Rob Zombie - Lords of Salem

Chapter Thirty-one

When she regained consciousness, it was with the impression that she was hanging upside down in the air, clinging to the ceiling. If she moved at all, she worried that she would lose her grip and fall down, and perhaps would never stop falling.

But slowly she began to realize she was wrong, that she was disoriented, that something had gone wrong with her perception. Her face was pressed not against the ceiling but against a dusty wooden surface that, she started to realize, was a floor. She moved her hand and didn’t fall. No, she was not hanging in the air but lying on the floor.

What had happened to her? She had been suspended in darkness, her arms and legs pinned. She had seen the creature and it had approached her and it had laughed at her and then she had felt herself exiting her own body, falling off into the darkness. But what had happened after that, and how she had made her way back to her body afterward, and why she now found herself here, unbound and lying on a floor, she couldn’t say.

What happened? she asked herself again. But a part of her, a very large part of her, did not want to know what had happened.

She groaned. She was sore all over, her stomach and thighs especially, as if they had been beaten with a stick. Slowly, she lifted her head and pulled herself to her feet.

She was, she suddenly realized after glancing around, in apartment five.

It was empty and dark, lit only by the cast-off light of a streetlamp from outside and by the glow coming in from the hallway through the open door.

How the hell did I get in here? she wondered. And then thought, I have to get out. Now.

She stumbled out of the apartment and into the hallway, steadying herself against the wall. Her clothes, she realized once she was in the light, were torn and there were scratches and bruises visible on her sweat-drenched body. What had happened to her? A dream? Was she still having one?

Slowly, she made her way toward her apartment. Behind her, she heard a whispery noise and she turned to catch sight of something pale and white flitting through the depths of apartment number five. Though, no, she wasn’t exactly sure she had seen anything. Maybe it was just the light. She backtracked and closed the door to the apartment, just in case.

By the time she was approaching the door to her own apartment, she was starting to get her mind around things. Her clothing, looking at it again, didn’t seem torn exactly, only rumpled, and what she’d thought were scratches and bruises were instead just lines and creases from sleeping on a bare floor. Plus, she could hear Steve scratching on the inside of the door, which meant that he was okay, that there was nothing wrong with him, that it had all been just a bad dream.

The only question she had was, if it had been a dream, why had she woken up not in her own bed but in apartment number five? There was definitely something wrong with her.

She was just opening the door when she heard a creaking down at the end of the hallway. Despite herself, she turned to look. The door to apartment five was open. And there was something strange about the darkness of the doorway itself. It was almost as if, when she looked hard enough, she could begin to see someone standing there.

Very quickly, heart pounding hard, she entered her own apartment, locking the door behind her.

Steve was okay, still had all his paws anyway. He was definitely a little skittish, but maybe she was just passing her own mood along to him. Talk about a fucked-up dream . But she felt like she hadn’t gotten any sleep, and like she wasn’t likely to get any. She was reluctant to go back into the bathroom, but when she did everything seemed normal. There was a little water on the floor, puddles of it here and there, but nothing out of place. It was just an ordinary bathroom.

But still she felt unsettled. She sat on the toilet and held her head in her hands, and then she began to shiver and shake. Once she started shaking, it was hard to stop. It just kept coming. She stayed there for a moment, jittery as hell, then Fuck this, she thought, and she stood and grabbed a bottle of pills, quickly downing several. She slumped back on the toilet, waiting, hoping they would have some effect.

Wednesday

Chapter Thirty-two

Francis yawned, still tired. He was curled up on the couch, still wearing his pajamas and robe, despite it being late in the morning. He’d been more worked up than he’d realized after the radio program and then he’d allowed his research to get the better of him. What time exactly it had been when he finally closed his books and came to bed, he wasn’t sure.

“Do you want more coffee?” asked Alice. She was sitting in the armchair, feet propped up, reading the Salem News .

“Excuse me, dear?” he said. He looked down at his cup, which was still more than halfway full. To be honest, he’d forgotten he was holding it. “No,” he said. “I’m fine.”

He lifted his cup and took another sip, turned his attention back to the television. An old Western was playing on it, something he vaguely remembered having seen years ago, perhaps even when he was a child.

He cleared his throat. “Do you think there is anyone under the age of a thousand who still remembers Randolph Scott?” he asked.

Alice turned her page. “Nope,” she said.

“Shame,” said Francis. He took another sip. “Do you remember… what was it… Ride the High Country ?”

“Nope,” Alice said. She suddenly paused, put the paper down. “Hey, weren’t he and, um… Cary Grant a couple?”

Were they? wondered Francis. Why am I always the last to know? “I don’t want to think about that before lunch,” he said.

Alice gave a curt nod, raised the paper again. For a while she read in silence. Francis turned back to the TV, tried to watch the Western again. A man in buckskin was crouching behind a rock. Every time he tried to poke his head out, someone fired a shot and a puff of dust rose on the stone a few inches from the man’s head. No, he’d be trapped there for a while. Was he the villain or the hero? If he was the villain, probably eventually he’d make a run for it and then keel over, shot in the back or, if he was lucky, the leg. Then there’d be a deathbed scene if it was the back, an arrest scene if it was the leg. If he was the hero, then he’d hold out, cling to his rock until the villains shooting at him ran out of bullets or the cavalry showed up. Usually you could tell which it was pretty quickly but in this case he was having a hard time figuring it out. Man didn’t look like a villain nor really like a hero, just like some ordinary bastard who was about to die.

“I see they’ve released the identity of the murder victim and his killer,” said Alice, lowering the paper again.

Without fail , thought Francis. I start getting caught up in the show and she has to say something to pull me out of it. “Not interested,” he said. “I don’t need to know.” But it was too late; his concentration was broken. He was no longer lost in the movie anymore. He felt irritated. “I don’t want to know,” he added. “Murder as gossip does not concern me.”

Alice gave him a hard stare over the top of her glasses, but as usual she didn’t rise to the bait. How could she always remain so calm? It was something he couldn’t help but envy a little. “I thought this might interest you, Francis,” she said. She ruffled the paper and was hidden behind it again. “Says here the murderer was named Maisie Mather.”

“Mather?” said Francis. It was like his research was haunting him. First that radio woman in all likelihood related to Hawthorne and now a descendant of Justice Mather, Hawthorne’s crony.