Full Throttle

by Joe Hill

  The horse that had killed Jake was directly in front of us, and she smashed into it doing twenty miles an hour, cut its legs out from under it. The big horse had to weigh close to twelve hundred pounds, and the front end of the Corvette crumpled. I was slammed into the dash. The horse was thrown across the hood, rolled, legs flailing at the night, turned over, and kicked one hoof through the windshield. It struck Geri in the chest and drove her back into her seat. Safety glass erupted in a spray of chunky blue pebbles, rattled all over the cockpit.

  Geri threw the car into reverse and accelerated backward. The big white horse rolled off the hood with a great tumbling crash that shook the roadbed. It hit the dirt lane and hauled itself back up onto its front legs. Its shattered rear legs trailed uselessly. Geri jammed the car into drive and went straight at it again.

  The horse pulled itself out of the way, and we zipped past it, so close that its tail lashed my window. I think that was right around the time Geri drove over Nancy. I only saw Nan in front of the car for an instant before the Corvette thudded and lurched, passing over the obstruction in the road. An oily steam gushed from under the hood.

  For one terrible moment, the black dog ran alongside us, its great red tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth. Then we left it behind.

  “Geri!” I cried. “Roll up your window!”

  “I can’t!” she said.

  Her voice was thin with strain. Her shoulder had been clawed deep into the muscle, and the front of her shirt was soaked with blood. She drove one-handed.

  I reached across her waist and turned the window crank, rolled the glass up for her. We hit a rut, hard, and the top of my skull banged into her jaw. Black pinwheels erupted and whirled and faded before my eyes.

  “Slow down!” I yelled. “You’ll run us off the road!”

  “Can’t slow down,” she said. “Behind us.”

  I looked back through the rear window. They pelted after us, their hooves raising a low cloud of white chalk, five figures so pale they were like the ghosts of stallions.

  Geri shut her eyes and sagged, lowering her chin almost to her breastbone. We nearly went off the road then, as the Corvette blasted into a hairpin turn. I grabbed the wheel myself and hauled on it, and it still didn’t look like we were going to make it. I screamed. That got her attention, drew her up out of her pain. She wrenched at the wheel. The Corvette slung around the corner so hard the back end swished out to one side, throwing rocks. Geri drew a ragged, whistling breath.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked stupidly—like everything wasn’t wrong, like she hadn’t just seen her brother and her best friend trampled to death, like there wasn’t something impossible coming up behind us in a roar of pounding hooves.

  “Can’t breathe,” she said, and I remembered the hoof coming through the windshield and slugging her in the chest. Broken ribs, had to be.

  “We’ll get into the house. We’ll call for help.”

  “Can’t breathe,” she repeated. “Paul. They’re off the merry-go-round. They’re after us because of what we did, aren’t they? That’s why they killed Jake. That’s why they killed Nancy.”

  It was terrible to hear her say it. I knew it was true, had known from the moment I saw the horse with the burned face. The thought made my head go spinny and light. The thought made me feel like a drunk on a carousel, going around too fast, too hard. When I shut my eyes, it seemed to me I was dangerously close to being thrown right off the great turning wheel of the world.

  “We’re almost to the house.”

  “Paul,” she said, and for the first time in all the years I’d known her, I saw Geri trying not to cry. “I think there’s something broken in my chest. I think I’m smashed up good.”

  “Turn!” I cried.

  The front left headlight had been smashed out, and even though I’d traveled the road to Maggie Pond a thousand times, in the darkness we almost missed the turn to my parents’ place. She yanked the wheel, and the Corvette slued through its own smoke. We thudded down a steep gravel incline and swung in front of the house.

  It was a two-story white cottage with green shutters and a big screened-in front porch. A single stone stoop led up to the screen door. Safety was eight feet away, on the far side of the porch, through the front door. They couldn’t get us inside. I was pretty sure.

  No sooner had we stopped than the horses surrounded the car, circling us, tails twitching, shoulders bumping the Corvette. Their hooves threw up dust and obscured our view of the porch.

  Now that we were stopped, I could hear the thin, whistling wheeze Geri made each time she drew breath. She hunched forward, her brow touching the steering wheel, her hand to her breastbone.

  “What do we do?” I asked. One of the horses swiped the car hard enough to send it jouncing up and down on its springs.

  “Is it because we stole his money?” Geri asked, and drew another thin sip of air. “Or is it because I cut one of the horses?”

  “Don’t think about it. Let’s think about how to get past them into the house.”

  She went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “Or is it just because we needed killing? Is it because there’s something wrong with us, Paul? Oh. Oh, my chest.”

  “Maybe we could turn around, try to get back to the highway,” I said, although already I doubted we were going anywhere. Now that we were stopped, I wasn’t sure we could get going again. The front end of the car looked like it had met a tree at high speed. The hood was mashed out of shape, and something under the crumpled lid was hissing steadily.

  “I’ve got another idea,” she said, and looked at me from behind tangles of her own hair. Her eyes were rueful and bright. “How about I get out of the car and run for the lake? That’ll draw them away, and you can get into the house.”

  “What? No. Geri, no. The house is right here. No one else needs to die. The house is right here. There’s no fucking way you’re going to pull some kind of movie bullshit and try to lead them—”

  “Maybe they don’t want you, Paul,” she said. Her chest heaved slowly and steadily, her T-shirt plastered red and wet to her skin. “You didn’t do anything. We did. Maybe they’d let you go.”

  “What did Nancy do?” I cried.

  “She drank the beer,” Geri said, as if it were obvious. “We took the money, she spent it, and we all shared the beer—all except for you. Jake stole. I slashed up a horse. What did you do? You took the old guy and put him on his side so he wouldn’t choke to death.”

  “You’re aren’t thinking right. You’ve lost all kinds of blood, and you saw Jake and Nan get trampled, and you’re in shock. They’re horses. They can’t want revenge.”

  “Of course they want revenge,” she said. “But maybe not on you. Just listen. I’m too light-headed to argue with you. We have to do it now. I’m going to get out of the car and run to the left, first chance I see. I’ll run for the trees and the lake. Maybe I can make it to the float. Horses can swim, but I don’t think they could reach me up on the float, and even with my chest fucked up, I think I can paddle out there. When I go, you wait until they’ve rushed after me, and then you get inside and you call every cop in the state—”

  “No,” I said. “No.”

  “Besides,” she told me, and one corner of her mouth lifted in a wry smile, “I can still cut a motherfucker.”

  And she opened her left hand to show me the carousel operator’s knife. It rested in the center of her palm, so I could see the scrimshaw, that carving of stampeding horses.

  “No,” I said. I didn’t know any other words. Language had abandoned me.

  I reached for the knife, but she closed her fingers around it. I wound up only placing my hand on hers.

  “I always thought that stuff about going to New York together was crap,” she said. “The stuff about how I was going to be an actress and you were going to be a writer. I always thought it was impossible. But if I don’t die, we should give it a shot. It can’t be any more impossible than this.”

  Her
hand slipped out of mine. Even now I don’t know why I let her go.

  A horse wheeled in front of the Corvette and jumped, and his front hooves landed on the hood. The car bounced up and down on its coils. The great white saddle horse glared at us, and his eyes were the color of smoke. A snake’s tongue lapped at his wrinkled black gums. He sank onto his haunches, ready to come right through the space where the windshield had been.

  “Bye,” Geri said, almost softly.

  She was out of the car and on her feet and moving before I had time to turn my head.

  She ran from the screened-in porch, past the back of the car, heading for the corner of the house and the pines. I could see the lake between the black silhouettes of the tree trunks, faintly luminescent in the night. It wasn’t far to the water’s edge. Twenty-five yards maybe.

  The horse in front of me snapped its head around to watch her flight, then leaped away from the car and followed. Two other horses joined the chase, but Geri was fast, and the brush was close.

  She had just made the edge of the woods when the cat vaulted from behind a chest-high screen of bushes. It was the size of a cougar and had paws as big as baseball gloves. One of them batted her hard enough to spin her halfway around. The cat came down on top of her with a strangled yowl that turned into a high-pitched animal scream. I like to think she got the knife into it. I liked to think Geri showed it she had claws of her own.

  I ran. I don’t remember getting out of the car. I was just out, on my feet, booking it around the ruined front end of the Corvette. I hit the screen door and threw it open and launched myself at the front door beyond. It was locked, of course. The key hung off a rusting nail to the right of the door. I grabbed for it and dropped it and snatched it up. I stabbed it at the lock again and again. I have dreams about that, still—that I am thrusting a key, with a shaking hand, at a lock I must open and which I keep impossibly missing, while something terrible rushes up behind me through the darkness: a horse, or a wolf, or Geri, the lower part of her face clawed off, her throat raked into ribbons. Hey, babe, be honest: Do you really think I’m pretty enough to be in movies?

  In truth I was probably struggling with the lock for less than ten seconds. When the door opened, I went in so fast my feet caught on the jamb, and I hit the floor hard enough to drive the air out of me. I scrambled on all fours, shouting, making incoherent sobbing noises. I kicked the door shut behind me and curled on my side and wept. I shook as if I’d just been plunged through the ice into freezing water.

  It was a minute or two before I brought myself under control and was able to stand. I made my way, shakily, to the door and peered through one of the sidelights.

  Five horses watched from the driveway, gathered around the smashed wreck of the Corvette. They studied the house with their eyes of pale poison smoke. Farther up the road, I saw the dog pacing back and forth with a restless, muscular fury. I couldn’t tell where the cat had gotten to—but I heard it. At some point in the hours that followed, I heard it yowling angrily in the distance.

  I stared at the herd, and they stared back. One of them stood in profile to the house, half a ton of horse. The scars scrawled across his side looked like they might be a decade old, not a few hours, but for all that, they were quite distinct, in silver relief against his fine white hair. Hacked there in the horse’s flesh were the words FUCK YOU.

  They whinnied together, the pack of them. It sounded like laughter.

  I STAGGERED INTO THE KITCHEN and tried the phone. There was no dial tone, no connection. The line was down. Maybe it was the work of the horses, the creatures that came off the Wild Wheel, but I think it was more likely just the wind. When it gusted liked that out along Maggie Pond, the phone and electric quite often cut out, and as it happened, I had neither that night.

  I moved from window to window. The horses watched from the road. Other beasts crashed in the brush, circling the house. I screamed at them to go away. I screamed that I’d kill them, I’d kill all of them. I screamed that we didn’t mean it, that none of us meant anything. Only that last bit was true, though, it seems to me now. None of us meant anything.

  I passed out on the couch in the living room, and when I woke, to a bright morning—blue skies and every drop of dew glinting with sunlight—the creatures of the Wheel were gone. I didn’t dare go out, though. I thought they might be hiding.

  It was close on late afternoon when I finally risked the dirt road, and even then I walked with a big kitchen knife in one hand. A woman in a Land Rover rolled slowly by, raising a cloud of dust. I ran after her, screaming for help, and she sped away. Can you blame her?

  A state police cruiser collected me fifteen minutes later, was waiting for me where the dirt road met the state highway. I spent three days at Central Maine Medical in Lewiston—not because I’d suffered any great physical injury but to remain under observation after suffering what a clinician described to my parents as a “serious paranoid break from reality.”

  On the third day, with my parents and our family attorney at my bedside, I admitted to a cop named Follett that the four of us had dropped acid shortly before riding the Wild Wheel. Somewhere on the drive to Maggie Pond, we struck an animal, probably a moose, and Geri and Nan, who were riding without seat belts, were killed instantly. Follett asked who was driving, and the lawyer answered for me, said it had been Jake. I added, in a shaking voice, that I couldn’t drive a stick, which was true.

  The lawyer told the rest . . . that Jake had dumped the bodies in the lake and fled, probably for Canada, to avoid what almost certainly would’ve been a life sentence in jail. Our family attorney added that I, too, was a victim—a victim of the drugs Jake had supplied and the wreck he had caused. All I did was nod and agree and sign what they asked me to sign. It was good enough for the cop. He remembered Jake well, had not forgotten the night Jake decked his buddy at Lewiston Lanes.

  The Maine State Police and the Warden Service got out on Maggie Pond and dragged for bodies, but nothing was ever recovered. Maggie Pond is, after all, a tidal pool and opens to the sea.

  I NEVER WENT TO DARTMOUTH. I couldn’t even leave the house. To step outdoors was as hard for me as it would be to walk on a ledge ten stories above the ground.

  It was a month before I looked out my bedroom window one evening and saw one of the horses watching the house from the road. It stood beneath a streetlamp, staring up at me with milky eyes, the left half of its face mottled and withered from ancient burns. After a moment it lowered its head and clopped slowly away.

  Geri had thought maybe they didn’t want me. Of course they wanted me. I was the one who fingered the carousel operator. I was the one who lit Jake’s fuse.

  I developed a terror of the night. I was awake at all hours, watching for them—and sometimes I saw them. A couple of the horses one night, the cat another. They were keeping an eye on me. They were waiting for me.

  I was institutionalized for ten weeks in the spring of 1995. I got on lithium, and for a while the horses couldn’t find me. For a while I was better. I had months of therapy. I began to take walks outside—at first just from the front door to the mailbox and then down the street. Eventually I could go for blocks without a care, as long as it was bright daylight. Dusk, though, still made me short of breath.

  In the spring of 1996, with my parents’ blessing and my therapist’s endorsement, I flew to California and spent two months living with my aunt, crashing in her guest room. She was a bank teller and a devout, practicing, but not overbearing, Methodist, and I think my parents felt I would be safe enough with her. My mother was so proud of me for daring to travel. My father, I believe, was just relieved to get me out of the house, to have a break from my nervous fits and paranoia.

  I got a job in a thrift shop. I went on dates. I felt safe and, sometimes, almost content. It was just like normal life. I began seeing an older woman, a preschool teacher who was going prematurely gray and who had a man’s husky, rough laugh. One night we met for tea and coffee cake, and I l
ost track of time, and when we went out, the sky was glazed red with sunset and the dog was there. It had emerged from a nearby park and stood glaring at me, spit dripping from its open jaws. My date saw the dog, too, and gripped my wrist and said, “What the hell is that!” I wrenched my arm free and plunged back into the café, screaming for someone to call the police, screaming that I was going to die.

  I had to go back to the hospital. Three months that time, and a cycle of electroshock therapy. While I was in, someone sent me a postcard of the Cape Maggie Pier and the Wild Wheel. There was no message on it, but then the postcard was the message.

  I had never imagined that the creatures of the Wheel might follow me all the way across the country. It had taken them two months to catch up to me.

  IN THE EARLIEST PART of this century, I was accepted to the University of London and flew to the United Kingdom to study urban planning. After I graduated, I stayed there.

  I never did write a play, or even so much as a poem. My literary output has been limited to a few reports for technical journals about dealing with urban pests: pigeons, rats, raccoons. In the field I am sometimes half-jokingly called Mr. Murder. My specialty is developing strategies to wipe out any trace of the animal world from the chrome-and-glass order of the metropolis.

  But Mr. Murder is not the kind of moniker that invites romantic interest, and my personal issues—panic attacks, a profound fear of the dark—have left me relatively isolated. I never married. I have no children. I have acquaintances, not friends. Friendships are made in the pub, after hours—and after hours I am safely home, behind a bolted door, in a third-floor apartment, with my books.

  I have never seen the horses here. Rationally, I am certain that whatever their powers, they cannot cross three thousand miles of ocean to reach me. I am safe—from them.

  Last year, though, I was sent to an urban-planning conference in Brighton. I was to give an afternoon presentation on the Japanese beetle and the dangers it presents to urban forestry. I didn’t realize, until the taxi dropped me off, that the hotel was right across from Palace Pier, with its grand carousel turning out on the tip, the wind carrying the hurly-burly song of the Wurlitzer all up and down the beachfront. I delivered my talk in a conference room with a sick sweat prickling on my forehead and my stomach twisting, then all but fled the room the moment I finished. I could still hear the carousel music inside the hotel, its lunatic lullaby wafting through the imposing lobby. I couldn’t go back to London—was scheduled for a panel the following morning—but I could get away from the hotel for a while, and I set out down the beach, until the pier was well behind me.