Reaper Man

Bill Door considered his options. The chicken had focused one beady eye on him. Chickens are a lot more stupid than humans, and don't have the sophisticated mental filters that prevent them seeing what is truly there. It knew where it was and who was looking at it.

He looked into its small and simple life and saw the last few seconds pouring away.

He'd never killed. He'd taken life, but only when it was finished with. There was a difference between theft and stealing by finding.

NOT THE CLEAVER, he said wearily. GIVE ME THE CHICKEN.

He turned his back for a moment, then handed the limp body to Miss Flitworth.

"Well done. " she said, and went back to the kitchen.

Bill Door felt Cyril's accusing gaze on him.

He opened his hand. A tiny spot of light hovered over his palm. He blew on it, gently, and it faded away.

After lunch they put down the rat poison. He felt like a murderer.

A lot of rats died.

Down in the runs under the barn - in the deepest one, one tunnelled long ago by long-forgotten ancestral rodents - something appeared in the darkness.

It seemed to have difficulty deciding what shape it was going to be.

It began as a lump of highly-suspicious cheese. This didn't seem to work.

Then it tried something that looked very much like a small, hungry terrier. This was also rejected.

For a moment it was a steel-jawed trap. This was clearly unsuitable.

It cast around for fresh ideas and much to its surprise one arrived smoothly, as if travelling from no distance at all. Not so much a shape as a memory of a shape.

It tried it and found that, while totally wrong for the job, in some deeply satisfying way it was the only shape it could possibly be.

It went to work.

That evening the men were practising archery on the green. Bill Door had carefully ensured a local reputation as the worst bowman in the entire history of toxophily; it had never occurred to anyone that putting arrows through the hats of bystanders behind him must logically take a lot more skill than merely sending them through a quite large target a mere fifty yards away.

It was amazing how many friends you could make by being bad at things, provided you were bad enough to be funny.

So he was allowed to sit on a bench outside the inn, with the old men.

Next door, smoke poured from the chimney of the village smithy and spiralled up into the dusk. There was a ferocious hammering from behind its closed doors. Bill Door wondered why the smithy was always shut. Most smiths worked with their doors open, so that their forge became an unofficial village meeting room. This one was keen on his work -

"Hallo, skelington."

He swivelled round.

The small child of the house was watching him with the most penetrating gaze he had ever seen.

"You are a skelington, aren't you," she said. ‘l can tell, because of the bones."

YOU ARE MISTAKEN, SMALL CHILD.

"You are. People turn into skelingtons when they're dead. They're not supposed to walk around afterwards."

HA. HA. HA. WILL YOU HARK AT THE CHILD.

"Why are you walking around, then?"

Bill Door looked at the old men. They appeared engrossed in the sport.

I'LL TELL YOU WHAT, he said desperately, IF YOU WILL GO AWAY, I WILL GIVE YOU A HALF-PENNY.

"I've got a skelington mask for when we go trickle-treating on Soul Cake Night," she said. "It's made of paper. You get given sweets."

Bill Door made the mistake millions of people had tried before with small children in slightly similar circumstances.

He resorted to reason.

LOOK, he said, IF I WAS REALLY A SKELETON, LITTLE GIRL, I'M SURE THESE OLD GENTLEMEN HERE WOULD HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT IT.

She regarded the old men at the other end of the bench.

"They're nearly skelingtons anyway," she said. "l shouldn't think they'd want to see another one."

He gave in.

I HAVE TO ADMIT THAT YOU ARE RIGHT ON THAT POINT.

"Why don't you fall to bits?"

I DON'T KNOW. I NEVER HAVE.

"I've seen skelingtons of birds and things and they all fall to bits."

PERHAPS IT IS BECAUSE THEY ARE WHAT SOMETHING WAS. WHEREAS THIS IS WHAT I AM.

"The apothecary who does medicine over in Chambly's got a skelington on a hook with all wire to hold the bones together," said the child, with the air of one imparting information gained after diligent research.

I DON'T HAVE WIRES.

"There's a difference between alive skelingtons and dead ones?"

YES.

"It's a dead skelington he's got then, is it?"

YES.

"What was inside someone?"

YES.

"Ur. Yuk."

The child stared distantly at the landscape for a while and then said, "I've got new socks."

YES?

"You can look, if you like."

A grubby foot was extended for inspection.

WELL, WELL. FANCY THAT. NEW SOCKS.

"My mum knitted them out of sheep."

MY WORD.

The horizon was given another inspection.

"D'you know," she said, "d'you know... it's Friday."

YES.

"I found a spoon."

Bill Door found he was waiting expectantly. He was not familiar with people who had an attention span of less than three seconds.

"You work along of Miss Flitworth's?"

YES.

"My dad says you've got your feet properly under the table there."