THE BLACK ALBUM: A Hollywood Horror Story

by Carlton Kenneth Holder

  “Maybe, but that doesn’t change what’s happened. Wayne, the boy who died, had been playing around the ruins of the band’s house days before he- ,” the girl’s words, a near whisper, trailed off altogether.

  “Lizzy, are any of the kids you know, kids at school, involved in Satanic ceremonies in the woods?”

  “Stop it, J.D,” Charlotte said.

  Lizzy answered the question, “Some.”

  Charlotte looked back slowly at her daughter.

  “Older kids. Dropouts. I hear they have these parties. In the woods. At night.”

  “Any adults?”

  “J.D!”

  “Some. Just random people who’ve been pointed out to me at Starbucks, McDonalds, at the movies. Regular people mostly. Fathers, barbers, lumberjacks - teachers. People you’d never suspect. I don’t know if these kids are making it up or not.”

  “Enough. Enough. I don’t want to hear anymore from either of you. And, Lizzy, you do not, I mean it, you do not hang out with any kids you even think are involved in any of that!” The timber of Charlotte’s voice made Lizzy and Loveless shut up. “I’m so tempted to quit right now it isn’t funny. To just stop. I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all.”

  “You can’t stop, Mommy.”

  Now the filmmaker and the actress both looked at each other. Loveless studied Lizzy through the rearview mirror as Charlotte turned all the way around in her car seat and looked at her daughter. “Why not, baby?”

  The pronouncement that ended all conversation for the rest of the ride back up the mountain drifted up to them low, even and in the most innocent of voices, “Because he won’t let you stop.”

  Loveless and Charlotte didn’t ask who he was.

  The last day of shooting ended three days later uneventfully and unceremoniously. Like many films, most of the small and minor scenes were left to the end. Tedious little things. It was no different with “The Black Album” shoot. Most of the cast and crew didn’t even realize they were shooting the last shot of the last scene, with the exception of Matty, Loveless and Charlotte, until the filmmaker announced, “Martini shot!”

  Donovan was on hand for the end. He had driven up two days earlier and looked much better after having distanced himself from the latter half of the movie shoot. The headaches were still there, but now just a dim echo in his brainpan that any over the counter pain medication could numb. Donovan had his snowboard and gear with him and was headed up to Big Bear afterwards. On the way back, he would meet back up with Loveless and Charlotte to discuss strategy for the sale of the film.

  Donovan was standing right next to Loveless. “What’s that mean, J.D?”

  “Last shot of last scene of every film, the director calls ‘martini shot.’ Except in Mexico. They call ‘tequila shot’ and bring over a tray full of shots of tequila for everyone in the cast and crew.”

  “Next time we’re filming in Meheco,” Charlotte said cheerfully. Everyone’s spirits seemed lifted, now that the end was at hand.

  Matty signaled to Loveless that he was ready. The filmmaker called action. The scene played through without error. Moments later, "Cut.”

  “Checking the gate.” Matty pulled out a pen flashlight to check the lens of the digital camera he had been shooting with. After that he reviewed what they had just shot on a small monitor. Satisfied there were no obstructions to the shot on the screen like a hair or dust particle, Matty reported, “Gate clear.”

  “Well, folks, that’s a wrap.” Loveless didn’t realize how relieved he was until that exact moment.

  “And not a second too soon,” Charlotte said as she looked to the sky. The clouds that had been gathering in the distance for the last five days - since Della’s eerie-as-hell prediction - had finally become one humungous mass, headed right for the mountain, loaded for bear.

  Matty consulted the weather app on his cell. “Check this out. They’re predicting a blizzard.”

  “Blizzard,” Loveless echoed. “Did they actually use the word blizzard?”

  “That’s my cue,” Donovan hooted - excited about the extreme weather - as he hugged Charlotte and shook hands with everyone else. “I’ve gotta shred the gnar on some serious white powder. Catch you two on the way back down. We’ll chat then ‘bout what comes next.” A heartbeat later, the fledgling producer Donovan was gone.

  The filmmaker looked at Matty. “We better get you and our other out-of-towners down the mountain before the storm hits.” Matty, the actress playing Grace’s sister, and the actor playing Grace’s love interest were the only out-of-town cast members still in Arrowhead. Loveless had ‘shot out’ the actor playing the demon Jeremy in one week, mid-shoot, and sent him back to Los Angeles. The filmmaker had scheduled all Jeremy’s scenes back to back because he was the most high profile actor they had in the movie. He had once guest starred on the short- lived TV series “Firefly,” which was the filmmaker’s favorite guilty pleasure cult show.

  “We’ve all got our stuff packed,” Matty said speaking for himself and the others, who were waiting for him at the house that had been rented for them throughout the shoot. “We all rode together, so we’re good to go.”

  “Thanks a lot for everything, Matty. You did an outstanding job. If the weather wasn’t about to turn ugly, I’d have suggested you and the others stay one more night, so we could take you out for dinner and drinks.” Loveless looked at the clouds again. “But if you stayed, you’d likely be snowed in for days.” He handed the cinematographer three envelopes containing the final paychecks for him and the two actors. “We’ll all do lunch in LA.”

  “Thanks. I hear ya, man. No worries. I’ll tell the others you said bye.” Matty man-hugged Loveless, kissed Charlotte on the cheek and took off fast, looking over his shoulder at the heavy gray clouds moving across the sky like a pregnant blanket.

  The actress took out her cell and looked at the display. A concerned look spread over her face.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I didn't want to say anything earlier, because I didn't think it was anything. Lizzy’s hanging out with her friends. She was supposed to text me two hours ago where she’d be at so I could pick her up. She hasn't. I’m worried.”

  “I can have Jerry and Collin wrap the equipment up and drop it off by my place. I’ll go with you to look for Lizzy. We don’t want to get caught out in the storm.”

  “Thanks, J.D.”

  As Loveless sped through the mountains, the roads were eerily barren as if a worldwide pandemic or zombie invasion had wiped out the general populace. The residents of the mountains had seen the storm clouds coming and they were battening down the hatches. Hunkering in. As the filmmaker drove, Charlotte called all of Lizzy’s friends. None had seen her. Desperate, the actress had Loveless stop at Starbucks. The place was virtually empty. Carla was one of two employees behind the counter. The other employee was busy putting things away, preparing to close in a hurry.

  “Carla, have you seen Lizzy?”

  “No, Ms. Rae. It’s like I told you on the phone, I’ve been working all day.”

  Charlotte gave Carla a stern maternal gaze. The teenager wilted under it. “Carla, you only call me Ms. Rae when you’re hiding something from me. You know where she is.”

  “She made me promise not to tell. But I’m worried. She’s hanging out with some older kids.”

  “What?” Charlotte was now completely alarmed.

  “I have to get back to work.”

  That wasn’t going to work with Charlotte. The mother grabbed Carla’s arm and held it. “Where’s Lizzy at? Who’s she with? You tell me right now, Carla.”

  “I don’t know them. Brent knows them. Lamont, kids who run with him.”

  Charlotte continued to look Carla in the eye for several more seconds to make sure she was telling the truth. Convinced, she let go of the teen. The mother knew who Lamont was. He was a nineteen year old who was generally regarded as bad news. A trouble-maker. Lamont had been kicked out of school on several
occasions, until he was finally kicked out for good. He’d also been arrested. Charlotte had seen this kid around before and didn’t like the looks of him one bit: curly black locks, tall, gaunt, Goth with a fuck you smirk perpetually plastered across his pasty white face, a nasty attitude, and some serious anger management issues. She got a horrifyingly bad vibe as she thought of the way Lamont would look at Lizzy as he said hi, when they would come across him at the store or some other place in town. The mother could feel him checking out both her and her daughter’s asses after they had walked by. It gave Charlotte the chills. “Come on, J.D.”

  In the SUV, Charlotte directed Loveless. “I bet Brent knows where Lamont is.”

  They entered the clearing at the Rock. It was now dusk, but seemed later. The scant bit of daylight there was left wasn’t helped by the thick gray storm clouds bearing down. Charlotte got out and headed around back to where the kids hung out. Loveless followed.

  Brent and some of the others were standing around the fire-pit. They weren’t sitting down on the rocks that surrounded it as usual because the winds were whipping the flames wildly. It would have been hazardous to get any closer. The teens shuffled back and forth on their feet for warmth, hoodies up, hands tightly in pockets. It obviously wouldn’t be a late night hanging at the Rock. Red faces and runny noses were about to chase them all home.

  When Brent noticed Charlotte approaching, Loveless saw the teen mouth something under his breath along the lines of, “Oh shit!”

  Hell hath no fury like a lioness looking for her cub, the filmmaker thought. But with each passing moment, Loveless was getting more concerned for Lizzy as well.

  “Where is she, Brent?” Charlotte said as she got within voice range. The other teens, hearing that parental tone in her voice, dispersed into the night, leaving Brent on his own. “Thanks guys,” Brent retorted with dripping sarcasm to his fair-weather friends, then turned to Charlotte, “What makes you think I know where the fuck she is?”

  “Curse or lie to her again, I’ll knock your teeth down your throat.” Although few people ever saw it, Loveless had a mean streak earned from growing up in a very bad area of Brooklyn. He was so calm people sometimes mistook him for passive. It was a bad mistake to make with someone from the wrong part of the ghetto when he was in a foul mood.

  Charlotte turned to Loveless. “It’s okay, J.D. I can handle this.” The mother didn’t like seeing an adult threaten a kid. Brent was nearly seventeen. She turned back to the teen. “Please tell me where she is, Brent.”

  “I don’t know, Ms. Rae. I’d tell you if I knew.”

  “He’s lying, Charlotte.”

  “Fuck you, Jack Daniels. You’re a damn grown-up. You can’t threaten me.”

  Brent was a punk. The filmmaker knew the kid was a punk from the first time they met. Loveless was on the kid in seconds, one hand around the kid’s throat, the other twisting his arm behind his back.”

  “What the fuck, man?” Brent croaked in a last stab at bravado.

  “J.D!” Charlotte shouted, startled.

  As the filmmaker held fast to Brent, he looked over at Charlotte. “You want your daughter back, right? He knows where she is.”

  Brent glowered at him, then glanced over to Charlotte for help. The mother looked from Brent to Loveless, then stepped back, out of the filmmaker’s way.

  Loveless squeezed tighter. “Where the fuck is she?”

  “The altar,” Brent squawked.

  Loveless let go, giving the kid a shove to send him on his way. “She better be there.”

  “She is, man. She is. Just don’t tell Lamont I told you.” Brent backed away towards the woods that were as much home to him as the rundown family house he lived in with his mother and two sisters. Right before the forest swallowed him, Brent pointed an accusatory finger at Loveless. “You’ve got a real attitude problem, man. You know that.”

  “I know,” Loveless said quietly as he and Charlotte were already heading towards the SUV.

  The storm clouds ruptured simultaneously. The first wave of snow hit on the way to the altar. Charlotte knew how to get there during the day, but with daylight all but gone and the first snow starting to fall, she was panicking. It seemed like forever before they even found the spot where her and Loveless had parked the first time they had hiked to the arcane altar in the middle of the timberland. The filmmaker pulled out two flashlights - he had gotten into the habit of carrying them during the shoot as they were always needed for something or the other - and gave one to the worry-stricken mother.

  “I’m not sure I remember how to-”

  Loveless, seeing the doubt in her face, cut Charlotte off, “Don’t panic. Think through it. You know how to get there. You’ve been there before.”

  “In daylight.”

  “You know how to get there. Now which way?”

  Charlotte focused as she looked around. “Okay, there. That trail.”

  The trail wasn’t much of a trail. It was overgrown with bushes, weeds and the like. The first time they had made their way to the altar, the filmmaker hadn’t even realized they were on a trail. The woods were now covered with a layer of fresh snow. Charlotte and Loveless heard rock music as they approached the small clearing in which the ugly stone atrocity sat. It was that same black death metal the filmmaker had heard twice before on the mountain. Loveless took the lead.

  The altar was covered by a canvas tarp. One end of the tarp was tied around the stone demigod’s neck and covered the altar like a tent, the other ends anchored to the shackles. The ropes that held it were taunt and held fast against the wind whistling past. Underneath the canvas, in the little homemade camping tent, laying on an unrolled sleeping bag, were Lamont and Lizzy. The older teen was on top of the fifteen year old, kissing her, pulling at her clothing. Lizzy looked all but oblivious.

  In one fluid motion, the filmmaker picked up the portable stereo that sat on the altar spewing unintelligible lyrics and smashed it against a boulder. The death rock died abruptly. Next, he ripped Lamont off of Lizzy, flung him around and tossed him to the ground hard.

  “FUCK,” Lamont screamed like a wild animal.

  Charlotte was relieved to see that Lizzy and the boy’s clothes were still pretty much intact. They hadn’t yet gotten to where Lamont wanted to go. The dark sky opened up and the falling snow tripled in volume and density. The teen saw Charlotte as he got to his feet. The woman was already headed over to her daughter. Loveless kept both eyes on Lamont. A lesson he had learned in Brooklyn was: once you put your hands on someone, you don’t take your eyes off of them. It was at that moment that the filmmaker saw the blood dripping green thorn bracelet tattoo on Lamont's right arm and realized he was the executioner outside Gary's Arcade Asylum who had pummeled another boy on Halloween night in front of other feral youth.

  “Come on, man. We weren’t doin’ anything, lady.”

  Charlotte examined Lizzy, whose only reaction was, “Mom.”

  The mother looked at Loveless, “She’s on something.”

  The filmmaker looked Lamont in the eyes as the teen got to his feet, “What’d she take?” “Just some weed, man. Blazin’. That’s all.”

  Charlotte looked at her daughter again, then back to Loveless, “He’s lying.”

  “What’d she take?” the filmmaker growled, closing the gap between him and Lamont. The teen pulled a knife as he backed away, thinking about his options. Loveless shined the light in the teen’s eyes and kept moving forward. In a lucid moment, Lamont realized they were more concerned about helping Lizzy than hurting him.

  “Acid,” the teen said as he lowered the knife. “We dropped a tab.”

  “Acid!” Charlotte said mortified.

  “I didn’t force her. She wanted to.”

  “Let’s take her back to my place and stay with her. There’s not much more we can do.” Lamont saw that they were done with him. He rushed past Loveless towards the path.

  The filmmaker tripped the teen. The knife went flying into bushes
. Next, Loveless snatched the car keys out the teen's other hand and ripped the cell phone out of his pocket. From the ground, Lamont kicked at Loveless, but the filmmaker had already backed out of range.

  “What the hell, man?”

  “I’m not letting you go so you can slash our tires before we get to our car. Or call your backwoods cult buddies.” Loveless tossed the teen’s keys and cell into the woods. “Go fetch, fucker!”

  “You can’t leave me out here like this. I told you I dropped acid.”

  “Call a cop. ‘Course then you’d have to tell him what you were doing out here with a minor.”

  Lamont screamed at the filmmaker even as he scrambled around wildly looking for his car keys and phone, “You’re dead, man. DEAD! Don’t think we don’t know about you. You ain’t making it off this mountain, Loveless.”

  The filmmaker had already dismissed Lamont. He was too busy helping Charlotte get Lizzy back to the car. Loveless would have carried the girl, but he thought it was a good idea that she walk. Get the shit through her system that much sooner.

  The roads had become treacherous. The temperature dropped and the slushy snow that had already touched down was turning into thick, slick ice. The accumulation was building. There was a foot of snow, maybe more. Without chains on the SUV’s tires, the truck fish-tailed at any mild turn of the steering wheel. Charlotte - in the back with Lizzy - had one arm pressed across her daughter’s chest, even though the girl was wearing her seatbelt. The woman braced her other hand against the vehicle ceiling. The breath went out of her with each glissade.

  “We’re almost there,” Loveless tried to reassure Charlotte. He had snow chains for his tires in the back of the SUV. But the filmmaker didn’t want to waste time stopping to put them on. They would be buried by the time he got the chains on. The filmmaker didn’t dare stop. It was getting worse by the minute and this was only the beginning. Charlotte looked out the window in disbelief. Before living on the mountain, she had spent many long weekends and vacations up here with her ex. They would always spend the winter holidays in their condo retreat huddled up by a fire with baby Lizzy. Since moving here two years ago, Charlotte thought she had seen everything nature and the mountain could throw at them: wild fires, barks beetles infesting the forest and killing a quarter of all the trees on the mountain, snow, and rain storms. But the actress and mother had never seen anything like the storm that was raging outside her passenger side window. In all the time she had spent in Lake Arrowhead and the surrounding mountain townships, she had never experienced a blizzard. The snow was piling up right before her eyes. Loveless had to drive around snow drifts that were too substantial to drive over.