Rob Zombie - Lords of Salem

“What?” she said, her eyes dead, her voice flat, like she didn’t give a shit.

It pissed him off. “What?” he said. “You want to play a little game called What? What is fucking going on? And I don’t want to hear any more bullshit excuses about not getting enough sleep or food poisoning or motion sickness or anything like that. I want the real fucking deal.”

Heidi sighed, eyes still dead. “What do you want to hear?”

“The truth would be a nice place to start this trip down bullshit road,” said Herman. “Nice place to end at, too. Even though I’m afraid that you’re going to tell me something I don’t want to hear.”

“What are you so afraid of?” asked Heidi.

God, her fucking nerve. She wasn’t going to just come clean. She was going to make him say it. “What am I afraid of? Same old junkie business, baby.”

For a moment her eyes stayed dead, hearing him without really taking the words in, and then they suddenly grew fiery, furious. Yeah, there she was. She still had some fight in her, Herman thought, and he couldn’t help but think of that as a good sign.

“Fuck you!” she said angrily. “I told you I’m not doing that shit anymore.” She pulled back her sleeve and showed him her arms. “You see any fresh needle marks?” she asked. “You want to check under my toenails and fingernails? That not enough? You want to test me? You can fucking watch me piss to make sure I’m not hiding a secret urine stash.”

He took a step back. Whoa. “All right, then,” he said. “Maybe I’m an asshole. But you fucking explain it to me. You owe it to me to tell me. What the fuck is going on?”

Behind them the door swung open. They both turned, expecting Cerina since she was the only other woman working that shift at the station, but it was Whitey. He came in but stayed near the door, hanging back.

“What?” said Heidi to him. “You too? Or is this the new break room and I didn’t get the memo?”

Whitey didn’t say anything. “You owe it to him, too,” said Herman. “Come on, without us you would have lost this job a long time ago.” He reached out and took her shoulders, shook her lightly, just enough to get her paying attention again. “Come on,” he said. “Start talking.”

Heidi pushed his hands off, turned away, clutching herself. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on,” she said slowly. “I wish I did. But I can’t explain it.”

“Try,” said Herman.

She didn’t speak for a moment. Herman just stood there with his arms crossed, waiting. Whitey, too, was silent, waiting.

“Well,” she said. “I don’t know. It started a couple of days ago. I started having these nightmares, but not regular nightmares. Not normal nightmares but, like, I don’t know, sleepwalking nightmares. They don’t even feel like nightmares exactly. They feel real. Last night I woke up in the empty apartment down the hall. I don’t even know how I got in there. The thing is… there’s bits and pieces of it, weird shit that doesn’t make sense, but it’s basically a total blackout.”

If she’s lying, thought Herman, she’s too good at it for me to be able to tell. Maybe she was telling the truth. Maybe she hadn’t started back into the shit after all.

“Were you drinking?” he asked.

“Yeah, a little,” Heidi admitted. “But I never black out from drinking, Herman. You know that.”

“Yeah,” said Herman grudgingly. “I know that.”

From behind him Whitey spoke, his voice quiet. “Sounds like night terrors to me,” he said.

“Yeah?” said Heidi. “You think so?”

“What’s that?” asked Herman, turning toward Whitey.

Whitey cleared his throat. “Night terrors…,” he said. “It’s like a nightmare you can’t fully wake up from. I had a friend when I was a kid who had it. I remember sleeping over at his house for his birthday and he woke in the backyard drenched in sweat and screaming. I mean, he seemed to be awake and everything, but he wasn’t. His eyes were open, but he was still asleep or, like, half asleep. He was just screaming and thrashing at something that none of us could see. But in the morning, he didn’t remember anything.”

“Maybe that’s it,” said Heidi. “But I’ve never had them before. Why would they start now?”

Whitey shrugged.

“Maybe I should see a doctor,” Heidi said.

“I think you should most definitely see a doctor,” said Herman.

Heidi made a face, getting a little annoyed again. “All right,” she said. “I get the picture.”

“And nothing else?” said Herman.

“What do you mean?” she said. “Besides getting the picture?”

Herman shook his head. “No,” he said. “Besides the wine. You’re not doing anything else to help you sleep?”

“No,” she said. “I swear.” But the way her eyes flicked to one side as she said it, he wasn’t quite sure she was telling the truth.

“Cross your heart and hope to die?” he asked, just like he was a kid again.

She started to trace an X with her fingers in the center of her chest, then stopped, shook her head.

“What’s the matter?” asked Herman.

“The way the dreams I can remember are going, there’s no fucking way I’m going to say I hope to die.”

He looked at her face. Yeah, she was really scared, he realized. Really messed up over all this. Okay, he wouldn’t push it.

And then her expression changed. She was looking up, listening for something.

“Dead air,” she said.

“Huh?” said Whitey.

Oh shit , thought Herman. The song had ended and none of them were in the studio.

“Dead air,” she said again, and this time it clicked for Whitey. “Fuck!” he said, and rushed out of the bathroom.

Chapter Thirty-nine

In Heidi’s building, upstairs, the hall lights began to flicker, going out one by one. Light still came up from the stairwell, but very dimly. Had anyone been there, it would have taken a while for their eyes to adjust enough to see that anything in the hall had changed. For as soon as the lights had gone out, the doorknob of apartment number five began to turn. Very slowly the door opened, just an inch at first, then another inch, and another, moving with a slow creaking sound.

At first that was all, just an open door. But then there was a brief flicker of movement and something small and gray, just barely lighter than the darkness, rushed out. A rat. It zigzagged down the hall before coming to rest, panting, near the top of the stairs. Another rat soon followed, then another, and suddenly they were coming all at once and far too quickly to count, first dozens then hundreds of them, the door swinging wide. They spilled down the hall, pouring over one another like water, rolling and tumbling and flooding down the stairs.

And then, as suddenly as they had been there, they were gone.

But the door was still open, the hall lights still extinguished. The doorway itself had a more palpable darkness to it. Something was not right.

And then the darkness moved and seemed to thicken. Until it became a black figure, a silhouette, like a man but larger. It was wearing a broad-brimmed hat that nearly brushed the top of the door frame. It seemed to have no thickness, seemed to be just a shadow, but was cast and reflected in a way that it should not be, on a dark, open space. Either it was just a shadow or it was so enwreathed in darkness as to appear so.

For a long time, it just stood there, unmoving. A strange odor filled the hall, the smell of something rotting. The only sound was the sound of breathing, a slow, huffing sound, coming from the open doorway, either from the figure standing within the frame or from something beyond it, deep in the room itself.