The Fool came up with the idea in the middle of the night and wasn’t in the habit of waiting until morning to tell me. He doesn’t need sleep and doesn’t much tolerate the habit. He called me at home, sounding completely unmindful of the sun’s absence outside. I can also live just fine without sleep, but I enjoy doing it. I like dreaming.

“Find me a cult,” Fool said cheerfully.

“What?” I answered. I had never known the Fool to have any interest in acquiring followers nor have any interest in imparting knowledge on a group of people.

“You don’t have to start it yourself,” the Fool said, apparently thinking that I was already as familiar with his new idea as he was. “An existing one will work better, in fact. They need to be secretive, but people can know that they exist... just not what they do.”

“Like Mormons?” I can be snippy in the wee hours. Also, I’ve never trusted Mormons.

There was a pause. “Eh? No, not... well, perhaps. I’ve got a machine that I want kept secret, and I think that Mormons may be too public. Find me something obscure.”

“A machine?” I asked. “What size?”

“I don’t know yet,” he said, as if it were the most trivial of details. “I’m going to have it built. The cult is the important part. Once we have that, it can be properly prepared for the machine.”

“The machine that hasn’t been built yet.”

“Yes.” Another pause. “Well, get to it.”

“Do you want me to go out and physically find this cult, or can I just tell you about ones that I research?”

“For now, just research,” the Fool said graciously. “But make sure that you get a good idea of their size and location. And beliefs,” he added as an afterthought.

“I’ll get right on it,” I said. “I’ll compile a list of prospects for when you figure out the machine.”

I got out of bed and surfed the Web. There are a surprising number of small religious sects in Los Angeles, and a lot of them have their own websites. Even the infamous Heaven’s Gate cult had one. Frightening thought, isn’t it?

Another frightening thought was the fact that it was only fifteen minutes from the time of the Fool’s phone call until the time I had a list of prospective cults. Most of them were splinter groups of established religions, some were voodoo, and there was even a chapter of the Church of Satan. The one that ended up at the top of my list was known as the Well Wishers.

The name alone was worth it. I thought at first that it was a group that wished for love, or peace, so on. The truth was stranger.

The central altar for these freaks (I don’t apologize for the term) was an actual well, which was in the center of their church. The church itself was a shack, out in the middle of nowhere. Although by now you can guess, these freaks believed that throwing coins into their altar could make their wishes come true. Their website had a wealth of information about their beliefs, including a success rate, by percentage, of the wishes. I knew that the Fool would love the freaks as much as I had grown to.

In retrospect, I should have gone back to sleep and called the Fool in the morning. Instead, I called him right away on my infernal cell phone. I call it infernal because it was made in Hell, not because it irritates me.

“Our Lady of the Horrible Tumor,” Fool answered.

“I found our baby,” I announced.

I could tell that the Fool was head-over-heels in love with the Well Wishers. They seemed to exceed his every expectation.

“I knew you’d make a fantastic lackey,” Fool told me. “All that in less than a half hour! As long as you’re on a roll, go see the Engineer.”

Oh crap.

“Who is that and where are they?” I asked, when I should have been asking “Why should I?”

“Some White Zombie fan you are,” Fool said accusingly. “The Creature of the Wheel, the Master of the Infernal Engines. The Engineer. Just go to the Kawasaki dealer near you. I need the Wonderful Machine, and I need it to fit in that well the wishers have.”

“How will I know the Engineer?” I asked it without thinking.

“Look for the demon,” the Fool said flatly, then hung up. Even if I hadn’t asked, I doubt if anyone would be at the dealership at one in the morning. I put some clothes on and drove the two miles to the dealership. Sure enough, the parking lot was empty. I wondered briefly how to get inside, before a demon emerged from the front doors.

She was hot. Other than my sort-of girlfriend Alice, I’ve never been more attracted to anyone. The Engineer was six feet tall, with marigold yellow skin, ruby red eyes, and long, delicate horns that added another foot to her height. She folded her arms and regarded me with a cool expression. I wondered if the Fool had called ahead. I presumed that he must have.

“I came on a Fool’s errand,” I announced, proud of my wit. There was a slight movement of the Engineer’s lips, but whether it was a smile or a sneer I couldn’t tell.

“Come inside,” she said, holding the door open.

I went inside. There were motorcycles everywhere.

“Do you build these?” I asked her.

“I build special ones,” the Engineer replied. She closed and locked the doors behind us, then looked at me. “The Fool must trust you very much to tell you about me,” she said.

“That’s why they call him Fool,” I replied, and this time there was no mistaking a faint smile on the Engineer’s face.

“You and he share the same sense of humor,” she commented. “I wonder if the both of you have the same sense of morality.”

“I’m not sure,” I answered. I really wasn’t sure; the Fool and I are friends, in a way, but I can’t say for sure what his beliefs are. I don’t think he really knows mine, for that matter; part of the reason the Fool likes people so much is because they surprise him.

The Engineer waited a second, probably for my punchline. When she saw that I wasn’t saying anything further, she motioned for me to follow and opened up a hole in the floor. She descended the stairs that it contained.

Almost immediately after starting down the stairs, I heard heavy metal echoing up to me. I was starting to think that the whole ‘devil music’ rumors weren’t exaggerated. Maybe demons just appreciate the rare praise they get.

At the bottom of the stairs was a real mad scientist’s lab. Weird compounds were laying out, with no kind of containers to hold them, chemicals fizzed, and electronic components beeped at each other. The only normal piece of equipment was the boom box in the corner, which was the source of music.

“This is where it all happens?” I asked.

The Engineer looked at me. I don’t think she was too familiar with slang.

I cleared my throat. “What’s this Wonderful Machine that my boss wants?”

“A wishing machine,” the Engineer replied. She went to a collection of electronic components and started connecting pieces with her bare hands. It was pretty cool; she was like a living welding torch.

I watched her work. I’m not sure why, but I found it sexy. “What demonic affiliation are you?” I asked.

By the way she looked at me, I was guessing I’d just asked the demonic equivalent of “What’s your sign?” She went back to work.

“Not Gluttony,” I said aloud. I hadn’t met any demons other than the Fool, and a rather dumb one named Craig. I wanted to learn what I could from the Engineer.

“Not Wrath,” I continued. I watched the Engineer’s face as I spoke. “Not Sloth, or Lust. Envy!”

Those ruby eyes went my way sharply. I knew I was right.

“That’s why you’re helping the Fool,” I said. “This plan promotes both Pride and Envy.”

The Engineer continued to regard me impassively. I decided to stare back at her and wait for her to respond.

“You’re perceptive,” she said eventually. “How did you know I wasn’t Greed or another demon of Pride?”

“When I asked you if you built the bikes upstairs,” I explained, “you said you built “special ones,” which means you aren’t trying to inspire Greed. Greed comes from wanting more of a thing than you need, not wanting something that’s unique, unless it’s for a huge collection of similar items.”

The Engineer nodded.

“And for Pride, I just knew that the Fool wouldn’t ever work with another demon of Pride. He likes to think of himself as the number one in his field, next to Lucifer.”

She looked impressed. “I can see why the Fool put you in his service,” she said.

I had to smile. “So, what makes you the top of your field?” I asked her, “since my boss obviously only works with the best.”

The Engineer turned back to her work, but kept talking. “I get my title because I engineered the industrial revolution,” she said. “I and a group of colleagues arranged for the Great Depression. That makes me the top of my field.”

Those were some credentials. I decided to keep quiet and watch the Engineer do her thing. She worked for hours, and I wished I’d just stayed at home instead of coming in and sitting there like furniture. I entertained the idea of trying to read the Engineer’s notes, but she wrote in coded ancient Sumerian, which somehow I neglected to learn. I really should brush up.

When it was done, the Wonderful Machine was the size of an engine block. It was silent, which was more ominous than if it had been beeping and whirring. The Engineer picked it up and handed it to me.

And I collapsed.

Since selling my soul, I’ve gotten much physically stronger than I was during life. I’m as strong as a guy twice my size, and I can carry two hundred and fifty pounds with some difficulty. The Wonderful Machine was somewhere around three-fifty, four hundred pounds. I was painfully trapped beneath it, listening to my ribs crack.

The Engineer put her slender hands on her hips and looked down at me, like she was waiting for me to stop kidding around. After watching me gasp and flail for a while, she reached out one long, slight arm, and plucked the Wonderful Machine off of me.

I knew before that size isn’t a reliable indicator of strength when it comes to demons, but the Engineer’s ratio of size to strength still caught me off guard. I would have said so, but I was busy hemorrhaging and crying.

“You can’t carry it?” The Engineer was either genuinely surprised or really sadistic.

“No!” I gasped from the ground. “I’m a human!”

The Engineer set the machine back on the bench it had come from, then put her hands on her hips again and looked at me. I think she was annoyed.

“You people,” she said.

I wobbled back to my feet. “What people?” I asked her.

“People,” she replied. With a sigh, she added “I suppose I’ll have to teach you the Carrying Trick.”

I was going to suggest using a trolley, but I liked her way better. I already knew how to do the Fire Trick, where I spit a fireball into my hand and keep it burning, and I couldn’t convince the Fool to teach me any new ones. That the Engineer was just going to show me how to do another one was really cool.

It took all of ten minutes to learn the Carrying Trick. It doesn’t so much seem to make what you’re carrying lighter, as it seems to make you keep from dropping it. My whole body ached as I carried the Wonderful Machine up the stairs, and my Honda sank back on its tires when I loaded the trunk.

The sun was just coming up. It was roughly five o’clock in the morning, and I considered dropping the Wonderful Machine off at the Fool’s house. He would have just told me to take it to the Well Wishers church, though, so I decided to skip the middleman.

The shack was even more run down than the pictures I’d seen on the internet. I subjected my aching body to another Carrying Trick, and climbed into the well inside the shack.

The Wonderful Machine fit neatly at the bottom, in a puddle of water. There were all kinds of coins down there. I took the quarters, in case I had to do laundry later.

Climbing out of a well is a lot harder than climbing in, especially when you got your feet wet at the bottom. I started up, and slid back down. I did that a couple of times before I started to worry.

I managed to get out. If I hadn’t, I’m sure the Fool would have let me stay down there for the rest of eternity, or I could have convinced one of the Well Wishing freaks to wish me out of the well.

By the time I’d climbed out, I saw cars pulling up. My Honda was parked out front, so I had no chance to hide. If it hadn’t taken me an hour to climb back out of the well, I would have been fine.

I decided to try and act natural. As much as I could while wearing soaked trousers.

The people that entered the shack looked exactly like I expected Well Wishers to look like: old and crazy. You know those hippies from the 1960s? The ones that never gave up the lifestyle became Well Wishers. The first three people I saw, two women and one man, were at least in their fifties. The man had a long, scraggly beard with clothes that didn’t fit him properly, and John Lennon glasses. Both the women wore headbands with floral patterns, and bifocals. These were not my kind of people.

“Whoah,” the old man said, reminding me of Tommy Chong. “What did you do, man? Did you fall in?”

“I climbed down in it,” I replied honestly.

“Why would you do that?” one of the women asked.

More cars were pulling up outside. I resigned myself to staying for the ceremonies.

“I saw your website,” I said. “I wanted to see if there was anything special about your well.”

In a way, that was true.

“Oh, you saw the site, man?” Tommy Chong’s clone asked. “You know, Nancy here did the work for that.”

“It was very informative,” I told Nancy. She thanked me.

“Is it all right if I watch your ceremonies?” I asked, as more of the freaks filtered in.

“Sure, man,” Chong told me. I sat in a corner and tried not to talk to anyone.

The actual ceremonies, once they started, resembled more of a group therapy activity than any kind of religion. All the hippies sat in a big circle and talked about feelings and what was going on in their lives. The youngest people there were a trio of sixteen year olds, who held the sacred responsibility of recording past wishes that came true. Other than them, pretty much everyone were in their fifties.

They kept inviting me to join in. I wanted to complain that every time I meet a sexy demon, she crushes me with an engine block, but knowing these people they would have turned it into something impure. I declined.

The ceremonies closed with the actual wishing. Tommy Chong stood up and asked if anyone wanted to make a request of the Well Spirit. There were only two that did; I don’t mind saying that I was disappointed.

The first person up was a big fatso. Hippie Santa Claus, I decided. He wished to lose weight, and hearing that made me giddy. I couldn’t wait to see the results.

The other wisher was a woman, who wished for the safe recovery of her husband in the hospital. I can’t fault that one.

That was that. Tommy Chong tried to catch me in a conversation, but I managed to get to my car. I called Fool on my drive home, and told him the situation. He, too, was eager to see what happened with the weight loss wish.

When I returned to the shack the next day, Santa Claus was at least fifty pounds lighter. He couldn’t talk enough about how good he felt. The other wisher’s husband had made a full recovery the day of the wish. I listened with interest.

There were eight people that wanted to make wishes that day: Four wished for money, two for world peace, one for his car to run like new, and one for his ex-wife to come back to him. I didn’t have much stock in the world peace wishes, but I thought the other ones would be good to see. I started making my own list, similar to the one the teenagers kept.

The day after, Santa was looking lean and mean. Not only was the fat disappearing, but muscle was showing. The four people who had wished for money had each won a hundred dollars on a call-in radio show. The gearhead’s car ran like new, and lonely boy’s ex-wife came back to him. She was remarried, but she didn’t care.

I was the only one that appreciated the irony.

No word on that world peace deal. I wasn’t surprised.

That day, a dozen people made wishes. The four people who had wished for money before wished for more money today. So did the two who had wished for world peace, go figure. Three new people wished for money. One guy wished that he’d get the rest of the week off, a woman wished that the screenplay she was writing would get made into a movie, and one of the sixteen year olds made a wish without speaking. The clone of Tommy Chong admonished him.

“Hey, man, if you don’t feel comfortable to tell others your wish, okay, maybe you should question if it’s a wish you want to make,” Tommy said.

It ignited a pretty heated argument. I could tell that seeing wishes actually granted was changing these people. Changing them into something worth watching, as far as I was concerned.

The majority were on the side of Tommy Chong, in feeling that any wish worth making was something worth sharing. The minority, I thought it was interesting, had all three young people in it. They felt that a wish was your own, and that you didn’t need to share it. The arguments started off civil, and didn’t take long to descend into name calling.

“I wish you were dead!”

I don’t know who shouted it, but I could tell that the point of no return had been reached. The room went silent, with all the freaks looking fearfully at one another. I wasn’t sure what the appropriate response from me might have been, but I decided that if I sat quietly and tried not to laugh maniacally, I could go unnoticed.

I did.

Nothing more was said as the freaks filtered out. They continued to stare at each other as they left, until it was only me by myself with the well. Only then did I laugh.

I got the feeling that the Well Wishers would probably be forming alliances in secret, after what had happened that day. It was a thought that gave me a warm feeling through the night.

I showed up an hour early to the ceremony, without my car. I was just in time to see the teens drive up.

The three that had already been in the group were there, but so were two more. The new ones had the same kind of hippie look, but I think they also had a more dangerous edge to them. Flower children with knives, or something.

They talked excitedly about the wishes coming true and talked about wishes they could make. The teen that hadn’t told anyone about his wish yesterday couldn’t talk enough about it today; he’d scored with that cheerleader he’d been dreaming about. The guy was bragging, but the low popularity of everyone he was bragging to made it seem only natural. Even the female teens were . . . well, they were basically the same as the guys. They were all just thinking about the person they wanted to score with.

They all made scoring wishes, giving specific names. I’m guessing that they were all popular kids at school, but they might well have been pop stars; I’m bad when it comes to recognizing teen idols these days.

The kids didn’t wait around for the ceremony: they left as soon as they’d made their wishes. The usual crowd started showing up afterward; Santa Claus was looking almost sickly by now, he was so skinny. Lonely Boy had bullet holes in the doors of his car, and it made me wonder how he and his ex were doing.

The mood was tense. Everyone noticed that the teenagers were absent, and even though no accusations were made aloud, a lot of suspicious looks went back and forth. The wishes were hit and miss: everyone who’d made a wish already, got nothing. The three new wishers that had asked for money inherited from long lost relatives, each more than ten thousand dollars. The screenplay writer was talking to Jerry Bruckheimer in her off hours, and the guy who’d wished for the rest of the week off had gotten fired. That one made me smile.

Instead of the usual support group style sharing, this meeting started off with arguments. Whether wishing was a good idea, and why had some wishes had good results while others had bad, the people who’d wasted their wishes for world peace just felt shafted all around. They hadn’t even gotten the hundred dollars that their greedier counterparts had gotten.

It was hard to believe that these were the same freaks that I’d seen on the first day I’d carried in the Wonderful Machine. These were more like Hell’s Angels than hippies. Shouting matches turned into pushing and shoving, shoves gave way to punches. Then, somebody threw a penny.

Not everyone noticed. I saw it because I was far outside of the emotional conflict that the Well Wishers were having. As soon as the woman who’d written the screenplay dropped dead, though, everybody realized what was happening.

Coins flew. People were dropping like flies amidst the sound of jingling change, and about half the congregation was dead by the time Tommy Chong pointed at me and shouted, “It’s him that’s doing it! I just wished he were dead, and he’s still alive!”

I don’t think the real Chong would ever have said that.

When the villagers tried to kill Frankenstein’s monster, they didn’t have half the fury of the aging hippies that chased after me. Even though they were old, delusional hippie freaks, they chased me for miles through the wilderness of Los Angeles county. Some of them had wished for weapons, I think, because a lot of them had axes that they hadn’t had before. Of course, I got away. I’m young, they’re old, and I had coward speed on my side.

That was pretty much the end of my involvement with the Wonderful Machine. Weeks later, I did check back on the Well Wishers church; the congregation that meets there these days has a very different look than it used to. They meet in secret, at midnight, and always leave someone behind to shoot trespassers.

A lot of the cars I had last seen outside are still there, rusting. A lot of dirt mounds have sprung up around them, though. Tommy Chong looks a little more like Charles Manson and sounds a lot more like a fire-and-brimstone southern Baptist than a hippie.

Be careful what you wish for. Or at least, check the bottom of the damned well first.