Rob Zombie - Lords of Salem

For a moment, Heidi tried to protest, but she was having a hard time putting sentences together. Eventually, she just shook her head and moved lower in the bed, turning on her side. Almost immediately she fell asleep.

Chapter Forty-seven

For a time the three sisters just stayed in their places, watching the television, their faces expressionless in the pale blue light. They did not speak, hardly moved.

Finally Lacy prodded Heidi with a finger. When she didn’t move, didn’t respond to the prodding in any way, Lacy got up and went to turn off the television.

She stood there at the foot of the bed, in the light cast through the window. Her face, normally so friendly and relaxed, had taken on a different expression, as if a mask had been stripped away to reveal a true face underneath. Her mouth was tight, her lips pressed. Her gaze was cold. She stayed there, staring intensely at Heidi.

“Sisters,” she said. “It is time.”

“Yes,” said Sonny and Megan in unison. “It is time.”

Heidi slept on.

Lacy had just begun to move toward the door to the living room when the telephone on the bedside table rang. She stopped and waited, then made a swirling gesture with one hand. Megan, the one closest to the phone, reached out and answered it.

“Yes,” Megan said, her voice level and calm.

“Hello,” said the voice on the other end, speaking quietly. “I’m looking for Heidi Hawthorne.”

When Megan said nothing, the voice said again, “Hello?”

“Who did you say you were?” asked Megan.

“I didn’t say,” he said. “I’m Francis Matthias, and it’s urgent that I speak to her.”

“And who were you looking for?” asked Megan.

“Heidi,” said Francis. “Heidi Hawthorne.”

“I’m sorry, darling, but there’s nobody here by that name,” said Megan. “You must have the wrong number. Please, don’t call back.”

She hung the phone back in its cradle and then unplugged it from the wall. Lacy left the room and moved through the living room and kitchen, went out the apartment door. From the room, you could hear the sound of her footsteps moving down the hall. Sonny and Megan had both stood now and were looming over the bed, staring down at Heidi. There was something strange about the room as well, a disturbance in the air that moved slowly about the bed, becoming finally a pale ghostly figure before fading back into nothingness and then becoming tangible again. Both Sonny and Megan noticed it, but showed no sign of anxiety or surprise. It walked toward the bed and then through it, pushing its legs through the mattress without disturbing it until it came out on the other side. Slowly, it made its way toward the corner of the room and then pushed its way through the wall and disappeared.

For a moment they were alone and silent, as if they were the only people in the world. And then came, very quiet at first and at a distance, a metallic squeaking noise. It stopped a moment and the apartment door opened and closed, and then it started again, the noise growing louder until Lacy appeared, pushing an old-fashioned wicker wheelchair.

It had large wooden wheels in back, with wooden spokes, like wagon wheels though not nearly so large. The front wheels were very small and made of wrought iron. The seat itself was frayed and coming apart and the basket to hold the invalid’s feet had been awkwardly repaired with strands of wire.

She moved it near the bed and then nodded. Sonny and Megan reached down and heaved Heidi up to a seated posture but she still did not wake up. Her head lolled loosely, as if she were freshly dead. They dragged her over to one side of the bed, then moved her legs so that her feet were resting on the floor. With each of them grasping an arm firmly, they forced her to her feet and then pulled her over to settle her in the chair.

For just an instant her eyes wavered open slightly, and then they closed again. The two sisters busied themselves positioning Heidi’s legs in the basket and crossing her hands on her lap, and then Lacy began wheeling her backward out of the room with her sisters following.

They went squeaking through the living room. Sonny and Megan darted out to hold the door open. Lacy maneuvered the wheelchair through and turned it sharply, directed its wheels toward apartment number five.

“Oh, Father,” said Lacy quietly as she went, her voice just audible over the squeaking of the wheels. Her face had taken on an unearthly glow. “You give us the venom… fill us with your essence.”

“Let it burn through our souls and our minds,” said Megan.

“We trample on the cross,” claimed Sonny.

All together, as if repeating a ritual, they intoned, “We spit upon the book of lies… We desecrate the virgin whore.”

Lacy stopped just before the door to the apartment and bowed. She released her grip on the wheelchair and walked around in front of it. Removing a stub of chalk from her pocket, she proceeded to trace a circle on the floor. In the center of it, she carefully and deftly inscribed the symbol for the Lords of Salem.

“We blaspheme his holy spirit and rejoice in his suffering,” she said, her voice thick with hatred now. She stepped back and bowed again, and then gestured. Megan came forward and stood in the middle of the circle, careful not to smear or obscure its design. From there she reached out and placed her hand on the doorknob. Slowly, muttering something inaudible, she turned it and opened the door.

The door opened not onto the empty rooms that belonged to the abandoned apartment five, but onto another place entirely. Through the doorway was a massive room, bigger than the house itself and lavishly furnished. It smelled of strange incense and burned hair, and of something else as well that was impossible to place, something fetid. Heidi’s eyelids flickered open again, then closed. But her eyes kept moving back and forth beneath the lids, as if she were dreaming.

Megan raised her arms, her fingers spread wide. “Guide this child still in the shackles of the Oppressor,” she said. “Help her break free from his tyrant ways.” Then she stepped out of the circle and stood to one side of the door frame.

Sonny stepped forward and into her vacated place within the circle. She ran her palms over her breasts and down her sides to her hips. “Entice her to take that precious bite,” she said. “From whence she shall be delivered.” She stepped out of the circle as well.

Lacy had stuck her hands underneath Heidi’s armpits. She hauled her to her feet and brought her stumbling into the circle, Heidi’s feet erasing and distorting the symbol. Sonny and Megan reached out and steadied her, while from behind, just on the outside of the chalk line, Lacy performed an elaborate bow.

“You are the Dragon, Lord Satan,” she said. “We hail the serpent and stand strong as warriors for you, both in this world and beyond.”

Heidi groaned. Her head, drooping forward, came up for just a moment and then fell back down again. With Sonny and Megan dragging her and Lacy supporting her from behind, Heidi shuffled forward, her feet effacing the remainder of the symbol. Slowly, and with great care, all four of them moved through the door and into the well-appointed room beyond.

For a moment they stood there, just inside the doorway, Heidi still unconscious and the three sisters peering about themselves as if in wonderment. And then, very abruptly, the door was slammed shut by an invisible hand.

Chapter Forty-eight

They held a mirror to her face. She was awake now, but what she saw she didn’t recognize: a dead white face, lips bloodred. They’d put a beauty mark on one cheek, a black pock. She was wearing an eighteenth-century gown, ribs of whalebone painfully constricting her waist and chest so that it hurt to breathe too deeply. The gown billowed out below the waist, quadrupling the size of her hips, crossing and interlacing, parts folded forward and back. She felt like Marie Antoinette, ready for the chopping block.