Curse of the Pogo Stick

by Colin Cotterill

  “I was afraid you’d say that.”

  Siri walked into the yawning darkness and immediately felt a morbid sense of familiarity. He’d been here recently. He’d walked along these uneven paving stones and squinted through the gray lamplight. It was his dream. This was the selfsame place he’d walked on the day he was given the sleeping poison. He knew what to expect. He knew that up ahead he’d meet two thugs and be attacked. He stopped. Common sense told him that he should learn from his mistakes. The dream had been a warning. He had no weapon still. He couldn’t outrun them.

  “No, Siri. Go back to the horse and find a different path. Once bitten …”

  He turned on his heel and headed back the way he’d come. But the stones seemed more uneven than they had just been. The street lamps stretched further into the distance than was possible. He passed a doorway he hadn’t noticed and heard familiar voices from the shadows.

  “Well, whaddya know? The gook’s back.”

  “So he is. What’s new, Red? Been busy torturing the good guys, have ya?”

  This was wholly different from the dream. It had an extra dimension. In dreams he was in some kind of control, aware that he was in a dream. Even when he was frightened by them, something at the back of his mind told him it would all be over at cockcrow. But this felt so real. His feet and fingers were aching from the cold. He had a terrible urge to go to the bathroom and a tingle of fear rode the back of his neck. Up ahead, in the direction he thought he’d come from, he saw the lights of the Silver Pheasant. Somehow, he had to do a better job of getting past these goons.

  “Look,” he said. “If you leave me alone I won’t call on my auxiliary spirits.”

  “Ooooh,” mocked the first thug, stepping out of the doorway. The lamplight turned his skull the color of nicotine-stained teeth. He seemed to have grown in stature since they’d last met. Siri considered asking whether he’d been working out but decided it was a bad time for humor.

  “You hear that, Eric?” the thug said. “Grandpa’s gonna call the auxes.”

  Eric remained in the shadows.

  “Think you might be too late, Red Man,” the second thug said.

  Siri knew the skeleton was right. That was what he’d forgotten. He could see it underlined on his cheat sheet. “Must invoke guiding spirits before going into trance.” He was a hopeless shaman. But, hell, he hadn’t planned all this. It was supposed to be a hoax. It was worth a try anyway.

  “I’m warning you,” he said.

  “I’m trembling,” said the first thug.

  “Very well.” Like some ancient magician, Siri raised his arms to the tops of the buildings that towered over him. “I invoke the spirit of the otter.”

  “Tsk tsk,” came a sound from the shadows. “Did he invoke the otter, Danny?”

  “Sure did, Eric.”

  “Bad choice, Reddo. You should have gone for the eagle.”

  “Much better idea, gook. Otters are for water problems and what you’ve got—”

  Eric stepped out of the doorway, almost twice his previous size. “—is mugger problems.”

  “Go through his pockets while he’s still standing, Danny boy.”

  The first goon had a solid presence about him, like a front-end loader with attitude. Siri had no pockets but he allowed the pouch to be plucked from his waist without any retaliation.

  “Then I invoke the spirit of the great eagle,” Siri said, halfheartedly. Nothing happened.

  “Give it up, Red Man.”

  “Don’t you listen, gook?” Eric said, leaning against the wall with a Lucky Strike dangling unlit from his lower jaw. He was even more stained and chipped than his colleague. “You’ve blown it. You gotta invoke before you get on the horse, man.” He leaned down into Siri’s face and breathed rotten teeth at him. “You’re aux-less.”

  The first thug was digging down through the pouch, throwing out puffed maize.

  “He got any money?” Eric asked.

  “Nah, nothing.”

  “Shit, let’s kill him.”

  “No wait.” The thug known as Danny had found something deep in the pouch. “Oh, man, look!”

  His hand emerged from the bag with two bone fingers holding onto a button. Siri had forgotten all about it, didn’t even recall putting it in the pouch. It was the button he’d dredged up from the bottom of the rock pool. Danny handed it to Eric, who looked at Siri with as much emotion as a skull could ever hope to muster.

  “So he knows.” Eric nodded.

  “Looks like it.”

  “Have to let him go.”

  “I guess.”

  “You owe us for this, gook.”

  “Big-time.”

  Eric flipped the button into the air like a coin. Siri glanced up for a second and caught it on its way back down. But when he turned his head toward the muggers, they were no longer there. He looked around and he was all alone in that badly lit place.

  “Most peculiar,” he thought.

  He looked at the button. There was nothing special about it: green plastic, normal size for a shirt. He held it to his nose to see whether his enhanced sense of smell might tell him something. It had been submerged in water so he didn’t hold out much hope, but there was a very faint scent of … desperation.

  “Remember where you are, Siri. Remember, none of this is credible.”

  He put the button back in his pouch and staggered forward over the uneven stones to the end—or the beginning—of the alley. On the far side of a busy boulevard the gaudy lights of the Silver Pheasant beckoned. He negotiated the traffic with no problem as it was without substance, blurs of metallic paint flying past in either direction. But on the far sidewalk he encountered a long queue of shamans dressed much like he was, all waiting to get into the club. A huge black bouncer stood at the door with a list in his hand and a pistol sticking out of his belt. As Siri didn’t consider himself to have any special rights over the others, he nodded and smiled at the waiting men and women and joined the back of the line.

  Four hours later he was still there and the queue hadn’t advanced more than a step or two. Others had fallen in behind him but none of his line mates seemed particularly talkative. He kept himself entertained by singing the Hmong refrain to the dead he’d learned at the funeral.

  Aha, your ghost, my sister, richly dressed

  Appears on the other side,

  Pretty like you—your spitting image

  Is it you or not?

  Look, that woman, that stranger,

  She sings you a spirit song,

  Your ghost takes you by the hand and—

  His song was interrupted by a big booming voice from up ahead.

  “Yeh Ming, is that you, man?”

  Siri looked up to see the bouncer on the sidewalk looking over the heads of the other shamans. He held his knuckles against his waist and wore a big gappy grand-piano smile across his mouth.

  “I don’t believe it,” he said. “It is too.”

  He waded into the crowd like a whale through sardines and hugged Siri to him so tightly that Siri would carry the indentation of a pistol on his stomach for days.

  “You son of a gun,” the bouncer continued. He took a step back and looked at Siri’s confused face. “Don’t you recognize me, Yeh Ming? It’s me, man. See Yee.”

  Siri racked his brains. The only See Yee he could recall was the traditional god of shamans. He’d always imagined him to be more … well, this wasn’t the way he’d imagined him to look.

  “Good health,” Siri said.

  “Good health? Good health is all I get after all them years? After all we been through, Yeh Ming?”

  “You’re right, sorry.”

  “You must be—what you doing back here in the queue anyhow? You’re Yeh Ming. Get your bony little fanny up front.”

  There were groans and complaints from the assembled shamans.

  “Come on! I was here first.”

  “I’ve been here a month.”

  “I’m telling my
local representative. This isn’t the way we …”

  “Hey, cool it, guys,” See Yee said, leading Siri to the main door. “This here is Yeh Ming. You guys gotta do a helluva lot of standing before you’re even nearly worthy of kissing this shaman’s behind. So shut your whining.”

  With a wink, he ushered Siri through the doors and told him they’d catch up later. It took Siri a moment to get used to the glare inside. He’d been expecting some type of club—disco music and the like, crowds of dancing shamans and the stale smell of beer. What he saw in fact was a huge open-air swimming pool, even bigger than Olympic size. In the water, floating on an inflatable mattress, was a little man with a potbelly and a martini glass. His sunglasses were so large it was impossible to tell his ethnicity. Beneath the surface all around him were large green lizardlike creatures. They performed in pairs like synchronized swimmers.

  At the side of the pool, under an enormous purple beach umbrella, was a wooden desk piled high with papers and folders and alphabetically indexed ledgers. Siri’s wave to the man in the pool went unanswered so he approached the desk. Even a few feet away it was impossible to tell whether there was anyone in residence. Not till he heard the voice.

  “Name?”

  Siri tried to look around the stacks but saw no one.

  “Dr. Siri Paiboun,” he said.

  There was a brief flutter of papers.

  “Don’t have anyone here with such a name. Next!” said the voice.

  Siri walked around to the side of the desk and peered through the folders. He could only see a crop of ginger hair above the piles.

  “I’m here to negotiate for the soul of a friend’s daughter,” Siri said.

  “Oh, really? And I thought you might be here to fix the filter system,” the voice said impatiently. “Next!”

  “Well, I could have a look at it for you,” Siri said. “But I’m better with water pumps.”

  He heard a nasal huff.

  “It was sarcasm, brother. All we do here is negotiate for souls. But we don’t have any daughters on our lists called Dr. Siri Paiboun. Now, if you don’t mind …”

  “Oh, I see. Her name isn’t Dr. Siri Paiboun.”

  “So why did you say it was?”

  Siri pushed over a stack of files with his finger. It collapsed a second and a third stack and exposed a stunned, red-faced man who looked at him through bloodshot eyes.

  “Wh … ?”

  Siri said, “You find some of the most bad-mannered people in jobs dealing with the public. Why do you suppose that is?”

  “What?”

  “It takes skills to deal with people day in and day out. Customers have feelings, you know? It isn’t that difficult to show a little courtesy and civility. It takes no more effort to make your clients happy than it does to depress the socks off them. If you can’t do that, I don’t really know why you’re here. There are plenty of noncontact careers available for bookkeepers.”

  There was a long silence during which the two stared at each other. The ginger-haired man swallowed and his voice broke a little as he said, “I’m Nyuwa Tuatay, the deputy overlord of the Otherworld.”

  “Then, as I say, perhaps you should be looking for a position that better suits your personality. And who’s he?” Siri asked, pointing to the figure on the air mattress.

  “You don’t know?”

  “Would I ask if I did?”

  “That is Nyuwa Neyu, the great overlord.” “I’d say you drew the short straw, comrade.” The man in the pool smiled and beckoned Siri to join him. “Sorry, I can’t swim. Perhaps next time.” Another silence. “What can I do for you?” the bookkeeper asked. “Much better. I’m here to negotiate for the soul of a friend’s daughter.” “And her name is?” He added, “ If you’d be so kind.” Siri smiled. “Chamee Mua.” “Age?” “Fourteen.” There was more flipping of pages. Siri looked over at the pool. A blonde nymph in a polka dot bikini was swimming out with a fresh martini. Being the overlord of the Otherworld didn’t seem to be the most taxing of jobs. He considered taking an application form himself.

  “I’m sorry,” Nyuwa Tuatay told Siri. “What’s wrong?” “I don’t have a Chamee Mua on my list … and I’ve checked twice.” “And what does that mean?” “It probably means all her souls are still with her.” Siri stepped out of the sun and into the shade of the umbrella to consider matters. “Hmm,” he said. “Anything else I can do?” the deputy asked respectfully. “What if she were possessed by a demon?” Siri asked. “Oh, then that’s a different department altogether.”

  “And that is?”

  “Demons reside in the Land of the Dead.”

  “And how do I get there?”

  “You die.”

  “Really? I can’t just go and visit?”

  “Can a tree in the forest temporarily fall down?”

  “Is that a ‘no’?”

  “It is.”

  Siri walked a slow circuit of the desk and came back to the clearing he’d forged through the paperwork.

  “One more question,” he said.

  “Please.”

  “If a person were possessed by a devil, isn’t it likely his or her soul would be troubled and you’d have some record?”

  “One would think so. But I’m not qualified to do philosophy here,” the deputy told him matter-of-factly. “That’s two blocks east on Seventy-fifth. Here’s their card.”

  Siri knew he had a room full of people waiting for him back on earth but he spent some time chewing the fat with See Yee on the front step, talking about old times he wasn’t personally a part of, before heading back toward the alley. He didn’t bother with the Philosophy Department. He already had his answer. The winged steed was parked on the main street at the far end of the walkway where he’d left it. A parking attendant was looking for somewhere to attach a citation. Siri ignored him, climbed majestically onto the horse’s back, and flew away.

  There was a splinter in Siri’s backside. He felt it as he fell backward into Bao’s waiting arms. She was a deceptively strong girl.

  “OK, Yeh Ming. That should do,” she whispered so only he could hear. She pulled back the mask and the afternoon sun through the window blinded him. He was surprised it was still day. He continued to sit astride the bench. The rattle was no longer in his hand. The audience remained remarkably enthralled considering the number of hours he’d been away. Elder Long looked at Siri with admiration: the great Yeh Ming presiding over an exorcism right here in his own village. Who would have believed it? He nodded his head and raised his eyebrows as if expecting Siri to give him a summary of the trip.

  Siri was far from certain what had just happened.

  “I need a while to prepare my report,” Siri said.

  Nobody in the room moved.

  “Alone,” he added. Long and the women got to their feet and paraded out the door. When they were gone and only he and Bao remained in the shaman’s hut he whispered excitedly, “I did it.”

  “It was quite convincing,” she said, putting out the candle. “You were better in the rehearsal but I expect you were nervous.”

  “No, I mean I did it. I went to the Otherworld.”

  She turned to him. “Yeh Ming, there are just the two of us here.”

  “I know. So I have no reason to lie.”

  She walked to him and knelt by the bench. “You’re serious, Yeh Ming.”

  “I am. I can hardly believe it myself. If I was anybody else I’d call me a liar too. Isn’t it marvelous?”

  “Tell me about it. Tell me everything.”

  “Well, I was rather expecting caves and an underground lake and a mountain, all the things I’d read in the legends.”

  “My father said the location can depend on influence from the victim and the imagination of the shaman.”

  “Is that so? Then I have no idea who’s been playing with my head.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Somewhere in North America, I believe. It was a city. Nowhere I’ve ever been i
n real life. There were skyscrapers and the streets had a layer of ice.”

  Siri told her the whole story. There were parts that neither of them understood—the street thugs foremost among them—but everything else was as logical as necromancy can be.

  “And all that in three hundred heartbeats. Wonderful.” Bao smiled.

  “Three hundred? Why that’s not much more than five minutes. I was only in the trance for five minutes?”

  “At the most. You’ve done very well, Yeh Ming. I’m happy for you. But I’m sad for Elder Long.”

  “Why?”

  “You learned nothing about Chamee.”

  “Oh, but I did.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will. But first I have to go to her house again.”

  “Are you sure? You still have the bruises from last time.”

  “Ah, but last time I didn’t know what I was dealing with.” He stood and gently patted his rear end.

  “And now you do?”

  “I hope so.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “No, Bao. Not this time. This is something I have to do by myself. It’ll be all right. I promise.”

  “I trust you.”

  Siri retrieved the ceremonial dagger from the earth and used the rice whisky to clean the earth from it.

  “I should think this is pretty well sanctified now, wouldn’t you?”

  He walked gingerly to the door but stopped as he reached the doorway. An unpleasant memory had suddenly returned to him.

  “Did you happen to see … ?”

  “Your weak-minded ‘assistant’? He fainted. Dia took him back to his bed.”

  “Do you think he’ll remember?”

  “I’m afraid he might.”

  “Damn.”

  Siri Confronts His Demon

  Siri walked uncomfortably up the trail past the blackened stumps until he reached the first bush. He ducked behind it and checked back to be sure he wasn’t being followed. Once he was certain he was alone, he carefully lowered his trousers to his ankles and inspected his bottom. There were two fairly large splinters, neither one of which he could see. But they were protruding enough for him not to have need of the knife. He gritted his teeth and yanked them free. Bao had probably seen worse but this operation was hardly something to be done in front of a lady. She was really quite a remarkable girl. There was something of his ex-wife, Boua, about her, that same determination and …