by Rob Zombie
All around the fire the coven swayed, now lost in a trance. Some mumbled and babbled; others raised their hands high above their heads with their hands flopping on the ends of their wrists like birds with broken wings; others frothed at the mouth, their eyes rolled far back into their heads. First one and then slowly all the others began to drool, long strings of spittle slipping from their mouths, as if they were having a fit. And then the spittle grew dark, became a sticky black substance that descended in thick cords down their chins to drip along their naked flesh.
Chapter Three
Justice Samuel Mather strode quickly down the rutted wagon path and toward the town, his stick-thin body moving jerkily. He was waving his walking stick about, gesticulating with it rather than using it for walking. It had finally happened. Before, there had been rumors, a sense that evil was afoot, but he had never managed to catch the women in the act of pledging themselves to Satan. But all the nights of waiting and watching, sitting hidden in the woods outside of Margaret Morgan’s hovel until the midnight hour and even long past, hidden and shivering in his dark cloak, his thin hands clenched tight against the cold, had finally paid off. Or would, if he managed to gather the others in time.
He had watched the other women enter, one by one, each of them cloaked or dressed strangely, often in furs or rags. And then he had waited until the smoke began to rise from a chimney placed, oddly enough, in the center of the hovel, not near a wall like a chimney should be. Even still he had waited, not wanting to believe that what he and Hawthorne had feared to be the case was finally to be proven real. But when the smoke rising from the chimney had taken on a reddish tinge, he knew there was no denying what was happening.
He had reached the bridge, Salem lying just on the other side of it. The fog was rising off the river and obscuring the bridge itself, making it seem as if it dissolved halfway across the water. He hesitated for a moment before crossing over it, his footsteps echoing against the planks. The bridge slowly appeared out of the mist in front of him, becoming firmer, becoming real. But when he turned and looked back behind him it had begun to vanish. He hurried his steps, breathed a sigh of relief when he was finally on solid ground again.
He hurried through the muddy streets of town, past some of the newer and smaller dwellings, many of them still unfinished, until he came to a saltbox house with a long sloping roof. Well-made and painted a dark red, it was the largest house on the street and perhaps in the town. He pounded on its door with the knob of his walking stick. He waited impatiently, and when there was no answer, he knocked again.
After a moment the door swung open. Behind it was a man in his early fifties, nearly large enough to fill the doorway. John Hawthorne. He held a candle. He had shoulder-length hair and his feet were bare. He was dressed in a nightshirt made of rough linen, held gathered by strings at the neck and the wrists, and though he appeared to have been awoken from sleep, his appearance was not befuddled but focused and sharp.
“Brother Mather,” he said. “What cheer?”
Justice Mather shook his head. “None,” he said. “I have seen the smoke. I was right to suspect Margaret Morgan. It is happening. It is happening even now.”
Hawthorne’s lips thinned, his brow furrowed. “The red smoke of death,” he said, his voice heavy. “Then it is as we feared.”
“Aye, brother. I can only pray the angels protect us in our quest to drive this vile serpent from this township.”
Hawthorne took a deep breath, nodded. “I fear the Devil himself walks among us. I fear the Lord has turned a deaf ear to our most desperate prayers.” He reached out and placed his hand on the other man’s shoulder. “Brother Mather, the plague has returned to Salem.”
Justice Mather nodded curtly. “I fear the same,” he said. “But we must proceed as best we can. Dress yourself. We must do our best to nip this evil in its hellish bud. If we act with the conviction that God be with us, then so shall He be.”
“We will do what we can,” said Hawthorne.
“We must fetch the brothers,” said Mather. “There is no better pair for tonight’s work.”
“As you say,” said Hawthorne, turning back into the house and beckoning Mather to follow him. “But even the brothers have their limits.”
Chapter Four
The house was off the beaten path. It was a rough-hewn but well-built hodgepodge, a canny construction of wood, cut stone, and thick pond reeds. The chimney was a seemingly precarious pile of rough brick from which smoke belched out to thicken the darkness.
The man standing in the light of the doorway peering out was huge and lumbering, more like a bear than a man. His left eye was covered with a thick leathern patch that had once been dyed black but now had faded. His gray hair and lined face suggested he was in his sixties, but his thick and well-muscled body would have seemed to have been borrowed from a younger man were it not for the scars that crisscrossed his hands and arms. He squinted out into the darkness a moment more before grunting and returning inside, clapping the door shut behind him.
Dean Magnus walked to the fire, over which the carcass of an animal hung on a spit—a deer perhaps. The meat was blackened and charred on the outside but when he cut into it with his knife and sliced off a chunk of flesh, the inside was still bloody, nearly raw. He began to eat, tearing off mouthfuls of it, the juices and blood of the meat flowing down to stain his already-filthy beard and drip onto his shirt.
Behind him, sitting at a small wooden table whose surface was nicked and charred, was his brother Virgil. The family resemblance was clearly visible, despite Dean’s eye patch and the fact that a good half of Virgil’s face was torn by deep scars, the result of the swipe of a bear’s claws. The bear’s skin was lying on the packed dirt floor beside the table, and Virgil rested his feet on its head. Beside it, next to the table, was a goat chained to the wall, eating from a large bale of straw. On the table before him was a battered pewter plate in which sat part of a haunch of meat, charred on the edge and raw in the middle.
“Anything?” asked Virgil. He reached out and caressed the goat, which baaed once, then continued to eat its straw.
Dean shook his head. “Something’s happening,” he said, “but not too close. Maybe nothing much.”
Virgil nodded. “You’re starting to see ghosts,” he said.
“Aye, brother,” Dean said, and continued to chew on his chunk of meat, stopping only to spit out a bit of buckshot still lodged in it.
Virgil turned back to his plate, slicing off a bit of the haunch and swallowing it all in one gulp—gristle, tendon, and all.
“I noticed,” said Dean, and then swallowed deeply before continuing. “During morning services, I noticed the Widow Parsons was looking my way again. I think her mourning period might well be coming to an end.”
Virgil shook his head. “Hallucination of a lustful mind, my brother,” he said. Then he laughed. “That widow will be mourning ’til you are sleeping in a dirt hole feeding worms.”
Dean regarded him with irritation. “Don’t be so sure,” he said. “I’ll take down that woman just as I did this young doe. Once I set my sights, brother, my aim is true.”
Virgil smiled. He shook his knife at Dean, the piece of meat impaled on the end of it shivering. “I doubt Widow Parsons would be as delicious to the taste as this blackened flesh,” he claimed.
Dean relaxed a little, even smiled. “Don’t be so sure,” he said. “Nothing more delicious than a healthy woman craving meat.”
“True,” said Virgil. “Too true.”
There came a loud pounding at the front door. Both brothers froze. Dean finished his piece of meat and then wiped the blade of his knife clean on his trousers.
“Not ghosts after all,” said Virgil.
“No,” said Dean. “Told you there was something out there.”
“Maybe it’s the widow come a-calling, ready to be courted. Either that or someone just realized they’re missing a goat.”
“Mark my word, the widow aw
aits behind that door. The stench of finely roasted meat has done its job and brought her hither.”
But Dean did not pocket his knife as he approached the door, instead holding it casually but at the ready in his hand.
Behind the door were Hawthorne and Mather, both dressed in black traveling garb now. Mather had lifted his cane again, was preparing once more to rap on the door with it. He stopped when Dean opened. The latter smiled, wiped his beard with the back of his hand, the other hand quickly sheathing the knife.
“Greetings,” he said. “And to what honor do I owe this nocturnal intrusion?”
“It is time,” said Hawthorne.
For a moment Dean stood there motionless, a questioning expression on his face. And then suddenly his expression changed, his eyes narrowing.
“You are certain? When we wanted to proceed before, you preached caution. What has changed?” he asked. “You have proof?”
“As much proof as we need,” said Mather. “I have seen the red smoke.”
Dean turned again to Hawthorne, who simply nodded. “Now is the time to act,” he said.
Dean nodded, turned, and called back into the room, “Virgil!”
“Aye, brother,” said Virgil, still slowly eating the haunch of meat.
“Our brothers in God are here. Reverend Hawthorne claims it is time.”
“Time for what?” asked Virgil. But when Dean didn’t answer he pushed back from the table and stood. “I see,” he said.
“Sharpen the tools,” said Dean. “We’re going hunting.”
“Already have, brother, already have,” said Virgil. “A dull blade is of no use to anyone.”
Dean turned back to the door. “Well, Reverend, we shall be the Lord’s instruments of just destruction, his means of righteous anger. Direct us toward the demons and we’ll gut their bellies as we would any fatted hog awaiting slaughter.”
Chapter Five
They moved quietly through the night, the four of them traveling along the forest path single file. They all wore dark cloaks. Two of them had their faces hidden within their hoods. And they all had faces that were covered by dark masks emblazoned with rough-sewn death’s heads. Memento mori, remember that you will die. Moonlight caught the death’s heads and made them stand out faintly against the darkness, and with their otherwise dark clothing it was as if disembodied skulls were floating slowing down the path. It caught, too, on the blades of the weapons that a pair of the masked figures held: two huge splitting axes slung over their shoulders.
Even from a distance, they could make out the red smoke rising from the hovel’s crude chimney. It had an unearthly glow to it. Yes, this was the Devil’s fire.
They entered the clearing that contained the hovel and slowly spread out. Hawthorne approached the door silently. He depressed the latch lightly with his finger and then placed his hand against the door and pushed. The door, apparently barred from within, did not budge.
He slowly circled the house, the others following him as he examined the walls. After a moment he stopped, examined a section of wall up and down, and then nodded. He gestured and the masked Magnus brothers came forward. Together they heaved up their axes and began to chop.
The first few blows did but little, but after a moment the wooden wall began to splinter and crack, slowly coming asunder. Would they simply make an opening, wondered Hawthorne, or would the zeal of the brothers collapse the hut? Perhaps the easiest way to resolve this, he thought, would be for the hovel to collapse and for the witches to die beneath its weight.
But soon the hole was large enough for the Magnus brothers to shoulder their way in, Hawthorne and Mather following close behind.
What Hawthorne saw filled him with dread. The only one of the women on her feet was Margaret Morgan, who stood stock-still, her legs quivering, playing a simple haunting melody on a violin. The fire was high and strange, the color wrong, and around it, writhing at Morgan’s feet, were the rest of the coven. They were naked, their bodies painted with strange symbols, and they moved over and across one another, moaning with ecstasy. They embraced one another but tried, too, to couple with the ground, and one even had blackened and burning fingers where she had thrust them into the fire. With one or two it was as if their skin was covered with unnatural shadows that moved and twisted back and forth in a way not canny with the light cast in the room itself. On the sole bed in the corner was the body of a slaughtered woman, trussed to the bed, gutted, most of her abdomen missing, the bed and dirt floor beneath it slick with her blood. He recognized her: Krista Seward. She had been pregnant. He cast his eyes around for the child, but could not find it.
He felt his skin crawl. Any doubt that he’d had that these were witches, that this was a coven, immediately vanished.
The Magnus brothers went straight for the fire, kicking aside the convulsing witches in their path. With their axes they scattered the coals, stamping their way through the flames and kicking sparks and embers onto the witches around it. Some of them seemed to come back to themselves, brushing off the embers, ceasing their writhing and crying out, and becoming conscious of their surroundings. Others, however, seemed not to notice even as the embers burned their hair and flesh and the room filled with the stench of it. There was a roaring sound coming from the fire and it suddenly and impossibly rose up again from the scattered ashes, and Dean Magnus’s death’s head mask smoked and caught fire. He tore it off, laughing, sparks sizzling in his beard, and beat the flames out against his leg. He and Virgil continued to kick and hack apart the fire until with a whoosh the fire diminished, its color returning to normal.
“Battling devils is sweaty work,” claimed Dean, beating out his smoking beard. Through his mask, his brother gave a muffled laugh. The writhing of the women had slowed now. They were beginning to look stunned and confused, many not entirely sure of where they were. Some had begun to cover their nakedness, seeing the Magnus brothers leering down at them now that the fire was taken care of.
“Don’t lose your heads, brothers,” Hawthorne cautioned the Magnuses.
Dean brandished his mask, the death’s head damaged and partly burned through. “But I already have,” he claimed, shaking it. “I already have!”
Hawthorne frowned. The line between the good that they were trying to preserve and the evil they were hoping to stomp out was murky at times, and he could not help but feel that the Magnus brothers remained straddled there, one foot on either side of the line. They were willing to be God’s instruments, but had things been just a little different, the brothers might have tipped in the other direction and served the Devil. Better not to think of it, Hawthorne told himself. Better to simply accept the pair for what they had to offer.
Margaret Morgan still stood there, playing her violin, seemingly oblivious to the brothers or Hawthorne or Mather. What was that melody? Where had he heard it before? Why did he feel so sleepy, as if he had no desire to move? It was haunting, seemed to draw him deep within himself, and as she played it he felt dark shadows begin to flit around him, gathering closer. Mather, he saw, standing beside Morgan, was similarly affected, but Hawthorne watched him reach out with a great deal of struggle within him and drag the violin away from her.
As soon as the melody stopped, Hawthorne felt himself again, and control over his limbs returned. He strode forward as Mather broke the violin on his knee and tossed it to the ground.
“Margaret Morgan,” he said in a loud voice. “I, together with my brothers in Christ Jesus, Dean Magnus, Virgil Magnus, and Samuel Mather, bear witness against you for consorting with the Devil.”
Margaret Morgan stood motionless, unblinking, her face as slack and expressionless as if she were sleeping or dead. Hawthorne reached out and shook her shoulder, found her body as rigid as if it were made of wood.
“Margaret Morgan,” he said again. “In the name of God and his angels, I call upon you to confess your crimes and turn away from the Devil and his minions.”
This time she turned her head and blin
ked once and then smiled. “Satan will not desert me,” she said. “You shall see.”
“Satan!” shouted Mather, his eyes darting all around him. “We command thee to leave this place!”
“It is too late!” said Morgan. “We have unleashed him and you cannot confine him again. It is too late!”
She began to wave her hands and speak in a guttural, unknown language, and suddenly Hawthorne again felt a great, overwhelming tiredness. He could not move. He tried to reach his hand toward Morgan but it seemed to move so slowly that he could not believe that it would ever arrive. For a moment, Mather beside him was shouting but then he suddenly trailed off, his voice dying in his mouth. Morgan opened her eyes wide, and Hawthorne saw they were sparking with a reflected fire even though the fire in the pit was now out. Or an inner fire, he thought. From Hell. She opened her mouth and smiled, a wicked, hideous smile.
Then Dean Magnus struck her in the back of the head with the haft of his ax and she collapsed in a heap. And Hawthorne found he could move again. He took a deep breath.
“Did you kill her?” he asked.
Dean shook his head. “Just unconscious,” he said. “Do you want me to?”
Hawthorne shook his head. “No,” he said. “We’ll bring them back for a proper trial. We will follow God’s laws and give them that.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to kill them now?” asked Mather. “We know they are witches. We know what we have seen.”
Hawthorne shook his head. “They will die as witches,” he said. “That is beyond question. But even witches must be given a chance to confess and repent before they die.” He turned to the Magnus brothers. “Bind their hands and gag them,” he said. “And be certain that the gags are secure.” He gestured to the floor, at Margaret Morgan’s crumpled body. “Especially for that one,” he said.
Chapter Six
The building had only one entrance, a heavy door in bound iron, which was now barred. Inside, it was lit by torches and there were no windows, no other way out besides the door that you entered by. That door was colloquially called the Portal of Judgment. Those who passed through it with their hands bound were rarely allowed to leave alive.