Joe Hill - Horns

He’d been afraid to open the trap, had only worked up his nerve to pull back the hatch when the thing that was waiting outside stopped trying to force its way in. And there had been nothing there. He wasn’t there; or they weren’t.

“Listen,” said the person he’d been, on the other side of that door, “if there’s someone down there…you had your fun. We’re good and scared. We’re coming out now.”

The chair legs thumped and squeaked as they were pushed back, and Ig hit the trapdoor from beneath in the same moment the young Ig threw it open. Ig thought he saw the shadows of the two lovers leaping out and past him for a moment, but it was only a trick of the candlelight within, making the darkness seem briefly alive.

They had forgotten to blow out the candles, and when Ig stuck his head through the open door, he found them still lit, so-

– he stuck his head through the door, and his body tumbled after it. He hit the dirt on his shoulders, and a black electric shock went through his left arm, an explosion, and he felt he might be fragmented from the force of it, blown into pieces. They would find parts of him in the trees. He rolled onto his back, his eyes open and staring.

The world shivered from the force of the impact. Ig’s ears were filled with an atonal hum. When he looked into the night sky, it was like the end of a silent movie: A black circle began to shrink, closing in on itself, erasing the world, leaving him-

– alone in the dark of the tree house.

The candles had melted to misshapen three-inch plugs. Wax ran in thick and glistening columns, almost completely obscuring that crouching devil who squatted on the base of the menorah. The flame light flickered around the room. The mold-spotted easy chair stood to the left of the open trap. The shadows of the china figures wavered against the walls, the two angels of the Lord and the alien. Mary was tipped over on her side, just as he remembered leaving her.

Ig cast his gaze about him. It was as if only a few hours had passed since he’d last been in this place, and not years.

“What’s the point?” he asked. At first he thought he was speaking to himself. “Why bring me here if I can’t help them?” Growing angry as he said it. He felt a heat in his chest, a fuming tightness. They were smoky candles, and the room smelled of them.

There had to be a reason, something he was supposed to do, to find. Something they had left behind, maybe. He looked at the end table with the china figures on it and noticed that the little drawer was open a quarter of an inch. He strode to it and pulled it back, thinking there might be something in it, something he could use, something he could learn from. But there was nothing in there except a rectangular box of matches. A black devil leaped on the cover, head thrown back in laughter. The words LUCIFER MATCHES were written across the cover in ornate nineteenth-century script. Ig grabbed them and stared at them, then closed his fist on them, wanting to crush them. He didn’t, though. He stood there holding them, staring down at the little figures-and then his eyes refocused on the parchment beneath them.

The last time he’d been in this tree house, when Merrin was alive and the world was good, the words on the parchment had been in Hebrew and he hadn’t had any idea what they said. He’d believed it was Scripture, a scroll from a phylactery. But in the wavering light of the candle flame, the ornate black letters swayed, like living shadows somehow magically pinned to paper, spelling a message in plain, simple English:

THE TREE HOUSE OF THE MIND

TREE OF GOOD & EVIL

1 OLD FOUNDRY ROAD

GIDEON, NH 03880

RULES AND PROVISOS:

TAKE WHAT YOU WANT WHILE YOU’RE HERE

GET WHAT YOU NEED WHEN YOU LEAVE

SAY AMEN ON YOUR WAY OUT THE DOOR

SMOKING IS NOT PROHIBITED

L. MORNINGSTAR, PROPRIETOR

Ig stared, not sure he understood it any better now, even knowing what it said. What he wanted was Merrin, and he was never going to have her again, and, lacking that, he wanted to burn this fucking place to the ground and smoking was not prohibited and before he knew what he was doing, he swept his hand across the table, throwing the lit menorah across the room, crashing over the little figures. The alien tumbled and bounced, rolled off the table. The angel who resembled Terry, and who held a horn to his lips, dropped off the table and into the half-open drawer. The second angel, the one who had stood over Mary, looking aloof and superior, hit the table with a crack. His aloof, superior head rolled off.

Ig turned in a furious circle-

– turned his body in a painful circle and saw the gas can where he had left it, against the stone wall, below and to the right of the doorway. He shoved himself through a clump of high grass, and his hand swatted the can, producing a bonging sound and a watery slosh. He found the handle, tugged on it. It surprised him how heavy the thing was. As if it were full of liquid concrete. Ig felt along the top of the gasoline tank for the box of Lucifer Matches and set them aside.

He lay still for a while, gathering his strength for the last necessary act. The muscles in his right arm were trembling steadily, and he wasn’t sure he could do what he needed to. Finally he decided he was ready to try, and he made an effort to lift the can and upend it over himself.

Gasoline splattered down on him in a reeking, glittering rain. He felt it in his mutilated shoulder, a sudden stinging burst. He screamed, and a mushroom cloud of gray smoke gushed from his lips. His eyes watered. The pain was smothering, caused him to let go of the can and double over. He shivered furiously in his ridiculous blue skirt, a series of tremors that threatened to become a full-blown convulsion. He flailed with his right hand, didn’t know what he was reaching for until he found the box of Lucifer Matches in the dirt.

The August-night sounds of crickets and cars humming past on the highway were very faint. Ig tapped open the box. Matches flew from his shaking hand. He picked out one of the few that remained and dragged it across the strike strip on the side of the box. A white lick of fire rose from its head.

The candles had dropped to the floor and rolled every which way. Most of them were still lit. The gray rubber alien figure had come to rest against one, and a white lick of fire was blackening and liquefying the side of its face. One black eye had already melted away to reveal a hollowness within. Three other candles had wound up against the wall, beneath the window, with its sheer white curtains rippling gently in the August breeze.

Ig grabbed fistfuls of curtains, tore them from the window, and hung them over the burning candles. Fire climbed the cheap nylon, rushing up toward his hands. He threw them onto the chair.

Something popped and crunched underfoot, as if he had stepped on a small lightbulb. He looked down and saw he had put his heel on the figure of the china devil. He had crushed the body, although the head remained intact, wobbling on the planks. The devil grinned maniacally, teeth showing in his goatee.

Ig bent and picked the head up from the floor. He stood in the burning tree house, considering Satan’s urbane, handsome features, the little needles of his horns. Streamers of fire unrolled up the wall, and black smoke gathered beneath the banked ceiling. Flames boiled over the easy chair and end table alike. The little devil seemed to regard him with pleasure, with approval. He appreciated a man who knew how to burn a thing down. But Ig’s work here was done now, and it was time to move on. The world was full of other fires waiting to be lit.

He rolled the little head between his fingers for a moment, then returned to the end table. He picked up Mary and kissed her small face, said, “Good-bye, Merrin.” He set her right.