Rob Zombie - Lords of Salem

By the time they came to the opening and the entrance Steve had already done his business, but something drew her on. It had been years since she’d been inside the grounds. Maybe it was time to go in again. Maybe facing up to Salem’s history of witches a little would put things in perspective, would help the strangeness of the dreams she was having disperse.

She followed the path in, followed the wall to look at the memorials. SARAH GOOD, HANGED, JULY 16, 1692, she read. Someone had laid a flower on the grave, a red rose. REBECCA NURSE, HANGED, JULY 19, 1692. The stone of this one was mossy and harder to read. On Susannah Martin’s grave someone had left a cornhusk doll with red string tied around the neck, wrists, and waist. There were words written on its dress, but rain had smeared them and she couldn’t read them. Beside it was a wreath of white flowers. She wasn’t sure what kind exactly. There was a candle, too, the wax having puddled on the stone.

She walked a little farther, found a slab of stone embedded in the ground, something she remembered her mother having shown her in her childhood. The stone was weathered now, the words mossy and faded but still legible. GOD KNOWS I AM INNOCENT, they read. She stared at them a moment, sobered by them, then moved to another stone, this one partly cut off by the walls surrounding the memorial, which had been laid on top of them. Strange thing to do, considering several of the witches had been killed by being pressed to death with heavy stones. She brushed the gravel aside. TO MY DYING DA-, it read. I AM NO WIT-.

She stayed looking at it for a long moment, until she felt Steve tugging at her, trying to get her to move on. Did it help her to come here? Did it make her feel better? Could anything make her feel better?

She didn’t know. No. She couldn’t say.

As soon as Alice came out of the bath, he was there holding her robe for her, helping her to put it on. She sighed, but let him slip it on her.

“I’ll just put on some—” she said.

“No need,” he said. “There’s no law against playing the piano in a bathrobe. There’ll be plenty of time to get dressed later.”

She protested for a moment, then gave in, deciding that she’d waste more time arguing than in just getting it over with.

She allowed him to lead her by the hand out of the room and to the piano bench. His witch book was already there, open on the front of the piano, open to the entry for Hawthorne’s diary for September 16, 1692.

Francis dragged his finger down to the bottom of the page. Tapped his finger at the end of a series of musical notes that were drawn across the bottom of the page. Next to them was a strange symbol, a circle with a cross and some other strokes in it. Two dots as well.

“That symbol,” said Francis, pointing to it. “It was on the sleeve of the record they played.”

“That exact symbol?” asked Alice. “Or just something that looked like it?”

Francis shook his head. “I’m almost certain it was precisely that symbol,” he said.

“Almost certain,” she said. “But not completely certain.”

He ignored her, his hand drifting back to the musical notes. “Okay,” he said. “Along the bottom here are a series of musical notes. Can you play them?”

“Of course,” said Alice. “My mother didn’t pay for twelve years of piano lessons for nothing.”

“Of course she didn’t,” said Francis. “Let’s hear it.”

She looked more closely at the notes. There was only an upper stave, and it was a little strange. Instead of five lines it had only four, which meant she had to do a little guesswork about where things started, which line was missing. Maybe it wasn’t even the same notational system. Still, she gave it a try.

“That’s not it, is it?” asked Francis.

She shook her head. No, it didn’t sound right. She moved her fingers a little farther up the keys and tried again. This time the first chord and the notes that followed were discordant, but they still felt intentional, like they were part of a larger structure.

“I think that’s it,” she said.

Francis nodded. He went over to the stereo, pressed PLAY on the cassette tape in its deck. It was the radio tape, Alice realized, the tail end of the recording of Francis’s appearance on the radio show. Someone announced the Lords, and then music started.

He let it go for a moment, then shut it off.

“So is it the same?” he asked.

Alice furrowed her brow. She thought she already knew the answer, but she played the notes on the piano again anyway. Meanwhile, Francis rewound a little, and when Alice was done he played the tape a second time.

“Yes,” she said. “Embellished, but basically the same. So?”

“Doesn’t that strike you as odd?” asked Francis.

Alice laughed. “Not really,” she said. “You said yourself this symbol was on the record. Somebody else obviously had this book and took the name, the tune, and the symbol from it. No big mystery.”

Francis pulled a frown. He came over and sat down on the bench next to her.

“Play it again,” he said.

Alice began playing the notes over and over. She sighed. It’d be afternoon, probably, by the time he’d let her get dressed.

Back in her apartment, Heidi found herself just sitting on her bed. How long she’d been there, she couldn’t say. Every once in a while she’d come back to herself, think about getting up and going to do something, but by the time that happened she was already beginning to sink back into a stupor.

After a while, she realized she was looking up, trying to see something. What? She didn’t know quite what. There was something hanging over the bed. She felt it, but no, there was nothing there, only empty air. But why did her eyes keep wandering up, looking to whatever wasn’t there? There was something about the air there, something thicker than air should be. She couldn’t see anything and yet, somehow, she still felt that something was there.

I’ve got to get up, she told herself. I’ve got to leave. And yet she didn’t feel any desire to move. Any time she tried to budge, she felt as if all the energy had drained from her body.

She watched the sunlight slowly coming through the window diminish and then disappear entirely. Then night came, and the glass became dark. She stared up into the air above her, waiting for something to happen, for something to appear.

Francis sat with the portable phone gripped in one hand. He had the white pages spread open on his lap. He was scanning his finger rapidly down the page when Alice came in.

She was dressed now to go out, her hair and face done up, wearing a scoop-neck top, black tights, and a jean skirt. Francis took her in approvingly at a glance before letting his gaze return to the page.

Alice put her hands on her hips. “Who are you calling at this hour?” she asked.

“Huh?” said Francis, without looking up.

“Francis, who are you calling?”

“Oh,” he said. “I was thinking of calling that girl Heidi from the radio station.”

“What?” she said. “And what exactly did you plan on telling that girl Heidi from the radio station?”

“I was planning to tell her what I discovered about the music,” he said.

“Why?”

“Why?” he repeated. He looked up, finally read her angry expression. “Well, it’s only… I thought she might find it interesting.”

“Interesting,” she said, folding her arms.

“Yes, interesting.”

She came forward and plucked the phone out of his hand. She carried it away, put it back on its wall charger.

“What’s the problem?” asked Francis, genuinely surprised.

“You know what, Sherlock—let’s drop it,” said Alice. “This is getting silly. First an hour or so of having me play the same piece of music over and over again, and now this?”