Mojo and the Pickle Jar

by Douglas Bell

  Narn peered doubtfully at Mojo. “The heart in the pickle jar?”

  “Yeah. The whole universe is inside the heart in the pickle jar. And it’s sick too. He showed me that. That’s why we’ve got to get it back to her as quick as we can.”

  Narn stared hard at Mojo for a long time. Finally he shrugged. “Come on,” Narn said.

  Narn turned on his heel and started up the corridor.

  Mojo followed after him.

  Mr. Rat was waiting.

  13

  The rat led Mojo and Narn down the chalk corridor and through an unlocked door into a small, empty room.

  “Guardroom,” Narn said, looking around. “We must be close. Cells are probably just outside that door.”

  He walked over to a gun rack and jerked on it. A hasp lock rattled. “Too bad. I’d sure like to have something with a little more stopping power than a pistol.”

  “I can open it for you,” Mojo offered.

  “Well, then, don’t just stand there, do it.”

  Mojo pulled a length of stiff wire from his pocket and went to work on the hasp lock. The rat danced away from Narn and over to the door and then back again. It fussed angrily, its long tail slapping the floor.

  “Keep your shirt on,” Narn told the rat. “It won’t do any good to spring the girl if we can’t get back out again. And I figure what’s in this rack is a direct ticket to the outside.”

  Mojo popped the lock. Narn wrenched the rack open and reached in and selected a sawed-off shotgun. He slid the rack’s bottom drawers out and began searching through them for shells.

  “A shotgun?” Mojo wondered. “I figured you’d want one of those automatic rifles.”

  “Shows what you know,” Narn said as he filled his pockets with shells from an open box.

  “Here.” He handed Mojo a rifle. “You may need this.”

  In a few minutes Narn had the shotgun loaded. “Okay.” He slammed a shell into the chamber with a sharp clang. He turned to the rat. “We’re ready now, Mr. Rat. Take us to her.”

  * * *

  The rat led them out of the small room and into another corridor. The corridor was empty. There were barred cell doors along both sides.

  Mojo followed Narn and the rat slowly up the corridor, his ears open for any sound. He moved stealthily, checking each cell as he passed. All were empty. He tried carrying the rifle cradled in his arms and then slung over his shoulder. It felt uncomfortable both ways. He pulled the rifle off his shoulder and let it dangle by his side. He wished he hadn’t taken it. Mojo couldn’t shoot straight, and his Uncle Ort had always warned him that it was dangerous for a man who couldn’t shoot straight to carry a gun. Someone else might not know it and shoot him first.

  Juanita was in one of the middle cells. She was lying on a cot in a corner, fast asleep. Mojo used his wire on the door lock while Narn and the rat stood guard.

  Mojo had the door open within seconds. “Juanita?” he whispered. He went to her. Shook her shoulder gently. “Wake up, Juanita.”

  She was on him in a flash. If Mojo had been any slower, she would have clawed his eyes out. He received a long scratch on his cheek as it was.

  “Hey! It’s me!” he cried, backing off.

  “Mojo!” Juanita suddenly realized she had made a mistake. “Oh, I’m sorry! I thought you were one of them!”

  “Keep your voice down,” he warned her.

  “Oh, Mojo.” She threw her arms around him. “I knew you’d come! I knew you wouldn’t let those pendejos sacrifice me!”

  “Sacrifice you?”

  “Can you believe it? These creeps were actually gonna sacrifice me to the devil! The devil!”

  “Hurry up! Quit screwing around in there!” Narn hissed into the cell.

  “Who’s that?” Juanita asked.

  “Narn. He’s a Texas Ranger.”

  “A what?”

  “Later. I’ll explain everything later. Right now, we’ve got to get you out of here before somebody comes along to check on you.”

  Mojo led Juanita out of the cell and into the hallway.

  “This way. After that rat up there.”

  “Rat?!”

  The rat was already halfway up the corridor. It turned and squeaked urgently.

  “You want me to follow a rat?” Juanita asked incredulously.

  “Not just a rat. Mister Rat.” Mojo took her arm and started up the corridor.

  “Wait.” Juanita stopped him. “We’ve got to get Rocky out first.”

  “Who?”

  “Him.”

  Mojo turned to where Juanita was pointing. There was a young boy hanging on the bars of a cell across the way. He couldn’t have been more than fourteen or fifteen. His hair was wild and unkept. Dirt and filth obscured most of his thin face. He was dressed in jeans and a torn T-shirt with “Metal Rules” emblazoned across the front.

  “That’s Rocky?”

  “Right. They were gonna sacrifice him along with me. Can you help him?”

  “No problem,” Mojo told her.

  Mojo had the door of the second cell open in seconds. The boy was just stepping through when footsteps approached from down the hall. Then the sound of a man’s voice.

  Mr. Rat squealed in alarm and flew up the corridor.

  Mojo grabbed Juanita’s arm and raced after Mr. Rat.

  Narn and the boy raced after Mojo and Juanita.

  Mojo and Juanita skidded around the end of the corridor and fled up another. They were almost to the end when the rat suddenly stopped and began clawing at a stone wall. Mojo looked up. There was another loose grate.

  “Too late. We don’t have time for that,” Mojo told the rat as he shot past him.

  Shouts echoed from somewhere behind them. The sound of running feet.

  They flew around a second corner and into yet another corridor. There was an open double door just ahead. Mojo ducked into the door, taking Juanita with him. The boy and Narn followed. They sprinted into a vast, open room, their footsteps echoing thinly off distant walls.

  Mojo slowed. Then stopped. His eyes darted desperately from side to side, surveying the huge room, which wasn’t really a room at all but a cavern with a high arched roof with stalactites hanging from it. Great sweeping walls of washed limestone fell from the roof to a concrete floor.

  Mojo heard footsteps behind them, pounding up the corridor. His eyes swept the cavern again but without success.

  There were no other exits.

  They were trapped.

  * * *

  The cavern was lit by dim, oily torches and filled with folding chairs. Row upon row of folding chairs swept away towards the front. Beyond the chairs, mounted high on the front wall, was a gigantic goat head. The goat head was white, covered by long fur. It had huge red eyes that caught the torchlight. Its horns were golden and hooked. Directly below the goat head was the dark maw of a small cave. In front of the cave was a carved stone altar on a raised dais. In front of the altar were four men. Mojo recognized two of them.

  The first man Mojo recognized was the Reverend Jerry Lee Rutt, the semifamous TV evangelist. The Reverend Rutt was pointing angrily at Mojo. He didn’t look at all like he looked on television. His cheeks weren’t pink. He didn’t have a Bible in his hand. He wasn’t grinning. If it hadn’t been for his hair—a towering black edifice of waves and curls—Mojo wouldn’t have recognized him at all.

  The second man Mojo recognized was the one pulling a gun from his coat pocket: Machete Ray Castillo.

  “Get down!” Mojo yanked on Juanita’s arm.

  He was just in time.

  Narn’s shotgun exploded behind them. Fire leaped over their heads. Shotgun pellets, sounding like hail on a tin roof, ricocheted around the altar.

  Castillo yelled and dropped his gun and clutched the side of his head. The other three men dove into the first row of folding chairs.

  Narn’s shotgun roared again. One of the folding chairs next to Castillo did a front flip. Castillo jerked his hand away from
his head and dove for the cover of the chairs. Mojo could see Castillo’s ear was bleeding. What was left of it.

  “This way!” The boy, Rocky, ran past them down the aisle. Mojo had a pretty good idea of where he was headed. The cave. It was the only way out.

  Mojo grabbed Juanita and ran after the boy. He could hear Narn’s boots pounding the concrete behind them.

  They were only four or five rows from the altar when Mojo heard a shout from behind, followed by several gunshots, followed by another thunderous roar from Narn’s 12-gauge. An instant later a figure popped up out of the folding chairs to Mojo’s right. It was Castillo. His mouth was drawn back in a pained grimace. The shoulder of his expensive suit was soaked with dark blood. His pistol was in his hand. He was taking aim at Mojo.

  Mojo blanched. There was no way he was going to get his rifle up, aim, and shoot Castillo before Castillo shot him.

  Luckily he had another option.

  * * *

  Mojo may not have been much of a shot, but he was one hell of a chunker. Mojo was the champion beer-bottle chunker of Culberson County. No Texas Highway Department sign was safe when Mojo was on the road. Mojo could dead-center a Highway Department sign from a speeding automobile with fantastic accuracy. Poteet had once bragged that Mojo could hit a highway sign with a beer bottle even if Mojo was too drunk to see the sign.

  Mojo whipped the rifle forward with a sweeping underhand motion that would have been alien to any boy who had learned his throwing style from baseballs rather than beer bottles. The rifle spun once in the air. Twice. Three times. It caught Castillo on the forehead with a sharp crack. The rifle bounced one way and Castillo another. Castillo went down into the quagmire of folding chairs like a load of bricks.

  The Reverend Jerry Lee Rutt peeked over the top of the chairs just as Mojo hurtled past. There was a bruise on his cheek and a long red scratch across his temple but his lacquered hair was still immaculate. “I’ll remember you, motherfucker!” the Reverend Rutt screamed after Mojo.

  Mojo and Juanita tore around the altar and under the goat’s head and into the small cave, Mojo snagging a torch from a socket as they flew past.

  “Hurry up!” the boy shouted. He was just inside the mouth of the cave, waiting for them. He had a second torch. Before Mojo could reply, the boy had turned and was pounding up the narrow passage.

  Mojo and Juanita raced after the bobbing flame of the boy’s torch, Narn right behind them.

  14

  Mojo and Juanita ran down the cave, following the boy’s bobbing torch. They ran for some time, turning and winding and turning and running, following one passage after another. After a time Mojo lost track. The cave had more strands than a bowl of spaghetti. It was like traveling through a piece of Swiss cheese. As they dodged through one narrow tunnel after another he began to doubt whether even chain-gang dogs could have followed them.

  “Slow … down … damn it!” Narn wheezed finally.

  “Good … idea.” Mojo slowed to a walk then halted, Juanita beside him.

  The boy turned back. “What’s wrong? Why are you stopping?”

  “Why? I’ll tell you why.” Narn leaned against the wall of the cave and took a deep breath. “Because nobody’s chasing us.”

  Mojo listened. Narn was right. There were no pursuing footsteps. No voices. The cave was silent except for their ragged breath and the distant sound of water dripping.

  “They’re not?”

  “Nope,” Narn said. “We lost them somewhere, and I don’t think we’re gonna see them again anytime soon either. You made sure of that, buddy boy. I haven’t seen that much juking and jiving since O.J. Simpson retired. They’ve got about as much chance of finding us as we do of finding them. Which is to say, slim to none.”

  “You’re saying we’re lost?” Mojo asked.

  “Well, I don’t know about you, but I damn sure am.”

  Mojo peered around. Beyond the small circle of torchlight the cave was a blank wall of impenetrable darkness. He couldn’t have said which direction was north or east or whatever, never to mention which led back to the big cavern.

  “I don’t see that it makes any difference whether we’re lost or not,” Juanita said. “We couldn’t go back to the lodge now even if we wanted to.”

  “Good point.” Narn pushed himself away from the wall. “She’s right. If we intend to leave this gar-hole alive, we’re gonna have to find another exit. One that doesn’t have Ray Castillo and his pistoleros waiting for us.”

  “But how?” Mojo wondered. There were several corridors near them, all branching off in different directions. Any one of them could have led out; any one of them could have led deeper into the maze of passageways.

  “There’re ways to find a trail. Even in a cave.” Narn told him. “If the air’s circulating, then we can follow it to its source. And I suspect from the way those torches are flickering, there is circulation.”

  Narn stepped closer to Mojo. Eyed his torch. After a moment he pointed up one of the side corridors. “That way. The breeze is blowing from that direction.”

  * * *

  Narn led them up the side passage, stopping periodically to check the soft cave breeze by studying the torch flames or by holding up a wet finger. They passed out of the passage and into a series of short connecting tunnels. Out of the connecting tunnels and into a new passage. Reached a dead end, doubled back, passed into yet another long corridor.

  They entered a large cavern. Narn had Mojo extinguish his torch, saving it for later. The cavern was so big that the dim light of the single torch couldn’t reach its walls. The cavern might have been the size of the one under the hunting lodge or the size of a football stadium or the size of a small ocean. There was no way to tell.

  “Were you serious back there when you said they were going to sacrifice you to the devil?” Mojo asked Juanita as they picked their way across the huge cavern.

  “Serious as a heart attack. It’s how they pay him for the stuff.”

  “The stuff?” Narn asked.

  “The cocaine. Castillo sacrifices people to the devil, and the devil gives him cocaine in return.”

  Mojo shook his head. So Grandmother was right after all. The devil really was behind the drug business.

  “That’s the damnedest thing I ever heard,” Narn said. He glanced at Mojo and hesitated. “Well, maybe the second damnedest.”

  “But how did you know where I was?” Juanita asked Mojo.

  Mojo quickly recounted Narn’s encounter with the black Christ and his with the demon.

  “A demon?” the boy, Rocky, asked dubiously.

  “I know it sounds crazy, but believe me, it’s real,” Mojo assured him.

  “I believe you,” Juanita said. “You know that altar back there where all the chairs were? That’s where Castillo planned to sacrifice Rocky and me. On that altar. He told me all about it. Bragged. Said they were going to cut our hearts out, and then, afterwards, a demon would come up out of this cave, up from Hell, and take our souls.”

  “This cave? This cave we’re in now?” It sounded ominous to Mojo.

  “Right.” She nodded grimly.

  “Come on.” Rocky tugged at Narn’s sleeve. “Let’s get going.”

  They crossed to the far side of the cavern and—after searching along a limestone wall until they found an opening—passed into a long corridor with a sand bottom. Along that corridor into a longer one. Then a longer one still.

  The boy’s torch began to sputter. When its flame had dwindled to little more than a feeble blue flicker, Mojo relit his. Moments later the boy’s torch died with a final wisp of oily grey smoke.

  They reached the end of the corridor and descended into a narrow passage with a rocky floor and damp walls. The passage ended at a pile of loose boulders. Narn said the breeze was blowing from behind the boulders, so they climbed them. Mojo going up first and then helping the others. Rocky scrambled over last, bounding up the rocks like a monkey.

  They squeezed throug
h a crevice behind the boulders and into a tunnel so tight that they had to crawl most of the way. The passage finally opened up into a larger corridor with high, shadowy ceilings. The breeze grew stronger. At the end of the corridor there were several passageways. One of the passageways was faced with a row of gigantic black columns.

  “What are they?” Mojo ran his hand down one of the columns. The column was smooth and hard and cold as ice. It was blacker than black. Unnaturally black. It seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. It had veins like marble but it wasn’t.

  “A better question is: Why are they?” Narn stroked his chin and stared into the darkness behind the columns. “This seems like a rather peculiar spot to be building things.”

  “Maybe it’s the entrance to Hell,” Juanita suggested. “A gate.”

  “Hell?”

  “Sure. If Castillo is bringing up drugs from Hell, then there has to be an entrance to it somewhere, right? Maybe this is it.”

  “You think so? You think this could be a gate to Hell?” Mojo wondered.

  “Maybe. What else?”

  Mojo had no idea. He peered through the columns into the cavern beyond. All he could see was blackness and the leading edge of a packed, level floor.

  “But it really doesn’t matter, does it?” Narn said. “The torch is almost finished. If we intend to get out of here alive, we’ve got to keep following the breeze. And the breeze is blowing from in there.” He pointed through the columns.

  “Couldn’t we at least check out some of these other passages first?” Mojo asked, not at all anxious to go to Hell if he could avoid it.

  “Come on.” Narn took the torch from Mojo and stepped between the columns. The boy followed. Mojo and Juanita had no choice but to follow as well.

  * * *

  They were walking along another black sea bottom. If the cavern had walls or a ceiling, they were too far away for the flickering torchlight to reach them. The air was colder here than in the other sections of the cave. The breeze was stronger. The flames of the torch arched like tree boughs in a gale.

  They had been walking for about fifteen minutes when Narn suddenly paused. He lowered the torch and studied the floor for a long moment. Then stood back up.