“Rigor mortis. Each time it hits, it’s harder to break through.”
“Interesting,” he says in a tone that should be reserved for viewing dissected frogs and roadkill.
Just north of the airport I say, “Take this exit. Head for those warehouses over there.”
He takes us down a side road to a cluster of metal buildings.
“See that collapsed one over there? That’s where we’re going.”
“Are you sure?” he says uncertainly.
“Yes. And speed it up. The van is back.”
Howard hits the gas and fishtails the car, almost spinning us into the metal fencing along the road. But he gets control again and we head for the warehouse. I undo my seat belt and pull out the Colt. Twisting around in my seat, I fire at the van’s front tires. It takes all six shots, but I manage to hit one.
In the rearview, Howard sees the van lurch. He smiles, but it disappears quickly.
“It’s still coming,” he says.
“They’re running on the rim. It’ll slow them down. Keep driving.”
He pulls the Mercedes to a stop by the collapsed warehouse.
“Kill the lights,” I tell him.
When it’s dark, I pry myself out of the car with the help of the cane and Howard follows me inside the building. I use my phone to light the way.
We pass the same scattered pipes and shattered toilets I went by the last time I was here. Birds shriek at us from the ceiling. Howard stays close to me.
“Are you sure this is the right place?”
“Shut up.”
Lights slide over the interior of the warehouse as we reach the office in the back.
Howard says, “The van is outside.”
“We’re almost there.”
I cut myself again and bark some hoodoo. Rotting wooden crates all over the warehouse burst into flame. The birds go wild. The ones that can’t find a way out through the roof swoop down and fly out the front, right through the Vigil crew.
When we reach the office, I stay by the door and point to the fifties girlie calendar.
“Find February twenty-ninth.”
A few seconds later Howard says, “I found it.”
“Now push the number.”
Something clicks and the wall swings open. I grab Howard and shove him through. Push the wall back into place.
We’re back in the hunting lodge safe house. I collapse on the sofa.
“What is this place?” says Howard.
“A Sub Rosa meeting house.”
“Like the other place you kept me?”
“Bingo.”
He looks back over his shoulder.
“Are we safe?”
“For a little while.”
I get out my phone and text Abbot.
We’re at the LAX house. Golden Vigil outside. You might want to hurry.
A few seconds later I get, We’re on our way. Stay there.
Can’t. Have to get somewhere. Carlos says you need more spices in the kitchen.
Who’s Carlos?
I put the phone away.
“You ready to go?”
“Where?” says Howard.
“Wherever we’re doing the ritual.”
He nods. “We need to get to where the San Bernardino Freeway intersects with the 5.”
I try to visualize the place. My mind keeps wandering, but I get it.
“A crossroad. You need a crossroad for it to work.”
He pulls a sprig of something from one of his pockets.
“Are you surprised?”
I try to shake my head, but it hurts. Damn rigor mortis.
I say, “‘Go to the crossroads and call him three times.’”
It’s a line from F. W. Murnau’s Faust. I already made one bad bargain recently. Am I making another one? What if Howard gets away? What if he’s lying? What if, no matter what I tell myself, I’m so desperate to live and be with Candy that I’ll agree to anything? My mind is too fuzzy. I’m weak and I hurt too much to be sure.
“Invoking the Devil? I never took you for such a traditionalist,” says Howard. “Ludovico’s technique was much more modern and efficient.”
I look at my hands. A couple of my fingernails have fallen off. I’m leaving bloodstains on the sofa.
“Do I need to do anything?”
“Can you stand?”
“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.”
My legs and arms cramp as a wave of rigor hits me. A semi roars by and blasts its air horn at us. Startled, I drop the cane. But I can’t even fall over. My body is rigid against the rail.
Howard comes over, smiling.
“Not feeling so good, are we? Relax. It will all be over soon. But I still need some of your blood.”
Howard grabs my arm.
As quic
kly as it came, the rigor eases and I can move again. I pull my arm free of Howard’s grip. That doesn’t go over so well with him. He grabs the cane and swings it like a baseball bat into the side of my head. It hits and I drop onto the road like a dead flounder. He beats me with the cane a few more times while I’m down, just having fun. Cars honk and people video us. It’s L.A. Blood lust runs deep.
When beating me isn’t fun anymore, Howard throws the cane away and drags me to the swirling mist. He squeezes my arm where I cut myself earlier. Black blood flows into the magic circle. The dancing light seethes for a few seconds, then goes out. I’m able to roll away a few feet, but that’s all.
The center of the pentagram begins to sizzle. Pieces of it fall away. The burning continues to expand and pieces of the circle continue dropping into a dark abyss. The incandescence stops at the edges of the larger circle. There’s a void the size of a manhole in front of me. Howard gives me a kick on the side of the head with his nice shoes and drags me toward it.
“You were right. This isn’t Ludovico’s Ellicit. Although, to be precise, it was the Ellicit until the point where I added your blood,” he says. “What to do with you was a problem, you see. I could send you to Hell, but you’re perfectly comfortable there. I could kill you, but, again, you would go right back to Hell, which solves nothing. Altering the Ellicit was the only solution.”
The piece of shit has been dragging me this whole time, and now my bruised and woozy head dangles over the freeway chasm.
He says, “Most people think that the opposite of life is death, but that’s not true. The opposite of life is nothingness. That’s what reversing the Ellicit has conjured—perfect, perpetual nothingness. You can spend eternity there thinking about your wasted life. Or going mad. Whichever suits you.”
He drops my head and tries to shove me into the hole. My dead nerves don’t feel a thing, but I can smell my flesh burning. Before I slide in, I manage to get my arms around one of his legs and hang on like an angry tick.
I suppose if I’m really leaving for good, the freeway is the best place to do it. If nothing else, L.A. is the city of roads and I’m an L.A. boy. Plus, I’m not going out entirely dead. Just Hollywood dead. I hate not making it into the movie, but maybe they’ll include a couple of my scenes in the director’s cut.
Something thumps repeatedly against my back and I realize that Howard is beating me with the cane again. I can’t look up at him, but every few seconds, a car passes by and throws his shadow on the road. He’s working Casey Jones hard to get me loose. And he’s doing it. My arms are loose. I slide a few inches down his leg.
Goddammit, I don’t want to go, especially not at the hands of a ten-dollar corpse fucker. But only the lucky ones get to choose how they go out and that’s not me.
Candy was right. I should have stayed at Vidocq’s. Candy was right about a lot of things. I miss her already.
There’s a skid and a thump. The undercarriage of a car flashes overhead. All of a sudden Howard’s gone and there’s nothing for me to hold on to.
I fall into the dark.
WHAT’S TERMINAL VELOCITY in nothingness? Is there air drag? Updrafts? I wish I’d brought a book. I suppose I could Google it, but I don’t think they have Wi-Fi in nothingness.
How long do I fall? How far? Am I going to float in nothingness or fall forever?
Do those questions even matter in a total void situation? If there’s no up or down, how do you measure time or distance? I don’t think you can and everything is the same forever, which I’m guessing is part of Howard’s “going mad” plan for my future.
I wonder when that starts.
Has it started already?
My head feels funny.
Is today my birthday? I can’t remember.
But I met a cute alien. That was cool.
How long have I been here?
I’m going to miss touching things and smelling things the most, I think.
I hope Candy isn’t too mad when I don’t come back. I hope Alessa takes good care of her.
How do you tell time here? Has it been a million years yet?
Something happens to my hands. My wrists get tight. I brace for another bout of rigor, but it’s not like that. My arms stretch and my head falls back.
Soon, I see something, which is strange for a void. And what I see is even stranger than that.
It’s a palm tree.
I didn’t expect to see one of those in nothingness. I mean, if there are trees, it kind of defeats the whole concept of nothingness.
Someone slaps me. I’m sure of it.
“Stop yammering,” a woman says.
There are palm trees and women here? Things are looking up for nothingness.
Someone slaps me again.
I say, “Where are you?”
“I’m right in front of you, you nitwit,” she says. “Your eyes closed again.”
I open them and she was telling the truth. She’s right there.
Mustang Sally, the highway sylph. The queen of the roads. Wherever there’s a path, a track, or a rut around here, Sally is there watching over it.
“Sally. What are you doing here?”
With one hand, she pulls me the rest of the way out of the hole.
“Saving your ridiculous life,” she says. Then she gets a good look at me. “Oh dear. I’d heard that Hell had aged you, but I didn’t expect this.”
“Who said Hell aged me?”
“People. Spirits. Agents of the road. I hear it all.”
Sally always looks like she’s on her way to the best parties. She’s dressed in an all-black iridescent floor-length gown. Even on the filthy road, not a speck of dust sticks to her.
I look into the hole.
“How long are your arms? I was falling for like an hour.”
She sees I’m wobbly, so she gives me the cane and pushes me against the guardrail. Even with that, I can’t stand up anymore. I slide down to a sitting position on the ground.
“You were falling for a second or two,” she says. “And you were only down about an inch.”
“Still, you’re really strong.”
Sally makes a face, watching the cars go by. Some honk at her. She waves to them.
I look around. There’s a silver Bugatti Chiron parked a few yards away. The right front fender is crumpled.
I point.
“You broke your car.”
“That’s life on the road. Do you like it? It’s tribute from someone who owes me more than a car could pay. I’ll return it to him tomorrow so he can get me another.”
“Sorry if this sounds uncivilized, but why did you save me just now?”
She looks at her nails.
“I just happened to be passing by.”
“That was convenient.”
She gives me a little kick with her pointy designer shoe.
“Besides,” she says, “I couldn’t let you disappear. You still owe me a car, remember?”
“A little. My head is kind of fuzzy. What kind of car was it?”
Sally leans against the guardrail.
“The exact model doesn’t matter. But something big and powerful. Red. And not recent.”
I have to think about it for a minute.
“Wasn’t it a Catalina fastback? Late sixties?”
She stands up again.
“That will do.”
“Where’s Howard?”
She makes a face.
“By the Bugatti. He’s a bit of a mess. So are you, but you’re in one piece.”
“What are you going to do with him?”
“I thought I’d leave that to you. We could chuck him into that little hole I pulled you from or we could do it my way. Leave him where he is. Let his spirit wander the roads and freeways of the city with all the other lost souls forever.”
“But he’s immortal. I mean, I think so. Yeah, his body’s a mess, but won’t he wake up alive again at some point?”
Sally looks at me, annoyed.
“Immortality? On my road? Darling, there’s only room for one immortal here and it’s not a moth-eaten necromancer. He’s as dead as anyone else. Just another highway ghost.”
I try to pull myself up but fail miserably. “Let’s do it your way. Let him thumb rides forever and no one will ever stop, right?”
“No one. He won’t even know he’s dead at first. Some of his kind spend years frightened and confused before they admit what’s become of them.”
“I like that. But what about the hole?”
“What hole?” she says.
I look back and Howard’s shaft to the void is closed.
“As for you, get off your rear and get in the car.”
I try to stand up. I can’t do it. With both hands on the guardrail, I try to pull myself up, but that doesn’t work either.
I sigh, embarrassed.
“Sorry. I might have to spend eternity right here with Howard.”
She comes to me and puts out her hands.
“Men are such babies.”
I reach for her and with no effort whatsoever, she pulls me to my feet. I can’t walk, so she tosses one of my arms around her shoulders and puts one of hers around my waist. We walk like that, very slowly and clumsily, to the Bugatti.
She opens the door, but when she starts to help me in I stop her.
“I’m going to bleed all over your nice seats.”
She pushes me inside and belts me in.
“I told you I was getting a new one. Bleed to your heart’s content.”
Sally revs the engine and, being the freeway sylph, a spot opens for her in the traffic. She blasts onto the road, cutting across six lanes, a pure spirit in her element.
She says, “Where am I taking you?”
“Back to Vidocq’s I suppose.”
“You don’t sound happy. Isn’t that where your friends are?”
“That’s why. I’m just going there to die in front of everyone.”
She looks at me longer than makes me comfortable at this speed. But these are her roads. Traffic moves apart for her.
“If I understand things correctly, they’re trying to find a fix for your current situation.”
“Yeah. They’re nice people. And Vidocq and Ray are smart. Maybe they’ll figure something out.”
“Then why are you hesitating?”
I close my eyes.
“Can’t we just drive awhile? It’s really nice here with you.”