By the eighth grade he had discovered how to sin with his hands. He knew he was doomed to hellfire and damnation, for try as he might, he could not stop. He would go for days, weeks, without touching himself, only to succumb in delicious fury, and afterwards feel the guilt of a murderer. The image of God he carried in his head was a bleak one—the Old Testament God of Abraham and Isaac and David, who took no foolishness and punished true to his word. A vengeful, dusky-skinned Arab with electric eyes and white hair. This God thundered in his mind after his orgasms; this God bellowed in his head when the need arose and Horace had conjured up the pornographic images he had seen of women and men in unholy congress. Is that when the truth uncovered itself and stood naked before him? When the thought of a woman failed to arouse him, and the thought of a man did?

Let’s take a trip, said the voice.

What?

Come on. There’s a house next door. Come.

The house next door belonged to the Sapphires. Mrs. Daisy Sapphire had been Horace’s second-grade teacher. She was a hateful woman, tall, with long stringy black hair, who never smiled and for some reason seemed to derive pleasure in punishing Horace for no reason at all. She even had a strange way of eating, alone at a table in the cafeteria, slicing her hamburgers into neat bite-sized sections with a knife and a fork, picking up the portions with the fork. All the other teachers avoided her.

Her husband was a farmer, a round-bellied, tobacco-chewing, good ole boy whom Horace only saw atop tractors or flat on his back underneath a truck. His name was Mason.

Around their house were nine pecan trees in clusters at each corner of the squarish property. The house itself was a white one-story with a screened-in porch across the front, with a door at the side that led into the kitchen. Off to the left was Mrs. Sapphire’s garden, about ten rows of peas and collards and mustard greens, sweet peas and corn, beets, turnips, and squash. A scarecrow hung on a pole amid the corn rows. Horace stood at the edge of the garden, his toes sinking in the moist earth, thinking about Mrs. Sapphire and the second grade.

Well, well, well, said the demon. Do your worst.

Without hesitation Horace dropped his gun and started tearing and digging in the soil of the garden. The goblins and trolls yelled and screamed and chattered. But he was intent on uprooting turnips and young collard plants, yanking up and breaking poles, trampling cornstalks . . . The destruction didn’t take long. Then he walked up and down the rows saturating the ruined plants in urine.

The demon laughed softly with pleasure. Now, it said. The car.

The car?

Go to the car shed.