"The Mass of the Phoenix, liber forty-four, the Book of Lies," Huey repeated under his breath as he loaded said tome into his backpack.
It wasn't easy sneaking so many magico-religious texts into the mansion, considering Uncle Scrooge's disdain for the art, but Huey was clever. Most of the books he had to study for his magic curriculum were not explicitly magical in subject but philosophical and theological, and so could be bought using Scrooge's own money (he had given Huey a monetary allowance for educational resources after seeing that even Beakley's homeschooling wasn't challenging his nephew). However, those works which did openly discuss magic had to be bought in person, using cash, and later hidden either from sight or by using mismatched dust jackets.
"Alright, I have the books, my robes and the regular camping supplies. Now I need my tools and the sacraments," Huey felt around on the carpet of his study, trying to catch the flap he cut into it. Peeling the flap up and opening the hatch beneath, he produced a lockbox - unlocked by a key hung from a chain around his neck. Therein was a dagger, a grail, a wand and a pentacle, and in that order each magical weapon was carefully loaded into Huey's backpack. The sacraments, a capsule of dimethyltryptamine - DMT - and a few doses of cannabis conveniently baked into edible gummy candies, were also in the lockbox and quickly packed away.
The magical weapons were once enchanted implements in Scrooge's collection of baubles, easily taken and reconsecrated. The sacraments were more difficult to obtain, the DMT being synthesized by Huey himself in his chemistry lab (Scrooge was very laissez faire when it came to 'educational resources' like chemicals), and the weed edibles had to be bargained for outside head shops in the city - marijuana being legal for recreational use in Calisota.
It wasn't easy getting to this point, but everything was finally coming together.
Huey replaced the lockbox, closed the trapdoor, resealed the carpet flap and took a deep breath. This was it. Weeks of planning were about to pay off. The adults all knew he would be out camping tonight, all he had to do now was sneak out of the mansion and slip into the wilderness. Then he could perform this supremely important ritual in peace.
"Showtime," Huey unlocked and opened the door, scanned the hallway, then briskly exited his study. Listening intently for footfalls as he walked down the halls to the side-entrance, Huey stopped short of the kitchen and hid in an alcove nearby. Something didn't feel right. He quieted his mind and breathed intently, honing his intuition on the kitchen. This was a faculty he had spent months training, since his magical education began. Eventually, he felt a presence leave his path to the exit. Peeking his head into the kitchen, he saw his mother, Della, walking away and out holding a bowl of popcorn.
Smirking at his progress in the art, Huey scampered through the kitchen and out of the mansion.
Once the fresh air hit his lungs the urge to fly was overpowering. Huey hopped on his bike and careened down the hill, then peeled off into the street and shot down to the national park.
Huey was ahead of schedule and he didn't remember the trails exactly, so he slacked up on his bike and took it slow to the campsite. The flowers were in bloom, anyway, and it would be nice to clear his head before the ritual. It would be even nicer to remember what this was all about before he took the plunge.
It all started after Violet stole the title of Senior Woodchuck. It wasn't really stealing, he knew she earned it, but he still felt like she stole it from him and he had become more comfortable in that feeling since it happened. Huey was a good sport, he could shake hands and celebrate someone else's victory, but that didn't mean he had to like it. He would like it if he could, but it sank like an anchor in his stomach when he thought about Violet beating him - and making him feel like a jerk for losing, or even trying to win in the first place.
He remembered the first grimoire he bought, just to spite Violet: Magick by Aleister Crowley. Liber ABA. The sober, scientific tone appealed to him, and later paved the way for more mystical than magical experiences. Though he took great care to branch out and digest the widest possible array of voices on magic, most of Huey's fondly held books on the subject were written by Aleister. Huey could picture the old crow, his jet black feathers and coquettish grin, almost fatherly. He seemed so alive, even after being dead for nearly a century.
Somewhere down the line, the immature quest to one-up Violet at magic became a genuine interest, a craving for the joie de vivre of the magician's libertine, almost solipsistic worldview. To Huey, becoming a magician typified everything Uncle Scrooge taught him about the life of adventure, and the adventure of life.
Now Huey was rolling through the woods, looking for an isolated campsite so he could get high and perform a magic ritual.
(Even now, though, Huey would shun drug use - save for spiritual purposes like his own. The idea of it all was startling, but exciting to him.)
"Laissez les bons temps rouler," Huey sang, to banish the doubt he felt creeping up on him. 'Let the good times roll.'
He was close to the campsite, now. Huey slid off the trail and stopped, pushing his bike against a tree. The edibles came out, and he chewed enough to make things interesting. Not enough to impair his functioning, of course; the camp had still to be made and the rites performed.
Huey walked his bike into the copse of trees that hid what would soon be his camp. He had yet to actually get high in his life, unless one were to count the dry run he did of the edibles when he first bought them (and he didn't), but Huey felt like the marijuana should have kicked in sooner. He considered eating more edibles, but wisely thought better of it.
Huey went through the motions and it felt like the camp was building itself, his thoughts being elsewhere. Once the tent went up he felt the first waves of euphoria hitting his mind, and he used his magical training to shape it into feelings more productive for the ritual work he would soon perform. He started the arduous and precise work of carving a magical circle into the dirt.
Huey toiled doubly, making the circle in body and fighting to keep presence over his actions in mind.
Once the circle was made, he stripped down and symbolically bathed, then slipped into his hand-made ceremonial robes. Out of the backpack came the last preliminary, an MAO inhibitor so the DMT could be orally active; he gulped the pill down with water from his canteen.
Huey began by consecrating the circle, crossing himself and drawing pentagrams in the four quarters with his dagger. To his surprise, the pentagrams hung in the air, a visible trail of light lingering behind the motions of the dagger, and as he vibrated the names into each pentagram the names appeared therein.
It must be the marijuana, Huey thought to himself.
More frightening than the pentagrams were the shades of the archangels as he invoked each, appearing before his waking eyes. Their appearance soon came to comfort Huey, though, after the initial shock.
At last, the stage was set for the Mass of the Phoenix. Enthusiastically chanting each line, Huey improvised for those 'instruments' he had not, and treated the DMT capsule as the eucharist in place of the second cake of light. The words seemed to roar through the channels of reality itself as they were spoken.
Finally, the time came to receive the eucharist. Trembling, Huey swallowed the DMT.
"This bread I eat. This oath I swear, as I enflame myself with prayer," he felt his heart pounding in anticipation. He felt the pangs of latent shame. Worst of all, he felt fear. But then, he felt something else. "There is no grace. There is no guilt. This is the law: Do what thou wilt!"
He sustained the mass, his actions nearly automatic as his mind drifted away. It was getting harder to hold on.
"T...to do my pleasures on the earth… among the legions of the living…" Huey completed the ritual and crossed his arms over his chest. Quieting his mind and breathing intently, he tried to lock himself into a trance before his mind got swept away. It worked, but too well as the DMT peeled Huey away from everything, even himself, as he melted away into the secret machinery of the universe.
Everything crashing onto itself, then onto nothing, then nothing crashing onto nothingness.
Finally, silence. Then something less than silence. Indescribable.
Huey was there for a long time, wherever it was, but he didn't know.
Aeons passed, maybe.
Then Huey felt himself again, but not his body. No physical form, but he was there. It felt like waking up at the bottom of the ocean. Then, slowly at first, the world built itself around his consciousness. It was a house. An apartment? Two men, he could see them as though with his eyes, but he could also feel them - their existence. He recognized them!
They were Violet's dads! This was Violet's house!
Huey was quite conscious of everything now, even while lacking a body. He was in Violet's house, but on the astral plane. He didn't know why.
It was just as clear and lucid as if he were there in person.
Huey focused his will and pulled together his body of light, the subtle body of energies, around his consciousness. His astral form took the shape of a great black bird-monster, at first, then he willed it into more-or-less an approximation of his physical shape. He could feel opposition to his being there on the astral, probably from some piddly ward Violet or Lena cobbled together. He attacked the feeling with his will and it vanished.
The scene started to mellow, and Huey took the time to fully immerse himself in the place. He heard Violet's dads, Indy and Ty he thought they were named, talking about some film in the kitchen. Something was in the oven - cookies! Snacks were arrayed on the countertops and an emotional warmth permeated the home. He wondered why, then he knew: it was movie night at the Sabrewings'. Violet and Lena were sitting in the immaculately decorated living room, waiting for the two adults.
No one, not even the two girls who were supposedly gifted in magic, could tell Huey was there.
Something welled up in Huey. A bad feeling. Loneliness, or maybe jealousy, or maybe just untrained contempt. Whatever it was, he didn't fight it. Huey imagined the life forces of Indy and Ty diminishing on the astral plane, their very lives being torn and ripped away. Then he felt it happening, and saw them confusedly contorting in on themselves in pain. Few things had scared Huey so greatly as the realization he was hurting them, and he knew he should have stopped, but he just didn't.
"What's going on?!" questioned Violet in a rare tone. She and Lena both burst into the kitchen looking very concerned.
Like an explosion, all the shame and disdain he felt after his loss to Violet burst into Huey's heart. He stretched out an arm and imagined a ray of disease issuing forth from it and into Violet and Lena.
Violet started to breathe hard, like she was having an asthma attack. Lena just grabbed her head.
It was all happening so fast. They were screaming and moaning, it was too loud. Huey wanted to stop, but something was-
Lena was looking at him! Agonized though she was, Lena was staring directly at Huey, and he could feel it in the pit of his stomach. She could see him!
Huey willed himself away, out of Violet's house and into the night sky. He stayed there for a while, trying to calm his anxiety over Lena's gaze. Then he felt a darkness over his shoulder. He turned to face a monstrosity, an astral parasite of some composition. He imagined a magical dagger in his hand and, using it, made the sign of the pentagram over the horror. It wailed before vanishing.
Enough! thought Huey. He imagined a silver cord attached to his astral form and anchored to his physical body. Following the cord at the speed of thought, he slammed back into his body, lying asleep in the dirt circle.
"Agh!" he screamed into the waking world. "Wha-?"
There Huey sat, in the dirt circle, everything the same as it ever was. The forest was serene and silent.
What he knew was real started to feel like a dream, and he hastily plucked his magic journal from his backpack and recorded everything he saw and did that night. Upon review, Huey felt even worse over what he did to the Sabrewings than when he was doing it. He also had a vague, positive feeling about it all he couldn't place, but he mostly felt awful.
All of those feelings began to ebb and fade, though, when he sat the journal down and realized the reality of his situation. It was midnight, and he was alone. Only the sad glimmerings of a dying moon to shed light on the hostile woods, Huey looked at his lonely little tent.
Huey, being a Junior Woodchuck, would ordinarily feel at home in the wilderness. But Huey didn't feel like a Junior Woodchuck tonight. He felt like a scared little kid.
Huey took another long, hard look at his tent.
"No… no… I want to go home," he croaked.
It took awhile to pack everything back up, but he did, and upon folding the tent back up Huey felt something strange overcome him. As though he were forgetting something, something right behind him.
Huey glanced back and felt his heart jump into his throat.
It was… something. Just a vague darkness congregating in one spot a few yards away. A shadowy presence. Much like the archangels, Huey's fear of the thing subsided quickly - but its being there wasn't comforting. He didn't feel good or bad about the shadow-thing. It was just there.
He turned back and finished packing up camp. Huey couldn't leave this place soon enough. He sat on his bike and got ready to start home, then looked back and saw the shadow-thing still there, still watching him. He wondered if he should say something to it. He didn't. He left.
It was a long, cold ride home, and the last leg of the hill put his own legs to the test but eventually Huey got home to the mansion. He stood for a while at the front door, freezing and hungry.
He'd wake Dewey and Louie if he tried to sleep in his bed, and their suspicion might give his work away. Huey decided to first sneak his tools back into hiding in his study, then sleep on the floor or something. It wasn't his finest plan, but he was exhausted and still coming off of a DMT trip, so it had to do.
Huey grabbed the door knob, then something occurred to him. He looked over his shoulder. The shadow-thing had followed him. It was startling to see, but Huey ultimately felt at peace with it. He opened the door and crept up to his study.
Huey hid all of his little secrets away, including his magic journal, back under the floor. He picked out the most comfortable corner, then remembered some blankets in a hall closet not-too-far away. He passed the shadow-thing hovering down the hall to get the blankets, and carried them back into his study.
Snuggling into his corner, Huey tried to fall asleep but saw the shadow-thing watching him from the opposite corner. He didn't like the idea of it being there while he slept, but became resigned to it when he realized just how tired he actually felt.
"I shouldn't be seeing you," Huey said to the shadow-thing. "The drugs are all worn off. I'm not hallucinating. I shouldn't be seeing you there."
The shadow-thing didn't answer.
Huey fell asleep.