Lords of Salem

by Rob Zombie

  When the fanfare ended, he began to speak in stentorian tones. “The Lords are coming to Salem for one night only.”

  At that Heidi perked up a little. Opened her eyes anyway.

  “The Lords of Salem? Really?” she said in a half mumble. “When?”

  “You’ve got to start coming to the meetings,” said Whitey.

  Heidi gave a lazy smile and flipped Whitey off.

  Herman began singing, Bay City Rollers style. “S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y night! And we’ve got the tickets. In fact, we have all the tickets. You get them from us or you don’t get them at all. Plus, the show is free.”

  “Did you say free?” said Whitey in a fake excited voice. “Now I know there’s gotta be a catch.”

  “Why does there always have to be a catch?” groaned Heidi.

  “I don’t know,” said Whitey. “There just always is.”

  Chip wasn’t going to like that if he heard it, thought Herman. No point in making the audience paranoid. “No catch at all,” he said. “Just call in and get your tickets or come on down to the station and get them. Any way you slice this meat loaf, it is free, baby.”

  He gestured to Whitey, who put the needle on the album. The Lords track started off. Hell, he liked it even less than the first time he’d heard it. He made a face and then turned to dress Heidi down.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Virginia Williams sighed, her hands deep in the dishwater. She was tired, but she always felt tired these days. How had life gotten away from her? Last thing she remembered she’d been, like, twenty, and then she blinked and now suddenly here she was, fifty-one. Not even fifty, but fifty-fucking-one. And still with Keith, for Christ’s sake. And on top of that, she had to put up with this crap. Had Keith ever even washed a single damned dish in his life? To hear him tell it, he was the one who did all the work and kept things going. If that was the case, then why was the porch about to rot off? It was hardly even safe to go out there these days. And why was it that every time she turned around he was sucking down another beer?

  Okay, Keith wasn’t sucking down a beer right now, but he was damned sure digging through the fridge looking for one. He was way over the hill and halfway down the other side, almost sixty compared to her fifty-one. No hair on the man’s head to speak of, and why did he still insist on wearing a wifebeater? The only hair he had left was his chest hair, which was a stiff dirty white that was better left covered up. But could she get him to put a nice shirt on at home? Hell no. She sighed. It was lucky, she supposed, that he was willing to throw on a tank top. If she had to see even an inch more of his pasty white flesh, well, she didn’t know what she’d do.

  He surfaced from the fridge again and sure enough this time he had a beer in hand. He twisted the lid off and flicked it at the trash where, as usual, it bounced off the side and skittered across the linoleum. Was he going to pick it up? Not a chance. She’d be doing that later, as soon as she was done with all these dishes.

  On the window ledge over the sink, the radio was playing. The Big H. They were the best that Salem had to offer, which wasn’t, she had to admit, saying all that much.

  “I guess it’s time,” said one of them. Whitey, his name was.

  “Oh, it’s time, baby,” said the other one, Herman. “Give it up for the Lords of Salem.”

  And then the music started. It was some far-out stuff, all right, hardly even music, not like the stuff she grew up with anyway: REO Speedwagon, Donna Summer, Earth, Wind, and Fire. But there was something to it, something was pulling at her, dragging her into it.

  Keith was saying something to her, jabbing a finger at her as he spoke, just kind of crouched there beside the sink, watching her, drinking his beer. Couldn’t he just leave her alone? Couldn’t she be allowed to do the dishes and listen to the radio in peace for once? Was that really too much to ask?

  She’d missed most of it, but she caught the word daughter and realized he must be talking about his granddaughter’s birthday party. He’d been griping about it for days now.

  “Why should I?” he was saying. “I might as well stay home.”

  “Well, I don’t want to go either,” Virginia said harshly. “But guess what? You can just suck it up because we’re going.”

  It just bounced off Keith. It usually did. He was the kind of guy who thought an argument was just two people’s normal way of communicating.

  “It’s so stupid,” he said. “The fucking brat is one year old. She doesn’t even know it’s her fucking birthday.”

  “Hey,” she said. “It’s your family, not mine.”

  He gave her a disgusted look. “Trust me, I know,” he said, and walked out of the room.

  And then, mercifully, she was alone. Just her, for once. Or her and the music. There was something about it, something about the song, that she could feel humming in her bones. She liked it. It made her feel like she was somewhere else, and that was exactly how she wanted to feel. Anywhere but here. She reached out and turned it up just a little, her wet hand giving her a little shock when she touched the knob. Yeah, that was better, a little louder. What did it remind her of? Something, she couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but yeah, it was familiar somehow. The music was calling to her, whispering to her. Wow, she hadn’t felt that way about a song for years now, decades even. It made her tingle all over.

  The plates were done. She reached into the dishwater and groped along the bottom of the sink for silverware. She was scrubbing off utensils, moving them from the soapy water to the clean water when something caught her eye. What was that through the window above the sink, that shadowy shape staring at her?

  With a start, she realized that it was her own reflection against the dark glass. But it didn’t look like her, did it? Who was that old, fat, bedraggled woman? That wasn’t her. She knew she wasn’t really that way. This was the universe playing tricks on her.

  But maybe, a voice inside her said, it’s time for you to start playing tricks back.

  Who was that? she wondered. She looked at the strange shadowy reflection of herself in the pane of glass, the image that both was and was not her. There was something different about it, and it wasn’t just that the image was backward. She looked different than she had. A sly smile had begun to curve on her lips.

  “What kind of tricks?” she asked her reflection.

  “Did you say something?” shouted her husband from the other room.

  She ignored him.

  Well, it whispered back, we could start with a makeover…

  A makeover! She’d always wanted a makeover. She’d begged her friends to put her name in for one of those TV shows, the ones where the women went in looking dumpy and came out looking beautiful. She’d be perfect for one of those shows; she knew it. There was a beautiful woman hiding inside her. All she needed was for someone to let it out. But nobody ever took her seriously about it. And most of those friends were gone now anyway, driven away by Keith. She should have left him long ago. If she had, she’d probably still have friends now.

  “Shall I go get my makeup?” she said to her reflection. She began to dry her hands off, getting ready to go into the bathroom.

  “Are you talking on the phone or something?” Keith shouted. “Who you talking to?”

  She just ignored him. This was between her and her reflection—Keith had nothing to do with it. If Keith got involved he’d just wreck things, like he always did.

  No makeup needed, said her reflection. You’ve got an innate natural beauty. We just need to bring it out a little.

  Yes, that’s right, she thought. I do have an innate natural beauty. I’m ravishing. She lifted up her dripping hands and ran her fingers through her stringy hair.

  You just have to bring it out, said her reflection.

  But how was she to do that? And without makeup? She looked around on the counters but there wasn’t much there. A half-empty box of cereal, a grapefruit, some tomatoes. Two dirty shot glasses that somehow she’d missed washing. A rack with spices
on it. Other than that, there were only the things now draining in the dish drainer. A bunch of plates, some plastic cups, some utensils, a carving knife—

  —a carving knife, said her reflection. Well, that might come in handy.

  It just might, she thought. She saw her hand slowly reach out toward it, her fingers closing around it. It felt good, had a good heft to it—why hadn’t she noticed that about it before? She turned it slowly in her hand and watched the reflection of the overhead light enter the flat of its blade and then slide off and then slide back on when she turned it back. It was like the knife was winking at her, like there was a secret between her and the knife. She glanced up at her reflection and saw that it was winking at her as well, the sly smile having been transformed into a leer. A part of her was a little horrified by what she saw, but a larger part of her was delighted. Yes, Keith had spent so many years stamping her down, controlling her. How wonderful it was to finally be able to stretch out a little bit and show her inner self.

  “We’re in charge now,” she whispered to the knife. She turned it just right and lo and behold she saw her reflection in it, stretched a little, cut off at the top of the head, but still there. She was seeing herself in the knife now. She was the knife.

  Now what are you going to do with me? her reflection asked, the knife asked. Use me?

  She gave a low laugh. It came out sounding a little funny, like something was wrong with her vocal cords. A part of her registered that and filed it away, but most of the rest of her didn’t care. It felt so good to be free.

  She let her gaze drift away from the knife and back to the window. Her reflection was there, too. She watched the reflection slowly lift the carving knife and begin hacking off her hair. Strands of it drifted down into the sink and onto the counter. A new Virginia began to come out, a woman with short hair, thatched in places and in other places cut close to the scalp. She looked tough. And more than that, she looked dangerous.

  She reached up to feel her new head, was shocked when she felt the hair still there. The actual knife hadn’t moved—her reflection was somehow not following her, was instead showing her what to do. Now it was gesturing to her, telling her it was her turn.

  She brought the knife up and grabbed a fistful of hair. In the window, her reflection was behaving. It had gone back to being her reflection, was showing her what she was doing again. She watched as the hair began to fall, felt the tug of the knife as she sawed the blade through her hair, trying to crop it as close to the skull as possible.

  Her hand slipped and she jabbed her head, making a gash near her temple. It began to throb and bled feebly for a moment. In the window she saw her reflection reach up and touch the cut, then bring a blood-covered finger to its mouth. It licked the finger clean, its eyes crinkling with pleasure.

  A few moments later she had finished. The water in the sink had gone cloudy with blood. She looked at her reflection. She looked beautiful, her head shorn nearly bare, little lines of blood dripping down here and there where her hand had slipped or she had cut too close. Yes, she was gorgeous.

  In the window, her reflection smiled. Then it carefully shucked its shirt and dropped it out of sight. It took off its bra, its breasts now dangling loose, sagging. It took the carving knife and very deftly began to cut into its own chest. It traced out a circle on its chest, then drew a cross within it, then an upward facing semicircle at the head of the cross, a downward facing one through its base.

  Wow, she could become even more beautiful.

  It gestured to her. Was it her turn now? It was!

  She lifted her shirt off and dropped it onto the floor. She unhooked her bra and let that go, too. It fell into the water and floated for a moment before slowly becoming sodden and beginning to sink. She brought the knife to her skin and pressed it against herself until it broke through. It hurt a little, but it was a pain she enjoyed. It was the pain of letting go, of becoming something new, something that could be controlled. Panting, she brought the knife around to form a ragged, bloody circle. The upright of the cross was hard since at times it almost scraped bone, but soon she’d finished it.

  It hurt. God, it hurt a lot, more than anything she’d ever felt. Even more than that time when Keith had gotten drunk and hit her until she had to go to the hospital. But when she was done carving, she looked amazing. Like some sort of demonic goddess standing there with a shaved and bloody head and her chest radiating fire from the symbol she had made.

  She started to put the knife down on the counter, but then she caught sight of her reflection in its blade.

  Not yet, Virginia, it said.

  “Not yet what?” she asked the reflection.

  I don’t think you’re done with that yet, it said. Do you?

  Not done with it? What else could she do with it? Maybe carve another symbol? She pulled the knife back closer to herself until all she was seeing was the image of her own eye, flattened and wavering on the blade. Then the eye, slowly, winked.

  Watch me, she heard the reflection in the window say. She looked up and saw her slightly askew image, watched it put its fingers to its lips and then turn and walk away from the sink, walking step by step out of the kitchen. It was gone a long time. She just stayed there, staring at the window, waiting for it to come back. When it finally did, the knife and the hand that held it looked as if they had been soaked in blood and there was blood spattered over its body, too.

  Now your turn, it said, and gave a twisted smile.

  Yes, she thought, smiling back. Now it’s my turn.

  Whitey had left the Lords playing on the in-studio speakers instead of shutting it off. Heidi felt like she wasn’t just hearing it; she was feeling it, as if it had become part of her body. Her skin buzzed and her stomach twisted. She broke out in a cold sweat. Jesus, I must be sick, she thought. But it felt like it was the music doing it to her, like the music was making her ill.

  She tried to take a few deep breaths but it wasn’t helping. Her head was pounding now, too. She tried to get out of her chair, nearly knocked it over. She stumbled toward the door.

  “Excuse me a second,” she said.

  “Just where the hell do you think you’re going?” asked Herman.

  But Heidi didn’t answer, just careened out of the room.

  Herman shook his head. “Okay,” he said. “It’s on. This is getting fucking ridiculous.”

  “Maybe she just has to pee,” said Whitey.

  Herman gave him a look.

  “Really? Maybe she just has to pee? Come on, she’s practically nodding out right in front of you. You can’t ever find fault with her, can you?”

  Whitey just shrugged. “So what are you going to do?”

  “Do? What am I going to do? I’m going after her.”

  “Dude, she’s probably in the ladies’ room.”

  “Well, she don’t belong there,” said Herman, standing up. “Because she ain’t no lady.”

  By now she had used the knife to cut the rest of her clothes off her body, jabbing herself a few times in the process. Damn, that song was great. It was making her feel really alive. How had she been able to survive this long without it? She reached out and turned the music up, loud this time, her wet hand getting shocked again. Weirdly, it felt good. She turned it up as loud as it could go.

  From the living room she heard Keith shouting at her. “Will you please turn that fucking radio down?” he called.

  No, her reflection said. I won’t.

  She smiled at herself and then turned and moved stealthily toward the living room. Behind her, she imagined her reflection doing the same thing, going into the living room that lay within the reflection, killing its mirror husband. Or wait, no, it had already done that and had come back bloody, so maybe now it was just waiting there, staring at her, watching her. She turned around to have a look and sure enough there it was, watching her go, bright now against the black glass, and with eyes that glowed red. Go on, it motioned to her with the reflection of the knife. Go on.<
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  She went on. She came to the doorway and slowly peered around it. There was Keith in his shitty La-Z-Boy, sprawled out, reading the sports page, beer on the table next to him. He hadn’t even bothered to put the beer on the coaster.

  She could see the back of his head and the bald spot on top of it. Jesus, she heard him say, and then he half turned and she ducked back behind the doorway.

  “Christ!” he said. “Turn it the hell down! I can’t hear myself think. If I have to get out of this chair and do it myself there’ll be hell to pay!”

  She stayed there against the wall until she heard the rustle of the papers again, just audible over the radio. She peered out around the edge of the doorway. He was reading again. Slowly she shuffled forward and around the doorjamb. Keith, fool that he was, didn’t notice.

  She made her way around the back of the room, clinging to the wall, until she was directly behind him and then fell to her knees and crawled across the shag rug. There she was, gently touching the back of the armchair, listening to him rustle his papers and grunt and burp just on the other side.

  She felt her way along the fabric, locating where the wooden supports were hidden beneath. Carefully, she considered where he was on the other side and chose a spot.

  In one fast motion she drove the knife through the back of the chair as hard as she could, letting out a shriek as she did so. Her husband gave a cry of surprise and pain and stumbled out of the chair to crash into the TV. He had one hand pressed to his back, blood already seeping out, and seemed unable to catch his breath. She gave a crooked smile. Maybe she’d punctured a lung.

  She stood and came out from behind the chair, moved toward him.

  “Virginia?” he gasped. “What the hell?”

  There was fear in his eyes. He reached his hand out toward her and she flashed the knife forward, taking off two of his fingers at the knuckle. He cried out again and turned and clawed at the wall, tried to escape her by going through it and she brought the knife down again and took off one of his ears, opening a gash in his shoulder.