Mojo and the Pickle Jar

by Douglas Bell

  They mounted the altar.

  They found the santo.

  * * *

  Mojo stepped onto the altar and faced the santo of the Madonna. The Madonna stood on a simple pine pedestal just to the right of a rickety altar table. She glistened in the soft candlelight. She was dark-eyed and dark-skinned. She had a long, aristocratic face that was as beautiful as it was sad. Golden tears sparkled on her face. Golden threads glittered in her long blue robe. Her hands were raised beseechingly. There was a gaping hole in her chest with wine-colored stains around it.

  Grandmother set the basket down in front of the santo and pulled out the glass jar. She turned to Benegas. “You must do it.” She held the jar out to him. “You must be the one to return what you stole.”

  Benegas shrank back from her. “No. Please. I … I’m afraid.” His face was pale. His lips trembled. He looked as old as he was. “What if she won’t accept it from me?”

  “You have to do it,” Grandmother said firmly. “It’s the only way.”

  Grandmother pressed the jar into Benegas’ hands. He took it reluctantly.

  “Go on,” Grandmother prompted.

  Benegas unscrewed the lid and reached into the jar and pulled out the heart. The heart lay limp and lifeless in his hands. It shone with a slick, greasy sheen. It was completely black. There was no light coming from it. No movement.

  “Something’s wrong! I can feel it! It’s … dead!” Benegas exclaimed, horrified.

  The heart looked dead to Mojo too. A sudden sense of sadness, of loss, swept over him. Juanita must have felt it because she reached over and squeezed his arm.

  “Do it anyway,” Grandmother said commandingly. “Replace the heart in the wound.” Her expression was grim.

  After a few seconds of indecision, Benegas nodded. “All right, but you’ll have to help me.”

  Grandmother guided the old man to the Madonna. He placed the black heart carefully into the wound in her chest. They stepped quickly back.

  The heart lay still and unmoving for a long moment. Then a tiny blue spark appeared above it. Then another. The two sparks rose to meet one another. The two sparks circled together above the heart. Three more appeared and joined them.

  “See?!” Grandmother pointed triumphantly. “Do you see them? She has reclaimed her heart!”

  But even before Grandmother had finished speaking, the sparks began to slow and fade. Suddenly there were only three sparks circling over the heart. Then one. Then none.

  Grandmother gasped.

  There was a long silence.

  “What happened?” Mojo asked, confused.

  Grandmother shook her head. “I don’t understand it. We’ve done everything the child ordered me to do. What else could we—”

  The roof raised.

  There was a loud crackling sound that drowned out Grandmother’s next words. Mojo jerked his head up. The church roof was shooting up into the sky, spinning around and around as it ascended. Mojo stared after it, dumbfounded. He didn’t see a tornado, but he wouldn’t have been surprised if Dorothy herself had leaned over the edge of the rapidly dwindling roof and waved down to him.

  And then there was someone leaning over him, only it definitely wasn’t Dorothy. Mojo had to look twice to make sure the dim twilight wasn’t playing tricks on his eyes. It wasn’t. It really was a thirty-foot hunchbacked demon with bulging frog eyes who was leaning over the church and grinning down at him.

  Oh, shit, Mojo thought.

  “Beelzebub,” Juanita whispered.

  An intense blue light flashed in Mojo’s face.

  * * *

  “… free.”

  Mojo rubbed his eyes, trying to clear away the blue flash. When he could see again, the Madonna was standing in front of him. Only she wasn’t a statue anymore. She was real. The tears were gone from her cheeks. The sadness was gone from her face. There was a glowing heart of pure gold burning in her chest. She was peering down at a yellowed, crumbling skeleton at her feet. The skeleton was dressed in Benegas’ clothes.

  The Madonna looked up at them and smiled. “He is free now,” she said. “The curse is finally lifted.”

  Mojo wasn’t listening. It wasn’t Benegas Mojo was worried about. It was the grinning demon.

  “Lo-look,” Mojo managed, pointing, “at that!”

  The Madonna glanced up. Her smile turned to a frown. “You. You shouldn’t be here,” she told the demon.

  “Wrong. You’re the one who doesn’t belong here. Not anymore,” the demon rumbled from somewhere in the pit of his enormous belly.

  “You must return,” the Madonna said softly, her voice lilting with soft music. “There is no place for you now that Grace has been restored to the world.”

  “Too late for that grace crap,” the demon snarled.

  “It’s never too late for Grace,” the Madonna replied. She spread her arms and rose towards the demon in a revolving halo of light.

  The halo of light swirled around the Madonna as she floated upwards. Mojo blinked, and suddenly the Madonna was no longer an Indian. The Madonna rising towards the demon had alabaster skin and pale blue eyes and long blond hair that swayed across her back. She was dressed in a long white gown that covered her feet. There was a crescent of golden stars above her head.

  Mojo blinked again. Now it was a dusky Virgin with almond eyes and a sharp nose who was rising towards the demon in a cloud of light.

  Mojo blinked a third time and now the Virgin was as black as coal with full red lips and a great puff of black hair. She was wearing a red robe with blue stripes. Her willowy arms were covered by jangling copper bracelets.

  * * *

  The black Virgin floated up until she was in front of the demon’s huge face, suspended in the air some thirty feet above Mojo. He had to crane his neck to see her.

  “I order you to return,” the Virgin said, raising a thin, delicate arm and pointing it at the demon. She had coffee-and-cream skin. She had midnight-black hair piled high on her head and held by ivory combs. She had long, oriental eyes and tiny hands and feet.

  “You order me?!” The demon’s protruding eyes protruded even further.

  “I order you,” a diminutive Virgin with white lips and glossy green vines for hair repeated.

  The demon rolled his head back onto his hump and laughed. It was a huge, deafening sound. Suddenly the laughter stopped. Cut off. His head snapped forward and a gigantic fist flashed downwards. The fist smashed into the front wall of the church. Someone screamed. Logs flew. The remaining walls creaked and settled ominously. Mojo turned just in time to see Castillo and several others scurrying away from the ruins of the wall.

  “You order me? You? What kind of power do you think you have over me?!” the demon demanded to know.

  “The power of light,” a santo of Our Lady of Mercy with the hilt of a silver dagger protruding from her ruby-red heart said evenly.

  “The power of light,” the demon mimicked scornfully. “Is that something like the power of music? Or maybe the power of love? Is that how you plan to do it? With your bright lights and your sweet music and your pretty little pictures?”

  “If you don’t return voluntarily, I’ll be forced to use my power against you,” a burnished brown Virgin carved from mahogany with orchids in her hair said.

  “Your power? Don’t make me laugh. You don’t have any power,” the demon said contemptuously. Then: “You want to see power? You want me to show you some real power? I’ll show you real power! I’ll show you what power is, all right! I’ll rip this pretty little world of yours into specks of fly shit! I’ll turn your pretty music into a funeral dirge!”

  Mojo was edging towards the fallen front wall, pulling Juanita along with him, when the demon suddenly raised a clenched fist high into the air. He knew immediately that the time for edging was over.

  “Run!” Mojo yelled, bounding over a pair of outstretched legs as he shot through a gap in the wreckage. He burst through the gap, Juanita in tow, and spilled out
into the meadow beyond. Narn and Grandmother were right behind him. Chuy, his arms pumping furiously, brought up the rear.

  Mojo spotted a grove of pine trees just ahead. He sprinted for it, the others following. The demon’s fist fell with a tremendous crack. Small pieces of splintered wood peppered their backs as they raced into the grove. Larger chunks whistled through the boughs.

  They scrambled for safety behind the trunks.

  “Man!” Chuy wheezed.

  “Damn!” Mojo agreed with him.

  * * *

  When a few minutes passed without further bombardment, Mojo took courage and peeked around a low limb.

  “Why do you always struggle against the light?” a porcelain Virgin with white skin and white hair and white eyes was asking the demon. She seemed sad rather than angry.

  Beelzebub growled in reply. His hand whipped up faster than a striking snake. Faster than Mojo could follow, the demon’s enormous fist shot up out of the gathering twilight and into the Virgin.

  The fist passed through the Virgin. The fist passed right through and out her other side trailing streamers of tumbling sparks.

  The demon roared angrily. He jerked his fist back. The Virgin was floating exactly where she had been floating before. Not even a hair was out of place.

  “I can help you if you’ll let me,” a stained-glass Virgin with cobalt eyes told the demon. “I can make you whole again.”

  “Help yourself to Hell, bitch!” Beelzebub leaped at the Virgin, his mouth flying open to reveal row upon row upon row of tiny razor-sharp teeth. He bounded up and over her, wrapping her in his great arms. It didn’t work. He passed right through her again and tumbled heavily to the ground, crushing several small pines and what was left of the mission’s eastern wall.

  The Virgin revolved slowly in the air and looked down upon the demon, who was lying stunned on the ground.

  She smiled gently.

  She began to sing.

  * * *

  The song the Virgin sang was light as well as sound.

  The song drifted over the meadow towards Mojo in a great, slowly revolving wheel of light. It passed over him, submerging him on the bottom of a sparkling sea. The song had no words, and yet it was about time and space and love and a thousand other things. It was a song like no song Mojo had ever heard before. He wasn’t even sure if it was really a song. It had a peculiar undulating rhythm: a rising, falling, rising cadence. It had an incredible range: The high notes soared far beyond Mojo’s ability to hear them, the low notes rumbled down to a slow thunder that he felt more than heard. As the song progressed he realized it was as huge in scope as it was in range. It was a song of songs. Somewhere within the Virgin’s song was every song that had ever been written and every song that would be written and every song that could be written. Mojo suddenly realized that the song—if that was what its was—was somehow akin to his trick for opening locks. He realized that the Lady’s song contained all the possible permutations of all the possible musical notes. It was truly and literally the song of songs.

  And yet it was even more than that.

  The song had the power of all music played all together at one time and yet understood separately. The song had the power to turn men’s minds and hearts. It was certainly turning Mojo’s mind and heart. Mojo closed his eyes and let the music swell up around him. The music swelled, and Mojo swelled with it. As the Virgin’s song rose up and up over ever-ascending scales, Mojo rose with it. Mojo rose up in ecstatic harmony with the song. He felt the song rushing through his blood like a warm sweetness. He felt himself and the music becoming one. Mojo sighed in ecstasy as he rose with the song. It was like sex, only closer and tighter and drier. All thought left Mojo’s mind. He let himself rise upwards with the Virgin’s song, upwards into a dazzling night of stars and through that into a black void of galaxies and through that into a swirling fire storm of galaxies of galaxies of galaxies.

  And then—at the very height of the song, at the ultimate peak of the ultimate note that encompassed all possible notes, at the highest high Mojo had ever reached—the song shifted.

  The song shifted with a disconcerting suddenness.

  Suddenly the rising sweetness was gone. Suddenly the song was descending, falling back, running back down the scales it had just ascended. Suddenly the song was falling at such a speed that it sounded like the garble generated by spinning a radio dial. Mojo’s stomach heaved. He felt the blood leave his face. The song was degenerating into a discordant, chaotic squeal as it fell. The squeal grated in Mojo’s ears. It was the most horrible thing he had ever heard. He yelled and threw his hands over his ears. It did no good.

  Mojo’s knees buckled, and he had to catch himself to keep from falling. He was in pain. Pain was stabbing through Mojo’s mind and descending through his body as the song that was now a squeal descended through the scales. The pain was everywhere and nowhere, a nonspecific generalized ache.

  Mojo drew his shoulders in and huddled against the pain. He was in a black depression as well as in pain. He clenched his fists and gritted his teeth and glanced over at Grandmother. Then back again. He stared in disbelief. Grandmother was not in any pain. Grandmother was not even depressed. No. Grandmother was in ecstasy. Grandmother was beaming. Her face glowed like one of her pictures of the saints. She was holding her hands out towards the Virgin and singing along with her.

  Mojo looked past Grandmother to where Narn and Juanita and Chuy were huddled behind an ancient pine. Narn didn’t look ecstatic. Not at all. Narn looked like Mojo felt. Maybe worse. Narn was propping himself against the pine with both hands. Sweat was pouring from his forehead. His head was hanging down. He looked green around the gills.

  Juanita was standing beside Narn, helping to support him. Juanita looked better than Narn, but nowhere near as well as Grandmother. Juanita’s face was pasty. Her hands were clenched. Her mouth was set in a grim, determined line. She apparently wasn’t suffering as much from the Virgin’s song as Mojo and Narn were, but she certainly wasn’t singing along with it either.

  Neither was Chuy.

  It took Mojo a moment to find Chuy, and when he did, all Mojo could see of him were the soles of his shoes, the rest of him having rooted underneath a bush.

  * * *

  Mojo heard a low moan from the forest behind him. Then an entire series of moans as if a chorus of the damned had been raised to accompany the Virgin. Mojo turned. The moans were coming from a low thicket near the forest’s edge. A head popped out of the thicket. Then an upper body. It was the Reverend Jerry Lee Rutt. He looked terrible.

  The Reverend Rutt rose out of the thicket and stumbled over to a nearby tree. He grabbed the tree and clung to it with the desperation of a man caught in a hurricane. He leaned over some bushes and dry-heaved. His face was mottled and contorted. His eyes were unfocused. Threads of spit clung to his lips. He looked like the last day of a two-week drunk.

  Now more figures emerged from the thicket. Many were on their hands and knees. They were all crawling or staggering, trying to reach the deeper woods, trying to get away from the song. Mojo spotted Castillo stumbling through a thicket. Castillo’s jacket was torn and muddy. He was dragging one leg behind him. His head was bobbing like a doddering old man’s.

  Castillo disappeared into the shadows just as the song bottomed out and began to rise again. The song rose slowly at first, then faster, then faster, gaining momentum. Like a passenger on an emotional roller-coaster ride, Mojo rose with the song. Mojo rose out of the depths of pain and despair. Mojo rose up through happiness and contentment to the edge of ecstasy.

  And then the song ended.

  * * *

  “NO!!”

  The cry rolled across the meadow like a clap of thunder. Beelzebub was climbing back to his feet. A tornado of golden light was spinning around him.

  “You can’t do this to me!” He surged towards the Virgin, the bright tornado moving with him.

  “Why do you struggle?” a santo of Our Lady of
Remedies sighed as one of the demon’s clawed hands passed harmlessly through her. “Surely you know that you only struggle against yourself.”

  Mojo stared at the demon. The demon was in bad shape. He was being ripped to pieces. Flecks of black flesh were being pulled from his body by the tornado. The flecks swirled around the fringes of the tornado like candy wrappers.

  The demon turned away from the Virgin. He swatted at the tornado. He twisted about, trying to free himself from it, but without success. The tornado was closing in around him. Larger and larger pieces of burned, black flesh were being torn from him.

  The demon screamed as he struggled with the tornado.

  Then screamed again.

  Mojo frowned. Peered closer. Something weird was going on. Where the black flesh had been torn from the demon’s body, light was shining through. There was something shining underneath the blasted black exterior of the demon. There was something underneath that twisted exterior that shone with the same bright light that encircled the Virgin.

  The demon spun away from the Virgin and tried to run, but the tornado had him now. The demon staggered to his knees, the tornado wrapping itself around him, growing ever tighter, pulling and tearing at him.

  The tornado ripped off the demon’s hump. The hump came away in one piece like a turtle’s shell. It flew through the air and struck the ground and broke into a dozen smoking pieces.

  The tornado whirled faster and faster around the demon.

  More chunks of black flesh flew.

  The demon screamed with rage.

  “Now you need not return,” the Virgin said. “Now you have a second chance. Accept it. Accept the Grace,” she urged.

  “I accept nothing!” the demon roared. And suddenly he was shrinking. As Mojo watched transfixed, the demon shrank rapidly down to the size of an elephant. Then to the size of a man. Then a rat. Then a horsefly. And then he was gone completely, the center of the tornado a swirling, empty void.

  The tornado slowed as if confused.

  The Virgin sighed heavily and shook her head.

  Mojo stepped out from behind the tree.

  * * *