Mojo and the Pickle Jar

by Douglas Bell

  “Footprints,” he said over his shoulder as he resumed walking. “At least most of them were. Some of the others didn’t look that much like feet.”

  Mojo swallowed. This was not the sort of talk Mojo cared to hear while walking through the pitch-black dark with only a slowly dying torch for light. He found Juanita’s hand and squeezed it. Juanita, thinking he was trying to reassure her, squeezed back.

  They walked on. They came to a pool of darkness that was blacker than even the bottom of a cavern should have been. Narn stepped to its edge.

  “Pit. Deep one.”

  Mojo joined Narn. The pit was huge. The light barely carried to the other side. Narn held the torch over the open mouth but there was no bottom to be seen. Just sheer stone walls descending into darkness. A shaft straight down into the bowels of the earth.

  Mojo felt air, a current rising from the pit. It brushed across his face. He sniffed. The rising air was hot and humid. It stank of rot and mildew and sweet nauseous decay.

  Mojo shrank back from the edge of the pit. He had smelled that stench before.

  “What’s this?” Narn ran his hand along the ground.

  Lifted it. His fingers were coated with a fine, white powder. He licked some off the tips. Frowned. Licked again.

  “Cocaine,” Narn said slowly. “I’m damned if it’s not cocaine!”

  “Don’t! Don’t put that in your mouth!” Mojo gasped.

  Narn squinted at him. “Why not? This could be important. It confirms what the girl was saying. It’s—”

  “Just … don’t … put any more in your mouth. Please,” Mojo pleaded through clenched teeth. “It’s not really cocaine … It’s…” He couldn’t say it.

  “It’s what? Poison? I agree, though I sure didn’t expect to hear that from the likes of you. Now, come on. Let’s get moving. That torch isn’t getting any longer.”

  They skirted the pit and were only a short ways beyond when a light flashed suddenly in the darkness ahead. “There!” Narn shouted. They rushed eagerly towards it.

  “Breeze’s getting stronger!” Narn exclaimed as they neared the light. “Must be an exit!”

  But it wasn’t.

  * * *

  It was a lamp. An old-fashioned oil lamp. The lamp was balanced on the edge of a battered wooden table. An old man was seated behind the table. He looked up as they hurried into the circle of yellow light.

  “Well, well.” The old man cocked a bushy eyebrow. “What have we here?” A deck of greasy cards was laid out on the table before him. A solitaire game.

  “Man, are we ever glad to see you!” Mojo exclaimed. “We’re lost. We’re … we…” Mojo’s voice trailed off. He suddenly realized the old man was not a man at all.

  The old man grinned. He was very old. Older even than Narn. Older even than Grandmother. He had wrinkles so deep they seemed to cut his gaunt face to the bone. He had lips that were too wet and eyes that were too yellow and huge liver spots on his arms and hands the color of bloating fish bellies. He had a pair of small, ivory-colored horns protruding from his forehead.

  “Who are you?” Narn asked. What he meant was: What are you?

  “Me? Why, I’m old Aghastere. Didn’t they tell you about old Aghastere?”

  Narn wasn’t sure who “they” were. “Well, no … nobody told us anything.”

  “They didn’t tell you anything about old Aghastere?” The old man’s eyes narrowed. “They didn’t even mention my name?” He sounded offended.

  “Look!” Juanita pointed to the side. “Another gate.”

  Mojo peered. She was right. There was another set of black columns set in the far wall beyond the table. Behind them were stairs. The stairs led up.

  “No.” Narn shook his head. “And now—if you don’t mind—we’d better be on our way.”

  He stepped towards the doorway.

  “But I do mind,” Aghastere said, his voice suddenly hard. “I’m afraid I mind a lot.”

  Narn turned back with a frown. “What do you mean, you mind?”

  “I mean I can’t let you go. But you knew that, didn’t you? That’s rule number one down here, isn’t it? No one is ever allowed to leave Hell.”

  “Hell? You’re claiming we’re in Hell?!”

  “Well, an antechamber, but it’s all the same as far as you getting out.”

  “You don’t understand,” Juanita protested. “We’re not in Hell. We’re just passing through.”

  “Just passing through?… Oh, I like that one!” The old man cackled, displaying broken, discolored teeth punctuated by gaps. “Just passing through! That’s a good one!”

  Mojo caught something in the corner of his eye. Glanced over his shoulder and saw a small shadow scurrying out of the far edge of the lamplight. The shadow touched the wall and then turned for the doorway. Rocky.

  “Look, you can’t keep us here. We’re not damned.” Narn tried to reason with the old man. “We’re not even dead.”

  “Sure,” Aghastere snorted.

  Mojo watched as Rocky bolted out of the darkness and dashed between two of the black columns. For a moment Mojo thought the boy was going to make it. But then, just as Rocky’s feet were disappearing up the stairwell, the old man wheeled around, reached leisurely out, and snagged the boy by the cuff of the neck.

  The old man dragged Rocky back to the table and dropped him in a heap on the floor. “Damned gates,” the old man muttered to himself. “Getting so weak they couldn’t stop a mouse.”

  Mojo’s eyes widened. It had all happened so quickly he wasn’t exactly sure how the old man had done it. All he knew for certain was that Aghastere’s reach was longer than his arm. Much, much longer.

  Rocky scrambled back from the table, away from the old man, his eyes as wide as Mojo’s.

  “Now, then,” the old man said pleasantly. “Now that we’ve established that none of you are going anywhere—any of you folks play cards?”

  “Cards?!” Juanita sputtered. She took a step forward.

  “Wait.” Mojo stopped her. “Let me talk to him first.”

  * * *

  “A what?” The old man wrinkled his nose.

  “A bribe. A payoff,” Mojo repeated.

  The old man squinted at Mojo. The lamp gave his eyes a creeping cast, as if things were moving around inside them. “And what makes you think that I can be bribed?”

  “Why not? There’s nobody around but you and us. You could take a bribe and nobody’d ever know. We’re not on any official rolls or rosters or whatever it is you use down here to keep track of people. You could let us go and no one would ever know the difference.”

  The old man leaned back in his chair. He smacked his too–wet lips. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “What’re you offering?” he asked at length.

  Mojo had a watch and twenty in loose bills.

  Juanita had some silver jewelry and a rip-off Louis Vuitton purse.

  Narn had two hundred in cash and a pearl-handled .45 pistol.

  Rocky had three loose joints.

  The old man considered it for a long moment.

  Then shook his head. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

  “Better than—? It’s all we have!” Mojo objected. “What do you want us to do? Write you checks?”

  Aghastere shook his head. “No.” He smiled slyly. “Something much simpler.”

  * * *

  Aghastere wanted their souls.

  “Our souls?” Mojo frowned. He wasn’t sure what a soul was or whether he had one or, if he did, what it would mean to trade it away.

  “If we agree, you’ll let us go?” Narn asked.

  “Well … I’ll let one of you go.”

  “One?”

  “Here’s my deal.” The old man leaned forward. “The four of you draw straws. Short man gets to leave. I keep the other three.”

  “Deal? You call that a deal?” Juanita sputtered. “I call it a screw-job!”

  Aghastere shrugged. “Take it or leave it. But you really
don’t have much choice. Moloch’ll be coming up here as soon as it’s dark topside, and Moloch, being a major devil and all, doesn’t have to go through all this legal crap like I do. Not here. He’ll just take your souls and that’ll be that.”

  “Take them?” Mojo wondered.

  “Rip them out,” the old man said grimly. “He’ll rip your souls out and cast what’s left of you down into the pit where you’ll be turned into worms and put to work on the farms.”

  Mojo blanched. A worm. In the pit.

  “But that’s not fair!” Juanita protested.

  “Neither’s Hell.”

  Mojo had an idea. He wasn’t sure whether it was a good idea or a bad idea, but it was certainly a better idea than Aghastere’s deal.

  “Tell you what. You wanted to play cards; I’ll do it. I’ll play you cards for them,” Mojo proposed.

  “Cards?” The old man eyed him.

  “Right. I’ll play you cards for our souls. I win, you let all of us go. You win, you get all four souls.”

  The old man raised an eyebrow. “Hmmmm … Now, that is an interesting proposition. Yes, very interesting … What kind of game did you have in mind?”

  “Poker?”

  “Which poker?”

  “Five-card draw?”

  “Straight draw, huh?” The old man’s grin widened. The yellow lamplight caught in his broken teeth. He motioned Mojo towards the table. “All right, then. We’ll play. Straight draw. All or nothing.” He began squaring the cards into a deck.

  Mojo stepped forward towards the table.

  “Hold on there!” Narn grabbed him by the arm. “I didn’t hear any of the rest of us agree to this harebrained scheme!”

  “Let him try,” Juanita said. “Even if he loses, we won’t be any worse off than we are now.”

  Narn considered it. “Well … I suppose that’s true…”

  “Come on,” Mojo implored. “I’m pretty good at cards. With a little luck, I might even win.”

  Narn pursed his lips. Thought some more. Then shrugged. “All right. Why not? This old man has got us by the short hairs no matter what. And at least this way we got a chance. A slim-to-nothing chance, I grant you, but a chance nevertheless.”

  Narn released Mojo’s sleeve.

  “Shuffle,” the old man said, pushing the deck towards Mojo.

  * * *

  Mojo and Aghastere had been playing draw poker for nearly an hour. They were using matches for chips. The matches were from the box the old man used to light his lamp. They had begun with twenty matchsticks apiece. After an hour Mojo had twenty-one sticks and the old man nineteen. Mojo hadn’t cheated yet, but he was getting ready to rectify that.

  Mojo shuffled the cards. He could feel them as they passed through his fingers: king of diamonds, deuce of clubs, ten of hearts. He directed them to where he wanted them with tiny flicks of his fingertips. He squared the deck, putting a crimp into it with the same motion. He pushed the deck across the table to the old man.

  The old man cut at the crimp.

  Mojo slapped the two halves of the deck back together.

  He dealt.

  Mojo set the deck down, picked up his hand, and looked at his cards. Four fat queens looked back. He had dealt the old man three tens. When the old man drew, he would pick up the fourth ten. It wouldn’t be enough.

  “Bet two.” The old man pushed two matchsticks into the center of the table.

  “Your two and one more.” Mojo pushed out three matches.

  The old man hesitated for a second. Then: “Call.” He added another stick to the pot.

  “Cards?” Mojo asked, picking up the deck.

  “One.”

  Mojo resisted the temptation to grin. The old man was trying to be tricky. He was trying to make Mojo think he was drawing to a flush or a straight.

  The old man flipped a card facedown onto the table. Mojo dealt him the fourth ten.

  “And the dealer takes one.” Mojo tossed away his non-queen and picked another card off the top of the stack. He slipped it in with the queens and made a show of studying the hand for a couple of seconds.

  “Bet?” Mojo looked up at the old man.

  “Bet ten.” The old man pushed them out without hesitation. It was a steep bet, but Mojo would have done the same with a gut cinch like four tens.

  Mojo paused for a moment, worrying the cards with his fingers. Then: “Your ten plus the pot.”

  Mojo pushed all of his matches into the center of the table. He could hardly keep from grinning. He had him now! “Call.” The old man shoved the rest of his matches in. He leaned back in his chair. Smiled lazily.

  A sudden sense of unease stole over Mojo. He didn’t like that smile. Those sparkling eyes. He didn’t like the way the old man had called so quickly. Aghastere just didn’t look like a man should look who has just bet everything he has on one hand. Even on a hand as strong as four tens.

  A cold knot formed in Mojo’s stomach. Tightened.

  “What’d you got?” the old man asked softly.

  “Four ladies.” Mojo fanned them out.

  The old man nodded. “A very good hand. An excellent hand, in fact. But not this excellent.” He tabled an ace. Then another. Then another. Then another.

  Mojo sat up straight. He stared at the aces. His mouth fell open. The cold hard knot in his stomach ballooned to the size of a basketball.

  “Four aces?!”

  “Read ’em and weep.” The old man grinned at him. His teeth were as wet as his lips. They shone in the lamplight. “Luck of the draw, as they said.”

  “Bullshit!” Mojo blurted. “You—!” His breath was suddenly cut off. It took a second for him to realize that the old man had him by the throat, that the old man’s too-long arm had stretched across the table and was choking him. He tried to pry the old man’s fingers away, but he had a grip like steel.

  “Time to pay up,” the old man hissed. His eyes were even yellower than usual and Mojo suddenly realized that it wasn’t just the lamplight.

  “Not so fast.” Narn stepped out of the darkness behind the old man. Mojo blinked. He had been so intent on the cards that he hadn’t noticed Narn leave.

  “This game’s not over yet,” Narn told the old man. “There’s still the big trump to play.”

  This about R.K. Narn: This wasn’t the first time he had slipped behind someone. Narn was not a trusting person. The only person Narn ever trusted was his dog. And then only when he had the dog in clear sight.

  “The big trump?” The old man frowned. He tried to twist his head towards Narn. “What’d you mean, the big trump? There’s no trumps in a draw poker game!”

  “There is in this one.” Narn stepped up behind the old man’s chair. Suddenly the 12-gauge was in his hands. Its barrels were as big as open sewer pipes.

  The old man whipped around …

  “Ace of shotguns,” Narn announced as he pulled both barrels.

  The 12-gauge belched fire and thunder. Cards flew off the table in a blizzard of hearts and clubs and diamonds and spades. The old man shot up out of his seat. Blood and gore and grey hair flew everywhere. The old man’s angular body somersaulted over the table and to the floor a few feet past. His head went bouncing off into the shadows near the far wall.

  “Run for it!” Rocky yelled. And did.

  The old man’s body had already hit the floor and was lying there twitching and squirming like a severed worm before his hand released Mojo’s throat.

  Mojo leaped away from the table and spun on his heels. Rocky was already through the gate columns and disappearing up the stairwell. Narn wasn’t far behind. Juanita was running after Narn and waving at Mojo to come on.

  Mojo bolted after Juanita.

  Mojo, racing towards the gate, passed the old man’s head. The head was standing upright on the bloody stump of its neck and dragging itself across the floor, using the shredded flesh like tentacles.

  The head glared as Mojo flew past. “Moloch!” it screamed. “Mo-ooo-
loch!”

  Mojo flew past the head and through the columns and up the stairwell. He could see the others ahead of him, their legs churning up the steps. There was a tiny square of sunlight high above them, just visible at the top of the stairs. The stairs looked as tall as the sky.

  “Mo-ooo-loch!”

  * * *

  The stairs were even higher than they looked.

  By the time they were three quarters of the way up, all four of them were gasping and hanging on to the stone side walls for support. Mojo remembered reading once about a race up the Empire State Building. Up the stairs of the Empire State Building. He felt he had acquired a new appreciation for that race.

  “Just—a—little—ways … more,” Narn panted.

  Mojo glanced back. The stairs behind them were dark and empty. So far. Mojo was a little nervous about being the last in line. He would have much preferred that Narn be last. Or even the boy. He thought it was very impolite of Narn and the boy to climb ahead of Juanita. He thought they should move aside and let Juanita go to the front. And him with her, of course, since he was her unofficial protector. He would have complained about it had he had the wind to speak.

  A dozen steps more.

  Then half that.

  They were almost there. The tiny square of light had become a gaping doorway. Beyond the doorway was a cave. Sunlight was streaming though. The actual cave entrance must be very close.

  Mojo was just below the top step when he heard it.

  The sound came roaring up the stairwell behind him. The sound of hard shell scraping against stone, of many legs, of clicking, clacking, trailing body parts.

  Mojo didn’t know where he found the breath to scream, but he found it. “Run!!”

  The beast roared.

  Adrenaline carried Mojo up the last step and into a narrow passage. He squeezed past a boulder and dashed up a slightly wider tunnel. A sun-flooded entrance was just ahead, the light blindingly bright after all the hours down in the deep caverns.

  “Locked!” The boy’s voice carried back down. “It’s locked! We can’t get out!”

  In another moment Mojo arrived at the cave entrance and could see what the boy was shouting about. The entrance was secured with a line of heavy steel bars cemented into place. There was a door in the bars—very similar to a cell door—held by a padlock and chain.