Rob Zombie - Lords of Salem

For a moment a dull anger rose up in him. She was still trying to play the game, still trying to get him to say something sensational and irrational. But another part of him told him not to get angry. It wasn’t her fault—she was just doing her job, trying like so many people in Salem to sell something by using their history of destruction and violence. It was indicative of a problem with the country at large, but it wasn’t her fault. Probably it hadn’t been her who had insisted on interviewing him. Probably it hadn’t been the idea of any of them—hey, they just worked here. They were just as much victims of it as he was. And getting angry like that just made him tired.

“Both,” he said wearily. “We are the descendants of witches, and we are the descendants of murderers.”

She stared at him, a little surprised by his answer, and then White Herman jumped in and took over. “I could have told you that just by looking at the crowd at Dunkin’ Donuts this morning,” he said. “And speaking of defining who we are in the present, I think we need to define some present… It’s time for…” Whitey reached out and hit a button on the board. A recorded intro of a drumroll began to play, followed quickly by the sound of glass being smashed.

“Smash or Trash!” said the intro tape in an unnaturally deep voice.

That was it, then, thought Francis. His five minutes of radio fame were over and they were moving on to some novelty segment. Smash or Trash, whatever that meant. He’d made a fool of himself, probably came off as a pedantic old idiot. Oh well, what else was new?

“Today I think Heidi is going to provide us with the victim,” Herman was saying.

The victim? wondered Francis. What were they talking about? They weren’t going to start doing prank calls, were they?

“That’s right, Herman,” said Heidi. “This one is a little different from most. I have no info about where this came from. Strange handmade box with a weird symbol on it that just showed up in my mailbox here at work, no return address, nothing, and with an unmarked record inside. All I know is the group is called the Lords.”

“The Lords,” said Herman. “I assume they are from around here, so we’ll just call them the Lords of Salem.”

The Lords of Salem? Francis was a little shocked, not sure he’d heard right. Was this another joke they were playing on him? Had they read his book after all?

“Excuse me,” he said. “Did you say the Lords of Salem?”

Herman looked over at him, a little annoyed. “Yes, I did,” he said. “Francis Mattias, ladies and gentlemen. You got to remember, Francis, we’re still on the air.”

Probably just a coincidence, Francis told himself. I’m sure plenty of bands out there would take a name like that. And it wasn’t exactly the band name either—they were just the Lords, right, and it was Herman who had tacked “of Salem” onto them. No, it was just a coincidence. Nothing to worry about.

“The phone lines are now open, so get ready to smash or trash!” said Herman.

Or maybe it was the Lords of Salem, thought Francis, but the band had been founded by someone who had read his book, who knew what the name meant. Yes, that was a possibility, too. The book was just out, but bands were changing their names all the time. Maybe they had put together their album and decided on their name at the last minute…

On the other side of the studio, Whitey started the record. Initially he put the needle at the end of the record rather than at the beginning and then seemed surprised when nothing happened. Maybe he really was an idiot, thought Francis. He tried it twice that way and then put the needle where it was supposed to go. The music started up right away, and everyone took their headphones off.

“Hey, it’s going the right way,” said Whitey to Heidi, gesturing at the record. “What do you make of that?”

“I guess your turntable is possessed,” said Heidi to Herman.

“Not my turntable,” said Herman. “Last I checked that was how records played.”

“Yeah,” said Whitey. “That’s what I said. It’s going the right way. Last night it wasn’t. It was playing backward.”

“Backward?” said Herman. “Nah.”

“I shit you not,” said Whitey. “Ask Heidi.”

Herman turned to her. She nodded. “I know it sounds weird,” she said, “but that’s what happened.”

Herman stared at her a moment, then shook his head. “Naw, you guys are both messing with me,” he said. “Or you just had too much to drink last night.”

Backward? wondered Francis. What were they talking about? And what was it about the music that was making his skin crawl?

Chapter Twenty-four

A sound like women chanting, but distorted. Instruments that sounded damaged and as if they were deliberately being played wrong. Maisie Mather was naked in bed with her gangly boyfriend Jarrett when she heard the song on the radio.

Maisie was a WXKB girl, born and bred. It was the only Salem-based station that played classic rock, and it had stuck to that for years. She had curly black hair and was petite, not bad to look at but no raving beauty either. But she liked the way she looked; she was comfortable with it, and with herself. Maisie had lived a charmed life. She’d lived in Salem all her life, had even lived on the same block with her parents until finally moving out a few years back and into her own place. She’d grown up feeling loved and protected, and the knowledge that her family was old-Salem blood had given her a sense of privilege and belonging that she’d come to rely on. Her parents had accepted that privilege but had always played down her ancestor Judge Mather’s relation to the witch trials, and she had at first, too. But once she was older she’d embraced it, deciding that she might as well accept it rather than run from it. That was why she’d gotten involved with the Witch Museum, why she’d made a gift to the museum of Judge Mather’s papers once her parents had died.

It was still hard for her to think about their death. It had been so unnecessary, and the officer at the scene had said it was a hundred to one shot, that the wreck wasn’t all that bad and that they should have survived. Indeed, the people in the other car had all walked away without a scratch. She was still getting over that, and she never got into a car without thinking about it and wondering if, had she been in the car, she would have died, too.

She’d gone to college at Boston University, commuting every day from Salem. At the time, she’d told herself that once she graduated she was done with Salem and with Massachusetts in general, but no, apparently not. She didn’t know if it was inertia or an unwillingness to abandon her parents even though they were dead or what, but every time she got up the nerve to leave, something happened to keep her here. Last time, she’d even had a job arranged in California, had bought the plane ticket and everything, when she’d gotten a call to say that the company had been taken over and the job no longer existed. After a while, she started thinking of it as fate and figured she’d be here pretty much forever.

At first she didn’t pay any attention to the song, just kept kissing Jarrett, encouraging him, trying to get him into it. His blond beard and long hair kept on getting in the way, poking into her eyes, tickling her neck or snaking its way into her mouth, but whatever, that was how it was with Jarrett, something you had to live with if you wanted to have sex with him. And if you could get over that, well, he wasn’t such a bad lay.

Or okay at least. She had to admit, the last few weeks’ sex with Jarrett had been feeling a little routine. She had a hard time keeping her mind on things. She kept drifting away, thinking about what she had to do the next day, wondering whether she’d put the trash out, if the cat litter needed to be changed, whatever. Not a good sign, and probably an indication that Jarrett and she weren’t likely to be an item for all that much longer.