Mojo and the Pickle Jar

by Douglas Bell

  “Shit.” The mean-looking kid leaned in closer. “You’re the one in danger, man. Your ass is in one deep crack.”

  “No, really. There’s something coming. It’ll be here soon. We’ve got to get out of here right away! All of us!”

  “He’s from Texas, man. I recognize the accent,” a voice from the crowd said.

  Oh, shit.

  The kid grinned. “Is that right?” The grin grew. “You from Texas, man? You a land grabber?”

  Mojo glanced to the side. A girl was hanging out the side window of the car watching him. She had a too-plump face and disheveled black hair. She was chewing gum. There was a long piece of rusted pipe lying on the ground below her.

  “So what’re we gonna do with him?” The kid consulted his buddies. “What’re we gonna do with some Texas pendejo who comes sneaking up on us in the middle of the night?”

  “Do him up good,” a deep voice suggested.

  “Let him go!” Grandmother came hobbling into the circle of light. “Let Joseph go!”

  The kid turned towards Grandmother. His grip on Mojo’s throat loosened for an instant. Mojo broke away. In one swift move he leaped to the side, picked up the piece of pipe, and whirled back around.

  The girl shrieked and disappeared inside the car. The kid turned back and, seeing Mojo with the pipe, raised his fists.

  Mojo rushed forward. He had the pipe in both hands. He swung the pipe above his head. Someone screamed, “Look out!” Several alarmed faces dropped out of the circle. But Mojo wasn’t even thinking of attacking the Lowriders. He had a much better idea.

  At the last moment Mojo spun to the side. He lifted the pipe over the hood of the kid’s car and held it there. Poised. Ready to strike. The hood gleamed a deep rich red beneath the pipe.

  “Get back!” Mojo shouted. “Get back or I trash the car!”

  “Shit!” It was a cry of anguish. “Not my Chevy, man! I got ten coats of lacquer in that finish!”

  “I mean it!” Mojo warned. “I’ll do it!”

  “Shit! Get back!” The kid turned anxiously to the others. “Get back! He’s crazy!”

  Muttering ominously, the Lowriders moved away from Mojo.

  “Show them the heart,” Mojo ordered Grandmother. “Show them the heart and explain to them why we’ve got to get out of here.”

  “You touch that car and you’re dead meat, pendejo,” the kid warned him. “You put one scratch on that finish and I’m gonna put you in the graveyard, man.”

  “Just look at the heart,” Mojo told him.

  Grandmother shoved the pickle jar into the kid’s hands.

  * * *

  The kid held the jar for a long time. He held it in front of his face and then at arm’s reach and then right under the flashlight beam. He studied it. The heart was in fine form. Mojo could see it bubbling all the way from the car.

  Grandmother talked to the kid as he examined the heart. She explained about the beast and how the beast was after the heart but would undoubtedly kill them all since it was already tormenting them by not killing them right away and that the demon was either a giant spider or a pack of dogs but either way was an agent of the Great Deceiver himself.

  Mojo didn’t know about the kid, but it didn’t make any sense to him and he even knew what she was talking about.

  After a few more minutes of studying, the kid handed the jar off to a pockmarked boy in a turquoise shirt and turned towards Mojo. The kid had a very serious expression on his face. Mojo assumed the kid was either going to kill him or offer to drive him to the nearest mental hospital.

  “I’m Chuy.” The kid held out his hand. “Sorry for the misunderstanding, but you know how it is.”

  “Sure.” Mojo dropped the pipe gratefully and shook Chuy’s hand.

  “That’s Lupe.” Chuy nodded at the car window. Mojo turned and smiled. Lupe popped her gum and smiled back at him.

  Mojo turned back to the kid. “Listen, Chuy, I’m glad to meet you and all, but we’ve got to get out of here fast,” Mojo said. “That thing’ll be here any minute.”

  “The beast?”

  “Yeah. That’s right. The beast.”

  “You know, I’m not surprised, man.” Chuy looked out into the dark and shook his head. “No, I’m not surprised at all.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No. I can see why the devil would be after his heart. I can see it because I never really believed it. No matter what they said, I knew he couldn’t really be dead. And this heart proves it, man. This heart is the proof he never really died.”

  “Who?” Mojo was confused. “Who never really died?”

  “The King, man. The King. Elvis. I knew the minute I saw that heart that it was Elvis’.” His voice dropped to a conspiratorial level. “I expected it, man. I knew El Rey would be back. I knew they couldn’t keep him down.”

  “Huh…”

  “Other people might have lost faith, but not me, man. I still got a statue of him on my dash. Procelain, not plastic. Hand-painted. They said he was dead, but I kept the statue anyway. Right next to the Virgin, man.”

  Mojo started to correct Chuy but then stopped himself. What difference did it make?

  “Well, I’m glad you understand, then. Glad you understand how important it is to protect the heart. We’ve got to move fast, though, if we want to save it. We’ve got to—”

  The beast roared.

  The beast roared from the darkness beyond the cars. The sound was so loud that Mojo thought for an instant the thing had slipped up and was standing right next to him.

  Mojo jumped. He whipped his head around. Where had it come from? The woods? Yes! The woods! It was just in front of them! They had to move!

  “We’ve got to go! Now!” Mojo grabbed Chuy’s arm. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

  Chuy was staring off in the direction of the roar. “That was it, huh? That was the beast?”

  “That’s right!” Mojo said anxiously. “And now that you’ve heard it, you can imagine how big it is!”

  “Didn’t sound that big to me, man,” Chuy sniffed. “Not big enough to whip Los Lowriders anyway. No, I figure if it tries to screw around with us, we’ll kick its ass.”

  “Wha—?” Mojo stepped back. He didn’t like the sound of this. Not at all. “Kick its ass? Are you crazy?! It’s a demon, for Chrissakes! You can’t whip it! We’ve got to run!”

  Chuy turned slowly towards him. He gave Mojo a long contemptuous look. “Los Lowriders don’t run from nobody, man. Not never. It’s a rule.”

  Mojo opened his mouth but nothing came out. He was stunned. Without words. This crazy, macho bastard actually thought he could fight a demon!

  “Hey!” Chuy waved to the others. “Come over here.”

  Chuy waited until the other Lowriders were gathered around him. Then: “Look, this beast cabrón is coming in after Elvis’ heart. Right into Bartolo County like it owned it, man. Now, we can do one of two things: we can turn chickenshit and run like we’re a bunch of pendejos with no dignity, or we can get our shit together and whip its ass. We gotta decide which.”

  The following discussion was short. Nobody but Mojo seemed to have any interest in running anywhere. Whipping ass was the unanimous choice.

  Mojo stood helplessly by as the meeting broke up and Chuy and his friends went to fetch baseball bats and knives and other assorted weapons from underneath the front seats of their cars.

  “Joseph! You can’t let them do this thing.” Grandmother stepped up beside him. “They’ll be killed!”

  “You think I want them to do it? If it was up to me, we’d already be halfway to Santa Fe by now. I’ve had one run-in with this thing already, and I’m telling you, I wouldn’t lay odds on Rambo and Dirty Harry put together with half the Marine Corps being able to stop it.”

  “There must be something we can do.”

  “Well … yeah. I’ve been thinking about that. You stick close to me. Maybe if Chuy and his buddies can slow the beast up for a minute o
r two, we’ll have enough time to steal his car and get away.”

  “How can you even think of such a thing? We can’t just run away and leave them here to be killed!”

  “We can’t? Okay, okay, I suppose you’re right.” He held up his hands as she stepped angrily towards him. “I’ll try to think of something else.”

  But what, he couldn’t imagine.

  Then it came to him: “Hey! Wait a minute! Light! Bright light! The old monk told me it was afraid of the sunlight!”

  “But it’s night,” Grandmother protested. “There’s no bright light at night.”

  “We can make some! Chuy! Hey! I’ve got an idea!”

  Chuy had just received a long good-luck kiss from Lupe and was climbing out of his car. He had a baseball bat in his hand.

  “What is it? You want me to get you a bat? I’ve got an extra in the trunk.”

  “No. I’ve got something better than a bat. A plan. A plan to stop that thing. Bats won’t do it, but I’ll tell you what will: light. Headlights. We can blind it.” Mojo didn’t know this for sure, but it seemed like a good assumption.

  Chuy pursed his lips. “Could work,” he said after a moment. “I’ve seen some movies where the monsters are afraid of light.”

  “That’s right. That’s how it usually works,” Mojo said eagerly.

  “But what keeps it from going around behind us and sneaking up on us from the back while our headlights are pointed towards the front?”

  Mojo had to think about that one for a moment. “A circle,” he said at last. “We’ll form a circle. Like the old wagon trains.”

  “No.” Grandmother shook her head. “I have an even better idea. A way to trap the beast.”

  “What’s that?”

  Grandmother explained and Mojo was sorry he had asked.

  * * *

  Mojo gripped the jar tightly in his hands. The woods in front of him were dark. Dark and silent. Nothing moved. There weren’t even any crickets chirping. He could feel sweat forming on his forehead in spite of the night chill.

  Mojo sniffed the air. It was out there. He could smell it. It smelled like an open sewer with burning tires floating in it.

  Something rustled in the brush underneath the cottonwood trees and Mojo stopped breathing. The rustling continued for a moment longer, then something darted away into the woods. Mojo took a shuddering breath. A mouse. Or a rabbit.

  His relief was short-lived. There was another sound out in the darkness. A crunch. A heavy sound of something breaking. Mojo tensed. It was coming. Sneaking up on him. He knew it. Sneaking up until it was close enough to jump out of the bushes and grab him and—

  “Mojo.” The voice was not a voice at all. It was a creaking door that formed words. He had heard it before.

  Every muscle in Mojo’s body went rigid. The voice was less than fifteen feet in front of him. In the bushes.

  “Why don’t you run? Mojo?”

  Mojo took an involuntary step backwards. This was crazy. It was insane. He should have never listened to the old woman in the first place. Where had she gotten this idea from anyway? Staking out lambs for coyotes? He could be killed. Probably would be. And what about the Lowriders? Could he trust a gang of Lowriders? They were probably back there right now passing around joints and making out with their girlfriends.

  “Run, Mojo.” The bushes shook. Something huge and black and foul was rising up out of the bushes. It rose up until it brushed the overhanging tree branches and then it rose some more. It had glow-in-the-dark eyes. They looked like railroad lanterns.

  Mojo would have liked to run, but he couldn’t. He was frozen. Still as a Popsicle.

  “You won’t run? Mojo?” the creaking door creaked.

  Mojo opened his mouth to say he’d run if that was what it wanted, but nothing came out.

  “Then I will take you here.”

  The forest trembled then shuddered then erupted. There was a great rattling of bony parts. A wall of blackness surged forward. The yellow eyes surged forward with it.

  Mojo unfroze. He stumbled backwards.

  “Turn on the lights!” he screamed. “Turn on the friggin’ headlights!”

  The headlights of the cars behind Mojo flashed on. Not all on high-beam as Grandmother had directed, but enough so that the beast was caught in a blinding glare.

  The beast screamed. It twisted in the headlights. It wasn’t exactly a giant spider, but it was close. It was a sort of giant centipede-scorpion-spider. The most amazing thing about it was its face. It had more or less human features. If its mouth hadn’t been turned sideways and filled with dripping white fangs, Mojo imagined it would have looked something like his Uncle Ort.

  The demon screamed again. Coiled and uncoiled. It was even uglier than Mojo had first supposed. Uglier than an old barmaid in broad daylight. Its breath burned like battery acid fumes. Mojo turned and ran behind the nearest car, an old Buick with Cadillac fins welded onto the trunk. Its rear bumper was no more than four inches off the ground. Mojo crouched behind the bumper and peeked over one of the fins. The demon was on fire.

  The demon was writhing in blue fire. The blue fire shot off it in long, sparkling streamers. The blue fire had no heat. Mojo was only twenty feet from it and felt nothing but the cool mountain air.

  The blue fire grew in intensity. Became brighter and brighter. It swirled around the beast in a burning shell. The shell of blue fire was so bright that Mojo had to squint to see the beast twisting underneath it.

  Then poof and the fire was gone and the beast with it. Just poof. Suddenly there was no more fire. No more beast. A few whiffs of grey smoke drifting on the yellow headlights was all.

  For a moment there was silence, then someone began honking his horn. In a moment all the Lowriders were honking their horns and yelling congratulations at one another. The sound was deafening.

  The front door of Chuy’s car opened. Grandmother struggled out. “Joseph?” she called anxiously, raising her voice above the horns and the voices. “Where are you? Are you all right?”

  Mojo stood up. “I’m back here. I’m fine.”

  “You did it, Joseph. The beast is dead.” Grandmother hurried to him, her eyes shining. “I’m so proud of you!” She grabbed him and hugged him fiercely.

  Mojo, embarrassed, broke away. Chuy was coming around the other side of the car. He was running a comb lazily through his hair as he walked. He had an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. He sauntered up to Mojo and Grandmother.

  “Well, I guess the devil won’t be coming around Bartolo County no more after this, man,” Chuy said as he reached into his back pocket, pulled out a book of matches, and lit his cigarette. “I guess he’s learned his lesson, man; I guess he’s learned you don’t fuck around with Los Lowriders.”

  10

  Someone was fucking around with Narn.

  Someone was playing games.

  Narn eased the sheets off his chest. It was pitch-black, can’t-find-your-own-ass dark in the motel room. He rolled quitely over and felt on the nightstand for his gun. It wasn’t there. He remembered he had left it hanging in the closet.

  Narn rolled back. His eyes swept the darkness. There was someone else in the room with him. Narn could feel him. He pulled one leg slowly up out from under the sheets. Then the other.

  A tiny light flashed just beyond the end of the bed. A brief sparkle. Than another. Then more sparkles. Then still more until a cloud of sparkling lights as bright as a Christmas tree was growing, pulsating about the foot of the bed. Narn pulled himself up against the headboard, his eyes widening in astonishment. The sparkling could began to coalesce into several soft blue glows. Then the glows into vague figures.

  Narn stared as the figures rapidly developed faces and details. He blinked in amazement but the figures didn’t go away. Suddenly Narn’s bed was surrounded by a ring of tall thin men dressed in white loincloths with crowns of thorns upon their heads. All the men were bleeding or splattered with blood. All had gaping wounds in t
heir palms and sides and anguished looks upon their faces. A few were garden-variety, American-style Jesuses with long blond hair and blue eyes, but most were Mexican-looking: dark, glowering Jesuses with heavy, Indian features, black-eyed Jesuses with streams of bright red blood trickling down their faces.

  And they weren’t all. Directly behind the Jesuses a second ring of figures was forming, growing out of the first. A ring of women in long, loose robes. These women all had sorrowful faces streaked with tears. Some were holding their hands out in prayerful supplication while still others were pulling their robes open, revealing bright red hearts pierced by silver daggers.

  As Narn stared in amazement, one of the Jesuses floated up and over the foot of his bed. The Jesus was bony and angular. He had a radiant white halo over his head. He was black as pitch.

  Narn studied him. He was obviously supposed to be Jesus, but he wasn’t like any Jesus Narn had ever seen before. In fact, the man wasn’t like anyone Narn had ever seen before, period. The man was the purest, deepest, blackest black man Narn had ever seen.

  “I must speak with you,” the black Christ said in a deep, commanding voice.

  “Wh-who are you?” Narn asked hesitantly.

  “You don’t recognize me?”

  “Jesus?” It felt strange to say it.

  “I’m called the Lord of Chalma. Sometimes the Lord of Villa Seca. I’m a manifestation of the Christ.”

  Narn scowled. Narn wasn’t much on God or gods, whatever the case might be. When Narn was a child, God—in the form of a corpse-white Sunday School teacher named Mr. Spivey—had taken Narn’s last quarter. Narn had never forgiven him for it.

  “A manifestation?” Narn wondered. He squinted at the apparition. “You’re saying you’re not really Jesus?”

  “No. I am Jesus. The Jesus who appears as the Lord of Chalma.”

  “Uh-huh…” Narn wasn’t too sure about this. “What about all these other guys with you? They all Jesus too?”

  “Of course. This is the Lord of Azcapotzalco … and the Lord of Ameca…” The black Christ glanced over his shoulder.