Feet of Clay - Terry Pratchett [36]
“And what does she do?”
“Do? Well, she comes in here most days for a drink and some company. Sometimes we…they have a singsong. Old songs, that she remembers. She’s practically blind. If you mean, is she an undead…no, she’s isn’t. Not a vampire, a werewolf, a zombie, or a bogeyman. Just an old lady.”
A huge shambling hairy thing paused at Mrs. Gammage’s table and put a glass in front of her.
“Port and lemon. There you goes, Mrs. Gammage,” it rumbled.
“Cheers, Charlie!” the old lady cackled. “How’s the plumbing business?”
“Doing fine, love,” said the bogeyman, and vanished into the gloom.
“That was a plumber?” said Cheery.
“Of course not. I don’t know who Charlie was. He probably died years ago. But she thinks the bogeyman is him, and who’s going to tell her different?”
“You mean she doesn’t know this place is—”
“Look, she’s been coming here ever since the old days when it was the Crown and Axe,” said Angua. “No one wants to spoil things. Everyone likes Mrs. Gammage. They…watch out for her. Help her out in little ways.”
“How?”
“Well, I heard that last month someone broke into her hovel and stole some of her stuff…”
“That doesn’t sound helpful.”
“…And it was all returned next day and a couple of thieves were found in the Shades with not a drop of blood left in their bodies.” Angua smiled, and her voice took on a mocking edge. “You know, you get told a lot of bad things about the undead, but you never hear about the marvelous work they do in the community.”
Igor the barman appeared. He looked more or less human, apart from the hair on the back of his hands and the single unbifurcated eyebrow across his forehead. He tossed a couple of mats on the table and put their drinks down.
“You’re probably wishing this was a dwarf bar,” said Angua. She lifted her beer mat carefully and glanced at the underside.
Cheery looked around again. By now, if it had been a dwarf bar, the floor would be sticky with beer, the air would be full of flying quaff, and people would be singing. They’d probably be singing the latest dwarf tune, Gold, Gold, Gold, or one of the old favorites, like Gold, Gold, Gold, or the all-time biggie, Gold, Gold, Gold. In a few minutes, the first axe would have been thrown.
“No,” she said, “it could never be that bad.”
“Drink up,” said Angua. “We’ve got to go and see…something.”
A large hairy hand grabbed Angua’s wrist. She looked up into a terrifying face, all eyes and mouth and hair.
“Hello, Shlitzen,” she said calmly.
“Hah, I’m hearing where there’s a baron who’s really unhappy about you,” said Shlitzen, alcohol crystallizing on his breath.
“That’s my business, Shlitzen,” said Angua. “Why don’t you just go back behind your door like the good bogeyman that you are?”
“Hah, he’s sayin’ where you’re disgracin’ the Old Country—”
“Let go, please,” said Angua. Her skin was white where Shlitzen was gripping her.
Cheery looked from the wrist to the bogeyman’s shoulder. Rangy though the creature was, muscles were strung along the arm like beads on a wire.
“Hah, you wearin’ a badge,” it sneered. “What’s a good we—?”
Angua moved so fast she was a blur. Her free hand pulled something from her belt and flipped it up and on to Shlitzen’s head. He stopped, and stood swaying back and forth gently, making faint moaning sounds. On his head, flopping down around his ears like the knotted hanky of a style-impaired seaside sunbather, was a small square of heavy material.
Angua pushed back her chair and grabbed the beermat. The shadowy figures around the walls were muttering.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said. “Igor, give us half a minute and then you can take the blanket off him. Come on.”
They hurried out. The fog had already turned the sun into a mere suggestion, but it was vivid daylight compared to the gloom in Biers.
“What happened to him?” said Cheery, running to keep up with Angua’s stride.
“Existential uncertainty,” Angua said. “He doesn’t know whether he exists or not. It’s cruel, I know, but it’s the only thing we’ve found that works against bogeymen. Blue fluffy blanket, for preference.