Rob Zombie - Lords of Salem

“Heidi,” he said. “Heidi,” he repeated. He tried to speak further but blood began to drip from his mouth. Slowly, he fell and lay faceup on the ground, staring at Heidi. His vision grew dim and hazy, and before he knew for certain what was happening he was dead.

For a moment Heidi stared down at the body, and then she turned and faded from sight into the smoke. She walked with a slow and measured tread through the broken bodies and the few woman who still stabbed and tortured the bodies of the dead. But Heidi they ignored. And as she passed, they seemed to recoil a little and offer gestures of obeisance. They stopped their slaughter and followed her.

From deep within her body, Heidi watched it all happen. She could see it all, smell and hear and experience everything around her, but she was powerless to do anything to stop it, and she had no control over the body that now held her. She moved forward toward the leader of the witches, Margaret Morgan. She took her place in the center of the circle, facing the witch.

Around her the remaining women gathered. They bowed and reached out to touch her, kissing her feet and the edge of her robe.

“Take me… take me to hell,” Heidi heard her voice say. “I am your godless whore.”

Morgan nodded. She took up a knife and grabbed one of the remaining women by the hair, pulling her to her feet. The woman moaned in pleasure as Morgan drew the knife across her throat, spraying Heidi’s face and body with blood.

“By the blood of the damned, I do baptize thee and accept thee into hell,” the head of the witches said. “Christ, I spit upon you and I cast you down! Satan, we live on the blood of your oppressors!”

And with that the women started up again, howling and stabbing and assaulting one another, kissing each other and then killing each other, not caring if the person they stabbed or embraced was alive or dead. They thrashed and bit and tore, and when there was no corpse or other person close before them, they tore away at their own bodies, stabbing themselves, trying to bite off their own fingers, snarling and growling.

Then suddenly, in an instant, they stopped and fell into silence. As if one individual, they froze and waited in silence.

The flames of the bonfire began to surge upward to a great height and when they fell again, a shadowy figure standing eight feet tall stood within them.

When he stepped out of the fire and onto solid earth, his feet hissed and burned, and he left behind only parched, scorched ground. The few remaining women bowed to him as he came forward, moving across the wasteland of carnage and carnality, stopping here and there over a dismembered corpse or a slick of blood. The world had grown silent, as if all the sound had been sucked from it, as if nothing beyond this forest and its clearing existed. As if it floated in oblivion, surrounded by nothingness. The only sound that could be heard was the deep, monstrous breathing of the shadowy beast and its heavy, leaden footsteps as its cloven hooves struck the ground.

The head witch and the remnant of her coven took hold of Heidi and threw her on the cold ground, spreading her legs wide and holding them there. For a moment she was motionless and vacant, but then something started to change. She seemed to be coming to herself.

And indeed she was. For whatever the creature within her and possessing her had been, it had suddenly, with a little bow and a chuckle, stepped back into the recesses of her subconscious and left her in control of her body again. Only fair to let you experience this on your own , it suggested. She struggled, began to try to get away, but the witches held her fast.

And then she felt something twitch inside her. The eyes of the shadowy beast towering over her began to glow with a dim red light, one eye much bigger than the other. It came closer and she saw its barbed, dripping cock curving up into the air before it, and she remembered what it had done to her before, when it had found her before, the way it had sniffed her out in the darkness. It voiced its terrible laugh, and then, slowly and painfully, mounted her, tearing its way into her, whispering in her ear in a strange incomprehensible language as it thrust back and forth, a language that nonetheless filled her mind with images of pain and destruction. But now it just watched her, eager. She felt something twitch again. She screamed but no sound came out, or if it did it was covered over by the beast’s terrible breathing. Her belly began to throb and she felt as if she was being torn apart. She convulsed and twisted and the witches struggled to hold her and she could feel something within her beginning to destroy her. She thrashed uncontrollably back and forth and then screamed again. This time the scream was awful, a high, piercing shriek as of someone dying. An explosion of blood spat out between her legs and darkened her robe. She thrashed again, harder this time, and then went silent and still.

The coven released their grip on her. With a smile, Margaret Morgan slit open Heidi’s belly and tore open the womb. After a great deal of effort, she pulled forth a bloody deformed mass.

At first it seemed an abortion, an incomplete stillbirth, but as she held it and stroked it, it began to unfurl long curling tentacles that began to flail and shake. She turned, presenting the deformed creature to the shadowy figure of its father.

Heidi’s eyes clouded over, slowly glazing and going dim.

Satan took the child from Margaret Morgan and, cradling it, stepped slowly backward and away, returning once again to the fire. The flames again rose around him, and when they died down Satan and his child had disappeared. With his departure, the landscape, too, shifted, the trees fading and becoming the walls of the building, the hillock a stage, the rolling and lumpy grass the seats of a theater. Where Morgan had stood was now Heidi’s landlord, Lacy, her two sisters beside her.

For a moment they seemed confused. They looked around, scanned the theater, seeming to take in the corpses of the women and of Herman, and then they smiled.

“We have been avenged, sisters,” said Lacy.

The other two did not respond. Megan had found Heidi’s body and was prodding it, pushing her toe into the tear in her belly, and then letting most of her foot slide in. The others joined her, standing around the body, staring down at it, smiling.

They reached out and joined hands.

Soon they were dancing.

END

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Contents

Welcome

Part One: Salem, Massachusetts September 16, 1692

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Part Two: Salem, Massachusetts Present Day

Monday

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Tuesday

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-one

Wednesday

Chapter Thirty-two

Chapter Thirty-three

Chapter Thirty-four

Chapter Thirty-five