Rob Zombie - Lords of Salem

She let the smoke out slowly. She ashed the joint and shook it at Steve. It was already short enough that she could feel the heat coming off it against her thumb. “Now, don’t you start judging me,” she said to Steve. “That’s the last thing I need.”

Yeah, it wasn’t bad. She felt pretty good. Part of her was already feeling guilty about it—doing shit like this opened a kind of hunger in her, just made some monstrous part of her stretch and begin to wake up and start craving what she’d had before. But no, she couldn’t get into that again. Last time, it had gotten bad enough that she was lucky she came out of it alive. Griff hadn’t, after all. Did she feel guilty about that? Guilty about surviving?

But maybe , something in her said hopefully, maybe this time it’ll be different. Maybe it won’t be any trouble for me at all.

No, no next time. But the thoughts were already getting fuzzy. She was losing track of them, letting them slip away from her. Which, she told herself, was what she wanted—to not worry, to relax a little, to be able in some way or another to face her day.

Time slipped a little. It got slow, as if it wasn’t passing at all and it seemed like each moment was being stretched further and further. Maybe she slept a little. And then suddenly it sped up again and Steve was there, whining, licking her arm.

“What is it, Steve?” she asked him, and when he kept whining she hauled herself to her feet and stood. Wow, she was dizzy. She leaned against the wall for balance and navigated her way into the kitchen, poured Steve some food.

He immediately wolfed it down, clearly hungry. Had she remembered to feed him the night before? She wasn’t sure. Maybe, maybe not. God, she was terrible, starting to really fall apart.

No, she told herself, don’t think like that. You’re doing okay. You just have had a couple of bad days. Talk to your friends and they’ll help you.

Shit, the joint had made her moody and paranoid instead of relaxing her. Go fucking figure.

The bowl was empty but Steve was still whining, staring at her. Her head hurt a little. What did he want now?

It took him going over to the front door and pressing his nose against it before she figured out what she should have guessed immediately: he hadn’t been out yet.

“All right,” she said. Feeling like she was wading through knee-deep water, she found his leash and attached it to his collar and then led him out the door. She headed toward the stairs, but as she moved around the railing and started down she caught a glimpse of something and couldn’t help but stop.

No , she told herself. Don’t look.

But she couldn’t stop herself from turning around and looking down the corridor at apartment number five.

The door was open. And despite the fact that it was daytime, it remained dark, almost black, within the apartment. It was impossible to see anything.

Fuck me , she thought. For a moment she thought about going down the hall and looking in, see if there wasn’t someone there after all.

But no, she’d had so many nightmares about apartment number five that she knew it’d be a mistake. And she was stoned. Even if there was nothing in there, she still might get freaked out.

So she forced herself to turn back around and start slowly down the stairs.

But all the time, with every step she took, she could feel the room there, behind her, looming as if waiting for her. And about halfway down she thought she heard a strange rubbing sound, like bare feet sweeping along the hall’s wood floor. In her head, she saw unnaturally pale and unnaturally thin legs, the feet at the bottom of them slightly twisted, the nails blackened, following her. In her head they were just that: disembodied legs with a strange darkness surmounting them, hiding whatever was above.

And then she heard a creaking that sounded just a little too much like a high, tittering laugh. She bolted, taking the rest of the steps two at a time, making a run for the door.

Once she was outside, she felt a little better. She could breathe again anyway, could relax a little, and even though she was stoned it was okay now since she was out and walking. She took the usual route for a while until Steve did his business, and then decided to take the scenic route.

She headed down a long set of stone steps that looked as if they’d been there for hundreds of years. They were cracked here and there, covered with moss on the edges. They led to a bridge with wrought-iron sides that passed over a pond. On the other side was the heart of Greenlawn Cemetery. She crossed the first of several rolling hills, she and Steve slowly following the winding cemetery roads and gravel paths. The graves were well-kempt, the stones often ostentatious with many family plots that offered a central monument with smaller graves circled around them.

Her father’s grave was in the front part of the cemetery, among the newer stones. Usually she avoided it, but today, well, something drew her there. It was a modest stone, but long. The grave had her mother’s name on it as well, even though her mother was still alive; it was just waiting for someone to carve in the date of her death. Her mother sometimes spoke about that, said there was a “bed” waiting for her in the cemetery. Kind of creepy, Heidi thought, but also kind of romantic. Her mom and dad had really gotten along, really cared for each other, which had made her dad’s death all the harder.

And here she was, stoned to the gills, not sleeping, staring at her father’s grave. She’d had all sorts of advantages in life: parents who loved her, education at a good school, good friends. So why was it that she was where she was today? Where had she gone wrong? How had she slipped off course? How could she get back to being the person she wanted to be?

She moved away, into other parts of the cemetery. If you knew where to look, you’d find the older graves, some of them with stones so old and eaten away by time and the elements you could no longer read them. There, the stones were often not straight, sinking into the earth at odd angles as time had settled the ground below them.

She walked her way through the graveyard and out the edge of it, going a few blocks down to Saint Peter’s church. She had started past the old stone building and was near the huge red doors at the front of it when Steve stopped to sniff around a little. A little religion might not hurt, she told herself, though she also promised herself to take off if those two creepy nuns appeared.

Chapter Thirty-four

She found a small sapling and tied Steve’s leash off to it. He sat with his ears perked up, watching her leave. One of the red doors was slightly ajar and she pushed it open enough to slip in. She moved through the vestibule and into the main hall.

The church looked much different than it had at night, with a rich amber light now pouring through the stained-glass windows and making the air dance with motes of dust. An ornate crucifix hung over the altar, either gold-plated or bronze. Inside, the church was completely empty. She found a pew in the back that was warm from the sunlight, and she sat down, trying to take the atmosphere in, trying to relax. Did she want to try to pray? No, that seemed false—she could come share the comfort of a place like this, but she could hardly pass herself off as a believer. She hadn’t been to church in years. Still, she closed her eyes and tried to empty her mind of all bad thoughts.

When she opened her eyes, it was because she heard the sound of a door somewhere. She glanced up and saw that a smallish door to the right of the altar was ajar. As Heidi watched, a priest passed through it. Slowly, he began to walk down the central aisle, his footsteps ringing against the stone.