Horns

He took his glasses off with one hand, covered his eyes with the other. For a while he just sat there, his breathing ragged and soft. Ig waited, not wanting to interrupt.

There were pictures taped to the dash. One was of Jesus, an oil painting, Jesus with his golden beard and his swept-back golden hair, staring, in an inspired sort of way, into the sky while shafts of golden light broke through the clouds behind him. “Blessed are they that mourn,” read the caption, “for they shall be comforted.” Taped next to it was a picture of Merrin at ten, sitting behind her father on the back of his motorcycle. She wore aviator goggles and a white helmet with red stars and blue racing lines on it, and her arms were around him. A handsome woman with cherry-red hair stood behind the bike, one hand on Merrin’s helmet, smiling for the camera. At first Ig thought it was Merrin’s mother, then realized she was too young and that it had to be Merrin’s sister, the one who’d died when they lived in Rhode Island. Two daughters, both gone. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be kicked in the nuts as soon as they try to get back up. That wasn’t in the Bible, but maybe it should’ve been.

When Dale regained control of himself, he reached for the keys and started the car, pulled out onto the road with a last sidelong glance in the driver’s-side mirror. He swiped at his cheeks with his wrists, stuck his glasses back on his face. He drove for a while. Then he kissed his thumb and touched it to the little girl in the photo of the motorcycle.

“That was his car, Mary,” he said, his name for Merrin. “All burned up. I think he’s gone. I think the bad man is gone.”

Ig put one hand on the driver’s seat and the other on the passenger seat and hoisted himself between them, sliding up front to sit next to Dale.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” Ig said. “Only the good die young, I’m afraid.”

As Ig climbed forward into view, Dale made a gobbling noise of fright and jerked at the wheel. They swerved hard to the right, into the gravel breakdown lane. Ig fell hard against the dash and almost crashed to the floor. He could hear rocks clanging and bashing against the undercarriage. Then the car was in park and Dale was out of it and ru

Ig pushed himself up. He couldn’t make sense of it. No one else screamed and ran when they saw the horns. Sometimes they wanted to kill him, but no one screamed and ran.

Dale reeled up the center of the road, looking back over his shoulder at the station wagon and uttering vaguely birdlike cries. A woman in a Sentra blasted her horn at him as she blew by-Get the hell out of the road. Dale staggered to the edge of the highway, a thin strip of dirt crumbling off into a weedy ditch. The earth gave way under Dale’s right foot, and he went tumbling down.

Ig got behind the wheel and rolled slowly after him.

He pulled alongside as Dale rose unsteadily to his feet. Dale began to run once again, in the ditch now. Ig pressed the button to lower the passenger-side window and leaned across the seat to call out to him.

“Mr. Williams,” Ig said, “get in the car.”

Dale didn’t slow down but ran on, gasping for breath, clutching at his heart. Sweat gleamed on his jowls. There was a split in the back of his pants.

“Get away!” Dale cried, his words blurring together. Geddway. “Gedawayalp!” He said it twice more before Ig realized that “alp” was panic-ese for “help.”

Ig looked blankly at the picture of Christ taped to the dash, as if hoping Big J might have some advice for him, which was when he remembered the cross. He looked down at it, hanging between his clavicles, resting lightly on his bare chest. Lee had not been able to see the horns while he wore the cross; it stood to reason that if Ig was wearing the cross, no one could see them or feel their effects, an astonishing proposition, a cure for his condition. To Dale Williams, Ig was himself: the sex murderer who had bashed his daughter’s head in with a rock and who had just climbed out of the backseat in a skirt, armed with a pitchfork. The golden cross looped about Ig’s throat was his own humanity, burning brightly in the morning light.

But his humanity was of no use to him, not in this situation or any other. It had been of no use to him since the night Merrin was taken. Was, in fact, a weakness. Now that he was used to it, he far preferred being a demon. The cross was a symbol of that most human condition: suffering. And Ig was sick of suffering. If someone had to get nailed to a tree, he wanted to be the one holding the hammer. He pulled over, unclasped the cross, and put it in the glove compartment. Then he sat up straight behind the wheel again.

He sped up to get ahead of Dale, then stopped the car. He reached behind him and awkwardly lifted the pitchfork from the back and got out. Dale was just stumbling past, down in the ditch, up to his ankles in muddy water. Ig took two steps after him and threw the pitchfork. It hit the marshy water in front of him, and Dale shrieked. He tried to go back too quickly and sat down with a great splash. He paddled about, scrambling to find his feet. The pole of the pitchfork stood straight up from the shallow water, shivering from the force of its impact.

Ig slid down the embankment, with all the grace of a snake greasing its way through wet leaves, and grabbed the pitchfork before Dale could stand. He jerked it free from the mud and pointed the business end at him. There was a crawfish stuck to one of the tines, writhing in its death throes.

“Enough ru

Dale sat breathing strenuously in the muck. He looked up the shaft of the pitchfork and squinted into Ig’s face. He shaded his eyes with one hand. “You got rid of your hair.” Paused, then added, almost as an afterthought, “And grew horns. Jesus. What are you?”

“What’s it look like?” Ig asked. “Devil in a blue dress.”

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

I KNEW IT WAS YOUR CAR right away,” Dale said, behind the wheel and driving again. He was calm now, at peace with his own private demon. “Soon as I looked at it, I knew someone had set fire to it and pushed it into the river. And I thought you were probably in it at the time, and I felt…felt so…”

“Happy?”

“Sorry. I felt sorry.”

“Really?”

“That I wasn’t the one who did it.”

“Ah,” Ig said, looking away.

Ig held the pitchfork between his knees, the tines sticking into the fabric of the roof, but after they’d been driving for a bit, Dale seemed to forget about it. The horns were doing what they did, playing their secret music, and as long as Ig wasn’t wearing the cross, Dale was helpless not to dance along.

“I was too scared to kill you. I had a gun. I bought it just to shoot you. But the closest I ever came to killing anyone with it was myself. I put it in my mouth one night to see how it tasted.” He was silent briefly, remembering, then added, “It tasted bad.”

“I’m glad you didn’t shoot yourself, Mr. Williams.”

“I was scared to do that, too. Not because I’m afraid I’ll go to hell for committing suicide. It’s because I’m afraid I won’t go to hell…that there isn’t a hell to go to. No heaven either. Just nothing. Mostly I think there must be nothing after we die. Sometimes that seems like it would be a relief. Other times it’s the most awful thing I can imagine. I don’t believe a merciful God would’ve taken both my little girls from me. One from the cancer and the other killed out in the woods that way. I don’t think a God worth praying to would’ve put either of them through what they went through. Heidi still prays. She prays like you wouldn’t believe. She’s been praying for you to die, Ig, for a year now. When I saw your car in the river I thought…I thought…well. God finally came through on something. But no. No, Mary is gone forever, and you’re still here. You’re still here. You’re…you’re…the fucking devil.” Panting for breath. Struggling to go on.