March and April were the best months to make the drive out to the Texas hill country. Wildflowers blossomed with shades of red, yellow, blue and purple as bluebonnets and Indian paint brushes covered the rolling mounds and meadows. Parents all across the state held to tradition and had their children’s pictures taken in a field of bluebonnets. Gabriel was no different. Michael and I took an entire roll of our five-year-old angel frolicking in a field near Billy’s house. We knew this road well, and though late October provided a decent view of fall foliage, nothing compared to the magnificence of springtime.

Houston lurked in the rear-view-mirror as we settled into the three-hour trip. The traffic thinned out as the sprawling bayou city gave way to small farming communities. For one incredible second, I believed that everything would be okay. I believed the rhetoric that I fed Gabriel a few short hours ago. The air thinned out and I could stretch my limbs without worrying about someone cutting them off. I could breathe freely and not look over my shoulder every three seconds. The open road liberated my mind and I relished hugging the curve of the road with the top down and the speedometer pushing eighty. Everything would be okay, I truly believed it.

Michael rode with his feet propped up on the dashboard and the seatbelt tucked behind his shoulder. With his hair cut short to his scalp, the contour of his neck and strong outline of his face captivated the artist’s eye. I always admired his ever-changing thick head of hair, but the short crop quickly became my favorite. He begged me to let him drive, but I didn’t trust that he was completely sober. He insisted he was fine, acted fine, but I knew he was using heroin again and that meant he was always somewhat high. Gabriel’s overdose didn’t inspire Michael to give up the needle, but I didn’t judge him too harshly. I didn’t judge him at all. I was in no shape to pass judgment, having almost shot three innocent people dressed in Halloween costumes, as well as a high-profile attorney who would have deserved a bullet to the head. I was in no shape to judge or decipher fact from fiction, the lines already too blurred for me to make out anyway. My brain concocted ways in which to commit multiple murders and avoid prison time. The Halloween party tomorrow night would be a good place to start.

We discussed how to go about handling the situation and both agreed that attending the party was a must, though I worried he might not be mentally capable of handling it. That’s not to say that I was, but Michael had more history with these people. If he was correct in claiming that it was the same cult from his childhood, he might revert back to hiding in the closet. I needed him to be the strong domineering force that rescued us so many times in the past. The radio played at a low level with the afternoon DJ chattering on about all the spooky activities taking place in Houston this weekend, but static took over the channel. Leaning over to light up a couple of smokes, Michael handed one to me, leaned back in his seat and propped up his slender feet on the dashboard.

“They’re setting us up for something,” he said, “but I can’t figure out what it is. I don’t know, man, we might not make it out of there alive. Thoughts?” he asked, holding out his hand.

I told him I agreed but stressed that Gabriel was their main objective. I argued that our invitations to the Halloween party might be a ploy to isolate Gabriel leaving him unprotected and vulnerable, but Michael shot that theory down.

“They don’t need to do that,” he said. “If they want to kidnap him, they will, regardless of our whereabouts.”

“I know,” I said, irritated that both he and Billy felt the need to remind me of that fact. “So, what are they waiting for then? Halloween? Some sort of ritualistic kidnapping? I mean, we know they’re after him.” I crushed out my smoke in the ashtray and thought again about my meeting with the pinch-faced lawyer. I described the scene to Michael and confessed my disappointment of how things went down, that he’d shown little reaction to the mask but then asked about Gabriel immediately afterwards.

“He also admitted in a roundabout way,” I said, “that he remembered me from past parties, you know, from our childhood.”

Michael compulsively rubbed his wrists while turning to watch the passing scenery. I waited for a response, glancing at him every few seconds and growing increasingly distracted by the constant rubbing of his wrists. I was losing him again. The madness was closing in. I had to engage him, keep him on track and postpone his breakdown until after tomorrow’s party. I couldn’t do this thing alone. I needed my best friend back.

“What exactly happened at that party the other night?” I asked. “You left in a limo with them, Michael. Surely you know something.”

He turned and glanced at me, his amber-green eyes anxious and watery as he looked away and stared down at his lap. “I don’t know, Ash, nothing…A few celebrities were there, couple of people in the music industry, but nothing weird, no rent boys, none that I saw anyway.” Folding his arms against his chest, he turned to observe the scenery again.

“I don’t believe you,” I said. “There’s something you’re not telling me. I can read it all over your face.”

Michael sighed and reached for another cigarette, “It has nothing to do with Gabriel,” he said.

“Okay.”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said.

“Try me.”

“Fine.” He flicked his ashes out the window and into the backseat. “Black magic. They’re using black magic on me.”

I didn’t believe him. I refrained from grinning or rolling my eyes and listened as he explained his case. “Lay it on me,” I think is how I replied, and though reluctant, Michael rolled up his sleeves and presented his wrists. I swerved out of my lane doing a double take.

“Will you please watch the road and quit doubting me?” he asked.

I lied and told him yes. His wrists appeared perfectly healed. No scabs, or puncture wounds or deep cuts could be seen nor the old scars from his childhood. The light scarring that encircled both his wrists since the day I met him was gone, no longer visible, completely and perfectly healed. I was dumfounded.

“They itch though,” he said. “Side-effect I guess.”

“I don’t believe in magic,” I said. “What is it, some kind of topical cream?”

Michael laughed and crushed out his cigarette, “Just because you don’t believe in it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”

This wouldn’t be the first time someone said that to me, the first being a nun at the boy’s home referring to God, of course, and the second being Billy every time he went off about secret societies plotting to rule the world. Neither one could show me the proof, but Michael came close. His healed wrists intrigued me, but I suspected his family was toying with him somehow, and not by means of cauldrons, candles and incantations. It was trickery, the power of persuasion, mind over matter, deception, but not magic.

“Like seeing my father standing in your studio?” Michael asked. “That wasn’t real either, right?”

“I didn’t see your dad, I saw a shadow,” I said. “Shadows are normal.”

“You saw him standing outside the hospital!” he exclaimed.

“I saw a man with a cane,” I said. “Lots of men walk with canes.”

Michael shook his head and mumbled, “Unbelievable,” under his breath. I could say the same, but I didn’t. I loosened my grip on the steering wheel and apologized for my chronic skepticism.

“You’re a flip-flopper, that’s what you are,” he said.

Fine. I swallowed my doubt and pleaded with him to continue. Grinning, he crossed his arms and refused. I threatened to ram into a tree if he didn’t, which had absolutely no effect. Only when I offered to pull over somewhere and do him a favor of a sexual nature before we got to Billy’s, did he agree to finish his story. I didn’t believe in magic, but I believed in Michael.

It began with the man in the shiny suit who brought him the video tapes. Michael believed that spells had been put on the tapes, which he explained as a kind of subliminal messaging that controlled his thoughts and actions after viewing them.

“It is mind over matter,” he said, “I’ll give you that, but I didn’t know it was me. I thought it was coming from outside of me, but the wounds I sustained on those tapes, they began resurfacing each time I watched one. See what it was is,” he stopped and crinkled his forehead, “I was doing it,” he said, shaking off the grammatical confusion. “My subliminal mind manifested my psychological pain into physical pain, thus, the cuts and the bruises and the bleedy scabby wrists.”

“That’s psychosis not magic,” I said. “So, what, you quit watching the tapes and they healed?”

“No,” he said, “that’s not it at all.” I sighed and swept across two lanes to catch the next exit. Michael braced himself and grabbed onto the dashboard, “I’m not ready yet!” he exclaimed. I told him I was just stopping to piss.

Billy called while we were at the rest stop to let us know they arrived safely, and that Gabriel was doing fine. I told him we were on our way and would be there within the next two hours. As it turned out, Michael was ready. The secluded rest stop provided the perfect opportunity for us to let off some steam and relieve each other’s stress levels. I scratched his back and he scratched mine without spilling a drop, a true professional indeed. We remained in the backseat afterward with Michael resting his head in my lap while I surveyed his healed wrists. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe him (How could I not? They were healed!), but I surmised that he misinterpreted the phenomenon. I could buy the mind over matter bit, but I was still at a loss as to how black magic dovetailed into the scenario.

“I already told you,” he said. “The video tapes, they triggered something that already exists within me, but you’re right about the psycho thing. I’m certified bonkers, stark-raving mad, absolutely fucking nuts.” Although said with a humorous tone, his eyes displayed alarm when he tilted his chin up to look at me. “Everything’s a ritual to them,” he said, laying his head back down. “That’s all it boils down to.”

I didn’t understand so I let it go. That’s how I handled Michael, sometimes I believed him and sometimes I didn’t. Sometimes I didn’t believe my own past. I pulled out of the rest area and took to the highway with accelerated enthusiasm. The sun drenched the gray asphalt and blinded my perspective casting a glare upon the windshield, but I didn’t need full visibility to know that something was coming down the road. It wasn’t another vehicle or a wayward hitchhiker, but rather an omen seeking fulfillment. I felt it in the air, thick and heavy, like the watchful eye of an unseen god waiting to strike us down. The masked men were setting us up for something, and tomorrow night we would willingly walk into their trap, go out and face the enemy before the fight reached our doorstep. It was the only way, but if Michael didn’t make it out alive, neither would I.

His head rested against the back of the seat and tilted towards me, his amber-green eyes covered by his long black lashes. I loved watching him sleep. The wall crumbled, and he surrendered control, his plump lips lightly sealed across his seamless face, his body relaxed in a state of vulnerability. I needed twenty-four hours. If he could hold it together for twenty-four hours and play the role of indestructible Michael, I could carry the weight from then on. I needed answers and closure, and then I could carry the weight and take on his demons from now until the sky fell. I could be happy with Michael. I didn’t need anyone else.

I rarely thought about the future, but when my mind did brave the unknown I fantasized a simple life. Gabriel would graduate college, marry the girl of his dreams and start his own family. I knew he wanted one. He’d talked about it before, wanting a house in the country with several acres of land, a couple of porch hounds and a litter of rambunctious kids running around. Nothing would make me happier, and the thought of having grandchildren sparked unexpected giddiness in me I found impossible to curb. If we could just make it over this hump, everything would fall into place like drops of mercury.

Michael and Lisa tried several times to have children but gave up hope after three miscarriages. Lisa was seven months pregnant the last time she miscarried and it about killed them both. They named the child Timothy, and a small funeral was held in his honor followed by a burial. That had been three years ago, and Michael still had nightmares about the son who almost was. I knew he desperately wanted children, and in my rare venture into a fantasy future, I saw the two of us with lots of them. The idea struck me about a year ago when I stopped to give my pocket change to a couple of street kids. I wanted to take them home and give them food and shelter, let them know the world wasn’t all bad, that I used to be them, that it can get better. I toyed with the idea of opening up a shelter for the abandoned and runaway children who called Houston home, but had yet to voice the idea aloud. I had more than one fantasy about the future, and they all included Michael as my significant other.

The rolling hills animated the flat landscape and awakened my inner child as I sped up the steep slopes and coasted back down with my hands raised above my head. I quickly grabbed the steering wheel as the car veered off to the right, and then glanced at Michael for signs of life. Oblivious to my reckless and potentially deadly driving, he slept peacefully and undisturbed beside me, my longtime partner and favorite passenger who would have encouraged my irresponsible antics. Smiling, I turned away and gripped the steering wheel with both hands. Among the passing trees and barren fields of harvested crops, I saw the truth as plainly as I saw sunlight cast upon Michael’s face. The open road laid it all out for me. I was done for.

Perhaps I knew it all along but failed to recognize its authenticity, ignorant of its effects and blind to its presence. Over half the songs on the radio pined over it, glorified it, condemned and cursed it, but my love wasn’t like their love. My love was different, better, unconditional and without boundaries, too sacred to mindlessly sing about, and too deep for words. All of this I believed, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted what they had, love that wasn’t a secret or morally wrong, love that I could sing about or acknowledge outside of the hideous triangle. I wanted Michael for myself, not because I was worried about him, or wanted to help him, or just liked having my best bud around, but because I was flat out and quite simply in love with him.

The open road encouraged my outing and threw in a couple of monster hills to celebrate my bravery. I kicked it into second gear and climbed to the top, my foot easing off the clutch as gravity pulled us down the cement slide. Leaning back in the car seat, I reached for a smoke and glanced at Michael, though only to check if his eyes were open, which they weren’t. I was too embarrassed to look at him, almost ashamed for even daring to admit the sin to myself, let alone the open road. I could never tell him how I felt. Without a doubt, it would destroy our friendship. Those five little words changed everything. Saying I love you was perfectly acceptable, but the phrase, I’m in love with you, that’s asking for trouble, that’s a loaded pistol that Lisa wouldn’t hesitate to use.

I jumped at the sound of Michael’s groggy voice and whipped around to see his eyes remained closed. “We should wear masks,” he repeated.

“Are you actually awake?” I asked. It was hard to tell with Michael. I’d had entire conversations with him while he was wide-eyed and fast asleep.

“Yeah, I’m awake,” he answered. “We need costumes for tomorrow. I was thinking about wearing my Clinton mask.”

“Okay,” I laughed. “Got one of Kennedy?”

“No,” he said, feeling around the floorboard, “get shot in the head wearing one of those.”

I smiled and handed him my bottle of water, “Not if Kennedy shoots first this time.”

Bastrop was less than an hour away as we followed the narrow two-way road deeper into the forest and closer to Camp Faraday. We agreed upon leaving sometime around noon the next day and would pick up costumes for the party when we arrived back in Houston. This trip might appear pointless, and was on most accounts, but Gabriel wanted us there tonight and that was enough reason for me. Besides, I still needed to talk to him about the devil’s little helper, Mr. Spencer. I debriefed Michael on the story Gabriel told me about the party for which he received an invitation, and felt my chest tighten when I explained his reluctance to tell me what happened in that back room with the principal. I suspected Gabriel had been drugged, threatened and possibly raped, but I didn’t know for sure.

“I’ll find out tonight,” I said, “even if I have to force it out of him.”  I then told Michael about Gabriel’s confession to using heroin for the past six months. Hearing my voice speak the words aloud externalized his addiction and reaffirmed the severity of the crisis at hand. It was no longer a silent horror confined to the dark recesses of my mind, but rather a blaring siren confirming the emergency situation. Michael appeared as shocked as I had been. The color drained from his face as he rubbed his forearms, shook his head and reached for his cigarettes.

“Do you think he did it on purpose?” he asked. “The overdose, I mean.”

I nodded and fluttered my eyes to keep the tears from refracting sunlight. “You should have seen him, Michael,” I said, my voice wavering and on the brink of sobbing. “He wouldn’t even look at me or talk to me. He just, I don’t know, seemed off. Came home from school, completely ignored me, locked himself in his room and overdosed.” It seemed unreal to me as I relived the incident. The boy I found unconscious in the closet couldn’t have been Gabriel. This was someone else’s life, and although we’d only left the hospital a few short hours ago, it felt like I’d never been there at all. I truly questioned whether this was some horrible nightmare. I thought about clapping my hands but feared the robed men might appear in the backseat.

Michael stared out the window as the narrow curvy road trailed off into a graveled pathway through the trees. I needed him to say something, respond to my tearful words, but he held his hand over his mouth and said nothing. I lit another cigarette and plowed through nature’s browning foliage, kicking up dirt and skidding around the corner as “no trespassing” signs appeared in the clearing up ahead. Swinging his head around, Michael reached up and gently ran his finger down my moist cheek. I crumbled behind the wheel as he placed his hand over mine and brought us down a notch.

“We don’t know what happened,” he said, rubbing my hand. “It’ll be okay, Ash, we’ll get through this.”

I nodded and wiped my face, unconvinced and suddenly in a panic to see Gabriel. I knew Michael was pacifying me, I could tell by the look in his eye, I saw the fear lurking behind his calm demeanor. He was hiding something. I knew he was hiding something from me, some important revelation that he didn’t want to share, some secret he learned that explained everything, some sort of supernatural aspect that he figured I would just balk at. I suppose he thought some curse made Gabriel stick needles in his arm like a human voodoo doll, or maybe he’d say the devil made him do it. I didn’t ask. I was sick of hearing about Satanists and the occult. If black magic healed his wrists then so be it, but I didn’t want to hear about it anymore. I couldn’t think straight, my head foggy and unable to decipher one thought from the next. I wanted to take Gabriel and Michael and run for the hills, which I had, but the Texas hill country was much too close to the portal of hell, otherwise known as Houston. I needed infinitely more mileage between my family and the dark under lords of Hell.

My black sports car crept around the last bend in the road and followed a pack of barking dogs into the clearing. Billy’s dirty white van sat parked outside next to the main house of the old hippie commune, and a handful of people huddled around a small campfire off to the right of the house. An older man with long graying hair and a thick scraggly beard waved as we pulled in next to the van. Michael laughed and waved back, commenting under his breath that old naked dude put on a few pounds since the last time we visited. Indeed, the flab around his arms and on his belly jiggled as he dusted off his hairy ass and hobbled over to greet us, his half erect compass leading the way.