by Rob Zombie
Herman grinned, turned toward Francis. “So, Francis, tell me exactly how many people were actually executed during the Salem Witch trials.”
He opened his mouth to answer, but that other Herman, White Herman, cut in. “And more important,” said White Herman, “were any related to Dr. Frankenstein?”
He felt his blood start to boil—they just weren’t taking this seriously! But Alice, he knew, would want him to keep his cool. He took a deep breath and then responded.
“A good question, Herman,” he said. “Approximately twenty-five in all if you include accused witches who died while in prison…” He thought he might end it there, but both Hermans were looking at him, waiting for him to go on. Ah, what the hell, he thought. “And as far as I know, none were of any relation to Dr. Frankenstein.”
Whitey laughed. “Twenty-five? Are you serious? I thought there must be hundreds. I have to admit I’m disappointed by that number and especially by the non-Frankenstein lineage.”
How was he supposed to answer that? He just stared at the microphone.
“Professor Matthias,” said Heidi, “correct me if I’m wrong here, but wasn’t Dr. Frankenstein only a fictional character?”
“Yes,” he said, thankful for the correction. “Yes, I believe he was. And the book Frankenstein didn’t appear until nearly thirty years after the Salem Witch trials.”
“So what you’re saying is that the book Frankenstein was based on the Salem Witch trials?” said Whitey.
“Um, no,” said Francis, confused. “I wasn’t suggesting that at all. There’s no relation between the two.”
Whitey laughed. Am I being toyed with? wondered Francis. Or is this man just an idiot? He wondered if he should have said something else, or if he should go on now, but Heidi was already asking a new question.
“Hang with me on this, because it might seem like a ridiculous question,” she said. Oh no, he thought, not a promising start. “Were there any quote unquote ‘real witches’ in Salem in the seventeenth century?”
He cleared his throat. “Well, today we have a large group of practicing Wiccans living in Salem, which is a positive, earth-centered religion. They sometimes refer to themselves as white witches. It might seem strange to think they would gather here, at a site where witches were persecuted in the past, but they claim to be curing the place of the evil that took place here. But I assume you mean…”
He let his voice trail off. He wasn’t sure he wanted to get caught up in this sort of conversation. It wasn’t really what his work was about. It was a historical examination, for God’s sake, not some hippy-dippy mystical speculation.
“You know,” said Heidi, “classic witches with actual powers of some sort? Any of those?”
He shook his head. “Sorry, no. There is no such thing as witchcraft. Witchcraft is nothing more than psychotic beliefs brought on by a delusional state of mind.”
“So, nothing.”
Hadn’t he said just that? Couldn’t they move on to something else? He sat there staring at her, shaking his head, but she wouldn’t ask another question. He imagined Alice at home listening. She’d be disappointed. He wasn’t playing the game; he was messing it up.
He made an effort. “Nothing,” he said.
But the woman wouldn’t let it go. Maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe she wasn’t the nice one after all.
“Not even the teeny-weensiest incident of supernatural activity ever occurred?” she asked. Even the way she asked he found belittling, an assault on his dignity. No, it had been a huge mistake to come on the show. He could see that now. He never should have agreed to do it.
When he spoke again, there was a harshness he couldn’t keep out of his tone. “I thought I was quite clear the first time you asked,” he said. “You can ask me again, but the answer is still no.”
But still the girl didn’t stop. What was wrong with her? “How can you be so sure?” she asked. What was she, someone with aspirations to witchhood? He was losing his temper now.
“I can be sure because I am a reasonable person,” he said angrily. “I do not believe in supernatural nonsense any more than I believe in Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster.” He turned toward Whitey. “Or Frankenstein for that matter.”
“Whoa, my brother,” said Herman. “Don’t be ragging on Frankenstein. I’ve got film fest tickets to move.”
But Frances was going now and couldn’t stop. “In fact,” he said, stabbing his finger toward Heidi, “the idea of ‘real witches’ as well as the mindless cinematic trash like Frankenstein versus the Witchhunter—”
“Witchfinder,” interrupted Whitey.
“Witchfinder, whatever,” said Francis. He took a deep breath. “This inane garbage completely undermines the social importance of the witch trials themselves. Can’t you see that? That is exactly the problem with this country. Everything has to be a joke or a headline. History means nothing anymore.”
His anger was starting to run out of steam. He tried to calm down and wind it up. “History isn’t about the past,” he claimed. “It’s about defining who we are in the present.”
When he finished there was silence. Maybe he’d gone too far. He felt a little stab of regret; he’d promised Alice that he’d get her the tickets she wanted, but there was no way he could do that now, not with the tirade he’d just given them. There’d be hell to pay when he got home.
Heidi was looking at Herman, who was looking back at her, gesturing for her to go on. She lifted her shoulders and shrugged, gestured back to him. White Herman was deliberately not looking at either of them, staring down at his soundboard. No, he’d gone too far.
Finally Heidi spoke. “So which are we, then?” she asked. “Descendants of witches or descendants of murderers?”
For a moment a dull anger rose up in him. She was still trying to play the game, still trying to get him to say something sensational and irrational. But another part of him told him not to get angry. It wasn’t her fault—she was just doing her job, trying like so many people in Salem to sell something by using their history of destruction and violence. It was indicative of a problem with the country at large, but it wasn’t her fault. Probably it hadn’t been her who had insisted on interviewing him. Probably it hadn’t been the idea of any of them—hey, they just worked here. They were just as much victims of it as he was. And getting angry like that just made him tired.
“Both,” he said wearily. “We are the descendants of witches, and we are the descendants of murderers.”
She stared at him, a little surprised by his answer, and then White Herman jumped in and took over. “I could have told you that just by looking at the crowd at Dunkin’ Donuts this morning,” he said. “And speaking of defining who we are in the present, I think we need to define some present… It’s time for…” Whitey reached out and hit a button on the board. A recorded intro of a drumroll began to play, followed quickly by the sound of glass being smashed.
“Smash or Trash!” said the intro tape in an unnaturally deep voice.
That was it, then, thought Francis. His five minutes of radio fame were over and they were moving on to some novelty segment. Smash or Trash, whatever that meant. He’d made a fool of himself, probably came off as a pedantic old idiot. Oh well, what else was new?
“Today I think Heidi is going to provide us with the victim,” Herman was saying.
The victim? wondered Francis. What were they talking about? They weren’t going to start doing prank calls, were they?
“That’s right, Herman,” said Heidi. “This one is a little different from most. I have no info about where this came from. Strange handmade box with a weird symbol on it that just showed up in my mailbox here at work, no return address, nothing, and with an unmarked record inside. All I know is the group is called the Lords.”
“The Lords,” said Herman. “I assume they are from around here, so we’ll just call them the Lords of Salem.”
The Lords of Salem? Francis was a little shocked, not sure he’d heard
right. Was this another joke they were playing on him? Had they read his book after all?
“Excuse me,” he said. “Did you say the Lords of Salem?”
Herman looked over at him, a little annoyed. “Yes, I did,” he said. “Francis Mattias, ladies and gentlemen. You got to remember, Francis, we’re still on the air.”
Probably just a coincidence, Francis told himself. I’m sure plenty of bands out there would take a name like that. And it wasn’t exactly the band name either—they were just the Lords, right, and it was Herman who had tacked “of Salem” onto them. No, it was just a coincidence. Nothing to worry about.
“The phone lines are now open, so get ready to smash or trash!” said Herman.
Or maybe it was the Lords of Salem, thought Francis, but the band had been founded by someone who had read his book, who knew what the name meant. Yes, that was a possibility, too. The book was just out, but bands were changing their names all the time. Maybe they had put together their album and decided on their name at the last minute…
On the other side of the studio, Whitey started the record. Initially he put the needle at the end of the record rather than at the beginning and then seemed surprised when nothing happened. Maybe he really was an idiot, thought Francis. He tried it twice that way and then put the needle where it was supposed to go. The music started up right away, and everyone took their headphones off.
“Hey, it’s going the right way,” said Whitey to Heidi, gesturing at the record. “What do you make of that?”
“I guess your turntable is possessed,” said Heidi to Herman.
“Not my turntable,” said Herman. “Last I checked that was how records played.”
“Yeah,” said Whitey. “That’s what I said. It’s going the right way. Last night it wasn’t. It was playing backward.”
“Backward?” said Herman. “Nah.”
“I shit you not,” said Whitey. “Ask Heidi.”
Herman turned to her. She nodded. “I know it sounds weird,” she said, “but that’s what happened.”
Herman stared at her a moment, then shook his head. “Naw, you guys are both messing with me,” he said. “Or you just had too much to drink last night.”
Backward? wondered Francis. What were they talking about? And what was it about the music that was making his skin crawl?
Chapter Twenty-four
A sound like women chanting, but distorted. Instruments that sounded damaged and as if they were deliberately being played wrong. Maisie Mather was naked in bed with her gangly boyfriend Jarrett when she heard the song on the radio.
Maisie was a WXKB girl, born and bred. It was the only Salem-based station that played classic rock, and it had stuck to that for years. She had curly black hair and was petite, not bad to look at but no raving beauty either. But she liked the way she looked; she was comfortable with it, and with herself. Maisie had lived a charmed life. She’d lived in Salem all her life, had even lived on the same block with her parents until finally moving out a few years back and into her own place. She’d grown up feeling loved and protected, and the knowledge that her family was old-Salem blood had given her a sense of privilege and belonging that she’d come to rely on. Her parents had accepted that privilege but had always played down her ancestor Judge Mather’s relation to the witch trials, and she had at first, too. But once she was older she’d embraced it, deciding that she might as well accept it rather than run from it. That was why she’d gotten involved with the Witch Museum, why she’d made a gift to the museum of Judge Mather’s papers once her parents had died.
It was still hard for her to think about their death. It had been so unnecessary, and the officer at the scene had said it was a hundred to one shot, that the wreck wasn’t all that bad and that they should have survived. Indeed, the people in the other car had all walked away without a scratch. She was still getting over that, and she never got into a car without thinking about it and wondering if, had she been in the car, she would have died, too.
She’d gone to college at Boston University, commuting every day from Salem. At the time, she’d told herself that once she graduated she was done with Salem and with Massachusetts in general, but no, apparently not. She didn’t know if it was inertia or an unwillingness to abandon her parents even though they were dead or what, but every time she got up the nerve to leave, something happened to keep her here. Last time, she’d even had a job arranged in California, had bought the plane ticket and everything, when she’d gotten a call to say that the company had been taken over and the job no longer existed. After a while, she started thinking of it as fate and figured she’d be here pretty much forever.
At first she didn’t pay any attention to the song, just kept kissing Jarrett, encouraging him, trying to get him into it. His blond beard and long hair kept on getting in the way, poking into her eyes, tickling her neck or snaking its way into her mouth, but whatever, that was how it was with Jarrett, something you had to live with if you wanted to have sex with him. And if you could get over that, well, he wasn’t such a bad lay.
Or okay at least. She had to admit, the last few weeks’ sex with Jarrett had been feeling a little routine. She had a hard time keeping her mind on things. She kept drifting away, thinking about what she had to do the next day, wondering whether she’d put the trash out, if the cat litter needed to be changed, whatever. Not a good sign, and probably an indication that Jarrett and she weren’t likely to be an item for all that much longer.
But today her mind was catching on something, on the song coming from the radio. At first it seemed just weird, nothing worth paying much attention to, but there was something about it that kept hooking her. Hooking her, tugging at her, reeling her in. She kept imagining that: a hook sliding into her flesh and then pulling at it, the feel of it as it went in, the sharp pain of it, and then the anxious buzz of it as, once affixed, it began to tug. Why am I thinking that? she wondered briefly. It should have grossed her out. But weirdly enough, it was kind of a turn-on. It was like the tug of the hook and the music and the movement of their bodies were all the same thing, all mixed up in a way that made her crazy, but in a good, transgressive way. A really good way, she thought. It had been years since she’d felt this turned on. What was this music anyway? What was it doing to her? And how could she get it to do more?
“Turn it up,” she said, midthrust.
Jarrett stopped, breaking the rhythm. She pushed him from his side onto his back and climbed on top of him, slid him into her, took over. There it was again, the hook, piercing her skin. Only the music didn’t feel like a hook exactly anymore. It was thicker and harder, more like a nail or even a spike. And instead of feeling like it was hooked into the flesh of her body, it felt like it was being pounded first through one eye and then through the other. It was like she was being blinded by desire. Why should that feel good? What’s wrong with me to have a fantasy like that, some fucked-up mutilation thing? she wondered, and for a moment she tried to break away from it. But the music: something about it was too insistent, and it kept drawing her in, flooding her body and mind.
She gave a kind of gasp.
“Oh my God!” she said. “Turn that up… Turn it up! I have to hear it louder!”
Beneath her Jarrett lost his rhythm again, but she just kept going, faster and faster, listening to the slick thwip, thwip, thwip her movement made. “Huh, um, okay…,” he finally said. “Okay.” He reached to one side, tried to fiddle with the knob of the radio, but he wasn’t finding it fast enough.
“Louder!” screamed Maisie Mather.
And then he found the knob and had cranked the music as loud as it would go. The radio’s tiny speaker began to fuzz out, but Maisie didn’t care. Somehow that made the music even better. And she was beside herself now, no longer even quite sure who she was anymore. The music was a kind of discordant off-kilter metal, but with a tribal beat hidden somewhere inside it. It flowed into her and through her, and beneath it she could hear something else, a kind of chant, a
kind of spell almost, but running backward. There were voices there, and they were calling out to her. She could almost hear them, could almost hear what they were saying to her, what they were telling her to do.
“Louder!” she screamed again. “Louder!”
“Dude, chill,” said Jarrett. “That’s as loud as it’ll go!”
She moved faster and faster, grinding harder and harder. Even if she’d wanted to stop, she probably couldn’t have. Beneath her Jarrett just tried to hold on. She sunk her nails into his chest and he cried out, a little hurt maybe, but she didn’t care. She just kept going, the music rushing through her.
Inside of her, a sleeping beast reared its head and became attentive. It came and pressed its ear against the side of her skull, listened through the music to the reversed chant hidden within it. A chant she didn’t even hear until the beast did. She could feel it slavering within her, and then it opened its mouth and began to speak.
“Maisie Mather,” it said, and she felt her own name echo darkly within the confines of her skull. Its voice was the voice of an animal, and the words came out crippled and unnatural, but she could still understand them, could still hear her name. And once it said it, she realized that yes, this was one thing the chant was saying: it was calling to her, calling her name. And something inside her, some bestial thing she didn’t know was there, had heard the call and was answering for her, and now was listening to what was hidden in the music, to what the music was trying to say.
Suddenly she was very afraid.
But the part of her that was afraid was caught in a dark tide that swept through her whole body. It was as if her body no longer heard now; it was moving fast and hard and almost without her. The beast that had reared its head was fully awake now, and she could hear it slowly stretching and spreading within her, its limbs sliding through her arms and legs until it filled them, its chest expanding to fill her own and even push it out farther until her ribs threatened to crack. Below her Jarrett was a little astonished, maybe even a little afraid, but enjoying himself, enjoying the way she kept going and going and going. Help me, the part of her that was still left tried to say to him, but the only thing that came out of her mouth was a moan that mixed pleasure with pain. The creature snuffled through her skull and slowly pushed its way along its edges until its own head filled it, and the person who had been Maisie Mather was now relegated to a little imaginary island deep within her brain where she could feel things a little, could look out the eyes a little, but couldn’t move, couldn’t act. She was where the beast had been. And now the beast had taken her place.
