Mojo and the Pickle Jar

by Douglas Bell

  The beast roared again. The sound reverberated off the tunnel’s stone walls.

  “I know this place. It’s Indian Cave,” Rocky gasped. “The Forest Service put these bars up last spring. They’re set in concrete!”

  Mojo hurried to the door. He pulled a piece of wire from his pocket and went to work on the padlock. It was a simple hasp. He would have had it open in seconds if his hands hadn’t been shaking.

  The creaking-door voice suddenly rattled up the cave. “Mojo. I am here, Mojo.”

  “What’s that horrible smell?” Juanita asked, turning and wrinkling her nose.

  Narn turned with her. “I’ll be damned,” he said after a moment.

  Mojo had jumped at the sound of the voice and dropped the wire. Now he scrambled frantically to pick it up. As he raised up he glanced towards the rear of the cave. He could see it there: a maggot-whiteness hanging back in the deepest shadows. He guessed it was the sunlight pouring in the entrance that was keeping it at bay.

  Mojo returned to work on the lock with a vengeance.

  “The sun will be setting soon, Mojo,” the creaking door creaked.

  Mojo wormed the wire further into the lock.

  “Ugly as hell, ain’t he?” Narn stared at the beast, more fascinated than frightened.

  “You will never get out of these mountains, Mojo. Not before dark.”

  “Why don’t you leave Mojo alone and go screw yourself?” Juanita suggested to the thing in the back of the cave.

  Mojo popped the lock open.

  The door swung back with a rusty groan. Mojo and Juanita and Rocky and Narn spilled out of the cave and onto a rocky, wildflower-strewn slope. The slope fell away to a small valley with a narrow stream meandering down its middle. The mountainside opposite was covered with thick pines. The sun was hanging just above the mountain, feathering the tallest trees. Mojo opened his arms to the sun. He had never felt anything as warm and comforting in his life.

  “Come on!” Narn grabbed Mojo’s arm and pulled him down the slope. “We don’t have time to be lolly-gagging around. You heard that fly-faced bastard. Soon as it’s dark, he’s gonna come after us!”

  15

  There was a well-beaten path beside the small stream. The boy led them down it. He seemed to know where he was going. The path followed the stream down the valley and around a rocky ridge. Mojo glanced back as they passed behind the ridge. He could still see the cave entrance, dark and silent behind them on the side of the mountain.

  Mojo turned and hurried on.

  The path made a jaunt around a finger of forest and then opened into a broad meadow. The meadow was sprinkled with wildflowers. The air hummed with bees and other insects. There was a large tent pitched in the meadow at the edge of the forest. The tent was a mass of patches. It looked as though it had been sewn together from remnants of other tents, some of which matched and some of which didn’t. There was a clothesline running from the tent’s center pole to one of the pine trees, with a pair of jockey shorts hanging from it. There was a small campfire in front of the tent with four figures huddled around it.

  “Welcome to space cadet city,” the boy muttered to Mojo as he led them towards the tent.

  One of the figures from in front of the campfire rose as they approached. It was a woman. She stared at them for a long moment, then pointed. Then yelled. She ran towards them. As she came nearer she threw open her arms. She was wearing an ankle-length dress trimmed with fringe and beads. There was a scarf tied around her head bandanna-style with the peace sign painted on it. She had long braided hair that flopped behind her. She looked as though she had just stepped out of a time warp.

  “Moonbeam! Oh, Moonbeam! Oh, thank God, you’re all right!” The woman ran to Rocky and hugged him. There were tears running down her cheeks. Long streaks of grey in her otherwise sandy hair.

  “Aw, Maw!” The boy tried to twist away. “I’ve asked you not to call me that stupid name! It’s Rocky, Maw! Rocky!”

  “We’ve been so worried, Moonbeam! When you didn’t come back from Santa Fe, we looked everywhere! We didn’t know what had happened! We even called the Forest Service in to help us search!”

  “The Forest Service?” The boy stopped struggling. He looked suddenly worried. “The Forest Service has been snooping around up here?”

  “They sent a helicopter, but after a couple of days without finding any trace, they quit. Your father was so angry with them!”

  “Yeah…” Rocky looked relieved.

  “Son.” A man approached. He was dressed somewhat like the woman. That is, he looked as if he might have stepped through the same time warp. He was wearing granny glasses and faded jeans and a Pendleton shirt. He was going bald.

  After the man hugged Rocky and assured himself that the boy was all right, he introduced himself to the others. His name was Soaring Eagle. He introduced the woman as “my eternal kindred spirit, Nefertiti.”

  There were two more kindred spirits back at the campfire. Their names were Big Judy and Willis.

  Big Judy was big. She was a large blond woman with a full, smooth face and placid blue eyes. She was built like a side of beef, and not just of fat. She had arms the size of Mojo’s thighs and those arms didn’t jiggle.

  Big Judy warmly greeted each of them in turn as “brother” or “sister,” then gestured towards a tiny black man who was sitting immobile beside the fire. “And this is Willis,” Big Judy announced with a proud gleam in her eye.

  “Hello, Willis,” Mojo said politely.

  The little man didn’t look up. Didn’t even blink. He was staring vacantly into space. He wore a grey sweatshirt with “LSU Bengals” and some unidentified, multicolored stains across it.

  “Pleased to meet you, Willis,” Juanita tried, but Willis still didn’t respond.

  “What the hell’s wrong with him?” Narn asked.

  Big Judy took them aside and explained in a low voice that Willis wasn’t ignoring them on purpose. Wasn’t being impolite. Not at all. Willis was sick. Willis had had an unfortunate accident some years back. He had made a wrong turn while on an LSD trip and never come back.

  After the introductions were over, Narn led Mojo and Juanita and Rocky into the forest to gather firewood. Narn’s plan was to build a bonfire that would last all night. A bonfire so big and so bright that the demon couldn’t get near enough to harm them. He also wanted enough light to shoot the demon, but he didn’t tell them that.

  They located the bonfire in the middle of the meadow, as far away from the forest as they could get. The kindred spirits watched curiously as Mojo and the others hauled wood to the bonfire. They seemed to find the concept of work fascinating.

  The stack of firewood grew higher as the afternoon grew shorter. By the time dusk had begun to settle over the valley and the woods were filling with deep shadows, the stack of firewood was higher than the tent.

  Mojo was carrying a final load of dead pine branches through the greying twilight when Willis’ drooping head suddenly snapped up.

  “You need healin’, man?”

  Mojo peered down. The little black man’s normally dead eyes were bright and alive and staring intently at Mojo.

  “What?” Mojo asked, caught off guard.

  “I said: Do you need the Lord’s healin’?”

  “Ah … No. Thanks. I feel fine.”

  “That’s good, then. That’s real good.” The little man nodded once. Then looked away, the light in his eyes fading, his chin drooping as if a battery inside him had flared for a brief instant before running down again.

  Big Judy smiled up at Mojo. “Just remember: If you need healing anytime, anytime at all, Willis’ll be glad to help you. He has the gift.”

  “Yeah … well … sure … I’ll keep that in mind.” Mojo hurried on to the bonfire and dumped his load. He wiped the sweat from his forehead. He wasn’t sure but that this Willis character was even weirder when his brain was in gear.

  * * *

  By the time the last spark
s of sunset had faded from the sky and Narn had called a halt to the wood gathering, the stack of dead wood dwarfed Mojo. The stack of firewood was huge. It looked big enough to fuel a small freighter across the Atlantic. It looked like enough wood to cast light all the way up to the mountaintops. It looked like enough wood to last an entire winter instead of only one night.

  Mojo was just sorry that it wasn’t any bigger.

  * * *

  Night fell.

  Night fell like a bucket of cold water on the small valley, extinguishing all light. The forested slopes on both sides were black, impenetrable walls. Even the ground was black. Only the high, narrow strip of sky above was even the slightest shade of grey.

  Narn lit the bonfire.

  Everyone gathered close around, huddling about the light and turning their backs on the darkness. The hot firelight colored their skin and danced on their faces: streaks of yellow, red, and white. Narn kept adding wood. Soon glowing coals formed. The fire grew hotter. Then hotter still.

  The fire grew hot enough to peel skin. Mojo had to back away from it. “Couldn’t we tone that down just a little?” Mojo asked Narn. “I’d almost as soon be ripped to pieces as be roasted to death.”

  Narn shook his head. “Not yet. Best to keep it high for now. We can’t be sure it’ll be enough as it is.”

  “Beautiful up here, isn’t it?” Soaring Eagle sat down beside Mojo. He leaned his head back and gazed up into the narrow sky.

  Mojo followed Soaring Eagle’s gaze. The first stars of evening were beginning to appear. The stars were bright and cold and distant. A million miles from Narn’s scorching bonfire and centipede demons that came in the dark. Mojo only wished he could spend the night on one.

  “Yeah…”

  “We’ve been living up in these mountains for nearly twenty years now, and I never grow tired of it. I never grow tired of looking at the beauty that surrounds us.”

  “Twenty years? Really? Up here all alone? Just the five of you?”

  “Oh, no.” Soaring Eagle lowered his eyes. He shook his head sadly. “At one time we had over three hundred people in this valley. There were tents as far as you could see.” He waved an arm expansively. “Tents and crops and livestock. We were a real tribe then. We had our own schools, our own laws, our own government. We were a free people. Not like now.”

  “Really? What happened?”

  “The Gestapo,” Soaring Eagle said bitterly. “The Gestapo came and persecuted us. Persecuted and harassed us.”

  “The Gestapo?”

  “The Forest Service. They spread lies about us.”

  “Really? What kind of lies?”

  “You know. The usual. The usual fascist lies. First there was the lie about syphilis—they said we had a syphilis epidemic up here—then after that there was the lie about herpes.”

  “Herpes too, huh?” Mojo tried to scoot unobtrusively away from Soaring Eagle.

  “Yes. As if the lie about syphilis wasn’t bad enough.” Soaring Eagle shook his head and stared grimly into the fire. “They even tried to send their Nazi doctors up here to experiment on us. We resisted them, of course.”

  “Of course.” Mojo scooted over until he bumped up against Rocky.

  “Just another case of America oppressing its people.”

  “Hey!” Juanita ducked her head. “A bird! It almost hit me! Flew right at me!”

  “Not a bird.” Nefertiti laughed. “A bat.”

  “Bat?”

  “Sure. The firelight attracts bugs, and the bugs attract bats. But don’t worry, they won’t hurt you. They may come close sometimes, but they won’t actually fly into you. They’ve got a sonar that guides them.”

  “Yeah…” Juanita peered warily upwards. Nefertiti was right. She could see scores of the tiny black creatures, flitting rapidly in and out of the edges of the firelight.

  Suddenly one of the bats broke from the edge of darkness and came rocketing down. It shot past Juanita, who yelped and ducked again, and nicked Willis on the side of the head.

  Willis’ hooded eyes jumped open.

  The bat soared back up into the night.

  “You think it’s out there yet?” Rocky asked Mojo in a hushed voice.

  Mojo glanced over his shoulder. Bright reflections of the bonfire danced on the face of the forest behind them. Farther up the side of the mountain, beyond the light, there was only blackness. “I don’t know. Could be.”

  “You think the fire’s enough to keep it away?”

  “Sure.” Mojo forced a smile. He tried to sound more confident than he felt. “It’s like Narn said: We’re completely safe as long as we keep our fire going.”

  “I can feel somethin’ comin’, uh-huh! I can feel somethin’ comin’ this way, uh-huh!”

  Mojo glanced around at the sound of the voice. Willis was rising to his feet on the far side of the fire. His hands were clinched into tight fists. His face was turned up into the night sky.

  “I can feel somethin’ comin’ around the edge of the world and shootin’ across the seas and over the mountains and right down into this very valley, uh-huh! I can feel the hand of the Lord Himself comin’, yessir! I can feel his mighty hand comin’, yessir! I can feel the mighty hand of the Great God Jehovah Himself comin’ this way, yessir!”

  “Tell it, Willis!” Big Judy cried happily from her place beside him. “Give us the word!”

  “Oh, shit,” the boy said softly. “It’s Holy Roller time in the Rockies again.”

  “I can feel somethin’ out there, uh-huh! I can feel somethin’ out there in the dark, uh-huh! I can feel somethin’ out there in the dark heart of man waitin’ to defy that great powerful hand of the Lord’s, uh-huh!”

  “Again? You mean he gets like this often?” Mojo asked.

  “Just whenever the spirit takes him. Which is all the friggin’ time.”

  “I can feel the dark heart of evil out there! I can feel the dark heart of sin out there! I can feel the dark heart of the devil himself out there in the darkness! I can feel him creepin’ around out there, yessir!”

  Suddenly Mojo could feel him too.

  Mojo whipped around. It took a few moments of searching before he found what he was looking for: high up on the side of the mountain, far back in the pitch-black darkness of the trees, peering down through the gloom. Railroad lanterns.

  “Mojo,” the creaking door boomed down from the mountainside. “I have come, Mojo.”

  Mojo gulped. Why him? Why was the damn thing always talking to him? Why not somebody else?

  “Send back those you have stolen. Send the woman and the child back to me.”

  “Tell him to forget that,” Rocky whispered emphatically.

  “Is that the demon you told us about?” Nefertiti wondered.

  “Send them back or I shall destroy you all.” The voice rumbled across the valley like a slow freight train.

  “Just stay calm. He’s bluffing. He can’t touch us as long as we stay by the fire,” Narn assured them.

  There was a long moment of silence. Then: “Very well. So be it.”

  Mojo didn’t like the sound of that. It sounded too final to suit Mojo. He turned nervously towards Narn. “You’ve let that fire get too low. Put some more wood on it.”

  “Ten minutes ago, you were bitching about how hot it was.”

  “So I was wrong! Throw some more wood on it!”

  “Gather, creatures! Gather, my bloodthirsty creatures!” the demon’s voice rumbled down from the mountainside.

  “Bloodthirsty? Vampires? Is he trying to sic a pack of vampires on us?” Mojo wondered.

  “It’s possible,” Soaring Eagle said grimly. “There are vampires in these mountains. I’ve seen them. One of them even joined the tribe a few years back. You remember her, don’t you, hon? The girl who stayed rolled up in her sleeping bag all day? The one from Fresno?”

  “Gather, now! Gather!”

  Something whined past Mojo’s ear. He swatted at it. Missed. It whined past his other
ear. He swatted again. Missed again. The something stung him on the neck.

  “Mosquitoes!” Narn shouted suddenly, slapping his arm. “The sonofabitch has called up a mosquito invasion!”

  Mojo could see them now. They were coming in from the darkness in clouds, spreading around the camp like a thin, grey fog. Thousands of mosquitoes. No, millions of mosquitoes! A flood of mosquitoes! Mojo dropped to the ground and crawled towards the fire, hoping that the heat and smoke would drive them away. He could feel mosquitoes descending on him, covering his backside like a blanket.

  “There’s a can of Off in the tent. I’ll go get it.” Big Judy staggered away from the fire, swinging her arms around her face in an impersonation of an electric fan.

  “No!” Narn screamed at her. “Get back! That’s just what he wants! If you leave the fire, he’ll get you for sure!”

  Big Judy hesitated for a second, then fled back to the fire, where she joined the rest in trying to root into the ground. Everyone was on his or her stomach by now, pressing into the soft earth to minimize the amount of exposed flesh. They were flopping and writhing and swatting on all sides of Mojo. Above their shouts and curses Mojo could hear the tiny insects buzzing. There were so many they sounded like a small aircraft revving up for takeoff.

  Then something shot past Mojo’s head. The something was very small and very black and very fast. Then another. And another and another and …

  “Bats!” Mojo cried joyfully. “Bats are coming in!”

  “Gather, creatures!” Moloch’s voice boomed from the mountainside.

  Mojo decided it was time to fight fire with fire.

  “Gather, bats!” Mojo boomed back.

  “Come, my thirsty creatures!!” the demon commanded.

  “Come on, bats!!” Mojo answered.

  The air was now so thick with bats that Mojo was afraid to lift his head. The wind from a thousand leathery wings fluttered across his neck. The stinging sensations along his arms seemed to be lessening, though he wasn’t sure whether this meant there were now fewer mosquitoes or fewer nerve endings.