Mojo and the Pickle Jar Page 6

  As soon as the abbot was gone, Mojo stripped down to his underwear and fell onto the narrow bed. He stretched out and sighed. He closed his eyes. He hadn’t realized how tired he was until now.

  Mojo rolled over and, tucking the pillow up underneath his head, fell asleep in no time.

  * * *

  Mojo had a dream. In his dream he was standing in the center of a vast marble cathedral, a great hall lit only by a few sputtering candles. At first he thought he was alone. Then, around him, in the shadowy naves, beside the tall pillars, lounging against the white-draped altar table, he saw saints. And not just regular saints either. These saints were all dark-skinned and flat-eyed and bleeding from thorns and daggers and spears and God knew what. Dark Mexican saints like those in the monastery’s entry. The saints were watching Mojo. Studying him. Mojo felt as though he was on center stage. Or sitting on a platter in the middle of a banquet table. He could feel the saints’ eyes on him, see them gleaming in the half-light.

  No, he realized suddenly in the manner of dreams, not just watching, but weighing. The Mexican saints—he could hear the soft drip of their blood on the cold marble floors—were judging him, weighing his soul.

  Mojo peered down and saw that his soul was lying in the palm of his hand. It was a small, flimsy thing, brown and crumpled like a wadded-up candy wrapper. Pretty pathetic actually, but heavy as a stone. He understood that the soul was weighing him down, dragging him into the marble floor that was suddenly as soft as muck and pulsating with an angry red glow. His feet had already disappeared. It was as if he was wading in marble.

  Mojo, not anxious to be swallowed up by a floor, shook his hand, but the soul stuck to it, clinging as if it had been glued. He shook his hand again, harder this time, but the soul wouldn’t let go, sticking to him as tenaciously as the tar baby. He windmilled his arm but that didn’t help either. Fear shot through him. He was sinking. He couldn’t get rid of the damn thing.

  He tried pulling the soul off with his other hand but failed. The soul was slippery, hard to hold, evading his grip as though coated with Crisco. He tried to shout for help but no sound came. He was floundering now, sinking deeper and deeper into the marble. Up to his ankles … up to his knees … his feet growing hotter … and hotter …

  * * *

  Mojo awoke with a start.

  He opened his eyes. Blinked. Sat up. Rubbed his face. Moonlight was streaming through a small window beside his head. Damp sheets were tangled around his feet.

  For a moment Mojo didn’t know where he was. Didn’t recognize the room.

  Then it came to him.

  Mojo shivered once, remembering his dream, then glanced over at the door. He listened but there was only silence.

  He shivered again. Late. Middle of the night. Everyone asleep.

  Mojo yawned widely. Fell back onto the narrow bed. Closed his eyes again. Faint echoes of the dream came back to haunt him: a glimpse of a vast, shadowy place, of eyes in the dark, of a vague sense of unease. He tried to remember the details of the dream but all he could remember was that it had been one of those deals where you try to run but your feet don’t move.

  He shook his head, forcing the remnants of the dream from his mind. Was just nodding off again …

  A sharp click.

  Mojo’s eyes flicked open. He turned towards the window. Waited. After a few seconds there was another click. A brief, tiny shadow on the glass.

  A pebble. Someone was throwing pebbles at his window.

  Mojo rolled out of bed and padded over to the window in his bare feet. The world outside was bathed in moonlight and shadows. The tall forest blocked his view less than a hundred feet away. He looked down. Just beyond the narrow garden wall there was a short, cleared area between the monastery and the forest. There was a figure standing there, just at the edge of the forest. The figure was looking up at Mojo’s window.

  It was Juanita.

  She was naked.

  Mojo had to look twice before he believed it, but it was true.

  Juanita’s copper skin gleamed in the moonlight. He could see her face clearly. He could see the dark aureoles of her breasts, the even darker triangle at the base of her stomach.

  Juanita saw him looking down and smiled up at him. She tossed her head, her long black hair swinging free across her shoulders. She pursed her lips and threw him a kiss. She made a very small but very suggestive bump with her hips.

  Mojo’s mouth fell open. Mojo realized Juanita was not just naked, but nekkid, the difference being that a naked person simply has no clothes on while a nekkid person has no clothes on for a very specific purpose.

  Juanita waved to Mojo to follow as she disappeared under the shadow of the trees.

  Mojo threw some clothes on, even though he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to need them.

  Mojo pulled the blanket off his bed and opened his door and tiptoed down the long hall to the front door of the monastery.

  The front door of the monastery was locked with a bolt, but Mojo was able to ease it back with hardly any sound at all. He slipped out the front door and through the gate and around the garden wall to the side of the monastery that bordered the forest. He walked down the wall, looking for the spot where Juanita had disappeared into the woods.

  Mojo was almost to the end of the monastery before he finally stopped and paused. The forest was an impenetrable black void. He had no idea where Juanita had gone. He stepped towards the forest. He cupped his mouth.

  “Juanita?” he called softly.

  He waited, but there was no answer. The mountain air was cold. He hardly noticed.

  “Juanita?” A little louder.

  “Mojo.” Her voice was distant. It came from somewhere up in the trees. On the slope above him. It sounded peculiar. Strained.

  Second thoughts? Anticipation?

  Mojo moved down the tree line in the direction of the voice and found a break in the darkness. There was a narrow footpath leading up into the woods. He took it.

  It was pitch-black dark under the trees. Mojo stepped carefully up the path, feeling his way with his feet as much as anything. Limbs and branches brushed against him. He waded through the brush and wondered why Juanita was leading him up into the woods instead of just coming to his room. More romantic, he supposed. Girls were strange about things like that: candles, flowers, nights under the stars … girls were crazy about all that stuff. Maybe she had found a meadow up above the woods where they could lie on a blanket in the moonlight. Maybe that was it. Maybe she was leading him up to a beautiful meadow filled with flowers and moonlight. Maybe that was why she a was leading him away from the monastery.

  Or maybe she was a screamer.

  Mojo picked up the pace. Mojo felt his way around a sharp turn in the path and stopped. There she was. Juanita. Still nude. Still beautiful. Outlined against the night sky at the top of the trail.

  Juanita was standing with her legs slightly parted and her hands on her hips. Her head was held high. The moon shone on her hair and other parts. She was looking down the trail at Mojo. Waiting for him.

  “Mojo.” Juanita opened her arms as she called his name.

  Mojo hurried eagerly up the path towards her. He hadn’t gone more than a couple of steps, however, when something large and black detached itself from a tree just ahead of him and came swooping down the path.

  Mojo stopped. The thing was coming straight for his head! He ducked.

  Juanita hissed.

  The flying thing flashed through a shaft of moonlight and Mojo saw that it was only an owl. The owl passed inches above his head, just missing him. He felt the wind from its broad wings across his back.

  Mojo stayed crouched down for a second longer, then raised back up and glanced over his shoulder. The owl was gone, swallowed up by the night. The path behind him was a black void.

  He turned towards Juanita.

  Juanita was still waiting at the top of the trail. She opened her arms to him again. She motioned him forward.

/>   Mojo hesitated. That hiss … that sound Juanita had just made … He squinted into the darkness.

  “Come to me, Mojo. Come,” she called urgently.

  Mojo hesitated again. Something was definitely wrong. Juanita didn’t sound like herself. She sounded more like a creaking door than a woman.

  Mojo frowned. Maybe she was just nervous. Or anxious. He shrugged. He took a tentative step forward. Then quickly took it back. He had the strangest feeling …

  “I … said … come … to … me!!”

  Mojo gulped. This time there was no question. It definitely wasn’t Juanita’s voice. It wasn’t anybody’s voice. He took a quick step back.

  The woman who looked like Juanita took a quick step forward. Moonlight caught her face and Mojo could see she was furious. Her nose was flared. Her lips were pulled back from her teeth. Her eyes were slitted.

  Then Mojo saw something else. Mojo saw the shadows on either side of Juanita move. Move with her. Rustle across the ground behind her. Part of Juanita? Or what he had thought was Juanita?

  Mojo turned and ran.

  Something screamed in rage behind him. It wasn’t Juanita who screamed. It wasn’t even remotely human.

  Mojo flew down the path, brush slashing at him. He saw a break in the darkness ahead, a crack of moonlight, and ran for it. He used his hands to fend off the heavier limbs.

  Mojo broke through the brush and tore down the hill.

  He leaped a final border of two-foot-high pine seedlings and stumbled out into the cleared area in front of the garden wall. He could hear something crashing down the path after him. The something was making an unearthly whirring sound. It was breaking brush and tree limbs as it came.

  Mojo raced down the wall towards the front of the monastery. Towards the front door. He heard the thing break out of the undergrowth behind him. He heard it come scrabbling after him across the rocky ground. Whatever it was, it had a lot more legs than he did.

  Mojo resisted the temptation to turn around. He drove his legs as he had never driven them before. His knees churned like pistons. The far end of the wall was just ahead in the moonlight.

  Mojo drove for the end of the wall.

  And then he could feel it. Smell it. It was a hot, fetid, stinking wind coming up behind him. Coming up like a truck on a freeway. Coming up so fast that he might as well have been sitting down waiting for it. He realized then that he wasn’t going to make it, that the thing would have him before he even reached the end of the fence, never to mention the front door.

  * * *

  A pale hand shot out from the wall just ahead of Mojo. Mojo didn’t even have time to be surprised. The hand snagged him gafflike as he raced past and jerked him into the wall. Only it wasn’t a wall. It was a narrow gate.

  Mojo slipped through the narrow gate like a letter through a mail slot.

  Something screamed, a huge, angry bellow.

  Mojo stumbled to a halt. He was in the walled garden that surrounded the monastery, being held by the shoulder by a shadowy figure in a monk’s robe.

  “You’re safe now.” The monk gave Mojo’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “It can’t follow you here. This is consecrated ground. Understand?” Using his other hand, the monk latched the gate with a firm metal click.

  Mojo nodded, but he wasn’t really listening. His attention was on the thin wooden gate. The flimsy-looking gate. Waiting to see what might come over or under or through it.

  Mojo had no confidence in consecrated ground.

  Seconds passed without a repeat of the sound of many legs on hard ground or strange whirring noises or anything else. The moonlit top of the garden wall remained empty. The woods beyond the wall remained dark and silent.

  Finally Mojo shook off the monk’s hand and stepped forward and sniffed the air. It smelled of pine and cold, clear altitude, a faint whiff of roses. Clean as new snow. He moved closer to the garden gate and sniffed again. Still nothing.

  It wasn’t out there.

  The thing had gone without leaving.

  “This way.” The monk took Mojo’s arm and led him up the garden towards the front of the monastery. Mojo, not exactly shell-shocked but close, let himself be led.

  They had reached the corner before Mojo had gathered his wits enough to wonder: “What the … hell was that?”

  “The beast,” the monk said grimly. He led Mojo up the front steps and onto the broad lip of the doorway. Mojo could see his face clearly now. The monk had a thin, unlined face with high cheekbones and a long aristocratic nose. The top of his head was shaved and he was wearing a robe of cheap sackcloth with a rope belt. His eyes were a pale blue. He was probably older than he looked.

  “Go inside and don’t come out before sunrise,” the monk instructed Mojo. “The beast fears only light.”

  He turned to go.

  “Wait a minute.” Mojo touched the monk’s sleeve. “Have I met you before? Were you at dinner tonight?”

  “Of course.” The monk hesitated on the lower steps. He smiled at Mojo. “I’m always there. But I can see you don’t remember me. No matter. Outsiders often think we Brothers all look alike.”

  “No, I’m sure I would’ve remembered you,” Mojo protested. “I would’ve remembered that robe. That’s not the standard issue.”

  “Goodbye.” The monk stepped down off the steps.

  “Wait a second! You never did tell me what that thing was. You just said the beast. What kind of beast?”

  “Go inside,” the monk said over his shoulder. He waved as he passed around the corner of the building.

  “Hey! Thanks!” Mojo called after him, suddenly remembering his manners.

  Mojo stood quietly, staring at the empty garden for a long moment. It was weird. That wave. That hand. The monk’s hand only had two fingers. The thumb and one other. All the rest of his fingers had been cut off cleanly at the bottom joint.

  Surely he would have remembered a shabby monk with three fingers missing?

  * * *

  The big entry door behind Mojoe creaked open. Bright light spilled out onto the steps. A plump face peeked around the edge of the door. It was the redheaded abbot. He had a flashlight in his hand.

  Mojo turned to face him.

  “Mr. Birdsong? What are you doing out here?”

  “Well…” Mojo wasn’t sure where to begin.

  “We heard an animal. It sounded close.” The abbot eased out the door. Looked cautiously around.

  “It was close. It was after me,” Mojo told him.

  “After you? Really? How?”

  “Well, it’s a long story. I was up in my room, see, when I heard this noise at the window. I got up and—”

  “Mojo? Is that you?” Juanita appeared in the doorway. Her face was pale. She looked worried.

  “Yeah, it’s me.”

  “What are you doing out there? Didn’t you hear that scream? Brother Timothy told us it might be a mountain lion. You should come inside, where it’s safe.”

  Mojo shook his head. “It wasn’t a mountain lion. I was just telling the abbot here about it. You see, I heard this noise at my window and…” He looked into Juanita’s eyes. Juanita was staring expectantly at him. Waiting.

  Mojo’s tongue dried up.

  Oh, shit.

  What was he going to say next? What could he say? Could he say, “And then I went to the window and saw you down here buck naked doing the bump and grind so I got my blanket and went outside and followed you up into the woods so we could do it only you turned into a monster”?

  Not hardly.

  “And then?” she prompted.

  “And then … ah … and then I came down to investigate but I didn’t find anything,” he concluded lamely.

  “By yourself? Weren’t you afraid?”

  “Somebody had to do it.” Mojo shrugged. “But don’t worry. Whatever it was, it’s long gone now.”

  “You went out there in the dark looking for the lion? By yourself? Oh, Mojo! You could have been killed!”<
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  Mojo didn’t say anything but she was right. He had come closer to being killed than she would ever know.

  Juanita slipped out the door. Ran down the steps and, before Mojo knew what was happening, threw her arms around him and hugged him.

  Juanita pressed herself against Mojo. Tightly. “I’m sorry about all those bad things I said about you,” she whispered against his neck.

  “That’s okay.” She felt good. Very good. Soft and warm. Maybe not as soft and warm as she might have felt lying on a blanket in a meadow underneath the stars, but soft and warm enough.

  * * *

  The long hall was crowded with chattering monks when they returned. Two of the monks moved aside to let Mojo and Juanita through.

  “Joseph! I’m relieved to see you.” Grandmother came up, pushing her way through the throng. “I’ve been worried about you. You weren’t in your room.”

  “It’s all right, Grandmother,” Juanita told her. “Mojo protected us. He went out into the woods and chased the lion away.”

  Grandmother leaned towards Mojo. “Is this true? You frightened away a lion?”

  Mojo wasn’t listening. He was staring at a wooden santo of Saint Francis by the entry door. He was staring at Saint Francis’ outstretched hand. Three of the hand’s fingers were missing, broken off at the bottom joint.

  “That santo.” Mojo pointed to it.

  “Yes?” One of the monks turned to him.

  “What happened to its fingers?”

  “Its fingers? Oh, now I see. Yes, that’s very common with santos from Mexico. Most of them have several fingers broken off. It’s what happens when a prayer to the saint goes unanswered.”

  “You mean somebody broke the statue’s fingers because the saint didn’t answer his prayer?”

  “Exactly.”

  “They take revenge on a saint? They break his fingers?” This sounded more like the Mafia than religion to Mojo.