Rob Zombie - Lords of Salem

But people around them seemed to be having a great time, moving very quickly from laughter to fright and back again, and it was infectious. He found himself giving in to it, relaxing for once. Yes, probably better not to have said anything to poor Heidi Hawthorne. If he had he’d probably have terrified her and kept her from sleeping. Better to leave her alone and think of her at home, sleeping like a baby.

Heidi stared at the packet, wondering how long she would last before she opened it. Maybe just having it with her would be enough for a while, just knowing that she could fire it up if she wanted to, that it was there as her safety net.

But I’m already falling , she thought. Don’t I need the safety net now?

Beside the bed Steve whined, his ears flattened.

“Don’t worry, buddy,” said Heidi. “It’s going to be okay.” But even she didn’t believe it. She held the packet in one hand, just held on to it, and waited. Then she went into the kitchen and got out the aluminum foil and tore off a piece of it. She folded it smaller, then carried it back into the bedroom. She sat cross-legged on the bed, the tinfoil and the packet and her lighter just beside her, calling to her.

She switched on the TV and started surfing channels, but nothing was on. Absolutely nothing. She left it on one of the shopping networks, which was running an ad for huggable hangers. Why the hell would you want to hug a hanger? she wondered. Turns out they were fuzzy for some reason, and that the claim was that clothes would never slip off them. A woman wearing a pair of ugly slacks kept demonstrating them, showing how even if there were a major earthquake your clothing wouldn’t fall off the hooks. They came in packs of twenty-four, and you could get them in sage, or bright gold, or black, or silver, or turquoise, or…

“And to complete your collection,” said a strangely distorted voice, “meat hooks.”

Her head snapped up. On the screen now was a bald man wearing an eye patch, half of his head covered with hideous burn scars. He was stripped to the waist and was grotesquely muscled, tattoos with intertwined demons winding over his chest and arms. In one hand he held a meat hook by its wooden handle. His other hand gestured around it, outlining the blade. The inside of the hook had sharp, smaller barbs lined backward along it.

“Now, most meat hooks, you get them hooked into a good chunk of flesh and wave them around a little and the meat just slides right off,” said the man. His voice seemed to be subtly slowing down and speeding up, as if she were listening to a warped record. “But not this little baby. Once you get this one in, it just isn’t going to come out.”

He walked over across the stage, the camera slowly following him to a door marked five. He slowly opened it and entered. Inside was a poorly lit room where a man sat with his arms tied behind his back and his legs duct taped to a padded vinyl chair. His hair was rumpled and his face red, and duct tape had been stretched around his mouth to gag him, too. It took her a minute to recognize that it was Chip. Her boss was famous! He was on TV!

As the tattooed man approached him, Chip struggled and tried to speak through the gag, his eyes vivid with fear.

“Now, take a situation like this,” said the tattooed man. “We’ve all been there. You’ve got a man tied up in a chair. You’re not quite ready to dismember him, but at the same time he’s at one side of your deserted factory space and you want to drag him over to the other side of your deserted factory space because you’ve got your dismembering and other torture equipment over there and, plus, the video camera is already set up. It’s just more convenient to have him over there.”

He bent over a little, pressed his hand against his back. “But your back has been acting up on you,” he claimed, looking straight into the camera. “Not too bad, not enough so that you’re going to have to let this guy sit for a few days, but enough that you don’t want to have to bend over to pull him.”

He raised the meat hook in the air, and the camera closed in on it, held it in close-up.

“Ordinary meat hook and a guy struggling as much as this little bastard’s going to be in just a moment and it’ll slip out maybe five, maybe ten times on your way over,” his voice said from off-camera. “You’ll have to put so many holes in the guy that by the time you get over there that it’s hardly even worth it—he may even be dead by the time you arrive. And you won’t have captured any of it on film. What fun is that?”

He put one hand on Chip’s triceps, caressing it, examining it.

“But a meat hook like this,” he said. “Well, it’s special.” He raised it high in the air and with one sharp, hard movement drove it through Chip’s upper arm. Chip screamed into the gag, his eyes rolling. Holy shit , thought Heidi. “Now that,” he said, grabbing the handle and jerking on it, “that’s a meat hook that’s secure.”

She jerked awake. Shit , she thought. More nightmares.

Almost without thinking, she reached for her lighter.

Friday

Chapter Forty-three

It was close to noon before Francis got out of bed. Once up, he puttered around the house a while. He looked for Alice, but she’d left a note on the counter saying she had an appointment with her hairdresser and wouldn’t be back for a few hours.

Hairdresser , he thought, somewhat amused. How could a woman go revel in B horror movies by night and go to her hairdresser by day? But maybe that was why he liked her.

He looked for the paper but it wasn’t in the kitchen, not in the living room either. Maybe she’d taken it with her, but that didn’t seem like something Alice would do. No, she knew he liked to read his paper in the morning. Admittedly, it wasn’t actually morning anymore, but to him it still was. In a way.

He poured himself some cereal and sat down at the table to eat it, then looked around for the paper again. Maybe she’d forgotten to bring it in? He opened the door, but it wasn’t on his mat. Sighing, he went back inside and put on a shirt and some trousers and then went down the stairs in his slippers, but it wasn’t downstairs. And when he opened the door and looked out on the porch, it wasn’t there either.

So he trudged back upstairs, irritated now, and put on his shoes and jacket, grabbed his wallet. A little walk wouldn’t hurt him, he told himself. True, usually he took a walk at some point in the day, but why should he have to take it before he’d read his paper?

He walked out the front door and down the street. The low autumn sun was out and shining. It was still cold outside, but not as cold as it had been a few days before. It was completely bearable. He walked down the street, through beautiful historic Salem. A little trash-ridden, admittedly, but still beautiful. He crossed the street and moved toward the downtown—probably likely to be crowded with tourists, considering it was a Friday and that Halloween wasn’t all that far off, but he knew at least he could get a paper there. He’d just try to avoid all the somewhat irritating witch tourism. Or try, at least, not to let it make him angry.

He followed Mason Street as it curved along the perimeter of Mack Park. At the edge of the park he came to a Labrador retriever who had been tied off to a No Parking sign. The poor animal had gotten tangled up so much that he could hardly move.

“Are you all right, boy?” asked Francis. The dog just wagged its tail. He looked around for its owner, but didn’t see anybody—probably off in the park somewhere. But if that was the case, why not take the dog along? Francis let his arm fall limp and brought it close to the dog, watching for signs of aggression, ears dropping back or lip starting to curl, but the dog just sniffed his hand and licked it.