He began to chant some archaic words, most of whose meaning he had no notion of, but which he suspected had to be powerful, words he had spliced together from different rites and rituals from similar conjurings and acts of high sorcery. The words sounded German and French and Latin and Greek, and because he had no true knowledge of any other language than his high-school Spanish, he created a special accent for this chant, which he fancied a cross between High German and French. And in the middle of his chant the smell of the burning cat struck him full in the face—a green, vile smell of guts and hair and dried urine and feces. But he continued, as he choked on the noxious fumes, to recite in his elegant accent.

When he had finished chanting the chant, thrice—an act that would make the ashes holy and protect him from the demon he would summon—he committed the paper with the chant and the paper with the list to the fire and went behind an apple tree and retched in violent spasms that brought tears to his eyes. Weakly he walked to the water spigot by the pump house that sat on top of the very well where once his great-grandmother had hauled up water in a wooden pail. The water was still well-sweet and well-bitter and tasted thick with iron. First he washed his mouth out and then he drank deeply of the sweet and bitter water, finally washing his face in its coolness. He sat on the back stoop, watching the fire die down and down. The sky, which had been high and blue earlier, streaked with thin white clouds, was now collecting clouds the color of tar smoke. His stomach began to knot for fear of what the gathering clouds could mean or should mean to a true mystic.

About an hour later, when the fire was no more than coals crackling with heat, he went to bank the smoldering ashes so they would be ready for the hour of his transfiguration. He went into the house, into his room, and began to tidy up, the neatest it had ever been. Books stacked in straight piles, papers filed away, clothes folded and put in a drawer. He did not worry about the library loans, for it would all be part of his disappearance. Now he was excited and restless. He considered leaving his grandfather a note: Granddaddy, I have been transformed. I will see you in the rapture. But no, his grandfather would think it a queer and peculiar joke. It would confound and confuse him and then, when his grandson did indeed actually disappear without a trace, it would leave him thinking strange and bizarre thoughts, because he would have no knowledge of the dazzling, wondrous truth.