Rob Zombie - Lords of Salem

Heidi smeared her syrup around her plate with her fork and shrugged. “I think maybe my landlady has the hots for me,” she said. “That probably explains it. You saw her. She’s kind of got that hippie free-love vibe going on. I mean, she’s sweet, but… I don’t know.”

“My place sucks ass,” said Whitey. “I’m paying a fortune for absolutely nothing. My landlord is some asshole Russian guy, Kazmir Yakov… total cunt.” He pulled himself straight and tried to imitate his landlord. “Vitey, Vitey, you got my rent? In Ukraine, rent is due when landlord knock on door. If landlord have to knock twice, then KGB knock next.”

But Heidi wasn’t listening. She wasn’t looking at him but at some indefinable space beyond him. “Dead air,” she said.

“Huh?” asked Whitey.

“Music,” said Heidi.

Oh, right , thought Whitey, the record ended. He got up and took the record off the platter, slid it back into its sleeve, and then kneeled down to put it away.

“You manage to file things right over here,” said Heidi. “Why can’t you do it at the station?”

“What?” asked Whitey. “Oh, here it matters,” he said. Inwardly, he winced. What was that supposed to mean? She must think I’m an idiot.

He flipped through the closest stack of records, looking for the next thing, his mind wandering. How was he supposed to choose something when she’d make assumptions about him from anything he chose? Heidi’s bag was right there as well, leaning against the side of the milk crate. It was half open, the wooden box sticking out of it. There we go , he thought. Neither of them had heard it, so it wouldn’t say anything about either of them if he chose it.

He put on his landlord’s accent again. “How about this? In Ukraine, music always delivered in wooden box. Like dead body.”

“Sure, whatever,” said Heidi.

Whitey took out the box and tried to open it, but it seemed stuck. He could tell where the lid stopped and the box started, but there didn’t seem to be any latch or hook to separate one from the other. How had she done it again? Embarrassed, he pried at it.

“See those two dots in the symbol on top?” said Heidi. “Press them at the same time.”

“What for?” asked Whitey, but when she didn’t answer, he pressed them. The box clicked and the lid became slightly loose. “Clever,” he said. He carefully lifted the lid off, removed the record from inside.

He held its edges against his palms, still speaking in mock-Russian. “Ah, very thick vinyl… strong like bear.”

Actually, it was unusually thick, and strong, too. He stood and laid the record down on the turntable.

He lifted the needle and set it in place. But as soon as he let go, it immediately slid across the entire record. What the fuck? he wondered.

“Whoa, sorry,” he said, lifting up the needle and hoping Heidi hadn’t been paying too much attention. “Let’s try that again.”

But when he replaced the needle, the exact same thing happened. He set the needle in place and released it and it fled to the center of the record, as though it were blank. But he could see the grooves, which meant something was pressed on it.

“That’s weird,” he said, reaching out for the needle again. “The needle keeps jumping to the other side of the…”

But before he could lift the needle, the record began to play, the needle moving slowly backward across the vinyl, from the center toward the rim.

“Huh?” said Heidi. “The other side of the track?”

“Well, I was going to say ‘that’s weird, the record won’t play,’ but now it’s playing…”

“So what’s the problem? Why don’t I hear anything?” asked Heidi.

“It’s playing backward. Look at this. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Heidi got up and went over to the stereo.

“What the fuck?” she said. “How is that even possible?”

Whitey just shook his head. “It’s not,” he said. “The motor doesn’t work that way, unless you’ve made some weird sort of mod on it.”

“Why would I do that?”

Whitey shrugged. “I’m just trying to explain it,” he said. “I’m not accusing you of anything.”

Together they looked down at the needle moving in reverse. No, it shouldn’t be able to do that, but there it was, doing it. Damn , Whitey couldn’t help but think. This isn’t Heidi messing with me somehow, is it? But she seemed as confused by it as he was.

“I guess it’s blank,” said Whitey. “I don’t hear anything.”

“Why would it be blank?”

“I don’t know,” said Whitey. “Some kind of joke?” He began to reach out for the needle, ready to pluck it off the record.

“Hold up a second,” Heidi said. She reached down and cranked the volume all the way up. And then Whitey could hear something, a sort of faint moaning sound. But how Heidi had been able to hear it with the sound turned down to normal levels damned if he knew. Maybe she hadn’t been able to hear it and had just made a lucky guess.

It was moaning voices, he was pretty sure, a bunch of them, or the same voice overlaid a bunch of times. It sounded strange, definitely. Gradually the sound grew louder, melding with a rhythmic and repeated booming sound. The booming was repeated three times in succession, followed by a fourth strike at a higher pitch, then repeated again. Together with the moaning it was almost hypnotic, and as Whitey continued to listen he heard something else. What was it, exactly? A kind of crackling noise, like a fire, or like twigs being snapped, but not quite either of those things. And there, far beneath the other sounds, was the strange discordant noise of various primitive instruments, a flute or a kind of pipe, a screeching from some sort of stringed instrument being played wrong, a sound like someone blowing through a long tube, a sound like sand being thrown against an echoing surface: spat, spat, spat . It was all pretty chaotic, but it definitely added up to something. Not really a song exactly, more a kind of drone or chant, the music (if it was properly speaking music) wandering and shapeless. But there was a note pattern there, too, if you listened for it, a structure of repetition beyond the rhythmic boom of the drum, but one that seemed to have little interest in resolving itself. There was something there, too—it was hard for him to put his finger on it since so many aspects of the music were so different—that reminded him of the tracks they’d played from Leviathan and the Fleeing Serpent earlier. Maybe a tone? Even just a repeated gesture, something very slight? Very hard to say. But yes, there was definitely a connection. Was it just the fact that both that and this kind of made his skin crawl?

“Man, this is really fucked-up sounding,” he said. He looked at Heidi but she didn’t say anything, just stared at the turntable. “I’m going to take it off,” he said, and when she still didn’t say anything, he reached out and lifted the needle.

“We should Smash or Trash it tomorrow and see what happens,” he said.

But Heidi still didn’t answer. She seemed lost in thought, standing almost like she was paralyzed over the turntable.

He reached out and touched her arm. “Heidi,” he said.

“Huh?” she said. She looked up at him, disoriented and a little scared, almost like she didn’t know who he was.

“Just for the fuck of it should we Smash or Trash this tomorrow?” Whitey asked.

“Yeah, sure,” said Heidi.

He waited for her to go on, but she didn’t. “Or not,” he said.

Heidi put her hand to her forehead, rubbed her temples. “Whew, I am suddenly really tired,” she said.

Maybe he’d outstayed his welcome. Not a good thing to do on his first visit, particularly if he wanted to come back. “Yeah,” he said. “I should get the fuck out of here anyway. I’ve got to walk all the way back to the station to get my car.”