Rob Zombie - Lords of Salem

“What happened to you was a privilege,” she heard the woman whisper in her ear. “Our Lord does not favor just anybody, only the precious few. Now you are one of us.”

“One of you?” Heidi managed to say. “What are you?”

Megan chuckled. “Ah,” she said. “That is the question, isn’t it? We have always been here and we will always be here. No matter how they try to do away with us, we survive.”

She felt Megan begin to lick the water off the back of her shoulder and then begin to kiss her neck. Megan moved her arm up and brought it down across her breasts, beginning to caress one of her nipples with her hand. Heidi struggled, but was too weak to do much. Slowly, Megan seemed to lose interest and then her arm slipped higher up, to wrap finally around Heidi’s throat. It tightened gradually, until Heidi found that she could not breathe.

She clawed at the arm, tried to bring it away, but Megan would not let go. Her vision began to be shot through with whirling points of light, like a swirl of flies, and then began to go black.

And then she passed out.

When she awoke, she was still groggy. Her throat hurt. She was lying in her bed, naked now, but clean, her body freshly washed. Her hair was still wet. Three women were there. Who were they again? They looked familiar, but for the life of her she couldn’t remember their names. Morgan, she was pretty sure one of them was called. One of the other two had hold of her blankets and as she watched she brought them higher, tucked them up around her neck.

“There,” the woman said. “Now you’ll be cozy.” And then for some reason, the woman laughed.

The woman reached over and turned off the light. “Sweet dreams,” she said, and then blew Heidi a kiss.

Each of the other women came forward as well. They bent over the bed one after the other and spoke a comforting word or two, and then kissed her on the brow. She could feel the kisses burning there long after they had stepped back. And then the three of them, waving to her, slowly moved out through the door and away. She heard them walking in a group through her living room, and then the change in the sound of their footsteps as they entered the kitchen, and then the sound of the apartment door opening and closing. And then they were gone and she was alone.

Only not exactly alone as it turned out. As she lay there, with the room blurring in and out around her, she began to feel that something was there, watching her. Her eyes drifted around the room, slowly coming to rest on the end of the bed. There was something there, at the foot of it.

Steve? she tried to say, but nothing came out.

Her eyes crossed, and the end of the bed doubled itself. She let one bed drift away from the other and then drift back again. When she blinked and they returned to being one bed again, she could see what was there.

She wished she couldn’t.

Something was perched there, huddled at the end of the bed. It was small, hardly bigger than her forearm, humanoid in form but with skin that had the striated texture of bare muscle. It was blotchy and red, and in places oozed with pus. Wherever they touched it, the bed linens grew damp and filthy. Its eyes, too, were strange and protruding and seemed ready to burst.

It just stayed there, watching her. Not doing anything, just watching.

She was terrified. She tried to move, but she could not move. She tried to scream, but she could not scream. Her body no longer belonged to her. All she could do—all she would ever be able to do, she felt—was lie there and watch it watch her, and wait for it to move closer, inch by inch, until it was on top of her chest, taking away her breath.

Saturday

Chapter Forty-nine

Where was that book again? wondered Francis. He had just been looking at it yesterday. Now where had he put it? He searched through the kitchen, then looked around the living room, then the bedroom without finding it. But when he went back into the living room he immediately saw it, open on the piano, right in plain sight. Of course. He should have seen it right away.

He closed it and shoved it into his briefcase, momentarily glimpsing the cover illustration, which was of a hanging witch. Last night after getting the wrong number he had tried to dial again, but this time nobody answered. If Heidi was there, she wasn’t picking up. So he’d made a note of her address. Assuming she hadn’t moved, he’d be able to talk to her in person, which was probably the best thing to do anyway, considering what he had to tell her. He would take the book with him and show her the Lords symbol, see if she’d let him compare it to the symbol on the record. And if she had a piano or a keyboard or something maybe she’d be able to play the tune for herself. Once she did that, maybe she’d be ready to hear what he had to say.

He headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” Alice asked.

Almost instinctively he lied. “I have to drop by the museum for a second and check on something for the new exhibit.” Feeling guilty, he added, “Should I pick up lunch on the way back?”

It wouldn’t do for Alice to know where he was really going. She’d just tell him he was being crazy and that he should “leave that poor girl alone.” But two of the female descendants of the men who had judged and slaughtered the Salem witches had been involved in ritualistic murders. Heidi was the only other female descendant he knew of, and she’d been sent a record with the Lords symbol on it, and thus she should be warned. He probably should tell the police as well, but that was a harder proposition. He didn’t know what he could say to them without making them think he was a nut job.

“Can’t someone else handle it?” she asked.

“Well, they could,” said Francis slowly. “But they’d do it wrong and then I’d have to redo it and that would take twice as long. Better just to get it over with. I’ll only be an hour.”

“Unbelievable,” said Alice. “You retire from teaching and suddenly you’re busier than you’ve ever been. What are they going to do when you give up working for the museum?”

“Close up shop, I guess,” he said.

And giving her a kiss on the cheek he headed for the door.

Chapter Fifty

Alone in her apartment, Heidi sat cross-legged on her bed, morning light pouring through the window. She stared blankly ahead as she raised a cigarette to her lips and took a long drag. Something was missing, she kept thinking, but no matter how much she wracked her brains, she couldn’t figure out what it was. She kept staring straight ahead, trying to remember what it was, but it just wouldn’t come to mind.

She got up for a moment, wandered through the apartment, her face still expressionless. The place was a wreck, and for some reason she’d moved the mats and the runner in the kitchen and folded the rug back in the living room. She couldn’t remember any of it, not a fucking thing.

In the kitchen on the floor were a water bowl and a food dish. What were those doing there? She must have been watching someone’s pet and forgotten to take them back. Probably they’d been there for a while.

She wandered a while more before suddenly finding herself in bed again. The cigarette hanging from her fingers was dead. Where had that come from? When had she started smoking again? She flicked it onto the floor and reached into the pack for another, got it lit, drew deep on it.

Her cell phone rang. She let it ring a few times, then reached out and flipped it open. Slowly, she raised the phone to the side of her head and pushed it against her ear.

“Hello,” she said. Her voice sounded happy, perky. But her face remained expressionless, seemed almost dead.