Features and limbs flickered into focus around the slablike teeth. Some form of creature stood on the ledge overlooking the tunnel chasm. A diminutive humanoid. Its blue-tinged skin matching the walls exactly. Perfect camouflage.
“What are you?” croaked Meg.
“What am I? asks the girl,” snorted the creature. “What am I? I be resident. You be intruder. No greeting? No felicitations? Just ignorance and bluntness.”
Meg considered her options. The thing was small enough; maybe she could hit it with a rock and make her escape along the ledge. But escape to where? To what?
The creature scratched a pointed chin. “You must pardon Flit, young lady. Company never land. Float on by. Floaty, floaty, floaty.”
“Where am I?” asked Meg.
Flit threw his arms wide. “Where? Tunnel, girl. The tunnel. Life . . . tunnel . . . afterlife.”
Meg sighed. Just as she’d feared. Dead then. “And you are?”
“Man once,” sighed the creature. “Bad man. So now mite. Tunnel scraper. Flit’s penance. Girl, look.”
Flit hauled a wicker basket from behind a kink in the wall. “Soul residue. Clog tunnel.”
Meg peered inside. The basket was full of glowing stones. Blue, of course. She could be imagining it, but she would have sworn the stones were singing.
Flit stroked the stones lovingly. “Two hundred baskets. Then Pearlies.”
Meg nodded. It made sense, she supposed. Sort of a heavenly community service.
“So that’s it, is it? I’m a . . . mite . . . am I?”
Flit found that hilarious. “Girl? Mite? Oh, no, no, negative. Girl one in a million billion. Purple spectral trail.”
“I don’t . . .”
Flit rapped Meg’s forehead with his knuckles.
“Ears open, girl! Blue trail Pearlies. Red trail pit. Purple trail, half-half.”
Meg gazed into the vastness of the tunnel. The recently deceased were zooming past her refuge on the ledge. Some flew so close that she could see the disbelief in their eyes.
“What spectral trail? I don’t see any . . .”
Then Flit passed a blue hand before her eyes, and she saw it. Behind each soul, a fiery discharge. Crimson or sky blue. Those with red trails were plucked from the stream, and sent spinning into the pit. Meg stared at her own hands. Violet sparks were playing around the tips of her fingers.
“See, girl, see! Purple. Goodie and baddie. Evenstevens. Fifty-fifty.”
Meg was starting to get the gist. “So what happens now?”
“No Pearlies. No pit. Back.”
“Back?”
The thing that had once been a man nodded. “Back. Fix the bad things.”
“Bad things?”
“Girl stupid parrot,” said Flit angrily. “Learn speak proper! Bad things done in body life. Back, back, floaty back. Mend. Then spectral trail lovely blue.”
Meg’s ghostly heart quickened. “I can go back? Be alive again?”
Flit cackled, slapping his hands in mirth. “Alive? No. Ghost—boo! Help wronged one. Use soul residue.”
It wasn’t easy keeping track of this conversation. Flit had been out of touch with humanity for so long that his vocabulary had been eroded to the bare essentials. As far as Meg could figure it, she had a choice. Either stay here on the ledge, or go back and try to patch things up with old Lowrie. Some choice. A gibbering creature or a . . . make that two gibbering creatures. How did you take back a sin, anyway? What was she supposed to do?
“Hurry, girl,” advised Flit. “Time ticking on, ticky-ticky-ticky. Good wasting away.”
Meg stared at her aura. Tiny red shoots were striating the purple. She swallowed. Once her ghostly energy ran out, it was down below with Belch for her. She could feel the pit drawing her like the North Pole pulling on an iron filing. Wisps of her aura broke off and were whipped into the abyss, like fluff down a plughole.
“How do I get back?”
The blue creature shrugged. “Flit not sure. Never happen before. Flit just hear from other mites.”
“Well, what did Flit hear?”
Flit pointed at the marbled wall. “Go through.”
“I tried that,” said Meg, rubbing her head. “Didn’t work.”
Flit frowned. “Not think wall. Think hole.”
This sounded a bit like surfer logic to Meg. “You’re sure about that?”
“Nope,” admitted the tunnel mite. “Crank tell I.”
Crank? Probably another blue creature with limited vocabulary. Meg tried to marshal her brain into some sort of order. Hole, she thought. Hole, hole, hole. The notion gripped her mind and spiraled in on itself like a mini-twister. Soon the word boomed in her head, pounding with her pulse. Hole, hole, hole. What was going on here? She’d never been able to concentrate on one thing her entire life. Maybe that was it. Life wasn’t here to distract her now.
She stretched out a hand. The wall did seem less solid now. Fluid somehow, as though it were a slow wave rippling with barely noticeable momentum. Her fingers brushed the surface and sank into it. Silver sparks danced around the contact point.
“See!” gloated the mite.
Meg whipped her hand back, flexing the fingers experimentally. Everything seemed in working order. Not bad for a dead girl.
“Go, girl—go!” urged Flit. “Pit strong here.”
Meg nodded. The farther away she was from that thing, the longer her spectral trail would last. And she’d need every ounce of strength in what was left of her body to make it up to old Lowrie.
“Okay. I’m going. I just hope you’re right. This’d better not be a shortcut to hell.”
“No, no, no. Flit sure. Straight homey home.”
No point in hanging around here putting it off. Into the wall and be done with it. She’d never been afraid of anything in her life, and she wasn’t going to start in her afterlife. She took a deep breath and . . .
“Girl, wait!”
“What?” spluttered a startled Meg.
“Here.”
Flit pressed something into her hand. Two small stones from his basket. Blue with silver ripples.
“Soul residue. Extra batteries.”
“Thanks, Flit,” said Meg, stuffing the stones deep into the pocket of her combats. That was all she needed. Some rocks. Still, better not dump them in front of the little guy. Might hurt his feelings.
“Girl go now! Fast. Roadrunner fast.”
“Beep, beep,” said Meg nervously.
She reached into the rock face again. The sparks danced around her wrist, then her elbow, then she was gone.
Myishi was fiddling around in Belch’s brain.
“Well?” said Beelzebub impatiently.
“Don’t rush me,” muttered the diminutive technician, not bothering to raise his eyes from the gray jelly before him.
“I’m on a tight schedule here, Myishi. Is he worth salvaging or not?”
Myishi straightened, shaking the slop from his fingers.
“Not in this state. Total burnout. The canine brain meld blew his mind. Literally.”
Sparks rippled at the end of Beelzebub’s talons. “Damn it to heaven! I need some background on that girl!”
The computer wizard grinned smugly. “No problem, Beelzebub-san. I can uplink him.”
Computers were something of a mystery to hell’s Number Two, a bit like transubstantiation.
“Uplink?”
Myishi grinned nastily. “On Earth, my methods were somewhat curtailed by professional ethics. Here . . .
He didn’t need to finish the sentence. In Hades, human rights were no longer an issue. Myishi removed a nasty-looking object from his box of tricks. It resembled a small monitor on a metal stake. Without hesitation the programmer plunged it into the morass of Belch’s brain.
Beelzebub winced. Myishi was one creepy individual. He made Doctor Frankenstein look like a Boy Scout.
“The brain spike. I love this little baby. The brain’s own electrical impulses provide
the power source. Ingenious, if I do say so myself.”
“Absolutely,” agreed Beelzebub, feeling just a tad faint.
Myishi pulled a remote from the pocket of his designer suit, smearing the silk with gobbets of brain matter.
“Now, let’s see what this creature saw.”
The tiny screen flickered into life, and the two demons saw themselves staring at themselves as Belch saw them. It was all very confusing. The sort of thing that would give you a headache.
“That’s no use, you moron.”
Myishi bit his bottom lip to hold in a reply. Beelzebub made a mental note. Watch him. Getting uppity.
“I’ll rewind it.”
The picture wavered and sped into reverse. Belch flew down the tunnel, and was born again. Only in his mind, of course.
“Right. Play.”
On the screen, Belch was once again grinning down at the writhing old man.
“I like this boy,” commented Myishi. “Real talent.”
“Plodder,” sniffed Beelzebub, ever the hypocrite. “Okay, hold it there!”
Myishi jabbed at the controls and the memory playback froze. In the jittering frame, Meg Finn was kneeling protectively over the frame of the injured old man.
“Aha!” said Beelzebub. “She protected him. That’s what got her off the hook. What are the odds of that? Must be a million to one.”
Myishi consulted a calculator the size of a credit card.
“Eighty-seven million to one, actually,” he corrected, the words plopping smarmily from between his lips.
Beelzebub counted to ten. You’d need the patience of a saint to put up with this smart aleck. And he was no saint. He pointed his trident threateningly at the computer programmer.
“This blob is no good to me like this, and neither are you if you can’t fix him up somehow.”
Myishi grinned, unfazed. “No problem, Beelzebubsan. I’ll install a virtual-help hologram, and upgrade him from catatonic to . . . let’s say . . . dogged, if you’ll excuse the pun.
“What about infernal?”
“Can’t be done. Not with his cranium. Very few skulls can support true evil, takes real strength of character. This particular specimen is never going to be anything more than a thug.”
“Dogged will have to do, then.”
Myishi’s manicured nails clicked on the remote pad. “That, added to the canine genes, should turn him into a right automaton. Once you set him in motion, he won’t stop until the job is done, or his life force runs out.”
Myishi hit SEND, and Belch’s frame spasmed as the bytes ran down the brain spike. “What’s all the urgency, anyway? What have you got in store for this guy?”
“This is my new Soul Man,” said Beelzebub, his eyes shining. “He’s going back to reclaim our lost spirit.”
Myishi stroked his goatee, a miniature version of the devil’s own. “I’d better juice him up, then. A few cc’s of liquefied residue straight into the cortex. He . . . it’ll be running smoother than a newborn babe.”
“It?” noted Beelzebub. “You can’t get the dog out of him?”
“No, Beelzebub-san. The mainframe is too corrupted.”
“Mainframe?” Beelzebub was certain Myishi used these technical terms only to confuse him. He was, of course, exactly right.
“Mainframe—brain. Imagine trying to unmix salt and water with a spoon.” All this was said in a tone of barely disguised condescension.
“How soon will he be ready?”
Myishi shrugged casually. “A day, perhaps two.”
Beelzebub had had enough of all this flippancy. It was true he could not afford to nullify Myishi’s soul, but he could certainly cause him some discomfort.
He allowed a sizable charge to build up in his trident, and discharged it into Myishi’s behind. The programmer executed a high jump that would not have shamed an Olympian.
“I need him in two hours. If I don’t have him in two hours, there’s a lot more where that came from.”
Myishi nodded, cheeks ballooning with swallowed screams.
Beelzebub smiled, his good humor restored. “Good. I’m glad we understand each other.”
He turned to go, the folds of his black kaftan swirling around his ankles. “Oh, and Myishi?”
“Hai, Beelzebub-san?”
“Put the top of his skull back on, there’s a good fellow.”
LOWRIE MCCALL’S LEG WAS FORECASTING RAIN. Two years now since that hound had taken a chunk out of him, and the leg still wasn’t right. Never would be either. The doctors said he’d walk with a limp for the rest of his life. Lowrie chuckled mirthlessly. The rest of his life? That was a laugh.
Lowrie lit up a fat stinking cigar. He’d started smoking again. Why not? No one was around to complain, and the nicotine would never have a chance to kill him.
It hadn’t always been like this. All doom and gloom. But now . . . well, things were different now. He could trace it all back to that night, two years ago, lying on the floor with his life’s blood pooling on the linoleum around him. It had hit him then that he was going to die. Maybe not then, but sometime. His interest in life just stopped. What was the point? Heaven? Balderdash. There was no justice aboveground, so why should there be any under it? Why all the effort, then? What was the point in being good? Lowrie still hadn’t answered that question. And until he could, there didn’t seem to be much point to anything.
Lowrie got fed up looking out the window and decided he’d chance a bit of television. Afternoon television. The pastime of the past it. After five minutes of elementary watercolor and cooking corner, he realized he wasn’t that desperate just yet and switched the box off. The garden. He’d go pull a few weeds in the garden.
But of course his leg had been right, and the rain began to pelt down on the tiny square the landlord optimistically called a “green area.” Lowrie sighed. Was anything going to go right ever again? Where was the wisecracking fine figure of a man that he had used to be? Where was his life gone?
Lowrie had spent so much time mulling over these particular questions that he had managed to isolate a few key moments in his past. Ones where he had a choice to make, and made the wrong one. A litany of mistakes. A list of would-haves, could-haves, and should-haves. Not that there was any point in thinking about it. It wasn’t as if he could change anything now. He put a hand over his rib cage, feeling the thump of his heart. Especially not now.
So, how to round out this roller coaster of a day?
Take some medicine perhaps. Go for a limp down to the newstand, or—oh, the excitement—bingo in the community center.
Meg Finn hurtled out of the afterlife and into Lowrie McCall’s armchair. And because she wasn’t thinking hole anymore, it was as solid to her as to you and me. The chair’s springs wheezed in protest, brass casters sending it spinning across the floor.
Lowrie did not jerk backward in shock. He jerked backward because the careering chair flipped his cane from under him. He went down in a heap, grasping at the bookcase as he fell. Not a good move, really. The top-heavy shelving teetered past the correctable angle and crashed down on the old man.
A few moments of dazed confusion followed all around. Meg gazed dopily at the motes of dust spiraling upward from the ancient cushion. Dust. Real dust. From the real world. She was back. Maybe she’d never been away. The chair was real enough. So, a possible theory: Belch’s shotgun blast had blown her through old Lowrie’s window, and the chair had broken her fall. Hmm. Dubious. Several holes in the reasoning. Still though, no harder to believe than melting into a tunnel wall, purple spectral trails, verbally challenged mites and all the rest.
Lowrie finally managed to focus. “You!” he gasped from under a pile of National Geographics. “Meg Finn!”
“Hmm?” said Meg distractedly.
“But you’re dead. I saw the body!”
Ah well. Another theory out the window.
“My body?”
“Yes. Not a pretty sight, I can tell you.”
Meg winced. She must have been in a bad way by the time they peeled her off that tank.
“How was my face?”
“Not much in the way of teeth.”
A couple of things occurred to Lowrie then. One, he was conducting a conversation with a dead person. Two, he couldn’t breathe!
“How do I look now?” ventured Meg nervously.
“Eehhhhh,” wheezed Lowrie, his forehead turning pastel blue.
“That bad?”
The old man, with no more air for chitchat, jabbed a finger at the heavy bookshelf straddling his chest.
The penny dropped. Meg vaulted from the comfort of a real live chair and put her weight behind the bookcase. The heavy pine shelving lifted and spun like a place mat off a table. It had cost Meg no more effort than tossing a coin. The case collided with the wall, tearing a right-angled rent in the plaster. What books there had been on its shelving fluttered to the ground like multiwinged moths.
“Wow,” said Meg, staring at her hands. They looked the same, not swollen like Popeye’s or anything. But somehow she was ten times stronger.
Lowrie sucked in a whistling breath. “Huff . . . haa,” he coughed.
“You’re welcome,” muttered Meg, flexing her fingers.
“I’m not . . . aheh . . . thanking you, you delinquent!”
Meg blinked. “But I just . . .”
Lowrie shook his fist from the floor. “You just what? You just broke into my apartment and had your dog take a chunk out of my leg!”
“That wasn’t my—”
“Crippling me for whatever’s left of my miserable life.”
“Ah, here now. Don’t let’s get carried away.”
“Carried away?”
“At least you’re not dead!” retorted Meg, feeling a bit sniffly. “I wound up wrapped around your stupid gas tank.”
Lowrie paused. The girl was right. If she was a girl. If he wasn’t dreaming all this. A hallucination brought on by oxygen deprivation. A bookcase across the lungs will do that to a person.
“What are you anyway? An angel?”
Meg snorted. “Hardly. I’m a nothing. Between heaven and hell. An in-betweener. That’s why I had to come back. To help the one I’ve sinned against, according to that blue-skinned idiot.”