Horns: A Novel

by Joe Hill

  The black cherry tree was as he had left it the night before. He had yanked her pictures down out of the branches. They lay scattered among weeds and bushes. The bark, a pale, scaly crust, was peeling away to show the rotten reddish wood beneath. Ig had pulled his pecker out and pissed into the weeds, on his own feet, and into the face of the plastic Virgin Mary figurine that had been left in a natural hollow between two of the thickest roots. He had despised that Mary with her idiot smile, symbol of a story that meant nothing, servant of a God who was no good to anyone. He had no doubt that Merrin had called out to God here in this place while she was being raped and killed, in her heart if not with her voice. God’s reply had been that due to the high volume of calls she could expect to be on hold until she was dead.

  Ig glanced casually at the statue of Mary now, started to look away, and then did a double take. The Holy Mother looked as if she had been held in flames. The right half of her smiling, beatific face was scabbed black, like a marshmallow left too long over a campfire. The other half of her face had run like wax. That side was frowning and deformed. The sight of her gave Ig a brief moment of light-headedness, and he swayed and put his foot on something round and smooth that rolled under his heel and—

  —for a moment it was night and the stars were wheeling overhead and he was peering up into the branches and gently drifting leaves, and he said, “I see you up there.” Talking to whom—God? Rocking on his heels in the warm night before he went—

  —straight back on his ass, slamming butt-first into the dirt. He looked past his feet and saw he had stepped on a bottle of wine, the same bottle he’d brought out the night before. He bent and picked it up and shook it, and wine sloshed inside.

  He got up and tipped his head back for an uneasy look into the branches of the black cherry tree. Leaves fluttered gently above. He moved his tongue around the tacky, bad-tasting cavity of his mouth, then turned and started back to the car.

  Ig stepped over a snake or two on the way, still ignoring them. He uncorked the wine and had a swallow. It was hot from a day spent in the sun, but he didn’t mind. It tasted like Merrin when he went down on her: a taste of oils and copper. It tasted like weeds, too, as if it had in some way absorbed the fragrance of the summer itself, after an evening spent beneath the tree.

  Ig drove on to the foundry, bumping gently across the overgrown meadow. As he rolled toward the building, he scanned the old foundry for signs of life. On a summer day in his own childhood, on a hot August evening, half the kids in Gideon would’ve been out here, looking to score something: a smoke, a beer, a kiss, a grope, or a sweet taste of their own mortality on the Evel Knievel trail. But the place was empty and isolated in the last of the day’s light. Maybe since Merrin had been killed out here, kids didn’t like to come around so much anymore. Maybe they thought the place was haunted. Maybe it was.

  He rolled around to the rear of the building and put his car into park to one side of the Evel Knievel trail, positioning the Gremlin in the shade of an oak. A frilly blue skirt, a long black sock, and someone’s overcoat hung from the branches, as if the tree were fruiting mildewed laundry. Beyond the front bumper were the old and rusting pipes leading down to the water. He shut off the car and got out to look around.

  Ig had not been inside for years, but it was much as he remembered it. The foundry lay open to the sky, brick arches and pillars rising away into the slanting reddish light. Thirty years of overlapping graffiti covered the walls. The individual messages were mostly incoherent, but then perhaps the individual messages were of no importance. It seemed to Ig that all such messages were the same at heart: I Am; I Was; I Want to Be.

  Part of one wall had fallen in, and Ig navigated his way around a mound of bricks, past a wheelbarrow piled with rusting tools. At the far side of the largest room was the chimney. The iron hatch to the blast furnace hung ajar, an opening just large enough to crawl into.

  Ig approached it and peered in at a mattress and a collection of red candles, melted to fat stubs. A filthy and stained blanket that had once been blue was pushed to the side of the mattress. Farther back were the charred remnants of a campfire in a circle of coppery light, centered directly beneath the chimney. Ig picked up the blanket and sniffed it. It reeked of stale urine and smoke. He let it flop from his hands.

  On his walk back to the car, to get his bottle and his cell phone, he finally had to admit that snakes were following him. He could hear them, the hiss their bodies made moving in the dry grass: almost a dozen of them in all. He grabbed a chunk of old concrete from amid the weeds and turned and threw it at them. One snake effortlessly weaved aside. None of them were struck. They went still, watching him in the last of the day’s light.

  He tried not to look at them but at the car; a two-foot rat snake dropped from the oak tree above and hit the hood of the Gremlin with a tinny bang. He recoiled with a scream, then lunged at it, grabbing at it to throw it off.

  Ig thought he had it by the head, but he’d gripped it too low, mid-trunk, and it twisted on itself and fastened its teeth into his hand. It was like catching an industrial staple in the meat of his thumb. He grunted and flung it into the brush. Ig stuck his thumb into his mouth and tasted blood. He wasn’t worried about poison. There were no poisonous snakes in New Hampshire. Or no, that wasn’t quite right. Dale Williams had liked to take Ig and Merrin hiking in the White Mountains and had warned them to be on the lookout for timber rattlers. But he had always done so gleefully, his chubby cheeks bright red, and Ig had never heard of rattlers in New Hampshire from anyone else.

  He spun on his entourage of reptiles. There were almost twenty of them now.

  “Get the fuck away from me!” he roared at them.

  They froze, watching him from the high grass with avid, slitted, gold-foil eyes—then began to scatter, veering aside and slipping into the weeds. Ig thought some cast disappointed looks back at him as they departed.

  He stalked toward the foundry and pulled himself up through a doorway several feet off the ground. He turned there for a last look into the deepening twilight. A single snake had not done as she was told and had trailed him all the way back to the ruin. She swished restlessly about directly below, a small, delicately marked garter, staring up with the excited, eager look of a groupie under a rock star’s balcony, desperate to be seen and acknowledged.

  “Go brumate somewhere!” he shouted.

  Maybe he was imagining it, but she seemed to squiggle about even faster, almost ecstatically. It reminded him of sperm swimming up the birth canal, of loosened erotic energy—a disconcerting line of thought. He whirled around and got away from there as fast as he could without running.

  HE SAT IN THE FURNACE with the bottle, and with each swallow of wine the darkness surrounding him opened and expanded, becoming more lush. When the last inch of merlot was gone and there was no point sucking on the bottle anymore, he sucked on his sore, snakebit thumb instead.

  He didn’t consider bedding down in the Gremlin—he had bad memories of the last time he’d dozed off there, and anyway, he did not want to wake up with a blanket of snakes covering the windshield.

  Ig wished for a way to light the candles but wasn’t sure it was worth going to the car to get the cigarette lighter. He didn’t want to walk through a mess of snakes in the dark. He was sure they were still out there.

  He thought there might be a lighter or a matchbook somewhere in the furnace with him, and he reached into his pocket for his cell phone, thinking he could use the light from the screen to look around. But when he put his hand in his pocket, he found something in there with his phone, a slim cardboard box that felt like, but couldn’t be…

  A box of matches. He slipped them out of his pocket and stared at them, a prickle of gooseflesh spilling down his back, and not just because he didn’t smoke and didn’t know how he had come by this particular matchbox.

  LUCIFER MATCHES, it said on the cover in ornate black script, and showed the silhouette of a leaping black devil, his hea
d tossed back, goatee curling from his chin, horns thrusting at the sky.

  And for a moment it was there again, tantalizingly close, what had happened the night before, what he had done, but when he grasped at it, it slipped away. It was as slippery, and as hard to get a hand on, as a snake in the weeds.

  He pushed open the little drawer in the box of Lucifer Matches. A few dozen matches, with evil-looking purply black heads. Big, thick, kitchen-style matches. They had a smell on them, the odor of eggs beginning to go bad, and he thought they were old, so old it would be a miracle if he could get one to light. He dragged one across the strike strip, and it hissed to life on the first try.

  Ig began lighting candles. There were six in all, arranged in a loose semicircle. In a moment they were throwing their reddish light upon the bricks, and he saw his own shadow surging and falling against the curved roof above. His horns were unmistakable, his shadow’s most striking feature. When he looked down, he saw that the match had burned itself out against his fingers. He hadn’t noticed, hadn’t felt any pain as it sizzled down to his skin. He rubbed thumb and index finger together and watched the blackened remains of the matchstick crumble away. His thumb didn’t hurt anymore where the rat snake had bitten him. In the poor light, he couldn’t even find the wound.

  He wondered what time it was. He didn’t own a watch, but he had a cell phone, and he turned it back on to see that it was almost nine. He had a low battery and five messages. He put the phone to his ear and played them.

  The first: “Ig, it’s Terry. Vera’s in the hospital. The brake on her wheelchair let go and she rolled down the hill and right into the fence. She’s lucky to be alive. She broke her fuckin’ face and cracked a couple ribs. They got her in intensive care, and it’s too early to get drunk. Call me.” A click and he was gone. No mention of their encounter in the kitchen that morning, but that didn’t surprise Ig. For Terry it hadn’t happened.

  The second: “Ig. It’s your mother. I know that Terry told you about Vera. They’re keeping her unconscious and on a morphine drip, but at least she’s stable. I talked to Glenna. She wasn’t sure where you are. Give me a call. I know we talked earlier today, but my head is a mess, and I can’t remember when or about what. I love you.”

  Ig laughed at that. The things people said. The effortless way they lied, to others, to themselves.

  The third: “Hey, kid. Dad. I guess you heard your Grandma Vera went through the fence like a runaway truck. I stretched out for an afternoon nap, and when I woke up, there was an ambulance in the front yard. You ought to talk to your mom. She’s pretty upset.” After a pause his father said, “I had the funniest dream about you.”

  The next was Glenna. “Your grandmother is in Emergency. Her wheelchair went out of control, and she rolled into the fence at your house. I don’t know where you are or what you’re doing. Your brother came by looking for you. If you get this message, your family needs you. You should go to the hospital.” Glenna burped softly. “Unh. Excuse me. I had one of those supermarket doughnuts this morning, and I think they were going bad. If a supermarket doughnut can go bad. My stomach has hurt all day.” She paused again and then said, “I’d go to the hospital with you, but I’ve never met your grandma, and I barely know your parents. I was thinking today how strange that is that I don’t know them. Or not strange. Maybe it’s not strange. You’re the nicest guy in the world, Ig. I’ve always thought that. But I think deep down you’ve always been sort of ashamed to be with me after all those years with her. Because she was so clean and good and never made any mistakes, and I’m all mistakes and bad habits. I don’t blame you, you know. For being ashamed. For what it’s worth, I don’t think too much of me either. I’m worrying about you, bud. Take care of your grandma. And yourself.”

  This message caught him off guard, or maybe it was his own reaction to it that caught him off guard. He had been prepared to hold her in contempt, to hate her, but not to remember why he’d liked her. Glenna had been casually free with her apartment and her body, had not held his self-pity and his wretched obsession with a dead girlfriend against him. And it was true: Ig had been with her because, on some level, it was a help to be around someone as fucked up as he was, someone he could look down his nose at just a little. Glenna was a sweet, shabby mess. She had a Playboy Bunny tattoo she didn’t remember getting—had been too drunk—and stories about being pepper-sprayed by cops, fighting at concerts. She’d been in a half-dozen relationships, all of them bad: a married man, an abusive pot dealer, a guy who’d taken pictures of her and shown them to friends. And of course there had been Lee.

  He thought over the thing she’d confessed about Lee Tourneau that morning, Lee who had been her first crush, who stole for her. Ig had not imagined he could be sexually possessive about Glenna—he’d never believed that their relationship was going anywhere or was exclusive in some way—they were roommates who fucked, not a couple with a future—but the thought of Glenna falling to her knees in front of Lee Tourneau and Lee pushing himself into her mouth made Ig feel weak with a disgust that bordered on moral horror. The idea of Lee Tourneau anywhere near Glenna made him ill and afraid for her, but there was no time to dwell on it. The phone was cycling on to the last message, and an instant later Terry was speaking in Ig’s ear again.

  “Still at the hospital,” he said. “Honestly, I’m more worried about you than I am about Vera. No one knows where you are, and you won’t answer this fucking phone. I went by the apartment looking for you. Glenna said she hasn’t seen you since last night. Did you two fight? She didn’t look too good.” Terry paused, and when he spoke again, his words had a quality of being weighed and measured before they were spoken, selected with unnatural care. “I know I talked to you, sometime since I got in, but I can’t remember if we made plans. I don’t know. My head isn’t right. You get this message, call me. Let me know where you are.” Ig thought that was all. Ig thought now Terry would hang up. Instead there was an unsteady, indrawn breath, and then, in a rough, scared voice, his brother said, “Why can’t I remember what we talked about the last time we talked?”

  EACH CANDLE CAST ITS OWN shadow against the curved brick ceiling, so that six featureless devils crowded together above Ig, mourners in black, gathered over the casket. They swayed from side to side to a dirge only they could hear.

  Ig chewed his beard, worrying about Glenna, wondering if Lee Tourneau would visit her tonight, looking for him. But when he called her, it switched over to voice mail without ringing. He didn’t leave a message. He didn’t know what to say. Hey, babe, I won’t be coming home tonight…. I want to stay away until I figure out what to do about the horns growing out of my head. Oh, and by the way, don’t suck Lee Tourneau’s cock tonight. He’s not a good guy. If she wasn’t answering the phone, she was already asleep. She had said she wasn’t feeling well. Enough, then. Leave it. Lee wasn’t going to batter in her door at midnight with an ax. Lee would want to remove Ig as a threat in some way that would expose himself to the bare minimum of risk.

  Ig lifted the bottle to his lips, but nothing came out. He had drained it a good while ago, and it was still empty now. It pissed him off. Bad enough to be exiled from humanity, but he had to be sober, too. He turned to heave the bottle, then caught himself, staring through the open furnace door.

  The snakes had found their way into the foundry, so many it caused the breath to shoot out of him. Were there a hundred? He thought there might be, a shifting tangle that faced the door to the furnace, their black eyes glittering and avid in the candlelight. After a moment of hesitation, he completed the throw, and the bottle hit the floor before them, spraying glass. Most of the serpents went gliding away, vanishing into piles of brick or out of sight through one of the many doorways. Some, however, only retreated a short distance and then stopped, eyeing him in an almost accusatory way.

  He slammed the door on them and flung himself down on the filthy bed, dragging the blanket over him. Ig’s thoughts were a riot of angry noise, people shoutin
g at him, confessing their sins, and asking for permission to commit more, and he did not imagine he would ever find his way to sleep, but sleep found him, pulled a black bag over his head, and choked the consciousness out of him. For six hours he could’ve been dead.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  IGGY WOKE IN THE FURNACE, wrapped in the old, piss-stained blanket. It was refreshingly cool at the bottom of the chimney, and he felt strong and well. As his head cleared, he had a thought, the happiest thought of his life. He had dreamt it—all of it. Everything that had come to pass the day before.

  He had been drunk and wretched, had pissed on the cross and the Virgin Mary, had cursed God and his own life, had been consumed by an annihilating rage, yes; that had happened. But then, in the blank time afterward, he had staggered here to the foundry and passed out. The rest had been a particularly vivid nightmare: discovering he’d grown horns; hearing one awful confession after another, leading up to the worst of all, Terry’s terrible, impossible secret; loosening the wheelchair brake and shoving Vera down the hill; his visit to the congressman’s office and his disorientating confrontation with Lee Tourneau and Eric Hannity; and then settling here at the foundry, hiding in the moribund blast furnace from a mob of love-struck serpents.

  Sighing with relief, Ig lifted his hands to his temples. His horns were hard as bone and filled with an unpleasant, fevery heat. He opened his mouth to scream, but someone else beat him to it.

  The iron hatch and the curved brick walls muffled sound, but as from a great distance he heard a sharp, anguished cry, followed by laughter. It was a girl. She screamed, “Please!” She screamed, “Don’t, stop!” Ig pushed open the iron door of the furnace, his pulse banging hard inside him.