The Djinn

The Djinn

Summer storms in South Texas blow in from nowhere and hemorrhage waterfalls. Just as quick, they disappear into the hazy blue yonder. That does a number on sun baked caliche as the runoff percolates and starts to boil lizards and rattlesnakes and scorpions.

Somewhere in between the raindrops and prickly pears, Jesse and Callie chase each other on dirt bikes. Braaap, braaap, braaap, they ride hard, throttles pinned and ripping, braaap, braaap, braaap. They swap places, blitzing a line toward a razor wire fence.

Callie is first to spot the jump. Braaap. Jesse closes fast. Fail to make that jump and it’s a laceration party with Edward Scissorhands. Thank God for leather. Off they go, no hesitation, easily clearing the wire and the backside like Evel Knievel. They bounce along whoops and ruts like pro-am champs.

Jessie signals. It’s the house. They down-shift, blipping all the way to neutral.

With hair tucked inside their helmets, nobody would guess they’re girls. They lock eyes through their goggles.

“Last one there is a…” Callie screeches away with Jesse on her tail.

It’s a sprawling, multi-story ranch house, the kind of place where presidents and movie stars likely stayed seventy years ago to go quail hunting and bag a trophy buck. But that was seventy years ago, and it shows.

Helmets off, the girls pop their kick stands and shake out their hair.

“Do you think anybody’s here?” Jesse asks.

“Doubtful. You got the notebook, right?”

Jesse pats her hip through the leather pants. “Right here baby. But it’s not a notebook, it’s my lucky Moleskine.”

“Moleskine, schmolskine. It’s just a notebook no matter what the crazy Prophet told you. Let’s do this thing before it gets dark.” Callie squints. The sun is hanging almost low enough to reach out and pop it like an egg yolk.

Suddenly, ka-boom, there’s a double-barreled gunshot blast.

The girls spin toward it while taking cover behind porch bannisters.

Peter Yukon ambles into view. He’s an old West cliché down to the Nacona cowboy boots and spurs that jingle jangle as he walks. The shotgun creaks in half as he ejects the spent shells.

“Mmmmm, mmmmm, you gotta love the smell of gunsmoke after a good bit of August rain.” He’s smiling from ear to crotchety ear. “Now that I got your attention ladies, I’ll take the Moleskine.” He says.

“Ahhh, you’re Yukon, the caretaker. We heard you were murdered.” Jesse says, licking her lips and stepping into view. Callie moves to corner the old man.

Kerplunk. He slides fresh shells into the chambers.

“Yeah, I heard that story too. What was it this time? Cartel? Or bikers?”

Jesse’s eyes are fiery dark puddles, lashes glowing. “Bikers.” she says, circling him. “They say your old bones are bleaching all across the valley.”

Callie bites into her gloves and pulls her hands free while Jesse flanks the old man. He can’t watch them both. They move closer, the shotgun still folded in half. He might be able to shoot one of them. That chance is gone in a flash as Jesse grabs the gun and jiu-jitsus it away.

“Honey, you get the drop on me every time with those fancy moves.” Yukon starts to snicker, but Jesse smashes the butt-stock into his face. He’s on his back with blood gushing from the bridge of his nose. Jesse’s boot is on his chest. She stares down the barrels into his eyes. Callie searches through his pockets for weapons.

“Aaargggh.” He yells. “I did not see that coming.”

“Well, honey,” She cocks both hammers back, “wait till you get a load of this.”

Yukon flails his hands.

“Wait, wait, wait!” He pleads.

“Do him.” Callie says as she looks through his wallet. Her eyes are a coy shade of turquoise with a few glints of copper. “Wait.” She echoes, just as Jesse starts to squeeze.

“Listen to her.”

“Wait for what?” Jesse lifts an eyebrow. It’s manicured, arched, and bending toward Callie.

“This.” Callie says. She unfolds a tired yellow hand-bill caked with crinkly crevices.

Jesse presses harder on Yukon’s chest, her heel digs into the metal wires protruding from his sternum.

“Easy.” He begs, wiping at the blood and worried that his chest will crack open.

“Well, well, well. Looks like we’ve got a stalker.” Callie says, waving the hand-bill.

“Is that right? Peter? You been stalking us?” Jesse doesn’t let up on his chest. He digs his spurs into the dirt, writhing for relief.

The hand-bill is from an insert in the Santa Fe Express nearly a decade ago. It’s been scribbled on with random numbers and names, but the graphics are still legible.

It reads: “JESSE JANE MANSFIELD and CALICO WINTERS - FAREWELL TOUR of the J.T. WINTERS’ CIRCUS SPECTACULAR and STUNT SHOW STARS!”

“Doot doot, dittle dittle, doot doot, dittle dittle.” Yukon hums.

“Funny guy. Missed your calling, should’ve been a clown.” Callie says.

Jesse pushes Yukon onto his side. “Enough. Get up and start talking.”

“Aweee, that’s all I ever do.” He struggles to his knees. “One of you could lend me a hand at least.”

“Not happening cowboy.” Jesse says, still locked, loaded, and itching un-scratchably.

A few minutes later they’re in the ranch house. Cob webs. Rodents. An armadillo scurries by. Clunk clunk and jingle jangle ricochet off the walls as they walk from vacant room to vacant room, down hallways, and up stairwells to nowhere.

The girls are unzipped, and sweating beneath their leather pants. Their jackets and helmets are outside. Even in halter tops, there’s scant comfort in this heat.

“Lead on Peter.” Callie pushes him. “And, so, what you’re saying is, this Prophet gave you that hand-bill a couple of Summer’s ago?”

“That’s right. He said you’d be coming on a storm. And you’d have the Moleskine.”

“And he cursed you?” Jesse asks, still holding the shotgun.

“That’s not what I said. I said we’re all cursed. You, me, Ms. Calico Winters there.”

“I don’t believe in curses, or Prophets.” Jesse says.

“Yet here you are, again, just like the Prophet said you’d be.”

The house meanders through incongruent dimensions.

“What do you mean by again?”

“This way.” Peter opens a hidden panel entry to an unnatural stairwell. Kerosene whooshes as he lights a lantern and angles it down.

“Cue the creepy music.” Callie says. “And, light another lantern for me or we’re not taking another step.” Callie stares into darkness where silence suddenly frames the lub dub lub dub lub dub of her beating heart. “Was this an old mine shaft?” She asks.

“Heh heh, long time ago, maybe 400 years or more.” Peter lights another lamp. “They say Hernan Cortez rode through these parts. Dug this hole himself looking for El Dorado.”

“El Dorado? Golden city? Sure.” Jesse says, right behind Peter as he braces to resist the incline. She presses the shotgun into his spine. “What did you mean when you said: yet here you are, again?” She pokes him hard with the gun for emphasis.

“I meant here you are again. How’d you two know to come to here anyway?”

Jessie glances backward, catching Callie’s eye roll.

“That’s okay, no need to fess up. I know it was the Moleskine.”

They’re surrounded by Earth now, several stories beneath the ranch. Rock walls. Flocks of static electricity. Chalky stalagmite fumes mixed with kerosene.

They see an opening to a cavern around the curve. But first, it gets steeper. Deeper. No handrails. Just step, step, step, precarious in the flickering shadows.

“Missy, can you park that scatter gun somewhere else? When you stumble, I don’t want to get cut in half.”

Jesse uncocks the gun and points it at his boots. “Okay, but you do anything funny and I’ll blow your spurs off. And then your head. And what do you mean when I stumble? What’s with the cryptic language?”

Clap, clap, clapping sounds bounce up the stairway.

“Is that…clapping?” Callie asks.

Jesse stumbles and nearly drops the gun but recovers.

They’re off the steps and in the cavern. Callie pans around with the lantern. Jesse follows.

The cavern walls are covered with alchemy and runes. The stone floor is smooth and inlaid with a mosaic mandala surrounded by evenly spaced torches.

Clap, clap, clap. And then a laugh.

“Djinn!” Jesse remembers.

“Djinn. Djinn.” The Djinn’s voice is everywhere, and nowhere.

“I’m here. Again. Again.” Jesse says, putting the shotgun aside.

Yukon kneels, unravelling scrolls filled with tokens. Jesse arranges them within the mandala.

The Djinn begins to chant in an ancient, unknowable language.

“Callie, quick,” Jesse says, “light the torches starting at 12 o’clock from center. Go clock-wise around the center, every 30 seconds for 6 minutes, starting…now. Now!”

“Shouldn’t we talk about that magic Djinn voice from nowhere? And maybe the magic Moleskine that started all of this?”

“Torches. Now!!”

“Weirder by the minute.” Callie moves from torch to torch. Thirty seconds, next torch. Thirty seconds, next. And then she sees it.

Treasure. Jewels. Gold. Silver. And money.

“Jesse. Look. It’s hundreds of hundreds.”

“Twenty thousand.” Jesse says.

“How do you know?”

“The Moleskine knows. It’s two hundred hundreds. Can’t you hear it? “Two hundred hundreds,” it says.”

The tokens are oriented on each axis, shimmering and humming in concert.

“Jesse Jane I love you, but books don’t talk.”

“Oh but they do, they do.” Jesse pulls the Moleskine out of her hip pocket. She rubs her fingertips over the black coverture rigide and presses it between her palms in prayer.

“And even if that one could talk, it would be in Arabic. You don’t understand Arabic.”

“I don’t have to understand it. I can feel it.”

Still on his knees, Yukon reads from the scrolls. Each syllable builds on the one before until he’s indistinguishable from the Djinn chanting both above and below.

Callie’s hands are in the jewels. Rubies devour her eyes. Her eyes devour the two hundred hundreds.

Jesse opens the Moleskine.

The inside cover page says:

In case of loss, please return to:

aljina

The Djinn

الجن

انفنتي طريق مزرعة تكساس

ainfanatay tariq mazraeat taksas

Infinity Texas Ranch Road.

Lower on the inside first cover page:

As a reward: $ alhaya

الحياة

Life.

The pages of the Moleskine are filled with music and poetry and art from memories and magic of lives unlived. They’re words birthed from spirit swords of Khalil Gibran in a phantom manuscript called the Djinn he left unwritten to ferry lost souls back to life and love.

Jesse flips through the pages, mouthing those words and living those lives in a language she can neither read nor speak. But, finally, she can feel.

“Callie, Callie. Come back with me.” She says. But Callie is mesmerized with treasures. “My sweet, my sweet, we died in that show in Santa Fe. We risked our lives and love and lost. But the prophet has given us the Djinn to choose. Come back with me while we can.”

Jesse remembers. They’ve ridden on a hundred storms to infinity Texas Ranch Road with the Moleskine in her pocket guiding them along great rivers and storms where Peter, St. Peter, kneels before them now in ancient prayer summoning the promise of love and life and unborn generations. This time, this storm, Jesse finally chooses life over emptiness of great mansions and wealth without love.

“Callie, Callie, Callie!” She wrestles Callie away from unthinkable treasures and chants unknowable words from St. Peter’s lips. Crashing, thunder, flashes, whirling tornado winds.

Suddenly, they’re in Santa Fe, on their bikes, more than ten years ago, with crisp yellow hand-bills in their hands. In the distance, the T.J. WINTERS SPECTACULAR roars.

Jesse and Callie smile. They crumple the hand-bills and ride away into the sunset with the lucky Moleskine safe in Jesse’s hip pocket.