The Wish List

  “Technically, you don’t have to make her bad, as the Master so eloquently put it,” explained Beelzebub. “You just have to stop her being good. The target will have been sent back to help the old man. Your mission is to make sure her efforts fail. That way we get a red aura, blah-blah-blah. The Master gets his precious soul, I keep my job, and you escape an eternity in the barbecue section. And—it ain’t beef bein’ cooked down there, cowboy.”

  Beelzebub liked to think of himself as humorous. Black humor, naturally. He was, after all, a demon. He chuckled gently at his own joke. Belch was encouraged to join in the laughter by the sparks jittering around the teeth of Number Two’s trident.

  “There’s one thing I don’t get in all this,” ventured Belch.

  “Only one?” sniggered Beelzebub, on a roll now.

  “That guy . . .”

  “The Master?”

  “Yeah, him. Well, he’s got me, hasn’t he? What does he want that girl for?”

  Beelzebub had an answer for that one, but he could-n’t even think it this close to the inner chamber. Suffice to say it contained the words stubborn and mule.

  “The Master believes Meg Finn to be special. Real potential. She did something to her stepfather apparently.”

  Belch swallowed. “Oh, that. Nasty stuff.”

  The elevator doors dinged open. Belch stepped in gingerly, half expecting some collapsing trapdoor– ha-ha–you’re-not-really-going-back-at-all type of thing. But no, just solid floor. Carpeted with some pinkish hairy material. Better not to think about that.

  “How long have I got? To make her bad.”

  Beelzebub shrugged. “It depends. Take it easy on the possessions, don’t call home too often, and you’ve got enough juice for a week.”

  Belch whined.

  “Any problems, check the virtual help. Myishi assures me every eventuality is covered.”

  “Okay, boss,” said Belch compliantly, thinking that he’d be off like a bullet as soon as this elevator spat him out on planet Earth. Sayonara, hell, and farewell, stumpy demon in the girly dress.

  “It’s a kaftan,” said Beelzebub coolly.

  “Woof,” croaked Belch. Seemingly his quadruped side dominated in times of stress.

  “That’s right,” continued hell’s Number Two. “I can read minds. Only weak ones, granted, but you’re smack-bang in the middle of that category. Don’t even think about escape, because the second your life force runs out you’ll be snapped back here like a pooch on an elastic leash.”

  “Right.”

  Beelzebub primed his trident for a level-four whammy. Very nasty. “And you know I can’t let you off with that girly dress crack, don’t you?”

  Belch shook a shaggy head. “Arf-arf.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” grinned the demon, jabbing his buzzing staff into Belch’s expectant skin.

  So Belch was back. Spewed from the mouth of a sweating elevator. Back where it had all begun; correction, back where it had all ended. The gas tank at the oldtimer’s apartment.

  Very nice it was, too. All orange and shiny, with barely a sign of the tragedy that had occurred there. Except for a hundred shrapnel gouges in the surrounding walls.

  Belch had a big advantage over his adversary, because he knew exactly what was going on. His implant had filled him in on no end of spiritual trivia. For example, the only reason he could come back at all was because of the untimely riddling of his torso with metal fragments. This left him with decades of unused life essence, or soul residue. Unfortunately, life essence without a life is like a brain outside a skull: fragile and quick-drying. A day per decade was about all you got. Even with the booster shot, that left him one week max to complete his mission.

  He also knew what Meg had to do to put a little blue in her aura. And it would be his absolute pleasure to put a stop to that. That little turncoat had cost him his life. So he would make absolutely sure that Meg Finn wouldn’t be spending eternity sipping chocolate milk shakes on some cloud up at the Pearlies. No sir. She’d be turning a greasy spit in hell, and getting the odd lick of Belch’s whip to keep her moving. Belch chuckled, a throaty growl. That was one image that appealed to him enormously.

  So Belch had a plan. He would mosey over to the old coot’s flat, frighten him to death, and then poor little Meggy wouldn’t have anyone to help. Genius.

  “Won’t work,” said an electronic voice.

  Belch glanced up. The virtual help floated at shoulder height, with a condescending sneer stretching its five-hundred-pixels-per-inch lips. The sneer looked like it belonged there.

  “You’re Myishi, I suppose? I’ve been told about you.”

  The icon blinked and flickered. “Yes . . . and no.”

  Belch groaned. Great. A schizophrenic computer program. (Obviously what had been Belch Brennan didn’t think the word schizophrenic, but that was the general idea.)

  “In terms of brain power, I am Myishi. His thoughts and expertise have been programmed into my memory. Spiritually, the Great One’s soul still resides in Hades.”

  Belch scratched the nub of flesh on his crown where the implant had been inserted. “Best place for him, the maniac.”

  The diminutive animated icon tutted. “Do not disrespect the inventor. I will be forced to activate the ectonet and send a live feed. This, in turn, will most definitely lead to a pain surge in your mainframe.”

  “Ectonet? Mainframe? What the hell are you?”

  The impeccably dressed figure bowed. “I am your EctoLink and Personal Help program. You may refer to me as Elph.”

  Belch squinted at him. “You’re not draining my juice, are you?”

  “No. I come free with the package.”

  “Good. Now, what’s wrong with my plan?”

  The condescending sneer returned. “It is the plan of an idiot. To kill the old man now does not make Meg Finn bad. If she has not tried, she cannot fail. For the target to fail, her essence must turn red.”

  “Hmm,” growled Belch, absently scratching behind his ear.

  “What you must do is foil their plans. Whatever McCall asks Finn to do, you must see to it that she fails.”

  Belch nodded. Made sense. In a Spockish sort of a way.

  “Right. Let’s check out the apartment then, see if we can’t throw a wrench in the works.”

  Elph frowned. “I am not equipped with hardware implements.”

  “Not a real wrench, cartoon-head! A pretend one—you know, like ‘strong as a horse,’ except you’re not really a horse.”

  The megabyte sprite bobbed along beside him. “Ah yes, Belch-san. I see. You speak metaphorically. A metaphors file was not included in my memory.

  The honored Myishi did not feel it relevant to our mission.”

  Belch snarled. “The honored Myishi can take his file and . . .”

  Before he could finish his highly graphic and uncomplimentary sentence, Belch’s brain spasmed with a jolt of fiery pain. Not an actual brain obviously—that was lying moldering in a cheap pine box. But spiritual pain is every bit as excruciating as the physical kind.

  After several moments Belch’s ears stopped ringing. Elph was regarding him coolly.

  “Disrespecting the Great One activates punitive feedback. It is not wise.”

  “Woof,” grunted Belch. “I mean, really.”

  “There is no need to revert to English,” commented Elph. “I am fluent in fourteen canine dialects, including the limited vocabulary of the pit bull breed.”

  Belch grunted. “Let’s get on with this, then. The old man’s apartment is just around the corner.”

  “Hai, Belch-san.”

  They proceeded through the courtyard. Belch upending trash cans, benches, and even small cars, generally overdoing the poltergeist thing. Elph hovered at his shoulder, shaking his flickering head, and looking very disapproving, for a hologram.

  NORA HAD APPARENTLY DRUNK THE CAR, SO THEY HAD to make the trip to Dublin by train. Being a senior citizen, Lowrie only had a pass for th
e second class, and so had to hold conversations with an invisible spirit while everybody watched.

  “What’s this trip about, McCall?”

  Lowrie came back from whatever dream he was dreaming. “Hmm?”

  “Kissy Sissy. The first thing on the Wish List. What does that mean.”

  The old man fired her a crabby glare. “What it says. There’s a woman called Sissy, I have to kiss her.”

  “Yes. But why?”

  “Never mind why. You just do what you were sent to do.”

  Meg frowned, levitating six inches off the seat. “I’m trying to help, you know. A bit of manners wouldn’t kill you.

  “Manners, is it?” snorted Lowrie. “What sort of manners would that be, now? The sort where you break into someone’s house and cripple them for life? Or the sort where you play a cruel and malicious trick on your stepfather?”

  Meg felt herself fuming at the mere reference to Franco. “Who told you about that?”

  “The man himself.”

  “You met Franco?”

  Lowrie shifted on his seat. “He came around to apologize after the . . . accident.”

  Meg could feel her molecules vibrating. Even in the afterlife, that man could drive her demented in one second flat.

  Lowrie drove the nail home. “The poor chap. And to think, I thought I was badly off.”

  Meg couldn’t believe her ears. “He had you feeling sorry for him?”

  “After what you did?”

  “He deserved it!” hissed Meg. “He deserved it, and more!”

  “I dunno,” sniffed Lowrie, “if anyone deserves that. That was . . .”

  “Justice,” announced Meg. “It was justice. That creep sold my mam’s jewelry. Sold her charm bracelet that we used to add to every year. And he watched our television, and sat on our sofa. He sat on our sofa so much that it wasn’t ours anymore. It was his. With his big disgusting butt-print right in the middle.”

  Lowrie read the girl’s face. “And did he give you the odd whack?”

  There was silence for a moment, and Meg settled back onto the cracked seat. “Never mind changing the subject on me, McCall,” she said suddenly. “Who’s this Sissy woman? And how do you know she won’t split your bony face in two when you try to plant one on her?”

  Lowrie settled back against the window, pulling a sausagelike cigar from his breast pocket.

  “Sissy Brogan,” he sighed, spinning the wheel on an ancient oil lighter. The flame, when it caught, was at least as pungent as the cigar. Meg watched, fascinated, as the smoke passed through her abdomen.

  “Sissy Brogan was the woman I should have married. Never mind that old fish, Nora. Sissy was a real woman. They broke the mold when they made her. . . .”

  “What mold? Like a jelly mold?”

  “No.”

  “Plaster?”

  “Shut up, will you?” growled Lowrie, his flow interrupted. “It’s an expression. It means she was unique. The one and only.”

  “Oh.”

  “We went stepping out once. . . .”

  “Out where?”

  Lowrie could feel a headache coming on. “It’s an expression! On a date! I took her on a date!”

  “Right.”

  “First of all to a movie on O’Connell Street.”

  “What was it?”

  Lowrie scowled. “I don’t remember . . .” he began, then the lines on his brow softened: “It was The Mask of Zorro. I do remember.”

  “Big deal. That’s still on.”

  “I remember because I was doing all the sword-fighting bits on the way for chips. I was only a young lad.”

  Meg chuckled. “You? Playing around? I don’t believe it.”

  “I barely believe it myself. Maybe the old brain is filling in the gaps for me. Anyway it was a great night. A classic. They don’t come along every day. You get maybe half a dozen in a lifetime. Perfect days. I can see her now, with the red hair curling behind her ears. The height of fashion in those days.”

  “Yeah,” muttered a thoroughly bored Meg. “That and outdoor toilets.”

  But Lowrie was far too immersed to be distracted by smart aleckry. His memories floated out of him. Wafting in luscious shades from his face and painting vague shapes in the air.

  “A perfect day . . .”

  “But?”

  “But I made a mess of it. As usual.”

  “How? It sounds as though all you had to do was walk her home, give her a kiss good night and . . .”

  “I never kissed her.”

  “You idiot.”

  Lowrie shook his grizzled head ruefully. “I know. Don’t you think I know? Not a day goes by. It was my hands, you see.”

  “Hands?”

  “They were sweating. Real bad. Like two lilies on a pond. I was afraid to put them around her waist. Stupid, I know. Stupid.”

  He got no argument from his ghostly partner.

  “I thought the feel of two big sopping palms would put an end to my chances. I thought—tomorrow, when it’s cool and my hands are dry. So I left it and went home.”

  “And you never saw her again?”

  The old man smiled mirthlessly. “Oh I saw her, all right. I saw her every day for four years. I saw the hurt in her eyes, then the coldness. I watched her marry my boyhood friend. And I had to stand there smiling, and hand over the ring like I was the happiest best man in the world.”

  “If all this happened when you were young, then this Sissy must be ancient by now. When was the last time you were in touch with her?”

  Lowrie scratched his bristled chin. “Personally? Now you’re asking. Must be forty years.”

  Meg vibrated six inches off the seat. “Forty years! She could be dead, or living in a home or anything.”

  “Oh no. Sissy is alive, all right. That much I do know.”

  “And how can you be so sure? Seeing as your own brain was no great shakes the last time I was in there.”

  Lowrie spoke clearly. “Because Sissy’s married name is Cicely Ward. And that’s one even a hooligan like you should recognize.”

  Meg sank dumbfounded into the foam of the train seat. “That Cicely Ward?”

  “Yes, that Cicely Ward. She wasn’t always who she is now, you know, she was herself once.”

  Funnily enough, that made perfect sense to Meg. “So, you’re telling me that you had the chance to marry the country’s favorite TV granny, and you blew it.”

  Lowrie rapped his knuckles against his own thick skull. “Yep. That’s what I’m telling you.”

  Meg whistled. “You really have the knack, don’t you? I thought my life was miserable.”

  “Least I have a life.”

  “Not for long.”

  Lowrie pulled himself together. His memories whooshed back into his face like paint down a drain.

  “Exactly. Not for long. So, if you’ll just do what I say, I don’t think there’s any need for conversation.”

  “But . . .”

  “Never mind your buts. You’re only here ’cause you have to be. If it was up to you, you’d be off burgling someone’s castle in heaven.”

  And with that Lowrie pulled his cap over his eyes and settled in for a snooze. Sleep again? Meg couldn’t believe it. After all the snoring he had done last night. How could someone with half a year to live bear to waste any of it sleeping? She shook her fist at the heavens. Thanks very much. Thanks a million. My last chance at salvation, and you send me to the one person who hates me more than Franco.

  When the train pulled into Heuston Station, Lowrie was still dragging ragged breaths through his open mouth. Meg was getting fairly sick of looking at his fillings. It was as if some medieval dentist had plugged the holes with lumps of coal. And just look at the state of him, she thought. Nora must’ve drunk his fashion sense along with everything else. If he went strolling around the streets of Dublin like that, people were going to start giving him their spare change.

  There was zero chance of getting into the national televis
ion studio with Mister Sleeping Tramp there. Something had to be done. Cicely Ward’s people weren’t going to let a scruffy old mumbling idiot in to see their boss just because he had blown a chance to kiss her back in the black-and-white movie days. And you can bet she had people; all these stars had groups of muscle-y types making sure they never had to talk to their fans.

  Meg could just imagine Lowrie. Uh, um, please can I go in, because I’ve got a Wish List and there’s this invisible spirit floating over my head . . . whack, bounce, skid along the sidewalk.

  No. If they were ever going to tick anything off this list, it was up to her.

  Time for a bit of possession. Meg steeled herself and eased into Lowrie’s slumbering frame. That’s not so bad, she told herself. Now that you know what’s going on.

  The old man’s brain was calm. Richly colored images floated around like fantastic clouds. Dream on, old-timer. No need to wake up. You wouldn’t like what’s going to happen anyway. Meg stretched her creaking legs and stepped down onto the platform.

  Behind her, two nuns blessed themselves and prayed fervently that they would never end up like that poor old tramp babbling at thin air.

  * * *

  Belch was smiling wolfishly. It gave him a warm fuzzy feeling to know that he could invade anyone’s privacy at will. Hole, he’d thought, and floated straight through Lowrie McCall’s front door. Marvelous.

  “They are not here,” buzzed Elph.

  Belch ran a thin tongue over his incisors. “I can’t turn you off, I suppose?”

  Elph blinked to access a file. “I cannot be disconnected by the host. Any attempt would be met with a massive cranial discharge and immediate relocation to base.”

  “I go straight to hell, is what you’re trying to say.”

  “Correct.”

  “Just great. Well, could you please shut up while I search this place?”

  Elph smiled, as a toddler would at an insect he is about to flatten. “I will, as you say, shut up. But only because it is the most effective course of action.”

  Belch rooted around in the threadbare furnishings for a while, then decided it was too much like hard work. He flopped onto the sofa, plonking his ghostly Doc Marten shoes on the glass surface of an ancient coffee table.

  “This place is a dump,” he remarked. “Dunno why I bothered breaking in here in the first place.”