Rob Zombie - Lords of Salem

He’d just lowered the boxes onto the table when Chip made his move.

“No, no,” he said, moving to the rack and plucking out a CD Whitey had just filed. “Rod Stewart goes under S, not R. Can’t you understand the concept of filing under last name first?”

Whitey shrugged. “Eh, we hardly ever play that CD. Doesn’t really matter.”

“That’s not the point!” said Chip. “The point is that there’s a proper way for things to be done.”

Whitey shrugged again, seemingly confused. “But I don’t need to find it.”

“But what if you did?”

Herman just shook his head. “But I don’t.”

Chip raised his voice. “What you need to find is none of my concern!”

“Then why are we talking about it?” asked Whitey, genuinely confused.

“Calm it down, Chip my man,” said Herman. “No need to start World War Three over a Rod Stewart CD.”

Chip turned to him, his finger raised and pointed. “And you,” he said. “You’re worse than this guy. At least this knuckle dragger attempts to file the catalog.”

That’s what I get for trying to help , thought Herman. Remind me never to do that again. He sniffed, raised his nose in the air. “That, my dear fellow, is intern work,” he said.

But Chip didn’t get the joke. “Need I remind you?” said Chip. “This is a rock station. We don’t have interns. You want interns? Go work for a Latino station. They’ve got all the pesos.”

If the boss wanted a fight, Herman would give it to him. “Exactly,” he said. “So you can sympathize with my quandary. No interns to do interns’ work. It is quite perplexing.”

“Ladies, please,” said Heidi, rolling her eyes.

Chip turned on her. “And that’s another piece of business I want to discuss. Please stop referring to everyone as girls or ladies. People are starting to get the wrong idea.”

Heidi plastered a look of mock concern and innocence on her face. “Wait, what people? What idea?”

“That we are all…” Chip stopped, perplexed at how to continue. “Fancy…,” he said, and then shook his head. “No, just drop it.”

“Fancy?” said Heidi, her eyes wide. Herman couldn’t help but grin. Chip should have seen it coming, he thought. But even when Chip saw it right there on the sidewalk, he couldn’t help but step right smack in it. Had to almost feel sorry for the guy. Heidi looked left and right and then came a step closer to Chip, her hand cupped to her mouth. She said in a stage whisper, “You mean homosexual?”

“I…,” said Chip. “Look,” he said. “Let’s just drop it. It’s just confusing, is all.”

“You feel a little confused, do you?” said Heidi. “Having thoughts and feelings that you’re not quite sure your pastor would approve of?”

“I, no,” said Chip, beginning to blush. “I’m not…”

“It’s okay, Chip,” she said, patting his cheek. “We’ll still love you whether you’re in the closet or out of it.”

Okay, thought Herman, good enough. She’d started out teasing and fun, but it was turning a little mean. If she kept it up, Chip wouldn’t know if he was coming or going. And then he wouldn’t be much help with the show. “Hey,” he said, breaking in. “What’s with the Groovy Ghoulies in the lobby?”

Chip turned toward him, relieved to have something else to discuss. He smiled, tried his best to be hip. “Those strapping young vampires are your first guests,” he said.

Herman smiled. He began to dance, a bumbling off-kilter soft-shoe, and then to sing in a deep, off-key voice: “The freaks come out at night, the freaks, the freaks, here they come.”

“Be nice,” said Heidi.

Be nice? he thought. Girl, you probably should take your own advice. But Chip seemed already to have forgotten about his ribbing and was going back to business as usual, watching Whitey out of one corner of his eye, waiting for him to misfile another CD.

Chapter Fourteen

At first something seemed to be wrong with the video. When they started it, the monitor stayed black and there was no music to be heard.

“There seems to be a problem,” Heidi said, and reached out to restart the DVD. “Technical difficulties,” she said into the mike. “Nothing we can’t handle. Banter, guys.”

“Um, did you guys give us some sort of foreign-coded DVD? PAL or whatever?” asked Whitey.

“There is no problem,” said Count Gorgann, in a falsely deep voice and with a heavy Norwegian accent.

“But I’m not seeing anything but darkness,” said Heidi. “And there’s no music.”

“Yes,” said Count Gorgann. “This is it exactly. Darkness. And silence.”

“So let me get this straight, man,” said Herman. “You recorded darkness and silence. Kind of like John Cage.”

“Who is this caged man named John?” asked Count Gorgann.

“Yes,” said Dr. Butcher. He had a similar accent, slightly less thick. “Exactly like John Cage, if John Cage was a worshipper of Satan.”

“Okayyy,” said Herman. “Whitey? Anything to add? Or should we sit here watching darkness and listening to silence?”

“I got nothing,” said Whitey.

“Heidi? What you got for me?”

“You want me to start this thing up again or not?” asked Heidi.

“It is the darkness and silence of the infernal regions,” said Count Gorgann, matter-of-factly.

“Is it now?” said Herman. “Sounds cozy.”

Whitey laughed.

“Real funny,” said Herman. “We got anything else of theirs to play, Heidi?”

“This is it,” said Heidi. “I think their production company was supposed to send something, but nothing has arrived. We only have this DVD because they brought it.”

“Excuse me, it is not only the darkness and silence of the infernal regions,” said Dr. Butcher. “First, it is such silence, to set the tone, and then we deploy our instruments to capture the torments of the damned.”

“So there’s music,” said Herman. “Eventually.”

“Yes,” said Count Gorgann. “It is so.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?” said Herman. “Heidi, roll tape.”

“You got it,” said Heidi.

The video started up again. At first, again, there was only the darkness and silence. “How long does this part last?” asked Whitey.

“Shhh,” said Count Gorgann. “You must listen.”

Whitey tried hard to repress his laughter.

“I think I see something,” claimed Heidi. Count Gorgann tried to shush her. On the monitor, the darkness was still there, but it had become a little more variegated. Vague shapes were beginning to appear. Then the music began.

At first it started as a single highly distorted note on a lone bass guitar, strummed over and over until it began to seem like a kind of drone. Then a second bass joined in, and a third, the three of them riffing off one another, punctuated by the aggressive thumps of a bass drum. Each time the hammer struck the bass drum, a flash of light came. These left the stage for the most part veiled in darkness, with brief images captured on the video here and there. Glimpses of the band members flashed on one by one, a drifting smoke rising and obscuring them, even when the lights were on them. They were dressed in black, their faces dead white, spikes sprouting not only from their bodies but from their guitars as well. The music was almost thrashy, very fast and discordant, and the singer sounded like he’d been possessed by the devil. The words were sometimes in Norwegian, sometimes in an English that was badly enough pronounced to be almost incomprehensible.

And then suddenly the stage disappeared, to be replaced by news footage of a church burning. The music continued.