“Do I have to?”
“Technically, no. But it gives the ritual a bit of elegance,” says Howard.
“Fuck your elegance. Let’s go.”
“Lead on.”
I stagger us through a shadow onto a freeway overpass.
We come out in the breakdown lane at the exact spot where the roads meet.
The San Bernardino Freeway and the 5 are busy any time of day or night. Cars and semis speed past us and under us. This is a wind I can feel. The pressure of each truck as it passes almost knocks me over. I lean against the metal guardrail. Even with the cane, it’s hard to stay upright.
“Are you ready?” says Howard.
“No. I want to wait for Labor Day, when the leaves start to change.”
“Is that a yes?”
He’s enjoying himself a little too much.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
With his foot, Howard brushes away some broken glass and twisted metal from the ground—signs of a recent crash— and gets down on his hands and knees. He takes something from one of his pockets and carefully draws a large circle, then a smaller circle inside it. He squares the interior and adds a pentagram. In the blank space between the two circles, he begins writing. Some of it looks like abbreviated Greek, some of it like angelic script. The letters themselves begin to melt together into snakelike squiggles chasing each other round and round the interior of the circle. It’s a neat trick if Howard is doing it, but it’s entirely possible that my vision is going funny again.
I say, “How much longer?”
“Not much,” he says. “You want it done properly, don’t you?”
I don’t answer.
He pours one of Vidocq’s potions into the center of the pentagram, then drops in what looks like a handful of dried moly flowers. The potion begins to glow. First a pale pink, then a deep blue, and finally a swirling mist of black and rose.
“How are you doing up there?” he says.
“Hungry. I’m looking forward to being able to eat again.”
“I’m sure you are. Just a couple of minutes more.”
“I’ll be over here thinking deep thoughts.”
As the light grows brighter, Howard gets to his feet and begins a low chant that I can’t quite make out. Whoever this Ludovico guy was, he took his sweet fucking time designing this ritual. On a good day, I could have conjured a herd of zebras, a large sausage pizza, and Ernest Borgnine’s ghost, and reunited the Misfits, by now. But Howard just keeps yammering away. Every now and then, he sprinkles a glittering powder that makes the mist seethe momentarily.
Our little snake oil act isn’t exactly stopping traffic, but the freeway is clogged as people slow to rubberneck at us. What do we look like to them? One of us is praying over the tiniest disco light show in history, and the other is a wobbly Crypt Keeper ready to topple over the guardrail onto the road below.
“I need a few drops of your blood,” shouts Howard.
“You didn’t tell me Ludovico’s Ellicit was blood magic.”
“Is that a problem? You’re already bleeding.”
I look into the swirling lights at our feet.
“That’s not the Ludovico, is it?”
“Of course it is, you idiot.”