something - but then, they always were. There was

always so much news going on you never had time to find out anything

important.

He walked round to the old factory site. Bull- dozers were parked around it

now, although they were all empty. There was a wire fence which had been

broken down here and there despite the notices about Guard Dogs on Patrol.

Perhaps the guard dogs had broken out.

And there was a big sign, showing the office building that was going to be

built on the site. It was beautiful. There were fountains in front of it, and

quite old trees carefully placed here and there, and neat people standing

chatting outside it. And the sky above it was a glorious blue, which was

pretty unusual for Blackbury, where most of the time the sky was that odd,

soapy colour you'd get if you lived in a Tupperware box.

Johnny stared at it for some time, while the rain fell in the real world

and the blue sky glittered on the sign.

It was pretty obvious that the building was going to take up more room than

the site of the old boot factory.

The words above the picture said, 'An Exciting Development for United

Amalagamated Consoli- dated Holdings: Forward to the Future!'

Johnny didn't feel very excited, but he did feel that 'Forward to the

Future' was even dafter than 'If It's a Boot, It's a Blackbury'.

Before school next day he pinched the newspaper and tucked it out of sight

behind William Sticker's grave.

He felt more daft than afraid. He wished he could talk to someone about it.

He didn't have anyone to talk to. But he did have three people to talk

with.

There were various gangs and alliances in the school, such as the sporty

group, and the bright kids, and the Computer Club Nerds.

And then there was Johnny, and Wobbler, and Bigmac, who said he was the

last of the well hard skinheads but was actually a skinny kid with short hair

and flat feet and asthma who had difficulty even walking in Doc Martens, and

there was Yo- less, who was technically black.

But at least they listened, during break, on the bit of Avail between the

school kitchens and the library. It was where they normally hung out — or at

least, hung around.

'Ghosts,' said Yo-less, when he'd finished.

'No-oo,' said Johnny uncertainly. 'They don't like being called ghosts. It

upsets them, for some reason. They're just . . . dead. I suppose it's like not

calling people handicapped or backward.'

'Politically incorrect,' said Yo-less. 'I read about that.'

'You mean they want to be called,' Wobbler paused for thought, 'post-senior

citizens.'

'Breathily challenged,' said Yo-less.

'Vertically disadvantaged,' said Wobbler.

'What? You mean they're short?' said Yo-less.

'Buried,' said Wobbler.

'How about zombies?' said Bigmac.

'No, you've got to have a body to be a zom- bie,' said Yo-less. 'You're not

really dead, you just get fed this secret voodoo mixture of fish and roots and

you turn into a zombie.'

'Wow. What mixture?'

'I don't know. How should I know? Just some kind offish and some kind of

root.'

'I bet it's a real adventure going down the chippie in voodoo country,'

said Wobbler.

'Well, you ought to know about voodoo,' said Bigmac.

'Why?' said Yo-less.

' 'Cos you're West Indian, right?'

'Do you know all about druids?'

'No.'

'There you are, then.'

'I 'spect your mum knows about it, though,' said Bigmac.

'Shouldn't think so. My mum spends more time in church than the Pope,' said

Yo-less. 'My mum spends more time in church than God.'

'You're not taking this seriously,' said Johnny severely. 'I really saw

them.'

'It might be something wrong with your eyes,' said Yo-less. 'Perhaps

there's a—'

' I saw this old film once, about a man with X-ray eyes,' said Bigmac. 'He

could use 'em to see right through things.'

'Women's clothes and stuff?' enquired Wobbler.

'There wasn't much of that,' said Bigmac.

They discussed this waste of a useful talent.

'I don't see through anything,' said Johnny, eventually. 'I just see people

who aren't ther— I mean, people other people don't see.'

'My uncle used to see things other people couldn't see,' said Wobbler.

'Especially on a Saturday night.'

'Don't be daft. I'm trying to be serious.'

'Yeah, but once you said you'd seen a Loch Ness Monster in your goldfish

pond,' said Bigmac.

'All right, but—'

'Probably just a plesiosaur,' said Yo-less. 'Just some old dinosaur that

ought to've been extinct seventy million years ago. Nothing special at all.'"

'Yes, but—'

'And then there was the Lost City of the Incas,' said Wobbler.

'Well, I found it, didn't I?'

'Yes, but it wasn't that lost,' said Yo-less. 'Behind Tesco's isn't exactly

lost.'

Bigmac sighed.

'You're all weird,' he said.

'All right,' said Johnny. 'You all come down there after school, right?'

'Well—' Wobbler began, and shifted uneasily.

'Not scared, are you?' said Johnny. He knew that was unfair, but he was

annoyed. 'You ran away before,' he said, 'when the Alderman came out.'

'I never saw no Alderman,' said Wobbler. 'Any- way, I wasn't scared. I ran

away to wind you up.'

'You certainly had me fooled,' said Johnny.

'Me? Scared? I watched Night of the Killer Zom- bies three times — with

freeze frame,' said Wobbler.

'All right, then. You come. All three of you come. After school.'

'After Cobbers,' said Bigmac.

'Look, this is a lot more important than—'

'Yes, but tonight Janine is going to tell Mick that Doraleen took Ron's

surfboard—'

Johnny hesitated.

'All right, then,' he said. 'After Cobbers.'

'And then I promised to help my brother load up his van,' said Bigmac.

'Well, not exactly promised ... he said he'd rip my arms off if I didn't.'

'And I've got to do some Geography home- work,' said Yo-less.

'We haven't got any,' said Johnny.

'No, but I thought if I did an extra essay on rainforests I could pull up

my marks average,' said Yo-less.

There was nothing odd about this, if you were used to Yo-less. Yo-less wore

school uniform. Ex- cept that it wasn't really school uniform. Well, all

right, technically it was school uniform, because everyone got these bits of

paper at the start of every year saying what the school uniform was, but

no-one ever wore it much, except for Yo-less, and

so if hardly anyone else was wearing it, Wobbler said, how could it be a

uniform? Whereas, said Wobbler, since at any one time nearly everyone was

wearing jeans and a T-shirt, then really jeans and T-shirt were the real

school uniform and Yo-less should be sent home for not wearing it.

'Tell you what,' said Johnny. 'Let's meet up later, then. Six o'clock. We

can meet at Bigmac's place. That's right near the cemetery, anyway.'

'But it'll be getting dark,' said Wobbler.

'Well?' said Johnny. 'You're not scared, are you?'

'Me? Scared? Huh! Me? Scared? Me? Scared?'

If you had to be somewhere frightening when it got dark, Johnny thought,

the Joshua N'Clement block rated a lot higher on the Aaargh scale than any

cemetery. At least the dead didn't mug you.

It was originally going to be the Sir Alec Douglas- Home block, and then it

became the Harold Wilson block, and then finally the new Council named it the

Joshua Che N'Clement block after a famous freedom fighter, who then became

president of his country, and who was now being an ex-freedom fighter and

president somewhere in Switzerland while some of his countrymen tried to find

him and ask him questions like: What happened to the two hundred million

dollars we thought we had, and how come your wife owned seven hundred hats?

The block had been described in 1965 as' an over- whelming and dynamic

relationship of voids and solids, majestic in its uncompromising simplicity'.

Often the Blackbury Guardian had pictures of

people complaining about the damp, or the cold, or the way the windows fell

out in high winds (it was always windy around the block, even on a calm day

everywhere else), or the way gangs roamed its dank passageways and pushed

shopping trolleys off the roof into the Great Lost Shop- ping Trolley

Graveyard. The lifts hadn't worked properly since 1966. They lurked in the

basement, too scared to go anywhere else.

The passages and walkways ('an excitingly brutal brushed concrete finish')

had two smells, depend- ing on whether or not the Council's ninja caretaker

had been round in his van. The other one was disinfectant.

No-one liked the Joshua N'Clement block. There were two schools of thought

about what should be done with it. The people who lived there thought everyone

should be taken out and then the block should be blown up, and the people who

lived near the block just wanted it blown up.

The odd thing was that although the block was cramped and fourteen storeys

high, it had been built in the middle of a huge area of what was theoreti-

cally grass ('environmental open space'), but which was now the home of the

Common Crisp Packet and Hardy-Perennial Burned-Out Car.

'Horrible place,' said Wobbler.

'People've got to live somewhere,' said Yo-less.

'Reckon the man who designed it lives here?' said Johnny.

'Shouldn't think so.'

'I'm not going too near Bigmac's brother,' said

Wobbler. 'He's a nutter. He's got tattoos and every- thing. And everyone

knows he pinches stuff" Videos and things. Out of factories. And he killed

Bigmac's hamster when he was little. And he chucks his stuff out of the window

when he's angry. And if Glint's been let out—'

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TERRYPRATCHETTJOHNNYANDTHEDEADChapterIJohnnyneverknewforcertainwhyhestartedseeingthedead.TheAldermansaiditwasprobablybecausehewastoolazynotto.Mostpeople'smindsdon'tletthemseethingsthatmightupsetthem,hesaid.TheAldermansaidheshouldknowifanyonedid,becausehe'dspenthiswholelife(1822-1906)notseeingthings....

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Terry Pratchett - Johnny 2 - Johnny And The Dead(1993)

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