Rob Zombie - Lords of Salem

“What’s this?” asked Herman. “Video’s over? New video?”

“History of the struggle,” said Dr. Butcher. “Now please be quiet.”

Herman raised his hands in mock surrender.

The footage suddenly cut out, going back to the concert again. The singer had run the spikes on his wrist along his side until he started to bleed. Watered down Stooges , thought Heidi dismissively. Then it was back to the burning church. Or another burning church, she realized, not the same one. What was the story there? she wondered. She remembered vaguely a controversy in the nineties surrounding the burning of a series of churches in Norway, and the assumption that it had been tied to black metal, maybe even had been done by members of a black-metal band, but she couldn’t remember the band’s name and she wasn’t really sure what the whole story had been. Herman had said something about it on the way over, but she hadn’t really been listening. She’d failed to do her homework for the interview, and there’d never been any question of Whitey doing much—he did better just playing off of whatever Herman said, harassing him mildly. Which meant Herman would have to carry them.

When they shifted back to the concert again, the lead singer’s demonic singing had deteriorated into a series of screams. Heidi winced. The lights flashed on and off faster and faster as the music crescendoed into something that Heidi did have to admit sounded like what she imagined the shrieking of the damned would sound like. And then with a burst of fire, the stage lit up all at once and all four members of the band were finally revealed, their faces now dripping with what looked like blood. The last chord was cut off abruptly, and the stage was plunged into darkness again, leaving Heidi unsure whether the video had ended or if they’d run through the end of the recorded tape.

“That’s it?” said Herman. “We’re done now.”

“Again there is silence and darkness,” said Count Gorgann. “We have returned to the primordial chaos.”

“So wait,” said Herman. “Is the song over or not?”

Count Gorgann shrugged.

“I think it’s over,” said Heidi. “For us, anyway.”

Herman shook his head. “I’m with you, girl,” he said. “If you’re just tuning in, we are here with Leviathan the Fleeing Serpent and the song you just heard and we just saw was ‘Crushing the Ritual.’ ” He turned to Count Gorgann. “I must admit, I’m a little…”

Whitey pretended to cough. “Old,” he said.

“… more into the classics,” said Herman, giving Whitey a dirty look. “Led Zeppelin, Motörhead, Black Sabbath, that sort of thing when it comes to heavy stuff. So I don’t exactly understand your music, but I do understand your passion. I see the passion… I get the passion. Can you explain the philosophy behind your music?”

“Yes,” said Count Gorgann, in his heavy accent. He leaned his elbows on the table and tented his fingers, a posture that clashed oddly with his makeup and manner of dress. “It is very simple,” he claimed. “Our philosophy is to expose the lies of the whores of Christianity and Jesus, the true bringers of death. We believe this way of life should be erased from the earth. More souls have been lost because of this war… God’s war. We fight this in our music.”

Herman looked like he’d swallowed something that tasted awful. “Whoa, all right,” he said. He glanced down at the handful of notes he’d brought. Heidi could see they were largely Internet printouts, most of them from the band’s own Web page. “So, are you for or against the church burnings that were taking place in Norway back in the early nineties?”

Dr. Butcher leaned forward. “We believe all churches should end in smoldering ashes,” he said.

“You do?” said Herman. “Really?”

“We are not of the cowering flock,” he said, his voice thick with contempt. “We are not the crying sheep of God. We are the mighty goat.”

“But we can agree that you’re a farm animal?” asked Whitey.

“Pardon me?” asked Count Gorgann.

Herman looked flabbergasted, unsure of what to ask next.

“The goat,” said Heidi, trying to help Herman out. “That’s interesting. Why the goat? What makes the goat different from the sheep?” Do I really want to know? she wondered.

“The goat has free will,” said Count Gorgann, smiling his bloody smile. “For this reason, he will always be punished by the oppressor God… God must die. God is the unholy pig. We serve the butcher.”

Wow, sheep, goats, and pigs, too , thought Heidi. Pretty soon we’ll have a whole barnyard. And wait, why would the goat gang up with the butcher? How did people get like this? she wondered. What made them go wrong? If they just reeled time back a decade or so and stripped away the body paint, would they see innocent, ordinary kids, like her and Griff in high school? She saw Whitey smiling, preparing to make some joke, and motioned him off. No need to get the two black-metal guys ranting any more than they already were.

She looked to Herman, waiting for him to pick the interview up, but he was staring over the heads of the band members and at the window of the booth. She followed his gaze, saw Chip standing there looking even more frazzled than before, his remaining hair on end, drawing his finger repeatedly across his throat in an effort to get them to stop the interview. Yeah, figures, thought Heidi. Talk of burning churches and killing God isn’t likely to go down well with our sponsors.

Herman gave a brief nod to Chip. “Okay, well,” he said. “There you have it. Again the band is Leviathan and the Fleeing Serpent and the album is called ‘Possessed by the Master’s War with the Knights of Korgaron.’ Any particular track you want us to hear?”

“Track four…,” said Dr. Butcher. “ ‘Cleansing the Skin of the False God.’ ”

“Okay, track four it is,” said Herman. “I know you have to head over to sound check, so thanks for coming in and good luck with the show.”

Whitey queued up the DVD to track four and it started again. At first there was only silence. Heidi glanced at the screen; again everything was black. Maybe they always started with darkness and silence, she thought. And then death metal started pouring into her headphones, even more frenetic than before. Herman, she saw, was wincing. He didn’t keep the headphones on for long.

Chip was already opening the door and ushering the pair of ghouls out of the studio before they could do any more damage. He was nodding and smiling, telling them how much he appreciated them coming and he was so sorry they had to go so soon.

“But we don’t have to go yet,” said Count Gorgann. “We are happy to stay and speak more of the goat.”

Chip just politely ignored him and moved them down the hall and out until they were gone. It was something that Chip was surprisingly good at, considering how easily he stuck his foot in his mouth on other occasions. Heidi took her headphones off, looked at Herman. Behind them, Whitey was still listening and watching the video, rocking his head slightly up and down.

“What was that all about?” asked Herman. “That what passes for music these days?”

Heidi shrugged. She hadn’t liked the ghouls any more than Herman did. There was something about them, Dr. Butcher especially, that was creepy. Not white-makeup creepy but much more serious than that, something deep and dark and mangled. Why had they been staring at her the whole time? Or had she just been imagining it?

“What happened to the good old days?” asked Herman. “I remember this one time, Marc Bolan was here, must have been just a year or two before his death, back when I was first at the station. All of T-Rex was here, in fact. They must have—”