I felt incredibly sorry for Johnny Metal. Maybe it was because I knew he wasn't lying. I probably wouldn't get the chance to talk to him after this.

"So why are you here?" I asked.

"Well," he grunted, positioning the guitar on his knee, holding an old chipped pick between his teeth as he did so. He took the pick out and cleared his throat. "I guess I came here to see if I could p.a.w.n this guitar. Then I decided I needed some whiskey, so I came here. Maybe I'm just here for you. Maybe you're the only reason I'm here. Sometimes I do things without knowing why. One minute I was sitting in a friend's apartment, the next I was hoppin on a train to come to Milltown. Who the h.e.l.l knows."

Metal flipped the amp on and lightly strummed the guitar. "I don't sing no more so you're gonna get the instrumental version. The real soul's always been in the guitar anyway."

"It was nice meeting you, Johnny," I said.

"Likewise." He shrugged his head, made a wild chicken motion and laid into the guitar.

The paralysis I felt automatically lifted. It was like he just started playing without really knowing what, without any kind of preparation or any f.u.c.kness like that. Chills dripped their way icily down my spine. And then there was the other sound-the rolling, banshee-like shriek of laughter. It was Gout, the man I'd been looking at under the spot of exposed insulation. Looking at him earlier, I wouldn't have thought he was capable of making such sounds. Nevertheless, there he was, bent over, a cup trembling in his hand, a coughing fit the only thing breaking up his laughter.

The other people in the bar were doing the same thing. The bartender pounded his heavy hand on the warped wooden bar. The guy in the opposite corner, Death Swamp, rolled around on the dusty floor. Slow w.i.l.l.y, standing only about five feet away, pointed as he laughed.

I had told myself I wasn't going to look. I looked around the bar at all those f.u.c.king blob wastes, laughing away like a.s.ses and I told myself I wasn't going to do that. I wanted to listen to the music. And I did, for as long as I could. I sat there looking down at that disgusting table until, finally, the sound of the laughter drowned out the sound of the guitar.

I looked at Metal.

It was one of the most amazing things I ever saw. After the first glance, I couldn't take my eyes off it. The music became like plinking dream notes, coming from somewhere way off in the distance. I was focused in so close to his face that there were moments when I was unaware he was even playing an instrument at all. His tongue lolled out, vast and pink. His lips pursed. His eyebrows went way back. His eyes bugged out. Sometimes he would glance down at the guitar and those eyebrows would go back and his mouth would draw up and he'd raise his shoulders, all at the same time, and he'd look like he was terrified as all h.e.l.l of that instrument. There were other things. Other things that are truly indescribable. Certain movements, ridiculous affectations, all contributed to some unbelievable show. And I felt the laugh, somewhere deep within me. Whenever you have a laugh buried somewhere deep in your viscera, there's really no way to stop it-and it feels so good to let it come out. It's what I imagined a snake shedding its skin must feel like, to laugh off some outer layer of repression.

Those drunka.s.s blobs were all still laughing away. Meat Sandwich had laughed until throwing up. He now rolled around on the ground beside his vomit. I imagined they had all p.i.s.sed their pants quite some time ago. I wouldn't let Metal see me laugh at him. That was part of the promise. So I stood up, amazingly easily, with my body hurting like h.e.l.l, my lungs burning, and took off for the entrance.

Now, apparently, they were finding everything hilarious. As I crossed the bar I noticed Slow w.i.l.l.y, the man who'd been pointing at Metal, was now pointing at me, as if to direct all the blobs' attention in my direction. How long had Metal put up with this? I could feel their malicious stares on my back and I inadvertently started snapping my head to the side and snapping my fingers. Both of those actions hurt worse than all f.u.c.k, but I couldn't control myself. I just wanted to be out of that smoky yellow tomb.

Just as I got to the entrance, I heard someone shout, "Horns!"

How observant, I thought.

The more laughter I suppressed, the more I had to look at all those blobbish faces around me, the less I felt like laughing and the angrier I became. The red crawlies were back, scouring the inside of my skin, blurring my vision, lifting me up out of that booth.

I had no control over myself.

I couldn't hear Metal's guitar anymore. The only sounds I heard were the heavy throbbing of my blood and the irritating laugh of all the drunks. My vision turned red. I couldn't see anything.

I could only hear and feel.

I felt skin in the palms of my hands. I felt the skin turn wet. I felt the horns punching into flesh and soft guts. I heard the fine shift of laughter turning to screams.

I don't know if I spun around the room or the room spun around me or how long it went on. Flesh and more flesh in my hands. So much hot wetness covering me. The occasional feel of the horns sc.r.a.ping on bone. The scents of blood and puke and p.i.s.s and s.h.i.t all mingling together and cloying at the back of my nose.

Slowly, the screams were eliminated.

I could hear Metal's guitar.

The red faded away, replaced by a different kind of red.

I stood up by the bar, leaning against it, looking out over the room. The room was covered in blood.

The drunks were indiscernible from one another. One of them was propped in a chair, his scalp peeled back from his skull. Another one lay face down on the floor, his back ripped from neck to waist, his spine exposed. Another one lay across a table, nearly ripped in two, his head and torso facing the ceiling, his groin against the table.

I looked at Metal, sitting there in the chair and facing the opposite wall, playing his guitar. His eyes were closed and he was covered in other people's blood. A piece of intestine was draped across his left arm.

I could feel the blood covering me turning sticky. I turned and headed for the front door, leaving Metal to play for an audience that wouldn't laugh. The now deafening refrain of his guitar followed me outside.

Once out there, I thought for sure I was going to throw up. But when I opened my mouth, I started laughing. I leaned up against one of those giant, rusted dumpsters, my whole body shaking. I wasn't just laughing at Metal, I laughed at the absurdity of everything: his faces, the horns atop my head, the drunks who went there every night, who no longer even thought about why they went, who died there, Metal's music taking them to whatever afterlife awaited them.

I tried to stop laughing because I think people usually look pretty stupid when they laugh. The more I tried not to laugh, the harder it came. Just like that, the sadness and its leaden wave had receded and, rather than feeling weightless, I was burdened with laughter. It was an amazing gift Johnny Metal had. However unwanted it was, it was truly amazing.

Chapter Fifteen.

The Boy With Horns Eventually I found my way out of the alley. The laughter had died down and I knew there was a foreboding wave of darkness waiting for me. I wondered why, when I had feelings of intense joy or happiness, I could always sense that black wave, cresting above and threatening to crash down on me at any time but, when I was actually having one of my sad spells, it felt like it was never going to end-like I would never get the happiness back.

I figured it must have been around two or three o'clock in the morning. Most of the businesses looked like they were closing up for the night. A few of the neon signs flickered and then went off. The people in the streets were twice as loud as they were earlier. I'm pretty sure this had something to do with them being twice as drunk as they were earlier. The people in pairs or groups engaged in overly militant babble. They were either going to go somewhere else and, "f.u.c.k some s.h.i.t up," "get into some s.h.i.t," or, apparently if there was no s.h.i.t already in existence, they were going to "start some s.h.i.t." The winos and drunks who were alone wandered along the street, sometimes losing their way and actually curving into the street, mumbling things under their breath, vigorous and confused conversations, imbued with an unusual pa.s.sion. Or they screamed various names out loud. Sometimes they yelled them at random windows above the bars, "Tina! Tina!!" Sometimes they merely yelled them at the heavens, as though crooning for some lover who was dead and gone or maybe, depending on their blood-alcohol level, never there in the first place.

There weren't many cars in this section of the Tar District. I a.s.sumed most of these people were either too poor to own cars or, more probable, had long ago had their licenses revoked for vehicular manslaughter. Whenever a car did come into sight, it traveled at speeds highly inappropriate. A loud roar, a flash of lights, and they were gone.

I tried to stay out of the faint pool of the streetlamps so no one could see me. I secretly willed the horns to go away. Without them, I didn't think anyone would really even notice me. By the standards presented around me, I wasn't even exceptionally ugly. I moved slowly, barely lifting my feet off the cement. My body was essentially numb, but I felt that grinding bonefeel starting up in the joints. If I stopped to rest again, I was sure I wouldn't be able to deal with the pain of moving.

I knew Uncle Skad lived by the river and I figured it was maybe two miles at most in front of me. Slowly, I had wandered out of the lively section of the Tar District and into what the mother and father called the slums. Apparently, even though Walnut was a horrible, hideous place to live, it was still better than the slums of the Tar District. Looking at it now, where the streetlights ended, I could see why the parents made that a.s.sertion.

Walnut contained houses in disarray, the ground threatening to consume some of them, but the Tar District contained an area that had once been houses. Now, they were entirely dilapidated-a pile of bricks, a heap of wood. To my left, knotted anemic gra.s.s covered a vacant lot. If there had once been a house or business there, it had been torn down a long time ago. To my right there were completely demolished houses. They didn't go unused, however. A long tarp was slung over the top of the piles and I could see little fires glowing in there. I imagined seeing the whites of their eyes, peering out into the darkness. Further down the road, in front of me, a group of homeless guys had started a fire in a barrel. I stopped in my tracks because I didn't want to draw their attention. It's not that I was afraid of them hurting me or any f.u.c.kness like that. I didn't want to make them feel watched or studied, even though that was exactly what was happening.

I stood there and watched them. They were virtually indistinguishable from one another. Their clothes had all gone indiscernible shades of brown or black. The men, and everyone I saw was a man, had long beards and something on their heads. They held out their hands to the fire, trying to let its pitiful flames spread warmth throughout their bodies. Maybe that's why so many of them drank, I thought. I was sure the alcohol did a much better job of spreading the warmth than that weak little fire did.

Standing there, the sadness came back in full force. The black and yellow wave of soulhurt hit me hard. It started raining again, icy rain. I stood there, letting it beat down on my horns until my head was hot and whumming and my lungs burned. I let the rain peel away the blood and the stink of death. There was something inside of me telling me this was where I belonged. If there was a place where people who didn't belong belonged, this was it. None of these people wore horns, true, but they might as well have. Everything they had had been stripped away and I felt like I didn't have anything either. Whether I had done it to myself or not, I wasn't sure, but something had been stripped away. Being a murderer, a ma.s.s murderer now, I guess, I didn't even have my morality to cling to.

I desperately wanted Uncle Skad. He was the reason I came here. He was the only thing, in my mind, keeping me from bottoming out. These people, they were people who had had the nets removed. The reason they ended up here was because there was absolutely no one to help them. I had wondered before how terrifying it would be to look around you and find no one and, if it weren't for the idea of Uncle Skad, I would know. This was where I belonged. In the Tar District. In the land of people who didn't have anybody. They weren't just without a home, they were without anything. Every comfort a home brings with it was denied these poor souls. And that's really all they were. Souls. Maybe they had beautiful thoughts that helped them get through. Maybe their thoughts were genius. Maybe they had firmly planted their existence in their minds. But they didn't exist in the physical world. Not the physical world that anybody sees, anyway. They had been cast out.

I stood there crying. I was stupid for doing everything I'd done. I shouldn't have run away. I shouldn't have killed the parents. I shouldn't have set fire to the parents' house. I shouldn't have stood up to Bucky Swarth. But I did. I did all of those things and I stood there rotting in my decisions, wondering if they were my decisions. Maybe that was why I stood there feeling like I belonged in the Tar District, but not feeling like one of them. I doubted their decisions put them here. Did they deserve it? Did they feel like they deserved it? That's exactly what I felt like.

What if I was what everybody said I was: a molester, a rapist, ugly, a demon, a half-wit, a murderer? If so, then this was certainly where I belonged. But I stood apart because something told me they wouldn't accept me either. Prison would have been a luxury. This was punishment of another kind.

I didn't have any idea what to do. I just wanted to see Uncle Skad but I didn't remember what he looked like or if he still lived here or not. I stood there and it felt like a billion different things were trying to pull me in all those directions and I couldn't do anything but stand there and cry like a huge baby. A weak demon. The boy with horns.

That's truly what I had become. Everyone I'd been around had found me to be repellent. They could remove my personality if they didn't interact with me. By telling me to shut up, by silencing me every day, they had removed a little bit more of that personality. And the more personality they removed, the more room they created for something more malevolent to fill. Oh sure, sometimes I would find someone else to inflict it upon, but it was never very long before they wised up too. And that was all I was as I stood there in the rain. I wasn't a name or a personality, I was the boy with horns, like the hunchback of Notre Dame, some twisted freak of nature people could no longer even bear to look upon.

I was an embarra.s.sment to the human race. I became a raw soul, unable to exist in the physical world.

No.

The thunder clapped and I took off running toward the Saints thinking maybe I should throw myself in, but that wouldn't happen either. No, I would run until I died. If I died it was going to be in a cathedral or a mansion, any place spectacular, not the Tar District, not where people died every day. Not where death was common. I would die someplace fantastic even if I was only robbing it.

I ran until I got so close to the river I could smell it, my raw lungs sucking that odor in. The Saints' presence was all over me and I collapsed into the mud and the muck, spiraling uncontrollably into some form of exhausted sleep and thinking for some odd reason the strong scent of the mud was what a fish's spine would smell like.

Chapter Sixteen.

Dreaming of h.e.l.l It's always the shortest sleeps that breed the longest, most vivid dreams.

The dream I had that night, after pa.s.sing out under the rain, gave me a desire to go on. I can't explain why. I think it showed me that things had to change. That eventually, something had to give. The f.u.c.kness had to recede.

When the dream started, it was very dark and I was wrapped up in all these things that felt like spiderwebs. They were very thin and fine but there was also something sort of metallic about them. Slowly, all those cobwebs dropped away and it got a little bit lighter all around me. It's amazing in dreams the amount you can feel. I think that's what really makes them so lifelike-the fact you can feel, emotionally as well as physically, everything you can in real life. That weightless feeling I'd had earlier, a feeling I would try never to forget, entered into me and it felt like I was flying, up close to the sun, the air around me thin and blue. I felt the coolness of the clouds on my face, so close I could taste them. They tasted like the purest, coldest water I had ever tasted. Nothing like the orange muck that came from the pipes at home.

And then I saw Bobby DeHaven. He was standing on a cloud further in front of me and I could tell by the way his mouth moved that he was singing but I couldn't make out any words. The wind up there, wherever there was, blew his beautiful blond hair off his face. Those feathered sides looked like wings. He wore pants that had the same pattern as the American flag-stars on his crotch and a.s.s and stripes down his legs-and then I was going past him, slowly past him.

I was coming down.

Everything felt so blue and weightless. It ran over my skin, through my veins, like a gentle electric current. I felt like I was in a bubble where no one could hurt me.

And then the bubble broke, the weightlessness sucked away. I found myself in a park. I never saw myself in this dream. I felt everything as though I were inside myself, looking out through my eyes. The parents were there. Off in the distance. They were throwing a bright red Frisbee back and forth. They were my parents but not really. Right away I noticed Racecar had legs. But as I got closer to them, I started noticing other differences. Racecar's legs were prosthetic. He wore a pair of very short running shorts. The shiny plastic of the legs gleamed in the sunlight. They had to have been like twice as long as his real legs had been. He moved deftly around on them, running this way and that to catch the Frisbee and then launching it back at the mother.

The mother looked better, too. She had on a new wig, an auburn one, and it looked like she'd taken the time to put it on straight. A cigarette dangled from the corner of her mouth, comically huge, bellowing a truly abnormal amount of smoke. She still wore a nightgown but it also looked new, bright nearly-fluorescent flowers standing out on a pink background.

Racecar was smoking too. Combined, they looked like a cigarette ad. The smoke from their cigarettes swirled up into the air, darkening it. I realized I could still hear some of the music from Bobby DeHaven's guitar playing except it, like the air around me, also became darker and heavier.

Suddenly, everything became foreboding.

I looked around the park. It was up on a hill. The only thing blotting the surface of its green gra.s.s was an orange swing set. The park was surrounded by a huge factory, as though the park itself were little more than a courtyard. Something inside me desperately wanted to be on the swing set, but there was another part of me that knew I had to run, to get the h.e.l.l out of the park.

The sound of the mother coughing drew my attention back to the parents. She was doubled over, having one of her fits. Racecar wound up with the Frisbee and let it fly. It hit the mother right on the head, knocking her wig askew. She coughed again before retching, unleashing a torrent of bright red onto the gra.s.s. The sounds of the factory gained volume, becoming both rhythmic and abrasive, nearly musical, drowning out all the other sounds.

I tried to run, but it felt incredibly hard, like the gra.s.s was growing up around my feet. The air felt thicker, also. Not only was it hard to run, it was nearly impossible to breathe. I half-ran until I got to the wall of that factory. I looked back over my shoulder and noticed the parents were following me.

"Come on, Wally," Racecar called. "Come and play Frisbee with us."

I ignored him and pressed on into the factory. Even though there weren't any discernible doors or entrances, I got inside anyway.

"Come on, Wally," Racecar's voice matched the rhythm of the factory sounds.

In front of me, there was nothing but blackness and h.e.l.l orange. To my sides were walls of dead, charred bodies. Once I realized what they were, the smell nearly made me vomit.

"You come back here, Wallace," the mother strumbled, framed against the comparative brightness of the entrance. "You little f.u.c.ker. Little s.h.i.t."

And she let fly with the Frisbee. It approached me in slow motion. I melted down to the floor, pains running all over my body, nearly paralyzing. While the Frisbee came floating toward me, I had the idea that, somehow, Uncle Skad was supposed to save me from all of this.

"Uncle Skad," I called.

Futility, a sinking dread, closed in around me along with the blackness and not the h.e.l.l orange, but its hot essence.

"Uncle Skad!" I yelled. "Uncle Skad! Uncle Skad!"

I opened my eyes and he was there.

Chapter Seventeen.

Uncle Skad The first thing I saw were his huge, crystal blue eyes surrounded by bloodshot. Those eyes were full of concern. Something in the area around his eyes, in the folds and wrinkles, said he'd done a lot of worrying in his life. Blackish dirt, the dirt of the homeless I'd seen before my collapse, caked his face. A huge steel-gray beard surrounded that face, the same color as his long, dirty gray hair. That strange electric feeling I remembered from my dream was still there, in the room all around me. I realized the energy was coming from Uncle Skad.

"How is it that you know my name?" he asked.

I must have mumbled his name in my sleep. It was a simple question but it caught me completely off guard. There was electricity there, in the air, but it couldn't eclipse that grinding bonefeel. It was back and hurting even worse than it had that morning, after the multiple beatings.

"I'm... I'm..." I stammered.

Skad backed away from me. He was older and a little bit plump, but he moved with amazing fluidity.

"A boy, a peculiar boy, with horns atop his head, staggers and falls. This boy, this stranger, this alien is brought to me, slung across the arms of a stranger. But I'm enjoying a fine sleep. A holy h.e.l.luva sleep. The door is kicked several times and I lie there, on my soft mat, my makeshift bed, hoping that the kicker, the disturbance, will go away. I lie there, drool trickling down my beard, listening to the kicking and the soft drip drop of rain on the rusted tin roof. I go to the door, look through my viewing slot and see one of my fellow Tar Mates. I open the door and the kicker, the knocker, comes inside with this woesome man-child slung over his arms. He plops him down on the floor and says, 'He was asking for you.' 'Me?' I ask. 'You,' he says."

Skad moved around his dark little s.p.a.ce, his arms gesturing in a dramatic fashion.

"And I ask this child, this being that calls for me as he nightmares away a rainy night, I ask him how he knows my name and he stammers, 'I... I...'"

Skad looked at me as though to terrify me and I did feel a great welling of fear from within, those eyes piercing through me. Then he smiled, chuckled, a whole different look, a friendlier one, covering his face. I struggled to sit up.

"Relax," he placed a hand on my chest.

Uncle Skad was the only thing I could focus on. Everything else was completely shrouded in black.

"I'm Wallace Black. Sadie and Carl's kid," I wheezed out. Skad's little place was uncomfortably warm, leaning more toward hot, but whenever I breathed in, it felt more like I was breathing in the icy, rainy air of outside.

"I guess that would make me your uncle. I thought we shared some familial resemblance. I knew it was you anyway. I could tell by the freckles and the mouth. Remember? The family reunion about ten years ago. Just you and me stayed out there by the swing set. My arm nearly fell off from pushing you so d.a.m.n much but I would have done just about anything to stay away from those potato salad-sucking fakes that call themselves family. Say, how are your parents anyway?"

I started to answer, to make up something I was supposed to say like, "Oh, they're doing fine," but he put a finger over my lips.

"Wait. You know what? And this is no offense to you, but I don't give a good G.o.dd.a.m.n how your parents are doing. They stopped believing in me a long time ago. Besides, you know, I didn't really push you on that swing just to stay away from the family, you were pretty interesting. Until you told me about those cloud factories, I didn't have any idea how those things got up there in the sky. If you haven't learned yet, Wally, you might figure out that the truth isn't always what you want to believe. You've grown horns since the last time I saw you. Looks like you've got something stuck on one of those things."

He reached out and poked one of the horns.

"That's an a.n.u.s," I said.

"So I see." He giggled. "An a.n.u.s."