Lords of Salem (24 page)

“You are a filthy whore of Satan,” he claimed. “Christ cannot save you. Only I can save you.” His voice had begun to change, becoming harsher and deeper, and he had begun to lose his composure now. His breathing was growing more and more heavy. He shifted his hips and forced himself into her mouth, pulling hard on her hair when at first she refused to open.

“You must no longer offer worship and sacrifice to the goat idols to whom you prostitute yourself,” he was saying.

He forced her head up and down. She choked and tried not to gag and wished for it all to be over. He began to moan, and she felt his thighs begin to tense. She felt humiliated, but quickly the humiliation shifted to anger. Rage filled her. She tightened her mouth and bit down until her teeth were tearing into the flesh of his cock and her mouth tasted of blood. But the priest, rather than protesting or hitting her, seemed to enjoy it. She tried to get her hand that was trapped behind his body free but it was wedged too firmly. She tried to strike him with her other hand but bent over like that, it was all but impossible. He just laughed.

He was panting heavily now, his hips bucking as he forced himself farther down her throat. “You must,” he said, “understand what the Lord… has done for you… and how… he has supreme… dominion… over your soul.”

Suddenly he gave a scream and Heidi expected him to come, but nothing happened. Instead, she felt something wet on the back of her head and neck and he let go. She pulled her head back quickly, saw that his eyes had rolled up into his head. From his mouth spurted a
black, viscous ichor, spraying into her mouth and eyes as she tried desperately to get away.

She woke up suddenly, feeling someone shaking her. She raised her hands to defend herself before realizing it was a priest.

“Miss… wake up,” he said. “Wake up.”

She looked at him in horror. He was the same priest as in her dream, though the lines of his face were different, softer, his expression anything but cruel.

“I believe you fell asleep,” he said, leaving his hand on her shoulder. “I’m afraid you must have been having some kind of nightmare. You kept calling out. I felt it my duty to awaken you.”

Heidi rubbed her face with her hands. “Oh, sorry,” she said. “I, um… I gotta go.”

“Are you all right?” he asked. “Do you need someone to talk to? God is always open and ready to listen.”

Hearing the same words as in her dream, she recoiled and pushed his hand away. He hovered there at the end of the pew, confused. “No,” she said. “I’m just fine.” Quickly she gathered herself together, pushed past the priest, and fled the church.

Steve had managed to get himself tangled and could hardly move. How long had she been asleep in there? Fuck, she was going to be late for work if she wasn’t careful. It never seemed to stop. Hands shaking, she untangled Steve and the two of them started quickly off and away.

She couldn’t stop herself from casting a glance back over her shoulder. She expected to see the priest standing by the open doors, but he wasn’t there. Instead, there were the two old nuns just standing motionless, watching her.

It’s like the whole world is out to get me
, thought Heidi, and then,
No, that’s just the joint making me paranoid
.

But it was more than that. It had to be. Those dreams started
before she had smoked the joint and everything had seemed weird before that. No, the world was fucked-up. Something was very wrong. It wasn’t just her.

She crossed the bridge over the pond and started up the stairs. She was still rattled, jittery enough that it was hard to walk. She stopped a few steps up and sat down, then begged a cigarette and a light off a passerby. Another gateway drug, another return to old habits. Her hands were shaking so hard that the man had to take it back from her to get it lit.

She took a deep puff, tried to calm down. Maybe the cigarette would do it. And if that didn’t work, there were always anxiety pills. And if those didn’t work, she could get drunk again. And if that didn’t work? Well, she didn’t want to think about that.

She tried to relax, letting her eyes wander. The pond was placid, the light just mellow enough that the reflections of the trees and hills in the water seemed almost more real than the actual trees and hills.

There were shouts and she turned her head to see, perhaps one hundred meters away, children wearing flowing white ghost costumes running around some of the graves, an older grouping of them, with cracked and dilapidated headstones. She watched the costumed children run, laughing at one another, playing tag or something.

And then suddenly, in unison, they stopped. Slowly, they began to turn until they were all facing her.
What the fuck?
she wondered. Steve began to whine. The children in ghost costumes stood there motionless, watching her, waiting.

Chapter Thirty-five

He’d waited at the curb, and then honked a few times, but the only thing that had happened was that that bitch who was her landlord came out and gave him the evil eye. Or maybe she was just checking him out. Hell, he was dressed nice, as usual, and he knew that even old chicks dug guys in fine-ass threads. She could look, but she couldn’t touch—Herman knew the warden wouldn’t tolerate that.

So he sat in the car a bit and then he got out and went up to the porch and rang Heidi’s bell about ten times but there was no answer and no sounds of anything stirring inside. He took out a cigar and rolled it between his fingers a bit, thinking that she’d come out right as soon as he started to smoke it. But even after he clipped off the ends and started puffing on it, there was no sign of her. He smoked it about halfway to ash. When one of the other tenants came out, he left it balanced precariously on the railing of the porch and grabbed the door before it could close and clomped his way down the hall and up the stairs to her door.
Pound, pound, pound
. Still no answer. And no whining or barking from Steve either, which meant that she probably was just out with her dog and had forgotten the time.

Still, he couldn’t stop himself from turning the door handle just to make sure. It wasn’t locked, and he couldn’t resist going in.
Just to see,
he told himself.
Just to make sure.

But what he saw didn’t reassure him. An empty container of
prescription pills rattling around in the sink of the bathroom. Not even in her name, but from someone named Griffin Lawe. He read the label on it—naproxen sodium, 500 mg. Not anything he’d ever heard of. Could be a painkiller or a sleeping pill but could also be an acne medication or something relatively harmless.
Don’t judge in advance
, he told himself.
You shouldn’t even be in here
. Records out and scattered all over the floor in the living room, some of them broken. The fainting couch had been turned over and was lying on its side, and several of the drawers of her dresser had been pulled out and dumped on the bed. Not nearly as bad as the time when he’d had to rescue her, admittedly, but something was wrong. She wasn’t keeping her shit together. Was she using again? There wasn’t anything besides the empty pill bottle in the sink to suggest that she was, and even that didn’t really prove anything, but still. He couldn’t help but be worried.

He went back outside, easing the door shut as he left. On his way toward the stairs he realized that the door to the apartment at the end of the hallway was open. Probably whoever lived there hadn’t pulled it quite shut when they left and his opening Heidi’s door had made that door come open, too. He was momentarily tempted to go down and pull it shut, do someone a good turn, but then thought,
Not my fucking problem
. No, he had to get over the idea that he was put on this earth to look out for other people, particularly if it was true that Heidi was using again. Last fucking thing he wanted was to get caught back up in that shit again.

Once back outside, he had to relight the cigar. He puffed on it patiently, feeling the impatience grow inside of him. Cigar gone, he ground it out and waited around outside a few more minutes, as long as he possibly could without being late. When she still hadn’t shown up, he just shook his head and climbed into the car.

He sighed. Maybe she’d already gone to the station and he’d meet her there. Maybe he’d been worried for nothing.

But no, he thought as he pulled a U-turn and started toward the station. She has Steve. She’d have to come home first.

Still, by the time he got to the station, he’d convinced himself that she might have brought Steve to work with her, that she’d be there waiting for him. But the only person in the break room was Whitey.

“Yo,” said Herman.

“Yo,” said Whitey back. He was holding a cup of coffee that was already mostly empty. Whitey had been there for a while. Which meant it must be later than Herman thought.

“Where you been?” asked Whitey. “You’re never late.”

Instead of answering, Herman turned to the refrigerator. He opened the door and looked inside, shuffled around a few items. At first it had been just to avoid answering Whitey, but when he realized what was missing, he began to get seriously pissed. But he wasn’t sure if it was real anger or just redirected shit over Heidi’s absence.

“Goddamn it! Who the fuck is stealing my Slim-Shakes?”

Whitey shrugged. “Not me,” he said. He patted his belly. “I’m trying to
gain
some weight. Got to be one of the overnights. Ambler maybe. He’s looking pretty fit these days.”

Herman just shook his head, closed the fridge. He pulled out a mug, poured himself some coffee. “Where’s girlie at?” he asked.

“Heidi? She didn’t take them. She’s not even here yet.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Herman glanced at his watch. Shit, they’d be on any minute. “What the hell, man? I knew it. I could see something in her eyes the other night. She better not be fucking up again. I laid my balls on the line to get her back on the air.”

“Chill, man,” said Whitey. “It’s all good.”

“It’s all good? You call this all good?”

“Mellow,” said Whitey. “She’s just late, is all. It’s no big thing.”

“I swear I’ll jam my size thirteens up her butthole if she repays me by throwing my ass under the bus.”

Whitey didn’t bother to answer. After a minute Herman sat down at the table and started drinking his coffee.

They were like that, listening to the sound of the news announcer playing low on the station speakers in the background, waiting for Heidi to make an appearance, for a minute or two. Finally Herman heard the sound of footsteps coming down the hall and thought,
She’s finally here
and began to relax. But it wasn’t Heidi who came in the break room door. It was Chip.

He was carrying a large wooden box and seemed to be out of breath. He set it down on the table between them with a loud thud.

“There you go, boys,” he said. “All yours.”

“What’s this?” asked Herman.

Chip smiled. “Free money.”

He pulled the top off the box. Inside were stacks of identical records, all of them in a simple black sleeve with that creepy-ass Lords symbol on it: a kind of weird, fucked-up Neanderthal face or whatever.

“Lords promos,” said Chip.

“What for?” said Whitey.

Chip turned to him, gave him a disgusted look. “What for? Are you sure you work in radio? For promotion, obviously. It seems this bunch of musical geniuses is coming to town and we’re the presenting station.”

“We’re standing behind that shit?” asked Herman. “Seriously?”

“Like my impending triple bypass,” said Chip. “So, in other words, the Lords of Salem are now off-limits to your wisecracks. No more jokes about this garbage. You play that record in heavy—and I do mean heavy—rotation and keep your snarky comments to yourself. And give all but one of these records away,” he said. He reached back into the box and pulled out a sheaf of tickets, shook them at Whitey. “And make sure these are all gone by Saturday.”

Whitey gave him a confused look. “What’s Saturday?” he asked.

Chip rolled his eyes. “Again, are you sure you work in radio? What do you think? The concert.”

Whitey, Herman realized, was getting ready to ask
What concert?
To head off Chip’s imminent explosion, he held out his hand and
said, “Hand them over.” When he did and Herman looked at them, he did a double take.

“Um, there’s a mistake here,” he said.

“What do you mean, a mistake?” said Chip.

Herman pointed to the venue listed on the ticket. “The Salem Palladium? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think there’s been a show at that dump since around 1983. Isn’t it abandoned?”

“Was last time I checked,” said Whitey.

Chip shrugged. “Technically, yes, but who am I to argue? If they want to have a show in a rat-infested hellhole, well then, God bless.”

“You sure it’s not just a mistake?” said Herman. “Where did these come from anyway? What did the rep say about them?”

“No rep,” said Chip.

“No rep? How’d you get them then?”

“They just showed up,” said Chip. “Were waiting for me when I got in this morning.”

“Who’s the contact?” said Whitey. “Let’s check with him about the venue.”

Chip ruffled through some of the promotional papers. “No name or number,” he said. “Not very professional.”

“Someone’s taking you for a ride,” said Herman. “It’s a joke.”

Chip shook his head. “No,” he said. “They already paid. Envelope of cash was included with the promos.”

“Doesn’t that seem fucked-up to you, Chip?” asked Herman.

But Chip was ignoring him. He was shuffling his way deeper into the papers. “Palladium, Palladium, Palladium,” he said. “If it’s a mistake, then they’ve made the same mistake the whole way across the board. It’s not our fault. We run with it.”

“That place is huge,” said White Herman. “You’re telling me this band is gonna sell enough tickets to fill it up?”

Chip turned toward him, a look of irritation immediately on his face. “I’m not telling you anything except get rid of these tickets,” he said. “These comps are the only tickets.”