Joe Hill - Horns

Ig rolled, grabbing blindly at the oar, trying to get it off him so he could stand up. Eric Hannity came at him, raising the club again. His eyes were blind, and his face was blank, the way a face looked when someone was under the influence of the horns. The horns were good at making people do terrible things, and Ig already understood they were an invitation now to Eric to do his worst.

He moved without thinking, holding the oar up in both hands, almost like an offering. His eyes focused on something written across the handle: “To Ig, from your best pal, Lee Tourneau-here’s something for the next time you’re up the creek.”

Eric came down with the club. It snapped the oar in two, at the narrowest point on the handle, and the paddle flipped into the air and swatted him across the face. He grunted and took an off-balance step back. Ig threw the knotty handle at his head. It struck him above the right eye and bounced off, bought enough time for Ig to push himself up off his elbows and onto his feet.

Ig wasn’t ready for Eric to recover as quickly as he did, but Hannity was at him again, as soon as he was up, coming around with the club. Ig jumped back. The head of the club brushed so close it caused the fabric of his T-shirt to snap. It kept going around and hit the screen of the television. The glass spiderwebbed, and there was a loud crack and a white snap of light somewhere inside the monitor.

Ig had backed right up into the coffee table and for an instant he was dangerously close to toppling over it. But he steadied himself while Hannity twisted the club free from the caved-in television screen. Ig turned, stepped onto the coffee table, across to the couch, and over the back, putting it between himself and Eric. In two more steps, Ig was in the kitchenette.

He turned. Eric Hannity stared in at him by way of the pass-through window. Ig crouched, breathing hard, a stitch in one lung. There were two ways out of the kitchen-he could go left or he could go right-but either way would dump him back into the living room with Eric, and he’d have to get by him to reach the stairwell.

“I didn’t come here to kill you, Ig,” Eric Hannity said. “I really just wanted to knock some sense into you. Make an impression on you, learn you to stay the fuck away from Lee Tourneau. But it’s a goddamn thing. I can’t stop thinking that I ought to smash your lunatic skull in like you did to Merrin Williams. I don’t think someone with horns coming out of their head ought to be allowed to live. I think it’d be a fucking service to the state of New Hampshire to kill you.”

The horns. It was the horns working on him.

“I forbid you to hurt me,” Ig said, trying to bend Eric Hannity to his will, putting all the concentration and force behind his horns that he could muster. They throbbed, but painfully, without any of the usual thrill. They didn’t work that way. They wouldn’t play that song, wouldn’t discourage sin, no matter how much Ig’s life depended on it.

“You forbid shit,” Hannity said.

Ig stared at him through the pass-through window, the blood rushing in him, making a dull roar in his ears like water coming to the boil. Water coming to the boil. Ig looked back over his shoulder at the pot on the stovetop. The eggs floated, while bubbles raced up and around them.

“I want to kill you and cut those fucking things off,” Eric said. “Or maybe cut them off and then kill you. I bet you have a kitchen knife that’s big enough. No one will know I did it. After what you did to Merrin Williams, there’s probably a hundred people in this town who want to see you dead. I’d be a hero, even if no one knows it but me. I’d be someone my dad was proud of.”

“Yes,” Ig said, pushing his will behind the horns again. “Come and get me. You know you want to do it. Don’t wait, do it, do it now.”

It was music to Hannity’s ears, and he lunged, not going around the island but coming straight at the pass-through window, his upper lip drawing back to show his teeth, bared in what was either a grimace of fury or a terrible grin. He put a hand on the counter and went up and headfirst through the window, and Ig took the pot by the handle and flung it.

Hannity was fast, got his free hand up to protect his face as half a gallon of scalding water hit him, dousing his arm, spraying past to spatter his big bald head. He screamed and pitched to the kitchen floor, and Ig was already moving, rushing for the door. Hannity still had time to get up and throw the club at him. It hit a lamp on an end table, and the lamp exploded. By then Ig was in the stairwell, flying down the steps, taking them five at a time, as if he had grown not horns but wings.

SOMEWHERE SOUTH OF TOWN, he pulled over to the side of the road and got out to stand on the embankment, holding himself and waiting for the shakes to pass.

The tremors came in furious bursts, racking his limbs, but the longer he stood there, the longer between fits. After a while they had passed completely, leaving him weak and dizzy. He felt as light as a maple wing-and as likely to be sent spinning by the next stiff breeze. The locusts droned, a sci-fi sound: alien death ray.

So he was right, had read the situation correctly. Lee was in some way beyond the reach of the horns. Lee had not forgotten seeing Ig yesterday, as others had forgotten; he knew that Ig was a threat to him. He would be looking to get at Ig before Ig found a way to get at him. Ig needed a plan, which was bad news; so far he hadn’t even come up with a workable plan for breakfast, was light-headed with hunger.

He got back into the car and sat with his hands on the steering wheel, trying to decide where to go now. It came to him, almost randomly, that today was his grandmother’s eightieth birthday and that she was lucky to see it. His next thought was that it was already midday, and his entire family would be at the hospital to sing “Happy Birthday” and eat cake at her bedside, which meant that Mama’s fridge would be undefended. Home was the one place you could always count on for a meal when there was nowhere else to go-wasn’t that some kind of saying?

Of course, visiting hours might be later in the day, he thought, already turning the car back onto the road. There was no guarantee the house would be empty. But would it matter if his family was home? He could walk right past them and they would forget seeing him the moment he left the room. Which raised a good question: Would Eric Hannity forget what had just happened in Glenna’s apartment? After Ig had boiled his head? Ig didn’t know.

He didn’t know if he really could walk right past his family either. He knew he couldn’t walk right past Terry. He needed to deal with Lee Tourneau, yes, but he needed to see to Terry as well. It would be a mistake to leave him out of it, let him slide away back to his life in L.A. The notion of Terry returning to L.A. to play his razzy little show tunes on Hothouse and wink at movie stars appalled Ig and filled him with an inspiring hate. Fucking Terry had a few things to answer for. Wouldn’t it be something to find him home alone? That would be too much to hope for. That would be the luck of the devil.

Ig considered parking on the fire road a quarter of a mile away and hiking around to the back of the house, scaling the wall, sneaking in, but then said fuck it and steered the Gremlin right up the drive. It was too hot for stealth, and he was too hungry.

Terry’s rent-a-Mercedes was the only car in the driveway.

Ig pulled up alongside it and sat with the engine off, listening. A cloud of glittering dust had chased him up the hill and roiled around the Gremlin. He considered the house and the hot, drowsing stillness of the early afternoon. Perhaps Terry had left his car and gone to the hospital with his parents. That was the most likely thing, only Ig didn’t believe it, knew he was in there.