The second: “Ig. It’s your mother. I know that Terry told you about Vera. They’re keeping her unconscious and on a morphine drip, but at least she’s stable. I talked to Glenna. She wasn’t sure where you are. Give me a call. I know we talked earlier today, but my head is a mess, and I can’t remember when or about what. I love you.”

Ig laughed at that. The things people said. The effortless way they lied, to others, to themselves.

The third: “Hey, kid. Dad. I guess you heard your Grandma Vera went through the fence like a runaway truck. I stretched out for an afternoon nap, and when I woke up, there was an ambulance in the front yard. You ought to talk to your mom. She’s pretty upset.” After a pause his father said, “I had the funniest dream about you.”

The next was Glenna. “Your grandmother is in Emergency. Her wheelchair went out of control, and she rolled into the fence at your house. I don’t know where you are or what you’re doing. Your brother came by looking for you. If you get this message, your family needs you. You should go to the hospital.” Glenna burped softly. “Unh. Excuse me. I had one of those supermarket doughnuts this morning, and I think they were going bad. If a supermarket doughnut can go bad. My stomach has hurt all day.” She paused again and then said, “I’d go to the hospital with you, but I’ve never met your grandma, and I barely know your parents. I was thinking today how strange that is that I don’t know them. Or not strange. Maybe it’s not strange. You’re the nicest guy in the world, Ig. I’ve always thought that. But I think deep down you’ve always been sort of ashamed to be with me after all those years with her. Because she was so clean and good and never made any mistakes, and I’m all mistakes and bad habits. I don’t blame you, you know. For being ashamed. For what it’s worth, I don’t think too much of me either. I’m worrying about you, bud. Take care of your grandma. And yourself.”

This message caught him off guard, or maybe it was his own reaction to it that caught him off guard. He had been prepared to hold her in contempt, to hate her, but not to remember why he’d liked her. Glenna had been casually free with her apartment and her body, had not held his self-pity and his wretched obsession with a dead girlfriend against him. And it was true: Ig had been with her because, on some level, it was a help to be around someone as fucked up as he was, someone he could look down his nose at just a little. Glenna was a sweet, shabby mess. She had a Playboy Bunny tattoo she didn’t remember getting-had been too drunk-and stories about being pepper-sprayed by cops, fighting at concerts. She’d been in a half-dozen relationships, all of them bad: a married man, an abusive pot dealer, a guy who’d taken pictures of her and shown them to friends. And of course there had been Lee.

He thought over the thing she’d confessed about Lee Tourneau that morning, Lee who had been her first crush, who stole for her. Ig had not imagined he could be sexually possessive about Glenna-he’d never believed that their relationship was going anywhere or was exclusive in some way-they were roommates who fucked, not a couple with a future-but the thought of Glenna falling to her knees in front of Lee Tourneau and Lee pushing himself into her mouth made Ig feel weak with a disgust that bordered on moral horror. The idea of Lee Tourneau anywhere near Glenna made him ill and afraid for her, but there was no time to dwell on it. The phone was cycling on to the last message, and an instant later Terry was speaking in Ig’s ear again.

“Still at the hospital,” he said. “Honestly, I’m more worried about you than I am about Vera. No one knows where you are, and you won’t answer this fucking phone. I went by the apartment looking for you. Glenna said she hasn’t seen you since last night. Did you two fight? She didn’t look too good.” Terry paused, and when he spoke again, his words had a quality of being weighed and measured before they were spoken, selected with unnatural care. “I know I talked to you, sometime since I got in, but I can’t remember if we made plans. I don’t know. My head isn’t right. You get this message, call me. Let me know where you are.” Ig thought that was all. Ig thought now Terry would hang up. Instead there was an unsteady, indrawn breath, and then, in a rough, scared voice, his brother said, “Why can’t I remember what we talked about the last time we talked?”

EACH CANDLE CAST ITS OWN shadow against the curved brick ceiling, so that six featureless devils crowded together above Ig, mourners in black, gathered over the casket. They swayed from side to side to a dirge only they could hear.

Ig chewed his beard, worrying about Glenna, wondering if Lee Tourneau would visit her tonight, looking for him. But when he called her, it switched over to voice mail without ringing. He didn’t leave a message. He didn’t know what to say. Hey, babe, I won’t be coming home tonight… I want to stay away until I figure out what to do about the horns growing out of my head. Oh, and by the way, don’t suck Lee Tourneau’s cock tonight. He’s not a good guy. If she wasn’t answering the phone, she was already asleep. She had said she wasn’t feeling well. Enough, then. Leave it. Lee wasn’t going to batter in her door at midnight with an ax. Lee would want to remove Ig as a threat in some way that would expose himself to the bare minimum of risk.

Ig lifted the bottle to his lips, but nothing came out. He had drained it a good while ago, and it was still empty now. It pissed him off. Bad enough to be exiled from humanity, but he had to be sober, too. He turned to heave the bottle, then caught himself, staring through the open furnace door.

The snakes had found their way into the foundry, so many it caused the breath to shoot out of him. Were there a hundred? He thought there might be, a shifting tangle that faced the door to the furnace, their black eyes glittering and avid in the candlelight. After a moment of hesitation, he completed the throw, and the bottle hit the floor before them, spraying glass. Most of the serpents went gliding away, vanishing into piles of brick or out of sight through one of the many doorways. Some, however, only retreated a short distance and then stopped, eyeing him in an almost accusatory way.

He slammed the door on them and flung himself down on the filthy bed, dragging the blanket over him. Ig’s thoughts were a riot of angry noise, people shouting at him, confessing their sins, and asking for permission to commit more, and he did not imagine he would ever find his way to sleep, but sleep found him, pulled a black bag over his head, and choked the consciousness out of him. For six hours he could’ve been dead.

IGGY WOKE IN THE FURNACE, wrapped in the old, piss-stained blanket. It was refreshingly cool at the bottom of the chimney, and he felt strong and well. As his head cleared, he had a thought, the happiest thought of his life. He had dreamt it-all of it. Everything that had come to pass the day before.

He had been drunk and wretched, had pissed on the cross and the Virgin Mary, had cursed God and his own life, had been consumed by an annihilating rage, yes; that had happened. But then, in the blank time afterward, he had staggered here to the foundry and passed out. The rest had been a particularly vivid nightmare: discovering he’d grown horns; hearing one awful confession after another, leading up to the worst of all, Terry’s terrible, impossible secret; loosening the wheelchair brake and shoving Vera down the hill; his visit to the congressman’s office and his disorientating confrontation with Lee Tourneau and Eric Hannity; and then settling here at the foundry, hiding in the moribund blast furnace from a mob of love-struck serpents.

Sighing with relief, Ig lifted his hands to his temples. His horns were hard as bone and filled with an unpleasant, fevery heat. He opened his mouth to scream, but someone else beat him to it.