Mojo and the Pickle Jar

by Douglas Bell

“I can’t think of anything else,” Mojo said.

  There was a soft rustling sound near the rear of the lodge. Mojo turned towards it. A deer moved out from under the pines and onto the manicured lawn. A huge buck. He had the biggest rack of antlers Mojo had ever seen. His coat glowed in the dappled light from the forest. The buck sniffed the air and pawed the grass. He stared defiantly at the guards as if daring them to shoot him.

  “Look at that,” Mojo said wonderingly, his eyes glued.

  The guards were as mesmerized by the buck as Mojo. After a quick muttered exchange they stood as still as statues. Finally one of them raised his gun. The buck took a step towards the guard and snorted defiantly. The guard pulled an imaginary trigger and made a soft clicking noise with his tongue. The buck tossed his head. The guard grinned and lowered his gun.

  “Now!” Narn hissed. He grabbed Mojo’s arm and pulled him from behind the bush. They fled across the lawn to the basement window.

  The crow hopped aside.

  The window was unlocked.

  * * *

  They were in a small storeroom. The walls were lined with cardboard cases. The cases had names like “#10 Tomatoes” and “Amigo Food Supply, Inc.” stenciled on them. Mojo shoved the narrow basement window back into place and secured it with a latch. The window was opaque with dirt and grime. There was no danger anyone could look in on them.

  Narn motioned. “This way. There’s a door over here.”

  Mojo didn’t move. He was waiting for the sound of gunfire. When the sound didn’t come he was relieved.

  “Come on,” Narn called impatiently.

  Mojo followed Narn over to the little room’s only exit, a heavy grey fire door with a handle instead of a knob. Narn tugged on the handle. The door didn’t budge. He looked up. There was a dead-bolt lock set just above the handle.

  “Damn.” Narn stepped back from the door. “We’re trapped. Trapped in this gar-hole. It took a whole menagerie to get us in, and now we’ve got to go back out and start all over again!”

  “Maybe not…” Mojo said slowly, eyeing the lock. “Maybe I can pick it.”

  “Pick a dead bolt?” Narn frowned suspiciously. “You a locksmith? Or is this a little trick you picked up in the doping business?”

  “It’s just a talent I have,” Mojo said defensively. “I’m good at locks, keys … all that kind of stuff.”

  “I’ll just bet you are. I—”

  Something squealed. Narn glanced down. There was a rat sitting on one of the cases. It was a fat, sleek brown rat with bright black eyes. The rat was staring up at Narn and wagging its pink tail.

  Narn eyed the rat critically. The rat squealed again. It raised up on its hind legs and twitched its nose and wagged its tail even harder.

  Narn studied the rat for a few seconds longer, then turned to Mojo. “This rat here seems to be acting awfully peculiar for a rat. It’s not another one of your little friends, is it?”

  “I don’t know.” Mojo stepped closer. “It could be.”

  The rat turned and scurried away. It ran to the back of the room and along the wall, leaping from case to case, until it halted underneath an old-fashioned metal coat hook. It turned back to Narn and squeaked loudly. Began hopping up and down.

  Narn walked over to the rat. “Okay. I’m here. What next?” Narn asked the rat.

  The rat flicked at the wall behind it with its nose. The wall was blank except for the coat hook.

  “All right.” Narn reached across and pulled down on the hook. Nothing happened. The rat squealed impatiently. Narn pushed up. The hook slid upwards with a groan, exposing a metal track underneath. There was a low grinding noise. A section of the wall a few feet down swung open. There was a descending stairway visible behind the open section.

  Narn walked over to the opening and looked inside. “Well, well.” He grinned.

  Mojo joined Narn. The rat bounded past them across the cases. Scampered through the opening and onto the stairs.

  “Lead on, Mr. Rat, lead on,” Narn called as he stepped through the doorway.

  * * *

  The rat led them down the staircase and out through a door at its bottom into a long corridor with doorways set off at regular intervals. There was no sign or sound of anyone else.

  “Be quiet,” Narn warned Mojo as they followed the rat down the corridor. “Just because we can’t see anybody doesn’t mean they aren’t around.”

  The corridor appeared to have been chiseled rather than built. Its walls were cold damp stone, as was the floor. The rat’s toenails and Narn’s boots clicked against the stone but Mojo moved silently on his rubber-soled Nikes.

  Narn stopped at the first side door and listened quietly before trying the knob. The knob was frozen. He moved on. The next three doors were locked as well. The fifth, and last, turned easily. Narn stepped inside.

  After a few moments he emerged again. “Come look at this,” he called softly to Mojo.

  Mojo went to the doorway and peered in. The room beyond was good-sized. It was filled from floor to ceiling and wall to wall with plump plastic Baggies. The Baggies were filled with white powder. There wasn’t much question what kind of powder it was.

  “A roomful,” Mojo said wonderingly. “A whole room full of dope.”

  “Something, isn’t it? Enough magic powder in here to keep the whole country sniffling for a month. Yeah, I’d say we’re looking at the makings for the biggest bust ever.” He nodded eagerly, his eyes bright.

  “Not yet!” Mojo warned him. “You’re not making any bust yet! We’ve got to get Juanita out of here first!”

  “Don’t worry,” Narn pushed him out and closed the door behind them. “It’ll keep. They couldn’t move a stash like that with a week’s notice. Which is about seven days longer than I intend to give them.”

  They crept down the corridor. It occurred to Mojo that all the rooms they were passing could be stacked with similar mother lodes of drugs. It was a mind-bending thought.

  The rat led them to the end of the corridor and around a corner into a small alcove. There were no doors in the narrow space, only three blank stone walls. The rat went straight to the back wall of the alcove and—rising onto its hind feet—began scratching at the stone.

  Mojo and Narn followed it.

  “Another door?” Narn ran his hands over the stone, feeling for cracks. He bent down. “What is it, Mr. Rat? Is there another secret door here? Is that what you’re trying to tell us?”

  The rat squeaked angrily. It swished its long tail in annoyance. It motioned upwards with its nose.

  “Something up there? I don’t see any … Oh, yes. Now I do.”

  “What is it?” Mojo asked.

  “That heating vent.” Narn pointed. “That must be it; there’s nothing else. He must want us to climb into that duct.”

  Mojo looked up. There was an old iron grate set high on the wall. The grate was hanging from one screw. Behind the grate was a dark mouth.

  “Get in that? Inside it?” This didn’t sound like a good idea to Mojo.

  “What’s the matter? You’re not claustrophobic, are you?”

  “What?”

  “You’re not frightened of being closed up in tight spaces, are you? Like elevators? You ever been afraid in an elevator?”

  “No. Of course not,” Mojo said indignantly. Mojo had never actually been in an elevator.

  “Good.” Narn reached down and picked up the rat. He dropped the creature into his shirt pocket. Bent over and, putting his hands on his knees, braced himself. “You go first, then.”

  * * *

  The heating duct—like the rooms and corridors—was cut from solid bedrock. Mojo inched his way down it. Mr. Rat was just ahead, his long tail swishing in front of Mojo’s nose.

  “See anything?” Narn asked from behind.

  “Not yet. There’s a couple of lights up ahead, though. Probably more vents.”

  Mojo worked his way to the first vent. Peeked out through the louvered opening. Th
e room beyond was filled with several long, stainless-steel tables covered with lab apparatus. There was metal shelving against the walls. The shelving was stacked with neat rows of unmarked canisters of chemicals. There was a pushcart near the door loaded with the white plastic Baggies.

  Mojo crept on.

  The next vent opened onto an even larger lab. There were people this time: two men in white smocks standing beside a Bunsen burner. The men were talking quietly together, but their voices were too low to hear. Mojo waited until he was sure they were too preoccupied with their conversation to notice, then squeezed past.

  The duct continued another twenty feet in a straight line, then made a sharp turn to the left. Around the turn was a broad shaft heading directly down. Mojo paused at the edge of the shaft and peered over. There was soft light coming up from a hazy bottom far below. There was a column of metal rungs set in the stone walls. The rungs descended towards the haze.

  Narn jabbed Mojo from behind. “What’re you waiting for?”

  Mojo was just about to step off onto one of the rungs when he heard the rat squeak. He glanced to the side. There was a crack in the stone along the back edge of the shaft, just wide enough for a man to squeeze through. The rat was peering out at him from the crack.

  Mojo and Narn followed the rat through the crack and down a long descending tunnel. The deeper they went, the cooler the air became, the more cavelike. Just when Mojo was beginning to worry they were going to descend forever, the tunnel opened up into a broad corridor. The corridor was level. It ran perpendicular to the tunnel, back underneath the mountain behind the lodge.

  The rat squealed at them and then scampered away up the corridor. Mojo and Narn followed. The corridor finally turned in front of a wall of sparkling granite. Mojo stepped around the turn and found himself in a new, narrower corridor with chalk-white walls.

  A tiny pinprick of light was hanging in the corridor just ahead, waiting. Mojo stopped, not sure what to make of it. The light wasn’t coming from a bulb or a torch or a candle or anything else. It wasn’t attached to anything; it was just there, floating alone in midair. As Mojo watched, the point of light expanded. It grew quickly to the size of a tennis ball. Then even more rapidly to the size of a basketball.

  Narn rounded the corner and bumped up behind him.

  The light continued to expand rapidly. It became a dazzling white glare that filled half the corridor. Mojo had to squint to see it.

  “What the—” Narn began.

  Suddenly the ball of light shot forward. Mojo tried to raise his hands to cover his face, but there wasn’t enough time. He heard Narn gasp as the ball of light broke over them in a blinding explosion.

  * * *

  Mojo blinked until he could see again. There was a young boy floating ahead of him in midair where the pinprick of light had been. The boy was dressed in a long white gown with ruffled cuffs and a short embroidered cloak. He wore a floppy felt hat with a long purple plume. His face seemed too mature for his plump child’s body.

  Mojo studied the child for a moment, thinking he had seen him somewhere before. Then suddenly it came to him. That hat, he remembered that funny-looking hat. He had seen it in one of the pictures in Grandmother’s house.

  Mojo heard something strike the floor behind him. He glanced over his shoulder. Narn was stretched out cold on the stone floor of the corridor. There was another body lying beside his.

  Mojo’s eyes widened. It was him. It was his body lying next to Narn’s. He was looking at himself. He—the second Mojo—was unconscious. His hands were folded neatly across his chest. His chest was heaving softly. He had a smile on his face.

  Mojo turned back to the child. He felt strange. Like he was drunk, but not quite. The child floated closer. He held out a hand to Mojo. Mojo looked at the hand. It was transparent. He looked down and saw that his body was transparent too. It was a disconcerting sight. He tried to touch his stomach, to make sure he was still there, but his hand passed right through to his backbone.

  The child took one of Mojo’s transparent hands in his own. His touch was warm, but more like the warmth of light than flesh. He raised Mojo’s hand up, pointing it at the roof of the corridor, and then squeezed it.

  A quick shock ran down Mojo’s spine.

  He began to grow.

  12

  Mojo sprung like a weed.

  In only seconds Mojo grew up to the ceiling of the corridor and then through it. He shot through solid bedrock. Layers of rock strata strobed past his face. Then a crumbling topsoil for an instant before rocketing up into the dappled light of a forest.

  Mojo rose up from the forest floor and into the trees. He was growing like the vine in Jack and the Beanstalk. His spreading shoulders engulfed an ancient pine, and he felt a tingling current. It took him a moment to realize that the current was a thought. The thought was as slow as sap. It was: “Who?”

  Mojo’s head broke from the forest and ballooned up into a blue sky. The child was still beside him. They rose into the sky together like twin mushroom clouds. Mojo looked down. The earth was flying away from him. His feet were above ground now. His feet were so large that they covered most of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The tip of one shoe was crossing Santa Fe and expanding down the valley towards Albuquerque.

  Mojo’s head tore through a thin cloud layer and through that into an even thinner layer and through that into a rapidly darkening sky. He had a sense that he was growing at a faster and faster rate. Growing exponentially. A jet buzzed under his nose. He reached out to touch it, but it was already gone, dropping down past his chest like a stone, even though Mojo knew that it wasn’t the plane falling, but himself rising.

  Mojo left the atmosphere and entered space.

  He looked back again as he flew past the moon. The earth was dwindling underneath him. For a moment it looked like the pictures from the space probes, a blue orb wrapped in swirling white clouds. Then it faded to a blue dot. Then to a white dot no brighter than a star.

  Mojo mounted up through the solar system. The sun was a shining disk at his feet, the planets revolving around his swelling body. He sparkled as he passed through the rings of Saturn. Comets and meteors too numerous to count shot through him. The child put a hand on his shoulder and gave him a reassuring smile. Mojo could see entire constellations behind the child’s smile.

  Mojo grew past Pluto—at least he assumed it was Pluto, a small dark planet with nothing near it—and out into the black spaces between the stars.

  The sun quickly receded until it was no more than a bright dot. Mojo was going faster now. Ever faster. He passed his first star, a quick blur of light that passed through one of his outstretched hands. Then another. Then ten more. Then a hundred. Stars were whipping past Mojo like highway markers; he couldn’t believe there were so many. He stretched out a hand towards a glowing mass of stars that lay far beyond the sun. In seconds his hand reached the mass. Seconds more and his elbow was there. His shoulders were so wide that they stretched across a thousand stars at once.

  Mojo rose up out of the sea of stars and into a blackness that was even blacker than the spaces between the stars. He looked down and saw a slowly spinning disk of light at his feet. He recognized the disk as the Milky Way. He tried to see if his feet were still touching the earth, but the earth—if it was still there—was far too small to be seen.

  Mojo grew on.

  Mojo grew until the Milky Way was no more than a bright blur. He passed through a new galaxy, a great spinning wheel of light. Then a gas cloud that flickered with dozens of colors.

  Then more and more.

  Soon Mojo was blasting through dozens of galaxies at a time. As far as he could see, there were galaxies. There were millions of them. Maybe billions of them. Maybe more than that. As far as Mojo could see, there were great clouds of stars, some so huge and vast and bright that he could have dropped his own galaxy into any one of them without any more effect than dropping a teaspoon of water into an ocean.

 
Mojo soared on up through the black night of galaxies. His head was enormous now. It encompassed four galaxies at once. Then eight. Then so many that he couldn’t count them all. His body was expanding in every direction. He looked over at the child. The child gave him another reassuring smile.

  Mojo grew even larger. As he grew, the galaxies shrank. The galaxies grew ever smaller and smaller relative to Mojo. Soon even the greatest galaxies had dwindled to no more than bright sparks in the universal night. And as these sparks drew closer, ever tighter together, they formed galaxies of their own. Galaxies of galaxies. He saw great spinning wheels of billions of galaxies join together and rush towards him. As he watched these new galaxies form, it struck him that this might be an infinite process. It struck him that if he grew large enough, he might eventually watch these galaxies of galaxies form galaxies of their own and so on out to infinity.

  It was enough to make your head swim.

  Then even the greatest conglomerations of stars began to dwindle, and he found himself traveling through a fire storm of tiny, close-packed sparks. After a short time the sparks faded, and soon he was in a miasma, a white fog where there was nothing large enough to be seen directly, just a bright hazy light stretching away from him in every direction.

  Mojo revolved in the fog. A sense of vertigo seized him. Everywhere he looked, everything looked the same. There was no up, no down, no direction of any kind. Nothing but fog. Infinite white fog. Mojo had grown so big that there was no body in the universe large enough for him to see anymore. Even the galaxies of galaxies had shrunk to no more than faint, diffused light. He had literally outgrown the universe.

  Mojo spun in the white fog. Fear shot through him. How would he get back? What if he grew forever out here in this white nothingness with no way to return to earth and Juanita? His eyes darted desperately. Then he felt a touch on his shoulder. He spun around and the child was pointing into the fog ahead of them.

  The child was pointing towards an area where the white fog seemed even thicker. At first Mojo couldn’t see anything, but then he caught a brief flicker of motion. Something was out there, moving in the fog. Slowly at first, then faster, they approached the area of the motion. Suddenly Mojo realized that it was the fog itself that was moving. The fog was swirling. It was spinning. The fog was spinning around in a great counterclockwise motion like a whirlpool or a tornado.