Joe Hill - Horns

“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-”

“Your place. It was never ours.”

“I tried to make it ours.”

“I know. I think you tried your best. I didn’t.”

“Why’d you burn your car? Why are you out here, wearing…that?” Her hands were balled into fists pressed into her bosom. She fought for a smile. “Aw, baby. You look like you’ve been through hell on earth.”

“You could say that.”

“Come on. Come get in my car, Ig. We’ll go back to the apartment and get you out of that skirt and get you cleaned up, and you’ll be yourself again.”

“And we’ll go back to the way things were before?”

“Yes. Just like the way things were before,” she said.

That was the problem right there. With the cross around his neck, he could be his old self again, he could have it all back if he wanted it, but it wasn’t worth having. If you were going to live in hell on earth, there was something to be said for being one of the devils. Ig reached behind his neck and unclasped Merrin’s cross and hung it from a branch overhead, then shoved aside the bushes and stepped into the light, let her see him for what he was now.

For one moment she quailed. Glenna took a staggering, unsteady step back, a heel sinking into soft earth and turning under her so she nearly twisted her ankle before she recovered. Her mouth opened to scream, a real horror-movie scream, a deep and tortured wail. But the scream didn’t come. Almost immediately her plump, pretty face smoothed itself back out.

“You hated the way things were,” spoke the devil.

“I hated it,” she agreed, and a kind of grief stole over her face again.

“All of it.”

“No,” she said. “There were a couple things I liked. I liked when we’d make love. You’d close your eyes and I’d know you were thinking of her, but I wouldn’t care because I could make you feel good and that was all right. And I liked when we made breakfast together on Saturday mornings, a big breakfast, bacon and eggs and juice, and then we’d watch stupid TV, and you seemed like you’d be happy to sit by me all day. But I hated knowing I’d never matter. I hated we didn’t have a future, and I hated hearing you talk about the funny things she said and the clever things she did. I couldn’t compete. I was never going to be able to compete.”

“Do you really want me to come back to the apartment?”

“I don’t even want to go back. I hate that apartment. I hate living there. I want to go away. I want to start again somewhere else.”

“Where else would you go? Where could you go to be happy?”

“To Lee’s house,” she said, and her face shone, and she smiled in a sweet, surprised way, like a girl catching her first sight of Disney World. “Go in my raincoat with nothing on underneath and give him a real thrill. Lee wants me to come by and see him sometime. He sent me a text message this afternoon saying if you didn’t turn up, we should-”

“No,” Ig said, his voice harsh and black smoke gushing from his nostrils.

She cringed, stepped away.

He inhaled, sucking the smoke back in. Took her arm and turned her in the direction of the car and started walking. The maiden and the devil walked in the furnace light at the end of the day, and the devil admonished her, “You don’t want to have anything to do with him. What’d he ever do for you besides steal you a jacket and treat you like a hooker? You need to tell Lee to fuck off. You need better than him. You have to give less and take more, Glenna.”

“I like to do nice things for people,” she said in a brave little voice, as if embarrassed.

“You’re people, too. Do something nice for yourself.” And as he spoke, he put his will behind the horns and felt a shock of white pleasure pass through the nerves in them. “Besides, look at how you’ve been treated. I wrecked your apartment, you haven’t seen me for days, and then you come out here and find me fagging around in a skirt. Screwing Lee Tourneau won’t pull you even. You need to think bigger than that. You got a little revenge coming to you. Go on home and get the bank card, empty the account, and…give yourself a vacation. Haven’t you ever wanted to take off for a little you time?”

“Wouldn’t that be something?” she said, but her smile faltered after a moment, and she said, “I’d get in trouble. I was in jail once, thirty days. I don’t ever want to go back.”

“No one’s going to bother you. Not after you drove by the foundry and spotted me out here in my little lace skirt, playing the nancy boy. My parents aren’t going to sic a lawyer on you. That’s not the kind of thing they want getting out to the general public. Take my credit card, too. I bet my folks won’t even put a stop on it for a few months. The best way to get even with anyone is to put them in the rearview mirror on your way to something better. You deserve something better, Glenna,” Ig said.

They were beside her car. Ig opened the door and held it for her. She looked down at his skirt, then up into his face. She was smiling. She was also crying, big black mascara tears.

“Was that your thing, Ig? Skirts? Is that why we didn’t have us too much fun? If I knew, I would’ve tried to…I dunno, tried to make that work.”

“No,” Ig said. “I’m only wearing this because I didn’t have red tights and a cape.”

“Red tights and a cape?” Her voice was dazed and a little slow.

“Isn’t that what the devil is supposed to wear? Like a superhero costume. In a lot of ways, I guess Satan was the first superhero.”

“Don’t you mean supervillain?”

“Nah. Hero, for sure. Think about it. In his first adventure, he took the form of a snake to free two prisoners being held naked in a Third World jungle prison by an all-powerful megalomaniac. At the same time, he broadened their diet and introduced them to their own sexuality. Sounds kind of like a cross between Animal Man and Dr. Phil to me.”

She laughed-weird, disjointed, confused laughter-and then hiccuped, and the smile faded.

“So where do you think you’ll go?” Ig asked.

“I dunno,” she said. “I always wanted to see New York City. New York City at night. Taxis going by with strange foreign music coming out the windows. People selling those peanuts, the sweet peanuts, on the corners. Don’t they still sell those peanuts in New York?”

“I don’t know if they do anymore. They used to. I haven’t been there since just before Merrin died. Go find out, why don’t you. It’s going to be great. Time of your life.”