by Joe Hart
But the baby goat. It had two heads.
Four staring, white eyes. Lips bared over teeth.
The lantern clanged against the floor.
I held my breath, waiting for the pain.
Nothing.
“Lane!”
I opened my eyes to see the lantern still whole at my feet, its light out, the top drizzling kerosene. I jerked it up from the ground, my entire body growing hot with shame.
“I’m sorry. Lost my grip.”
Ellis had stepped forward, bathing the squirming thing in the straw with light.
“God almighty,” he whispered.
The infant goat writhed in place. Its pale hoofs raked the floor. Its heads strained up from the dirt. It mewled out something barely resembling a goat’s bleat. Until then I’d never realized how serpent-like goat’s heads are. Looking back from the vantage of all the years, it makes perfect sense now. But then, staring at the thing on the floor of Ellis Wilmer’s barn with the steady rain thrumming down overhead and the darkness on all sides, I was stricken with amazed horror.
“Ellis, it’s an aberration,” my father said quietly. “It would be cruel to let it suffer. If it doesn’t die tonight it-”
My father’s calm words were lost in the screech of the two-headed infant as it kicked itself forward and clamped both mouths onto Josha’s right hind leg.
Ellis dropped his lantern with a curse and the dark rushed in.
Josha blatted, a deep and painful sound that vibrated in my chest. My father yelled something I couldn’t make out and bumped into me as he rose. There was another high-pitched shriek that was so unearthly it turned me toward the door, muscles twitching, ready to run. But what kept me from fleeing was my father’s voice yelling at Ellis, Matches, Ellis! Give me the matches!
The tang of kerosene was everywhere, and I knew Ellis hadn’t been so lucky when his lantern had fallen. Something brushed my legs and I shrank away, recalling how the two-headed beast’s teeth had glinted in the lamplight. Then a hand gripped my shoulder and I nearly screamed, but recognized its slender strength.
“Lane, hold the lantern steady,” my father said. I did, the trembling in my arms making the glass shade rattle in place. Something growled like a tomcat and there was a wet tearing sound followed by another anguished bleat from Josha.
A match popped alight, blazing like a miniature sun.
In the glow, the two-headed kid stood behind my father on its hind legs, mouths crimson and dripping.
I did scream then.
The wick caught and darkness shrank away, leaving the scene before us naked in the light.
Blood seeped in slow pumps from two ragged wounds shaped like half moons on the back of Josha’s leg. They looked like the craters a child might make in a ripe watermelon slice. Ellis was up against the nearest empty stall, eyes wild and rolling in his skull.
The infant goat was on its side, heaving laboring breaths in and out, mouths stained red, eyes milky. It kicked and some dark excrement shot from its back end, nearly spraying Ellis’s work boots. Ellis opened his mouth but he said nothing, his jaw bouncing as if hooked to an elastic band.
My father stared down at the thing on the floor for maybe two seconds before pacing to his satchel and pulling something from it. He returned, bent over the two-headed goat, and shot it between both sets of eyes with the .38 revolver in his hand.
The blasts were short and deafening, concise in their death punctuations. The kid flopped in the dirt, several short spasms running through its length before it laid still.
Silence rushed into the barn. Filled it up.
My father stood over the kid for a long moment before turning back to Ellis, who looked as if he were trying to shove himself through the gaps in the pen behind him.
“Ellis, Josha’s going to bleed out unless we get her somewhere I can stitch her shut. I need more light. Do you have room on your porch?”
Ellis took a moment to come back from wherever he was and pried his eyes away from the motionless thing on the ground.
“Y-yes. The porch’ll work.”
“Good, carry my satchel for me. Lane, take care of this,” my father said, bending low to scoop his arms beneath Josha. He stood, hoisting the animal’s considerable weight up with him. Josha blatted quietly.
“What do I do with it?” I asked. I was in shock. I knew it and was grateful for it.
“Throw it out behind the barn. Coyotes and wolves’ll take care of it. Come with me, Ellis.”
And with that he walked swiftly down the aisle with Ellis close behind, the older man carrying my father’s bag and moving as if he were in a dream. They melted into the darkness and I was alone with the blood and the two-headed corpse.
3
I’ve smelled blood plenty times since that wet night in May when I was fourteen.
The first time I killed a whitetail buck on the edge of the swamp behind our property. When I slipped cutting kindling with my father’s hatchet, the blade burying itself into the soft flesh just above my knee. The afternoon my son was born, the hospital disinfectant mingling in an ugly way to create a new, briny odor.
But nothing before or since has smelled like the soaked floor of Ellis Wilmer’s barn as I sat staring at the thing lying in the center of the aisle.
My gorge had risen and fallen so many times I lost count, and I managed to get to the backless chair and sit before my legs gave out. I held the lantern close, its wick extended farther than it should have been, but I didn’t care. The shadows were alive around me, capering in a way that spoke of terrible things just out of sight. My hands shook so badly that the shade continued to chatter until I was able to set the lantern down beside me in the dirt, mindful not to get it too close to the kerosene still soaking in where Ellis had dropped the other light.
The barn was quiet, all of the animals mute in their stalls. I’d expected them to be kicking the holy hell out of the walls and doors in an effort to get free, what with all the racket and stench of blood. It’s what I wanted to do. If I could’ve run from the barn and into the rain, I would’ve in a heartbeat. I would’ve kept running down Ellis’s drive and out onto County 7 and I don’t think I would’ve ever stopped. Only one thing kept me from doing just that.
My father’s orders.
He was relying on me to take care of the carcass of the thing that came out of Josha. I was done calling it a kid or even an animal. It hadn’t been. It was…something else.
The image of it standing behind my father on its hind legs buffeted me again and I turned my head away, sickened by the smell of afterbirth and gore. No. I’d imagined it surely and truly. No way I could’ve seen what I’d seen. Trick of the light paired with the adrenaline and fear of being caught in the dark. That was all, plain and simple.
Rain hammered down, a million drumbeats.
Coffee and acid burned the back of my throat.
I was going to have to pick it up and bring it outside.
That’s what he’d told me to do and I wasn’t going to fail him. Not now, not when his hands were already full trying to save Josha.
I licked my lips, still unwilling to look at the thing lying in the circle of blood. Farther down the alley of stanchions a horse’s head appeared over the side of a stall. It was a rich brown that looked almost ebony in the low light. One eye was trained on me and it snuffed, shook its head, and drew back into the safety of its pen.
There was no more stalling. I had to move and get the corpse out of the barn and then go and help my father in case he needed anything.
Just do it, Lane. Get it over with.
I knew I couldn’t touch it with my bare hands so I glanced around, looking for a shovel or pitchfork.
Both heads of the goat were upright and staring at me.
I tipped off the chair, my foot barely missing the lantern on the floor. A scream bubbled up from inside me but wouldn’t come out, my throat narrowed to a pinpoint.
The goat’s sightless eyes followed me as I
floundered backward on the ground. There were matching burnt holes in its skulls where my father’s bullets had done their work. Its lips peeled back from bloodied teeth and the right head’s tongue flashed pale, out and back, as if tasting the air.
“Ssssssssssoooooooooooooooooooonnn,” the heads hissed in unison. They grinned then, horrid glee pulling the corners of the twin mouths back farther than they should’ve been able.
I choked out a moan, tears of pure terror running from the corners of my eyes. A chuckle issued from the goat’s throats, there and gone before both necks went limp and the skulls fell back to their place on the ground with soft thumps.
I shook where I lay on my ass, arms propping me up enough to keep both eyes on the thing that had spoken. No way I could tear my gaze from it now. At any moment I was sure it would leap from the floor and skip toward me, teeth bared, ready to tear chunks from me as it had its own mother.
Something grazed the top of my head and I screamed.
I flung myself to the side and looked up into the face of the horse that had observed me before. It whinnied again, lower, and I could see how much of the whites were visible of its eyes. It was as scared as I was. Why the long face? The old joke flew through my mind and I nearly brayed insane laughter.
The goat thing was still on its side when I glanced again, managing to pull myself to my feet before taking a few deep breaths. I’d wet my pants. I didn’t care. Right then I was examining my options.
Option A: I was crazier than a shithouse mouse, as my grandfather used to say.
Option B: It had really happened.
I prayed for Option A.
After waiting for nearly five minutes, I took a step forward. When nothing moved in the barn except for the animals that were alive, I approached the goat and stepped around it, hurrying to the object I’d spotted earlier leaning against the wall.
The pitchfork felt good in my hands, and I only hesitated a split second before jabbing it into the small, slender body.
Nothing happened.
It didn’t move or squirm on the end of the tines.
It was dead. It had been dead all along.
I was losing it.
I nodded. That was okay with me. Insanity at that point in time was just fine. I hoisted the carcass up and grabbed the lantern with my other hand, keeping my eyes fixed on the goat the whole time. There was no reason in taking chances.
Outside the rain fell. It hadn’t let up since we’d left our house and inch-deep puddles lay on the newly-greened grass of Ellis’s yard. I hurried around the side of the barn to where the longer grass began and the beginnings of forest ended. With a flick of my arm, careful not to accidentally whip the corpse in my own direction, I flung the slender body off the tines and into the darkness between the blades of grass.
Without waiting to see if it would come racing back out at me, I turned and fled, and I didn’t put the pitchfork down until I reached the house.
4
The rain stopped early the next morning.
I knew when it did because I was still lying awake in my bed, staring up at the white-washed ceiling of my bedroom. There was a rumble of thunder, the first I’d heard all night, then the patter tapered off like someone was shutting down a spigot, and it got quiet.
I preferred the sound of the rain.
Without it my mind had nothing else to focus on as the night wore through into a gray dawn that barely lit my windows. I saw the goat-thing tearing at Josha’s leg. Saw it standing on its own. Heard its hissing voice.
At one point I got up and went to the toilet, sure I was going to be sick, but nothing would come up. I knelt there, staring into my dark reflection in the bowl water, and waited for another hallucination to appear. I’d strengthened the theory of my insanity on the drive back from Ellis Wilmer’s farm.
I hadn’t spoken a word when I entered the porch where my father and Ellis were tending to Josha, and neither of them had looked up. Josha was calm under my father’s careful and steady hands, and soon the wound in her haunch was stitched tight with a disinfectant salve spread over the entire area. He’d packed his satchel, washed thoroughly in Ellis’s sink, and we’d left, but not before he’d poured Ellis a half glass of whiskey and murmured something to him while the other man sat catatonic at his kitchen table in his empty house.
The ride back had been silent save for the swish of the windshield wiper, my father stoic as a wooden Indian. I hadn’t trusted my voice to speak. What I’d seen ran on an endless loop in my mind and at no point did it falter or become hazy like a dream. I could find no flaw in it, no missing time for myself where I may’ve passed out or hit my head.
Without sleep, my imagination continued to churn up hideous and new images, like bloated bodies rising from the bottom of a disturbed riverbed. Around the time daylight cut the edge of the land, I fell into a fitful slumber and fought nightmares with perfect square teeth growing from blackened gums.
Our rooster, Doodle, woke me sometime later. It was near noon as far as I could tell, the old bird’s habit of crowing well past dawn a bane of my father’s existence. The sound brought no smile to my lips as it typically did on any other day.
When I rose, I found my school clothes had been washed and my mother had placed them on the chair beside my door. I dressed, both thankful and depressed that I’d been allowed to sleep in. Maybe the normalcy and boredom of school would’ve leveled out my troubled thoughts.
My father was at the table when I stepped into the kitchen, a newspaper open on one crossed leg. He was sipping coffee and slid a plate of eggs and bacon toward me without looking up as I sat down. The food looked as appetizing as roadkill, but I made a solid effort, downing almost all of it as to not bring attention to myself.
My father shifted on his chair and turned another page, shaking out the wrinkles. He was normally like this after a late call. He would rise nearly as early as usual, but the work he typically did around our small farm was pushed off until the afternoon so that he could recoup from the night before. Gathering my courage I wet my lips and glanced outside.
“Where’s momma?”
“Hanging laundry. Trying to beat the rain.”
“Think it’s going to again today.”
“Yep. Probably around four or so.”
I let a healthy gap form, then plunged forward. “Why was that kid like that last night?”
He took a last swig of coffee and set the cup down on the table before folding the paper neatly beside it. “It happens from time to time, Lane, you know that. Something goes wrong during gestation and the animal comes out malformed.”
“I know. But why did it bite Josha.”
“I don’t know. I would assume the same aberrations it underwent physically also affected its mind, made it violent. Its mother’s haunch was the first thing it saw and it simply attacked out of instinct.”
I saw the thing rising up on its hind legs behind him in the flare of the match and suppressed a shudder.
“Can animals ever make sounds that are like words?”
My father frowned. “Well, you know as well as I do they can. You’ve heard some coyote song that sounds like a man’s voice. And a cow bellowing in the distance can sometimes be confused for a shout. Why do you ask?”
I swallowed a lump of egg that wouldn’t seem to stay down. “No reason.”
“Look, I appreciate your help last night, you did well. I’ve seen strange things as a vet, and last night was up there on the list, but it’s nothing to concern yourself about. Mother nature is cruel. Every so often it eats her young.” I nodded, wishing he hadn’t said that. “Now, you go help your mother finish hanging the clothes, then you can walk into school.” He picked up a handwritten note as well as several dollars and passed it to me. “Give this to Mrs. Shawler and pick up a jug of milk, some cheese, and a pint of whiskey from Nimble’s on your way home.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, standing up. The gladness I felt at having a simple and easy errand to run must’v
e shone through because my father smiled and handed me another quarter.
“And get yourself a Coke too.”
“Thanks!” I said, and couldn’t help but hug him. He seemed a little surprised since most of our affection was limited to a firm handshake or a pat on the shoulder now that I was becoming a young man, but he embraced me back nonetheless.
“Now get going,” he said, giving me a slap on my hip.
I found my mother standing out in the yard beneath the clotheslines studying a turkey buzzard that was perched in the top of a dead birch tree. When I stopped beside her she jumped and I realized she hadn’t heard me approach.
“Lord almighty! Lane David Murphy, you scared the bejesus out of me.”
“Sorry, momma. Didn’t mean to.”
“It’s all right. I guess I was lost in my own little world there. Turkey buzzard is acting awful strange. Caught my eye earlier and it hasn’t moved since.”
I looked up at the humped shape of the scavenger. Across the distance its featherless, red head was clear as day against the clouded sky. The bird’s skull looked skinned and bleeding, just like every other of its kind that I’d seen, but this one’s beaded eyes didn’t move from where we stood on the lawn.
“Shoo!” I yelled, whipping my arms over my head.
“Lane, you don’t need to scare it away.” She said the words halfheartedly and I knew she wanted it gone as much as I did. I bent over and retrieved a rock from the ground, wound up, and pitched it as hard as I could.
My aim was good back in those days since throwing rocks was a regular pastime, and the rock missed the buzzard by less than six inches. It didn’t move a muscle.
The urge to find another projectile was strong but my mother’s hand on my shoulder stopped me from moving. “Don’t, Lane. Leave it be.” She was staring at it again. “It’ll go away on its own.” She seemed to come back to herself and smiled, digging in the apron she wore. “Here. Your father gave you the grocery list I assume?”