Horns

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

AFTER HE HAD READ MERRIN’S final message, and set it aside, and read it again, and set it aside once more, Ig climbed out of his chimney, wanted to be away from the smell of cinder and ash for a while. He stood in the room beyond, breathing deeply of the late-afternoon air, before it came to him that the snakes had not gathered. He was alone in the foundry, or almost. A single snake, the pit viper, lay coiled in the wheelbarrow, sleeping in fat loops of herself. He was tempted to go close and stroke her head, even took a single step toward her, then stopped. Better not, he thought, and looked down at the cross around his neck, then shifted his gaze to stare at his shadow climbing the wall in the last of the day’s red light. He saw the shadow of a man, long and ski

He considered the black length of his shadow, climbing the brick wall, and understood that he could go home if he liked. With the cross about his throat, his humanity was his again, if he wanted it. He could put the last two days behind him, a nightmare time of sickness and panic, and be who he had always been. The thought brought with it an almost painful sense of relief, was an almost sensual pleasure: to be Ig Perrish and not the devil, to be a man and not a walking furnace.

He was still thinking it over when the serpent in the wheelbarrow lifted her head, white lights washing over her. Someone was coming up the road. Ig’s first thought was Lee, coming back to look for his lost cross and any other incriminating evidence he might’ve left behind.

But as the car rolled up in front of the foundry, he recognized it as Gle

Ig watched her from the windows while she made her way around the building. She had on too much makeup. She always had on too much makeup. Black cherry lipstick and a big hair perm and eye shadow and shiny pink paste-ons. She didn’t want to go inside, Ig could tell from the look on her face. Beneath her painted mask, she looked afraid and miserable and pretty in a plain, forlorn sort of way. She wore tight, low-riding black jeans that showed the crack of her ass, and a studded belt and a white halter, which bared her soft belly and exposed the tattoo on her hip, the Playboy Bu

“Ig?” she called. “Iggy! Are you in there? Are you around?” She cupped a hand to her mouth to amplify her voice.

He didn’t reply, and she dropped the hand.

Ig went from window to window, watching her stride through the weeds, around to the back of the foundry. The sun was on the other side of the building, the red tip of a cigarette sizzling through the pale curtain of the sky. As she crossed to the Evel Knievel trail, Ig slipped down through an open doorway and circled behind her. He crept through the grass and the day’s dying ember light: one crimson shadow among many. Her back was to him, and she did not see him coming toward her.

Gle

She looked at the burn in the dirt and then at the red metal gas can and, finally, down the trail, toward the water. Ig could see her putting the parts together, figuring it out. She was breathing faster now. Her right hand dived into her purse.

“Oh, Ig,” she said. “Oh, goddamn it, Ig.”

The hand came out with her phone.

“Don’t,” Ig said.

She tottered in her heels. Her phone, as pink and smooth as a bar of soap, slipped from her hand, hit the ground, bounced into the grass.

“What the hell are you doing, Ig?” Gle

“Stay where you are,” he told her.

“Why don’t you want me to-” she began, then stopped. “Are you wearing a skirt?”

Some faint rose-colored light reached through the branches and fell upon the skirt and his bare stomach. From the chest up, though, he remained in shadow.

The flushed and angry look on her face gave way to a disbelieving smile that did not express amusement so much as fright. “Oh, Ig,” she breathed. “Oh, baby.” She took another step forward, and he held up a hand.

“I don’t want you to come back here.”

She came no closer.

“What brings you to the foundry?”

“You trashed our place,” she said. “Why’d you do that?”

He didn’t answer, didn’t know what to say.

She dropped her gaze and bit her lip. “I guess someone told you about me and Lee the other night.” Not recalling, of course, that she had told him herself. She forced herself to look back up. “Ig, I’m sorry. You can hate me if you want. I got that coming, I guess. I just want to be sure you’re okay.” Breathing softly and in a small voice, she said, “Please let me help you.”

Ig shivered. It was almost more than he could bear, to hear another human voice offering to help him, to hear a voice raised in affection and concern. He had been a demon for just two days, but the time when he knew what it was like to be loved seemed to exist in a hazily recalled past, to have been left behind long ago. It amazed him to be talking with Gle

“How did you know to find me here?”

“I was watching the local news at work, and I saw about the burned-out wreck they found on the sandbar. The TV cameras were too far back, so I couldn’t tell if it was the Gremlin, and the newslady said the police hadn’t confirmed a make or model. But I just had a feeling, a kind of bad feeling. So I called Wyatt Farmer, do you remember Wyatt? He glued a beard on my cousin Gary once when we were kids, see if they couldn’t buy some beer.”

“I remember. Why did you call him?”

“I saw it was Wyatt’s tow truck that pulled the wreck off the sandbar. That’s what he does now. He has his own business in auto repair. I figured he could tell me what kind of car it was. He said it was so toasted they hadn’t figured it out yet, ’cause there was nothing to work from except the frame and the doors, but he thought it was a Hornet or a Gremlin, and he was thinking Gremlin because they’re more common these days. And I thought, oh, no, someone burned your car. Then I thought what if you were in it when it caught on fire. I thought what if you went and burned yourself up. I knew if you did it, you would’ve done it out here. To be close to her.” She gave him another shy, frightened look. “I get why you trashed our place-”