Happy Holidays, edna_blackadder!
Title: My Afterlyfe for a Hammer
Recipient: edna_blackadder
Author: irisbleufic
Characters/Pairings: John Device; Mr. Cranby; Mr. Bychance, Sr.; Aziraphale/Crowley; Anathema/Newt
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,000
Author's Notes: Dear recipient, I went with the first of your three prompts -Aziraphale/Crowley, something autumnal and spooky-because I never could resist the opportunity to write a ghost story (and old habits die harder with me, I’ve been told, than they do with many). Happy Holidays to everyone!
Summary: Bastarde though yowe be, nonetheless I leave yowe thif.
April 1655
John Device removed his hat and stepped across the threshold, although it wasn’t much of a threshold anymore, not as such, as the upper three-quarters of the doorframe had been entirely blown away. So had most of the roof.
A fine layer of ash crunched beneath the soles of John’s shoes as he approached the singed, battered table. He ran his fingers across the well-worn wood, easily finding the spot in which he’d carved his initials with a cheese knife when he was young. JSN, he’d put, but his mother had wrested the knife out of his hand, hacked out the N, and put D. Foresight, perhaps-or just bloody-minded insistence that John’s father remain part of his life in the only way the man really knew how.
He always came to see John on holidays. There was that.
John shivered and set his hand on the Book: that foul, accursed tome. It had been the last straw, perhaps. He’d begged his mother not to send it to press. If not for brazen, printed proof, she might at least have remained a healer and an eccentric.
Next to the Book, there was a box, and on top of that, a letter.
He did the only thing that there was left to do: he opened it with shaking hands, and he read.
Deareste John,
Bastarde though yowe be, nonetheless I leave yowe thif. Convey the bocks untoe somme Lawyers, scumme though yowe may think them alle. My Will must be Done. I neede never reminde yowe what will Come if yowe doe notte. My love to yowre Father, the daft olde foole. Telle him my answer is still Noe. Perchance I may see him again, Here or There-it matters notte. Be goode now, and yf not for me, doe it for yowre Child. Below, yowe will find a Name. This man owes me a tidy Sum, and he will Pay by my reckoning. Give somme to the Clerk, for he struggles sore.
And with thatte, my Sonne, I schalle say no more.
Yowre dotynge Mother,
Agnes
Part of it explained a lot, certainly. Maud had been ill of a morning or three this past fortnight.
Anger rose in John as abruptly as his grief; the whole place ought to be cinders, he thought fiercely, Book and table and all. He went over to the ruined hearth and found the makings for tinder, just enough charred wood to set a pathetic blaze. Smoke stung his eyes as he worked, and on that, at least, he could blame his tears.
He went over to the table, took hold of the Book, and stacked it on top of both box and letter. He carried them resolutely over to the hearth and stood staring at the breeze-fanned flames for a moment. Curse his mother and his childhood both: grit and dust, gone.
Just as he bent to place his burden on the makeshift pyre, wind buffeted the ruin around him, and he heard-
“MY AFTERLYFE FOR A HAMMER, BOY! WAS THE POYNT NOTTE CLEAR?”
John shivered and clutched the Book, box, and letter to his chest. Once he’d got a grip on himself, he stuffed the bundle in his satchel and, with blurred vision, cast about the room for anything else he might take. His mother’s library in the shelves on the wall, precious, a small fortune-obliterated, not a scrap or spine surviving but the one he carried.
“Yes, Mum,” he muttered, and, from behind him, as the wind fell abruptly still, he heard a clink.
A single roofing nail skittered across the floor and bounced neatly off the toe of his shoe.
John picked it up and, pocketing the last of his mother’s legacy, walked out of the ruin.
October 1757
“No more, George,” said Constance Plashkin, “to the Devil with you, for aught I care,” and slammed the door.
“Tough break, Mister Cranby,” offered Connie’s neighbor in passing. “Women spit brimstone, ain’t it the truth.”
“Get out of my bloody way, Amos,” muttered George, and swept out into the muddy, storm-blown street.
The relentless wind was picking up, and the deluge showed no sign of stopping. George had hoped he’d find shelter for the night in Connie’s bed, but she’d cooled to his advances since Michaelmas last. Home was two miles on, and there wasn’t a carriage in sight. Cursing under his breath, he rounded the corner at the end of the lane.
George had been with the firm for twelve years. The offices were close, five minutes’ walk at most, and although he’d just left there and wanted nothing so much as a warm fire and his own bed, he’d find his spare cloak and the stoup of whisky under his desk suitable companions until the gale blew over.
To Hell with Connie: he could pay for his own drink now, what with his debts all clear.
He thumped up two flights of stairs and fumbled his key into the lock, struggling to open the heavy door. Damn the ague in his creaking bones, but he wasn’t getting any younger. His left arm ached.
Finding his office too drafty for comfort (the fire wouldn’t stay lit, no matter how he tried), he took whisky, his spare cloak, and a fistful of candles to the store-room. It was the smallest enclosed space on the premises, windowless, and, between the burn of one thing and another, would warm quickly enough.
Hunkered down on the floor by candlelight, he’d drunk three or four long pulls by the time his glazed, swimming eyes drifted up to the shelves and lit on the Box. They’d had it for a donkey’s years, since time out of mind. Strict orders not to open and all that rot, but what of them? He’d be stuck till morning. Might prove good sport.
George took another swig of whisky and staggered to his feet, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. He held one of his candles up to the box and squinted at it, prodding the ancient twine. It fell away like cobwebbing beneath his touch, and it was simple, really, to set aside the candle and lift the Box down from its perch.
A quick rummage within its shadowed depths turned up an ancient letter with its wax seal still intact. He set the Box down and turned the letter over in his hands. The ache in his arm intensified, spiked when he saw what was written there in a spidery hand.
To One Mr. George Cranby, Esq., Nosey Goose & Drownt Ratte
So the whole sordid business was meant for him, then. He’d best open it.
No sooner had he got past the part where the writer seemed to know about the money he’d got from Connie-and what he’d done with her these several years past, snatch-pastry indeed-than the door, which he’d shut behind him, creaked and swung open.
“Mr. Redfearn, sir, I can explain-” he slurred, and fell silent as he turned and saw who stood there.
In the dimness and shadow, thanks to his drunken confusion, he might have taken the handsome middle-aged woman for Connie-something similar about the lines of the mouth, he supposed, and the vivacious dark eyes. The figure took a few steps forward, sniffed, and eyed the two candles: one on the shelf and one on the floor, both guttering dangerously. She bent and pinched out the one at his feet, and then stood, grabbed the remaining one off the shelf, and thrust the flame in his face.
“It ys notte tyme for the Book to burne,” she said. “Notte yet. But as for yowe-”
George watched as, too stupefied and pain-ridden to move, she blew out the candle, set it aside, and then, rummaging in her apron pocket, pressed something slender and cold to his lips. It tasted like iron, like blood.
The pain and the flames both engulfed him, the blackness fading to an even deeper void.
June 1928
“Arthur, come to bed,” Rosemary pleaded. “It’s hot as blazes, and you’ve smoked enough for one day.”
Arthur waved her off and stayed where he was, which was in a chair on the front porch with a stack of paperwork in his lap. He’d intended to see to its contents earlier, when he’d got home from the office, but it had been too lazy an evening to do anything but sweat his way through dinner and then retire back outside, where at least some air stirred, with his pipe and some ale. He tamped down a fresh wad of tobacco and waited until his wife went back inside.
He’d been in the store-room to perform a routine inventory. He’d found everything on his predecessors’ list exactly as it should have been, plus two burnt-out candle stubs that had rolled back under the rickety shelving framework. He’d had to step out briefly, as the dust had set off his asthma for a spell. When he returned to finish his task, there were two items left to tick off: the original Robeys’ bequest to the current Robeys’ offspring (not to be awarded till they reached their majority), and the Box.
Arthur hadn’t opened it intentionally; the twine was damaged, and the lid had jarred loose when he dusted it off.
He ought to have left the envelope inside, but he’d glimpsed the letters: To One Mr. Arthur By-
“Bychance,” he’d read off, removing the parchment, stupefied. “Notte Nosey, and Sorrye, Too.”
Not knowing what else to do, he’d replaced the lid on the Box and stuffed the letter in his jacket.
Now, safe at home with his wife gone to bed, Arthur cracked the wax seal with jittery fingers, but not before setting his pipe alight and taking a few strong puffs for courage. This particular blend always took him back, made him remember . . .
The writer of the letter seemed to remember, too, although how that was even possible flat-out escaped him.
Over and over, he read: lest the Worlde knoe the true Events of June 7th, Nineteen Hundred and Sixteene.
Down in the dusty lane, not a stone’s throw away, someone stood very patiently watching Arthur. As he began to lower the letter and shakily inquire if the woman was lost, she stepped through his front gate, soundlessly mounted the porch stairs, and came over to stand beside him with both hands on her ample, skirt-and-apron covered hips.
“Hotte as blazes indeed,” she said. “I see it’s been left it otherwyse as it is. But how could yowe-?”
“I was frightened,” said Arthur, pleadingly, his voice wrecked. “And if I hadn’t got out of that trench . . .”
The woman harrumphed her disapproval, but she handed him something from her pocket and set her hand on his shoulder.
“To remember them by,” she said, “and to remember me, too, if ye’ve any sense.”
The woman tramped her way back down the stairs and disappeared into the heat-streaked dusk.
Arthur held the nail in his palm-ancient and pitted, but so similar to the ones they’d used-and wept.
August 1990
They were, for the hundred-oddth time (hundred and thirty-second, by Crowley’s count), well on the way to soused.
They’d started drinking over lunch at the Ritz, and they’d seen no reason why they should stop when they got back to the bookshop, which shouldn’t have been there any more than the Bentley should have been extant, let alone operational.
“Bloody strange turn of events, if you ask me,” Aziraphale concluded drunkenly. “All of it.”
“Well, now there’s the question of what we do,” Crowley pointed out. “Isn’t that ssso?”
“Ease off the port, my dear, or I’ll not have the foggiest idea what you’re saying before long.”
Crowley bit his tongue, sucked in his breath, and continued, “I’m not messing about. I’m serious.”
“Much better,” said Aziraphale, approvingly. “And, yes, one does wonder what we’re now meant to . . . ah . . . ”
“That’s all been sorted for you, hasn’t it? Snazzy new stock,” Crowley managed, finding his tongue less than cooperative. “Look, this is hard; will you just let me speak?” He let the hiss creep back in, watched Aziraphale’s cheeks redden, but whether it was the fortified wine or some other form of consternation, Crowley couldn’t say. “The Prophecies burned. Now we’ll never know-”
Out in the front room, the doorbell jangled; both of them jumped.
“We’re closed!” shouted Aziraphale, irritably. “Mostly! Who’s there?”
“I think it’s nobody,” said Crowley, moodily, and reached for the bottle.
Aziraphale smacked his hand. “Oh, as if you’d ever set stock in one of ours!”
“I don’t think she’d sworn herself to either side, actually. Never met her. Did you? Give me that!”
Surrendering the bottle, Aziraphale slumped in his seat. “Whoever it was, I think they’ve gone.”
“The boy’s only eleven, after all,” Crowley reasoned. “Must’ve forgot to lock the door for you.”
“I shall have quite a lot of money if the market recovers,” said Aziraphale, slowly, with a renewed measure of shock. “Quite a bit indeed, dear boy. Whatever shall we do with it? The mind boggles.”
“I was just trying to ask you that same question, although, might I add, I was politely leaving the money out of it,” Crowley snapped. “If they’ve-” Crowley gestured surreptitiously at the ceiling, and then the floor “-decided to sod off and just leave us to our own devices, no pun intended, we really do have a staggering choice to make.”
“Why’s it got to be one big choice?” asked Aziraphale, shakily refilling his glass. “Why not lots of little ones?”
“Whatever,” said Crowley, turning toward a movement off to his left. “Fine, lotsss of little-what.”
They both stared at the personage standing next to the table. It was holding a book out at arms’ length.
“Do yowe have this in harde-backe?” asked the woman. “Somethyng right sturdie for the returne trip.”
Crowley ducked under the table, trying to hide, and hissed in pain as he bumped his head in the process.
Unexpectedly, Aziraphale caught Crowley’s hand as it scrabbled at the edge of his chair for purchase.
“Er, no,” said the angel, his voice anything but steady. “That one only arrived in softcover. Take it.”
The specter made a grumpy, dissatisfied noise, but she tucked Biggles On Mars under her arm.
“I schalle leave it for my grandchilde,” she said absently. “Or three. Now, yowe Two must get busy.”
“B-busy doing what?” Crowley stammered, poking his head out from under the table, which meant leaning partly across Aziraphale’s lap with Aziraphale’s hand still clutched in his own. It was somewhat awkward.
Something dropped to the floor with a faint plink and rolled under the table next to Crowley.
“Livynge,” said the woman, impatiently. “Or learning howe to doe so. ’Tis noe concern of myne.”
By the sound of things, Aziraphale had snatched the port and was chugging it straight from the bottle.
Crowley picked up the roofing nail and thought, The lack of a hammer really drives it home.
December 2005
“Are they down?” Anathema asked, soaked to her elbows in washing-up suds.
“The young ones, anyway,” said Newt. “Your precocious eldest is reading.”
“Under the duvet with a torch, no doubt,” Anathema sighed, handing him a tea towel. “At least it’s a normal tale of young adult derring-do printed on pulp that won’t last a decade. Thanks to my reading material, Mum used to find bookworms in the sheets.”
“I don’t think they survived the torching,” said Newt, grinning as he dried dishes, “so we’re safe.”
They finished tidying up the remnants of dinner and chatted about the girls’ performance at school, and how glad they were that the holidays were finally upon them (no more early morning runs for a couple of weeks, at least). They retired to the living room to read for a while: Newt had his newspapers, just like always, and Anathema had a New Aquarian backlog and texts pertaining to her latest degree (money being no object, thanks to the Device fortune, she quite fancied trying her hand at law) for company.
At a quarter till ten, Newt rose and stretched. “Are you coming to bed?”
“Not this minute,” said Anathema, engrossed, turning pages, “but soon.”
“Right,” Newt replied, and bent to kiss her forehead on his way out.
Anathema liked the quiet of winter evenings; she switched off all of the lamps and let the fairy lights along the mantelpiece bathe the room in their quiet off-white glow. As an afterthought, she lit a candle and set it on the coffee table in front of her. She’d only just dug into her case textbook when the flame guttered and made as if to go out.
Anathema could’ve sworn she’d seen a shadow, but she was forever seeing shadows and auras and such.
“Leave me alone, you daft old bat,” she said fondly. “I’m busy for a change, can’t you see?”
Something toppled off the edge of the mantelpiece, tangled in the fairy lights, and then dropped to the flagstone hearth with a delicate clatter. Anathema sighed, set her book aside, and went over to retrieve the offending item.
Much later, just before slipping under the covers beside Newt, she pulled a shoebox out from under the bed and tossed the nail in with four hundred years’ worth of its fellows. Agnes was a predictable ghost at best.
She’d get a hammer one of these days and use them, but not yet.
Recipient: edna_blackadder
Author: irisbleufic
Characters/Pairings: John Device; Mr. Cranby; Mr. Bychance, Sr.; Aziraphale/Crowley; Anathema/Newt
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,000
Author's Notes: Dear recipient, I went with the first of your three prompts -Aziraphale/Crowley, something autumnal and spooky-because I never could resist the opportunity to write a ghost story (and old habits die harder with me, I’ve been told, than they do with many). Happy Holidays to everyone!
Summary: Bastarde though yowe be, nonetheless I leave yowe thif.
April 1655
John Device removed his hat and stepped across the threshold, although it wasn’t much of a threshold anymore, not as such, as the upper three-quarters of the doorframe had been entirely blown away. So had most of the roof.
A fine layer of ash crunched beneath the soles of John’s shoes as he approached the singed, battered table. He ran his fingers across the well-worn wood, easily finding the spot in which he’d carved his initials with a cheese knife when he was young. JSN, he’d put, but his mother had wrested the knife out of his hand, hacked out the N, and put D. Foresight, perhaps-or just bloody-minded insistence that John’s father remain part of his life in the only way the man really knew how.
He always came to see John on holidays. There was that.
John shivered and set his hand on the Book: that foul, accursed tome. It had been the last straw, perhaps. He’d begged his mother not to send it to press. If not for brazen, printed proof, she might at least have remained a healer and an eccentric.
Next to the Book, there was a box, and on top of that, a letter.
He did the only thing that there was left to do: he opened it with shaking hands, and he read.
Deareste John,
Bastarde though yowe be, nonetheless I leave yowe thif. Convey the bocks untoe somme Lawyers, scumme though yowe may think them alle. My Will must be Done. I neede never reminde yowe what will Come if yowe doe notte. My love to yowre Father, the daft olde foole. Telle him my answer is still Noe. Perchance I may see him again, Here or There-it matters notte. Be goode now, and yf not for me, doe it for yowre Child. Below, yowe will find a Name. This man owes me a tidy Sum, and he will Pay by my reckoning. Give somme to the Clerk, for he struggles sore.
And with thatte, my Sonne, I schalle say no more.
Yowre dotynge Mother,
Agnes
Part of it explained a lot, certainly. Maud had been ill of a morning or three this past fortnight.
Anger rose in John as abruptly as his grief; the whole place ought to be cinders, he thought fiercely, Book and table and all. He went over to the ruined hearth and found the makings for tinder, just enough charred wood to set a pathetic blaze. Smoke stung his eyes as he worked, and on that, at least, he could blame his tears.
He went over to the table, took hold of the Book, and stacked it on top of both box and letter. He carried them resolutely over to the hearth and stood staring at the breeze-fanned flames for a moment. Curse his mother and his childhood both: grit and dust, gone.
Just as he bent to place his burden on the makeshift pyre, wind buffeted the ruin around him, and he heard-
“MY AFTERLYFE FOR A HAMMER, BOY! WAS THE POYNT NOTTE CLEAR?”
John shivered and clutched the Book, box, and letter to his chest. Once he’d got a grip on himself, he stuffed the bundle in his satchel and, with blurred vision, cast about the room for anything else he might take. His mother’s library in the shelves on the wall, precious, a small fortune-obliterated, not a scrap or spine surviving but the one he carried.
“Yes, Mum,” he muttered, and, from behind him, as the wind fell abruptly still, he heard a clink.
A single roofing nail skittered across the floor and bounced neatly off the toe of his shoe.
John picked it up and, pocketing the last of his mother’s legacy, walked out of the ruin.
October 1757
“No more, George,” said Constance Plashkin, “to the Devil with you, for aught I care,” and slammed the door.
“Tough break, Mister Cranby,” offered Connie’s neighbor in passing. “Women spit brimstone, ain’t it the truth.”
“Get out of my bloody way, Amos,” muttered George, and swept out into the muddy, storm-blown street.
The relentless wind was picking up, and the deluge showed no sign of stopping. George had hoped he’d find shelter for the night in Connie’s bed, but she’d cooled to his advances since Michaelmas last. Home was two miles on, and there wasn’t a carriage in sight. Cursing under his breath, he rounded the corner at the end of the lane.
George had been with the firm for twelve years. The offices were close, five minutes’ walk at most, and although he’d just left there and wanted nothing so much as a warm fire and his own bed, he’d find his spare cloak and the stoup of whisky under his desk suitable companions until the gale blew over.
To Hell with Connie: he could pay for his own drink now, what with his debts all clear.
He thumped up two flights of stairs and fumbled his key into the lock, struggling to open the heavy door. Damn the ague in his creaking bones, but he wasn’t getting any younger. His left arm ached.
Finding his office too drafty for comfort (the fire wouldn’t stay lit, no matter how he tried), he took whisky, his spare cloak, and a fistful of candles to the store-room. It was the smallest enclosed space on the premises, windowless, and, between the burn of one thing and another, would warm quickly enough.
Hunkered down on the floor by candlelight, he’d drunk three or four long pulls by the time his glazed, swimming eyes drifted up to the shelves and lit on the Box. They’d had it for a donkey’s years, since time out of mind. Strict orders not to open and all that rot, but what of them? He’d be stuck till morning. Might prove good sport.
George took another swig of whisky and staggered to his feet, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. He held one of his candles up to the box and squinted at it, prodding the ancient twine. It fell away like cobwebbing beneath his touch, and it was simple, really, to set aside the candle and lift the Box down from its perch.
A quick rummage within its shadowed depths turned up an ancient letter with its wax seal still intact. He set the Box down and turned the letter over in his hands. The ache in his arm intensified, spiked when he saw what was written there in a spidery hand.
To One Mr. George Cranby, Esq., Nosey Goose & Drownt Ratte
So the whole sordid business was meant for him, then. He’d best open it.
No sooner had he got past the part where the writer seemed to know about the money he’d got from Connie-and what he’d done with her these several years past, snatch-pastry indeed-than the door, which he’d shut behind him, creaked and swung open.
“Mr. Redfearn, sir, I can explain-” he slurred, and fell silent as he turned and saw who stood there.
In the dimness and shadow, thanks to his drunken confusion, he might have taken the handsome middle-aged woman for Connie-something similar about the lines of the mouth, he supposed, and the vivacious dark eyes. The figure took a few steps forward, sniffed, and eyed the two candles: one on the shelf and one on the floor, both guttering dangerously. She bent and pinched out the one at his feet, and then stood, grabbed the remaining one off the shelf, and thrust the flame in his face.
“It ys notte tyme for the Book to burne,” she said. “Notte yet. But as for yowe-”
George watched as, too stupefied and pain-ridden to move, she blew out the candle, set it aside, and then, rummaging in her apron pocket, pressed something slender and cold to his lips. It tasted like iron, like blood.
The pain and the flames both engulfed him, the blackness fading to an even deeper void.
June 1928
“Arthur, come to bed,” Rosemary pleaded. “It’s hot as blazes, and you’ve smoked enough for one day.”
Arthur waved her off and stayed where he was, which was in a chair on the front porch with a stack of paperwork in his lap. He’d intended to see to its contents earlier, when he’d got home from the office, but it had been too lazy an evening to do anything but sweat his way through dinner and then retire back outside, where at least some air stirred, with his pipe and some ale. He tamped down a fresh wad of tobacco and waited until his wife went back inside.
He’d been in the store-room to perform a routine inventory. He’d found everything on his predecessors’ list exactly as it should have been, plus two burnt-out candle stubs that had rolled back under the rickety shelving framework. He’d had to step out briefly, as the dust had set off his asthma for a spell. When he returned to finish his task, there were two items left to tick off: the original Robeys’ bequest to the current Robeys’ offspring (not to be awarded till they reached their majority), and the Box.
Arthur hadn’t opened it intentionally; the twine was damaged, and the lid had jarred loose when he dusted it off.
He ought to have left the envelope inside, but he’d glimpsed the letters: To One Mr. Arthur By-
“Bychance,” he’d read off, removing the parchment, stupefied. “Notte Nosey, and Sorrye, Too.”
Not knowing what else to do, he’d replaced the lid on the Box and stuffed the letter in his jacket.
Now, safe at home with his wife gone to bed, Arthur cracked the wax seal with jittery fingers, but not before setting his pipe alight and taking a few strong puffs for courage. This particular blend always took him back, made him remember . . .
The writer of the letter seemed to remember, too, although how that was even possible flat-out escaped him.
Over and over, he read: lest the Worlde knoe the true Events of June 7th, Nineteen Hundred and Sixteene.
Down in the dusty lane, not a stone’s throw away, someone stood very patiently watching Arthur. As he began to lower the letter and shakily inquire if the woman was lost, she stepped through his front gate, soundlessly mounted the porch stairs, and came over to stand beside him with both hands on her ample, skirt-and-apron covered hips.
“Hotte as blazes indeed,” she said. “I see it’s been left it otherwyse as it is. But how could yowe-?”
“I was frightened,” said Arthur, pleadingly, his voice wrecked. “And if I hadn’t got out of that trench . . .”
The woman harrumphed her disapproval, but she handed him something from her pocket and set her hand on his shoulder.
“To remember them by,” she said, “and to remember me, too, if ye’ve any sense.”
The woman tramped her way back down the stairs and disappeared into the heat-streaked dusk.
Arthur held the nail in his palm-ancient and pitted, but so similar to the ones they’d used-and wept.
August 1990
They were, for the hundred-oddth time (hundred and thirty-second, by Crowley’s count), well on the way to soused.
They’d started drinking over lunch at the Ritz, and they’d seen no reason why they should stop when they got back to the bookshop, which shouldn’t have been there any more than the Bentley should have been extant, let alone operational.
“Bloody strange turn of events, if you ask me,” Aziraphale concluded drunkenly. “All of it.”
“Well, now there’s the question of what we do,” Crowley pointed out. “Isn’t that ssso?”
“Ease off the port, my dear, or I’ll not have the foggiest idea what you’re saying before long.”
Crowley bit his tongue, sucked in his breath, and continued, “I’m not messing about. I’m serious.”
“Much better,” said Aziraphale, approvingly. “And, yes, one does wonder what we’re now meant to . . . ah . . . ”
“That’s all been sorted for you, hasn’t it? Snazzy new stock,” Crowley managed, finding his tongue less than cooperative. “Look, this is hard; will you just let me speak?” He let the hiss creep back in, watched Aziraphale’s cheeks redden, but whether it was the fortified wine or some other form of consternation, Crowley couldn’t say. “The Prophecies burned. Now we’ll never know-”
Out in the front room, the doorbell jangled; both of them jumped.
“We’re closed!” shouted Aziraphale, irritably. “Mostly! Who’s there?”
“I think it’s nobody,” said Crowley, moodily, and reached for the bottle.
Aziraphale smacked his hand. “Oh, as if you’d ever set stock in one of ours!”
“I don’t think she’d sworn herself to either side, actually. Never met her. Did you? Give me that!”
Surrendering the bottle, Aziraphale slumped in his seat. “Whoever it was, I think they’ve gone.”
“The boy’s only eleven, after all,” Crowley reasoned. “Must’ve forgot to lock the door for you.”
“I shall have quite a lot of money if the market recovers,” said Aziraphale, slowly, with a renewed measure of shock. “Quite a bit indeed, dear boy. Whatever shall we do with it? The mind boggles.”
“I was just trying to ask you that same question, although, might I add, I was politely leaving the money out of it,” Crowley snapped. “If they’ve-” Crowley gestured surreptitiously at the ceiling, and then the floor “-decided to sod off and just leave us to our own devices, no pun intended, we really do have a staggering choice to make.”
“Why’s it got to be one big choice?” asked Aziraphale, shakily refilling his glass. “Why not lots of little ones?”
“Whatever,” said Crowley, turning toward a movement off to his left. “Fine, lotsss of little-what.”
They both stared at the personage standing next to the table. It was holding a book out at arms’ length.
“Do yowe have this in harde-backe?” asked the woman. “Somethyng right sturdie for the returne trip.”
Crowley ducked under the table, trying to hide, and hissed in pain as he bumped his head in the process.
Unexpectedly, Aziraphale caught Crowley’s hand as it scrabbled at the edge of his chair for purchase.
“Er, no,” said the angel, his voice anything but steady. “That one only arrived in softcover. Take it.”
The specter made a grumpy, dissatisfied noise, but she tucked Biggles On Mars under her arm.
“I schalle leave it for my grandchilde,” she said absently. “Or three. Now, yowe Two must get busy.”
“B-busy doing what?” Crowley stammered, poking his head out from under the table, which meant leaning partly across Aziraphale’s lap with Aziraphale’s hand still clutched in his own. It was somewhat awkward.
Something dropped to the floor with a faint plink and rolled under the table next to Crowley.
“Livynge,” said the woman, impatiently. “Or learning howe to doe so. ’Tis noe concern of myne.”
By the sound of things, Aziraphale had snatched the port and was chugging it straight from the bottle.
Crowley picked up the roofing nail and thought, The lack of a hammer really drives it home.
December 2005
“Are they down?” Anathema asked, soaked to her elbows in washing-up suds.
“The young ones, anyway,” said Newt. “Your precocious eldest is reading.”
“Under the duvet with a torch, no doubt,” Anathema sighed, handing him a tea towel. “At least it’s a normal tale of young adult derring-do printed on pulp that won’t last a decade. Thanks to my reading material, Mum used to find bookworms in the sheets.”
“I don’t think they survived the torching,” said Newt, grinning as he dried dishes, “so we’re safe.”
They finished tidying up the remnants of dinner and chatted about the girls’ performance at school, and how glad they were that the holidays were finally upon them (no more early morning runs for a couple of weeks, at least). They retired to the living room to read for a while: Newt had his newspapers, just like always, and Anathema had a New Aquarian backlog and texts pertaining to her latest degree (money being no object, thanks to the Device fortune, she quite fancied trying her hand at law) for company.
At a quarter till ten, Newt rose and stretched. “Are you coming to bed?”
“Not this minute,” said Anathema, engrossed, turning pages, “but soon.”
“Right,” Newt replied, and bent to kiss her forehead on his way out.
Anathema liked the quiet of winter evenings; she switched off all of the lamps and let the fairy lights along the mantelpiece bathe the room in their quiet off-white glow. As an afterthought, she lit a candle and set it on the coffee table in front of her. She’d only just dug into her case textbook when the flame guttered and made as if to go out.
Anathema could’ve sworn she’d seen a shadow, but she was forever seeing shadows and auras and such.
“Leave me alone, you daft old bat,” she said fondly. “I’m busy for a change, can’t you see?”
Something toppled off the edge of the mantelpiece, tangled in the fairy lights, and then dropped to the flagstone hearth with a delicate clatter. Anathema sighed, set her book aside, and went over to retrieve the offending item.
Much later, just before slipping under the covers beside Newt, she pulled a shoebox out from under the bed and tossed the nail in with four hundred years’ worth of its fellows. Agnes was a predictable ghost at best.
She’d get a hammer one of these days and use them, but not yet.