Colin Cotterill - Curse of the Pogo Stick

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.