Joe Hill - Horns

Lee fired again, and a shovel struck Ig in the legs. They folded beneath him. For one instant he was able to keep his feet: He put the shaft of the pitchfork on the floor and leaned his weight against it to stay up. But Eric still had him by the arm and had caught spray himself, not in the legs but the chest. Eric went straight back and jerked Ig over with him.

Ig caught a whirling glimpse of black sky and luminescent cloud, where once, almost a century before, there had been ceiling. Then he hit the concrete on his back with a resounding thud that rattled his bones.

He lay next to Eric, his head almost resting on Eric’s hip. He couldn’t feel his right shoulder anymore, or anything below his knees. Blood rushed from his head, the darkness of the sky deepening dangerously, and he made a thrashing, desperate effort to hang on to consciousness. If he passed out now, Lee would kill him. This was followed by another thought, that his relative consciousness didn’t make any difference, because he was going to be killed here regardless. He noted, almost as a distant afterthought, that he had held on to his pitchfork.

“You hit me, you fuckhead!” Eric cried. His voice was muffled. Ig felt as if he were hearing the world through a motorcycle helmet.

“It could be worse. You could be dead,” Lee told Eric, and then he was standing over Ig, pointing the barrel into Ig’s face.

Ig stabbed out with the pitchfork and caught the barrel of the gun between the tines. He wrenched it up and to the right, so when it went off, it exploded in Eric Hannity’s face. Ig looked over in time to see Eric Hannity’s head burst like a cantaloupe dropped from a great height. Blood lashed Ig in the face, so hot it seemed to scald, and Ig thought, helplessly, of the turkey coming apart with a sudden annihilating crack. Snakes sloughed and slid through the blood, fleeing, headed to the corners of the room.

“Ah, shit,” Lee said. “It just got worse. Sorry, Eric. I was trying to kill Ig, I swear.” And then he laughed, hysterical, unfunny laughter.

Lee took a step back, sliding the barrel free from between the tines of the pitchfork. He lowered the gun, and Ig jabbed at it with the fork again, and the shotgun slammed for a fourth time. The shot went high, caught the shaft of the pitchfork itself, and shattered it. The trident head of the fork spun away into the darkness and clanged off the concrete, leaving Ig holding a splintered and useless wooden spoke.

“You want to please hold still?” Lee asked, working the slide on the shotgun again.

He took a step back and, from a safe distance of four feet away, pointed the gun once more into Ig’s face and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell with a dry clack. Lee scowled, lifted the.410, and looked at it with disappointment.

“What, these things only carry four bullets?” Lee said. “It’s not mine. It’s Eric’s. I would’ve used a gun on you the other night, but, you know, forensics. In this case, though, there’s nothing to worry about. You killed Eric, and he killed you, and I’m out of it, and everything makes sense. I’m just sorry Eric ran out of shells and had to club you to death with his gun.”

He turned the.410 around, took the barrel in both hands, and lifted it back over his shoulder. Ig had an instant to note that it looked as if Lee had been spending some time on the golf course-he had an easy, clean stroke, bringing the shotgun around-and then he smashed it into Ig’s head. It struck one of the horns with a splintering crack, and Ig was flung away from Eric, rolled across smooth floor.

He came to rest faceup, panting, a hot stitch in one lung, and waited for the sky to stop spinning. The heavens swayed, stars flying around like flakes in a snow globe that someone has given a good shake. The horns hummed, a great tuning fork. They had absorbed the blow, though, kept his skull together.

Lee stalked toward him and lifted the shotgun and brought it down on Ig’s right knee. Ig screamed and sat straight up, grabbing his leg with one hand. It felt as if the kneecap had split into three large pieces, as if there were broken shards of plate shifting around under the skin. He had hardly sat up, though, when Lee came around again. He caught Ig a glancing blow across the top of the head and knocked him onto his back once more. The spoke of wood Ig had been holding, the sharp spear that had been the shaft of the pitchfork, flew from his hand. The sky continued its nauseating snow-globe whirl.

Lee swung the butt of the shotgun, with as much force as he could muster, between Ig’s legs, struck him in the balls. Ig could not scream, could not find the air to scream. He twisted, jerking onto his side and doubling over. A hard white knot of pain rose from his crotch and into his bowels and intestines, expanding, like poisonous air filling a balloon, into a withering sensation of nausea. Ig’s whole body tightened as he fought the urge to vomit, his body clenching like a fist.

Lee tossed the shotgun, and Ig heard it clatter on the floor next to Eric. Then he began to pace around, looking for something. Ig couldn’t speak, could hardly get air down into his lungs.

“Now, what did Eric do with that pistol of his?” Lee said in a musing voice. “You know, you had me fooled, Ig. It’s amazing the things you can do to people’s heads. How you can make them forget things. Blank out their memory. Make them hear voices. I really thought it was Glenna. I was on the way here when she called me from the salon to tell me I could go fuck myself. More or less just like that. You believe it? I said, ‘Okay, I’ll go fuck myself, but how did you get your car unstuck?’ And she said, ‘What in God’s name are you talking about?’ You can’t imagine how that felt. Like I was losing my mind. Like the whole world was knocked out of whack. I felt something like that once upon a time, Ig. When I was little, I fell off a fence and hurt my head, and when I got up, the moon was trembling like it was about to fall out of the sky. I tried to tell you about it once, about how I fixed it. Fixed the moon. I set heaven back in order. And I’ll fix you, too.”

Ig heard the door to the blast furnace open with a squeal of iron hinges and felt a brief, almost painful surge of hope. The timber rattler would get Lee. He would reach into the chimney, and the viper would bite him. But then he heard Lee moving away, heels scuffing on concrete. He had only opened the door, perhaps for more light to see by, still searching for the gun.

“I called Eric, told him I thought you were out here, playing some kind of game, and that we had to step on you and I wasn’t sure how hard. I said because you used to be a friend, I thought we should deal with you off the books. Course, you know Eric. I didn’t have to work too hard to talk him into it. I didn’t need to tell him to bring his guns either. He did that all on his own. You know I’ve never shot a gun in my life? Never so much as loaded one. My mother used to say they’re the devil’s right hand and wouldn’t keep them in the house. Ah. Well. Better than nothing.” Ig heard a metallic scrape, Lee picking something off the floor. The waves of nausea were coming slower now, and Ig could breathe, in tiny little swallows. He thought that with another minute to rest he might have the strength to sit up. To make one final effort. He also thought that in another minute there would be five.38-caliber slugs in his head.

“You are just full of tricks, Iggy,” Lee said, walking back. “Truth is, just a couple minutes ago? When you were shouting to us in your Glenna voice from in here? A part of me half believed it all over again, really thought it was her, even though rationally I knew she was at the salon. The voices are great, Ig, but not as great as coming out of a burning wreck without a mark on you.” He paused. He was standing over Ig, not with the pistol but with the head of the pitchfork. He said, “How did it happen? How did you become like this? With the horns?”