Mojo and the Pickle Jar

by Douglas Bell

  Mojo didn’t find that encouraging.

  17

  “Gotdamnsummabitch!” Narn couldn’t believe his eyes.

  “What is it?” Grandmother, just behind him on the narrow trail, tried to peer past.

  Narn wheeled around. “Get back! Into those bushes over there!” He herded them back down the trail towards a dense thicket.

  “Is it Castillo?” Juanita asked as she ducked into the thicket.

  “Worse.”

  They barely had time to conceal themselves before what Narn had glimpsed burst through the trees and into clear sight: a demon, a gigantic thirty-foot demon with blasted black skin and bulging frog eyes. The demon was humpbacked and spraddle-legged. His wet, sucking breath hissed and groaned like an old steam boiler as he lumbered towards them, sweeping pine trees from his path like matchsticks.

  Juanita peered through a break in the bush. This demon was different from the one the night before. Much more humanlike. He had two arms and two legs and all the other usual apparatus. He was definitely not human, however. In addition to his outrageous size, his body was twisted and contorted in ways no human could have survived. He looked as though he had been crushed in a pneumatic press while being hosed down by flamethrowers.

  The demon strode down the path, headed straight for their hiding place. His reptilian eyes were narrowed to slits. He moved in the slow, hesitant manner of a man stumbling through darkness. Whenever a particularly strong shaft of sunlight struck him, thin smoke rose from his skin like mist off a marsh.

  Juanita crouched lower to the ground, cowering underneath the brush. The demon drew level with the thicket, and a vile, putrid stink washed over her. It was all she could do to keep from gagging. The demon smelled as bad as he looked.

  Then, just when Juanita had decided the thing couldn’t help but see them, the demon was past, lumbering away without even a side glance.

  No one moved for a long time. Not even after the sounds of branches breaking and trees falling had faded to an occasional distant crack. Finally Narn stood up and stared silently down the path in the direction the creature had gone.

  Benegas joined him. “Beelzebub,” Benegas said softly. “I recognized the stench. He’s come back.”

  The crow floated down from a tree and lit on Benegas’ shoulder.

  “Come back? You know this creature?” Grandmother asked, prying herself out of the thicket.

  “Yes,” Benegas said. “I met him on the river, not long after I’d driven the Madonna away and found the heart in my saddlebag.” He sighed heavily. “I was crushed, you see. Dejected. I knew what I’d done, what a terrible sin I’d committed. But I didn’t know what to do next. What to do to rectify it. I didn’t know what to do, so I did nothing. I just sat.

  “I sat by the river for the next two days and waited for the Virgin to return and claim her heart. I waited, but she didn’t come. I know now I should have saddled my horse and ridden for the mission, but at the time I was afraid. I was afraid that the murders of the friars had been discovered, and that I’d be arrested if I went back.

  “On the second night this demon, this Beelzebub, came to me. He squatted in the darkness beyond my campfire and offered to buy the heart from me. He offered my weight in gold. I refused. He offered three times my weight in gold. I refused again. I told him that I intended to return the Madonna’s heart to her.

  “Beelzebub became angry. He stepped out of the darkness and came for me, promising to tear me limb from limb.

  “I grabbed the saddlebag and ran. I ran to the river’s edge. And then, with no place left to run and seeing he would have me in seconds, I threw the bag into the waters.

  “The demon screamed. He cursed me. He rushed past me after the bag, but the river had carried the bag away. The demon ran down the bank after it. For a long time I could hear him crashing through the brush, following the bag downstream. Then I couldn’t hear him anymore.

  “I returned to the campfire and sat down and waited for the demon to return and kill me, but sunrise came before he did. I got up and saddled my horse and rode for Mexico. And I’ve wandered the earth ever since. It wasn’t until over three hundred years later when you came to me in the old church”—he nodded to Grandmother—“that I learned that the heart had somehow escaped.”

  “And now this same demon, this Beelzebub, is back, seeking the heart again?” Grandmother asked.

  “Yes. It must be the heart he’s after. And if we don’t find the mission before nightfall, he’ll get it. He’s weak now, in the daylight hours, but as soon as the sun sets he’ll track us down and destroy us along with the heart.”

  Juanita glanced through the trees. The sun was already falling towards the west.

  * * *

  “Wake up!” Someone was slapping Mojo’s face. At first the slapping seemed distant, removed, like it was happening to someone else or in a dream. Then suddenly it was real and close and painful. Mojo opened his eyes. Everything was spinning and swimming around him. He felt disoriented. He could taste smoke.

  “Come on, man. Get up.” Mojo allowed himself to be picked up and placed on his feet. The spinning slowed. He peered around. The rope he had been hanging from was dangling loose from the tree branch. Its end had been cut. There was a black, burned smudge underneath the rope. Bigthumb was sprawled beside the smudge. His eyes were closed and his mouth open. The vodka bottle was lying on the ground by his side.

  Mojo turned shakily towards his rescuer.

  “What’s happening, man?” Chuy asked. “That pendejo Indian trying to roast you? He some kind of weird cannibal?”

  * * *

  “It was a vision, man. A real vision. And I’m not talking about a face on a tortilla! No way! It was the Man of Sorrows himself! Appeared in my bedroom big as life. Hovered over the foot of my bed, all lit up, like a chopper with a laser concert going behind him!’

  “The Man of Sorrows?”

  “That’s straight, man. He’s the one who sent me.”

  “He sent you up here to help me?”

  “You?” Chuy frowned. “Naw. He never mentioned you. He sent me up here to help Grandmother. I just noticed the smoke and stopped off to see if she was here.”

  “Oh.” Mojo felt vaguely disappointed.

  “Geronimo over there didn’t want me to cut you down.” Chuy nodded at the comatose Apache. “So I had to talk him into it.” He lifted his hand. His baseball bat was in it.

  “Come on.” Chuy took Mojo’s arm. “We’d better get moving. I got my wheels right over here.”

  Chuy had an ATV. A three-wheeler.

  “An ATV?”

  “All-terrain vehicle, man. You can go anywhere on this sucker: over sand dunes, through the woods, across a swamp, even. There’s no place this baby can’t go.”

  Mojo peered closely at the strange contraption. It looked like a cross between a Harley hog and a tricycle. It had huge balloon tires that raised the chassis a good three feet above the ground.

  Chuy slipped his baseball bat underneath the lip of a carrying pack, then vaulted into the seat. “Come on, man.” He scooted up to leave room for Mojo. “Let’s go find old Grandmother.”

  Mojo hesitated. He had seen these things before. On a cable special about dangerous consumer products.

  “Ah, don’t these three-wheelers roll over kinda easy?”

  “No prob, man! No prob! I been driving this sucker since I was a kid, and I haven’t had more than two or three really serious crack-ups in all that time! And I know this mountain too. I been coming up here for years. I probably know every trail on this mountain. Hey! I’m not gonna crack up on a mountain I know like the back of my hand!”

  “But … there’s not even a trail.”

  “Sure there is. ATV trail, man. Goes all the way to the top. I told you, I ride up here all the time. It’s against the law, of course. Fucking Forest Service law. But, hey! It’s my land, you know? They stole it from me. I got the right to ride on my own land, right?”

&n
bsp; Chuy revved the engine. It sounded like a berserk lawn mower.

  Mojo got on anyway.

  * * *

  It was better than an amusement-park ride.

  And worse.

  Riding on the back of Chuy’s three-wheeler was like riding a runaway water balloon. Mojo kept bouncing and slipping and sliding off the back of the seat. If it hadn’t been for the death grip he had around Chuy’s waist and his own keen sense of self-survival, he would have been thrown off several times.

  “Slow down!” Mojo shouted over the roar of the engine. They were flying up a vague trail, bumping heavily over logs and holes and rocks.

  “Slow down? Shit. We’re barely moving.”

  Chuy maneuvered the ATV around a tight turn, one of the big rear wheels raising off the ground. Mojo leaned desperately in the direction of the wheel, and the tire fell back to earth.

  “Hey! You’re doing all right,” Chuy yelled over his shoulder. “Really starting to get the hang of it.”

  The only thing Mojo wanted to get was off. “How much further?” he shouted as they blasted their way up a dry runoff bed, pebbles rattling in their wake.

  “Not far. The tree line is at the top of this next ridge.”

  Mojo tried to look ahead, but the three-wheeler was bouncing so badly that all he could see were blurs of green and brown and grey. He ducked his head. He promised himself that if he survived this he would never get on or in anything with less than four wheels for the rest of his life.

  They powered their way up a steep, rocky slope and shot out into a grassy meadow. They were almost across the meadow and into the woods on the other side when Mojo noticed the log cabin. The cabin was hidden in the shadow of some towering pines. It had a small cross affixed to its roof. There were several people standing in front of the cabin. One of them was waving madly in his direction. It was Juanita.

  “It’s them!” Mojo shouted over the roar of wind and engine. “Turn around!”

  “Who?”

  “Them! Go back!”

  * * *

  “Thank goodness you found us!” Grandmother took Mojo’s arm as he stepped shakily down from the ATV. “We need you to open the door. It’s locked.”

  “Place is like a goddamn fortress,” Narn told Mojo as they walked around to the back of the tiny church. “Foot-thick walls and no windows. We tried to batter down the door with a dead log, but the log broke before the door did.”

  Narn led Mojo to a door set in the mission’s wall. The door was built from sections of sawed logs. There were no visible hinges. Near the left edge of the door was an ancient iron lock set deep into the wood.

  “You must hurry,” Grandmother said. She pulled the pickle jar from her basket and held it up in front of Mojo.

  “Look,” Grandmother said. Mojo did. The black stain had spread. Now it covered almost all of the heart. All but a tiny white splotch near its top.

  Mojo pulled his piece of stiff wire from his shirt pocket and went to work.

  * * *

  “What’s wrong?” Juanita frowned over Mojo’s shoulder. “What’s taking so long?”

  “It’s this lock. It’s old, all rusted up. Even the inside is rusted. If I had some WD-40 or something, I might be able to loosen it, but without anything but a piece of wire…” Mojo shrugged helplessly.

  “Well, you’d better find a way. And soon. It’ll be sunset in a few minutes.”

  Mojo glanced to the west. She was right. The sun was hovering on the crest of the farthest ridge. The light was already beginning to fade.

  Mojo returned to the lock with renewed vigor. He managed to chip away most of the rust from the outermost sections of the lock, but there was still a long ways to go. He wormed the wire down into the keyhole and closed his eyes and fished for the tumblers.

  A distant shout.

  A gunshot.

  Another.

  Narn came racing around the corner of the mission. “It’s him! It’s Castillo!” he cried.

  Mojo wiggled the wire frantically but the lock wouldn’t budge.

  This about Mojo Birdsong: He was a wizard because his mother was a witch.

  Mojo didn’t know his mother was a witch, didn’t know much about his mother at all. His mother had deserted him when he was still a child and he hardly remembered her. All Mojo could recall about his mother was her long blond hair and her snake tattoo and how she had always thrown things at him. Mojo didn’t know his mother was a witch nor who his real father was. If he had, he would have known why the demon always spoke to him and not to the others. He would have known why he had such peculiar talents. He might even have known how to open the rusted lock.

  Mojo had always had a talent for locks and keys and spoons and dice, had always been able to open, bend, and manipulate them, but without ever knowing exactly how he did it. It had something to do with geometry, he knew, but it wasn’t any geometry he had been taught at Van Horn High.

  When Mojo bent things, he did it by picturing the things in his mind as three-dimensional objects and then folding or unfolding the objects until he had them in the shape he wanted. He had the idea that it was space itself he was folding and unfolding, but he wasn’t really sure.

  There were rules. Things couldn’t just be folded any which way. There were a few basic transformations that would work and no others. To turn a wad of orange peels into an orange with no center, for example—a trick that always made the girls ooh and aah—Mojo couldn’t just pull the peels apart and mold them back together again into the shell of an orange. He had to leave the peels in a wad and then unfold rectangles of minuscule width to shift the peels around a minuscule bit at a time until they had all been shifted into a hollow sphere.

  Forming hollow oranges was hard. It was long and tedious. Keys were much easier.

  To turn a piece of wire into a key, all Mojo had to do was fold the wire into all its possible permutations. One of these permutations was bound to fit the lock. This was much easier to do than to explain. All he really did was set the wire to vibrating in a certain way. Once set to vibrating, waves ran down the wire like plucked guitar strings. These waves came so fast that it normally only took a few seconds until the right sequence of waves struck the tumblers and opened the lock.

  Normally.

  But not this time.

  * * *

  Mojo closed his eyes and concentrated. He felt the wire quivering in his hand. He felt slick sweat between his shoulder blades. He had to open this lock.

  But he couldn’t.

  Mojo opened his eyes. It just wasn’t going to work. There just wasn’t enough room inside the lock for the wire to vibrate properly. There was too much rust and dust and crap compacted inside and no time left to clean it out.

  A bullet whined over the roof of the tiny church.

  “Come on!” Juanita tried to grab his arm, but he pushed her away.

  There was one more chance.

  Mojo closed his eyes again. He pictured a line in his mind. The line was the wire. He expanded the line. The line grew at an exponential rate. The line ballooned up through Mojo’s mind in the same way that Mojo and the Child of Atocha had ballooned up through the universe. It only took a few seconds for the line to grow so large that Mojo’s mind could no longer hold it. In only seconds the line had reached the point the child and he had reached when the universe could no longer hold them and they had floated out into the white haze of the spinning egg.

  And then the line was gone.

  The line had floated out of Mojo’s mind.

  At first Mojo thought he had lost it completely. Had failed. Then he saw it again: an almost invisible crease in a corner in his mind, a shadow of a line that was now as small as it had been huge only a few seconds before. He concentrated on the crease and it began to grow. When it was almost the size of a hair but not quite, he stopped it.

  Mojo opened his eyes. The wire between his fingers was so thin and so fine that he had to turn his head and look at it in a certain way to even s
ee it. It was no more than a glint running between his fingers and the lock. It made dental floss look like a fire hose.

  “Come on, Mojo!” Juanita threw her arms around his waist and yanked. “We’ve got to get into the woods!”

  Mojo held his ground. He set the wire to vibrating. The lock shook slightly. There was a low crackling sound. Flecks of rust puffed out. The lock clicked open.

  “Follow me!” Mojo shouted as he pushed open the heavy door and stumbled into the church, dragging Juanita in with him.

  Grandmother and the others did. They followed.

  “Hold it right there!” a voice demanded just as Mojo was reaching back for the door.

  Fat chance.

  Mojo slammed the door and bolted it shut.

  18

  It was dark as a drive-in back seat inside the church.

  Something struck the door. Mojo jumped away from it. It struck again, a heavy, hollow thud.

  The hollow thuds became a steady pounding.

  A match flared. “Phew! Smells in here!” Chuy snorted.

  Chuy held the light higher. They caught a quick glimpse of long, narrow wooden walls bordering two rows of rough-hewn log benches before the match sputtered out.

  A bullet thwanged off the door’s heavy lock. Then a succession of bullets popping like grease in an iron skillet. Mojo held his breath. In a moment the popping stopped. The door remained shut. Mojo resumed breathing.

  “Light another match,” Grandmother instructed Chuy, her voice disembodied by the darkness. “I have a candle in my bag.”

  Grandmother led them up the aisle between the log benches, the dry, ancient flooring creaking ominously underneath their feet. They passed a skeleton lying sprawled in the middle of the aisle about halfway to the altar. The skeleton was dressed in the decayed rags of what had once been a monk’s robe. Benegas made the sign of the cross and muttered something as he stepped over it.