THE BLACK ALBUM: A Hollywood Horror Story

by Carlton Kenneth Holder

  Lizzy glanced out the window, “Isn’t the snow beautiful, mommy?”

  At the cabin, the stairs down were just a steep ski slope of snow. Fortunately the filmmaker had had the foresight to leave a shovel at the top of the stairs. He used it to clear step after step as he made his way down, Charlotte helping Lizzy down right behind him. The front door was essentially buried in an arch of snow. Loveless cleared it out as fast as he could, his hands growing numb under the gloves.

  Inside, he built a roaring fire as Charlotte helped her daughter change into dry clothes and set the girl up with blankets and pillows on the couch in front of the fireplace. The filmmaker and the actress took turns changing out of their wet clothes into dry things, while the other remained with Lizzy. Afterwards, Loveless sat on the throw rug on the floor by the fire sipping a glass of merlot, while Charlotte massaged and doted over her daughter. Lizzy had a huge dreamy smile on her face. The girl was having a good trip. The filmmaker was thankful for that and hoped it continued. Things could get so much more worse if her acid trip became a bummer.

  After some thought, Loveless got up. He went around the house locking all the doors and windows. Securing the perimeter. Downstairs, in the same closet in the game room where he had found the record player, the filmmaker hunted for what he knew he would find there: a large long metal box with a padlock. He pulled out the set of keys he had been given by his buddy for the cabin. Loveless found a small key that looked like it would fit the padlock. It did. He pulled the double-barrel shotgun out of the box. Along with it was a silver revolver and boxes of ammo for each of the weapons. The filmmaker loaded the revolver first and stuffed it into his pants under his belt like he had seen in countless movies. For a fleeting moment he wondered if any notorious gunslinger had ever accidentally shot his own dick off. Next the filmmaker loaded the shotgun and hefted it over his shoulder. At that moment, Loveless felt powerful; the power one felt when they knew, without a doubt, that they could take the life of another. The filmmaker just hoped it wouldn’t come to that. But his gut kept telling him otherwise. Loveless felt the cold veil of death riding in on the storm. When he returned upstairs, Charlotte took the sight of the armed man in in stages.

  “Expect the best. Prepare for the worst.”

  “I don’t like guns, J.D.”

  “The blizzard would make a perfect distraction.”

  “For what?” Charlotte said, not sure she wanted to know.

  “For something to happen to us. Local law enforcement and the fire department are going to have their hands full with this storm.”

  The actress waited for a long time before she said, “Do you really think anyone wants to harm us?”

  “You heard what Lamont said,” Loveless replied grimly. “You and your daughter lived on this mountain for two years. Why did he wait for now, the day we finished filming, to make a move on your daughter?”

  “As soon as this storm is over, Lizzy and I are out of here. I talked to my sister in Santa Monica. She told me we could stay with her for as long as we want while we look for an apartment. She’s got plenty of room and is out of town a lot for her job. These hillbilly fucks can have this damn mountain. I’m selling my condo and never coming back.”

  “I think that’s a wise decision. When this storm is done, I’ll help you pack up. When you leave for Los Angeles, I’ll head to Vegas.”

  “Why Vegas?”

  “A college buddy of mine lives out there. He edits commercials for the casinos. Has a complete editing bay in his house. He told me I could crash there while we finish editing the film. It’ll only be a few weeks at this point. I wouldn’t have to worry about finding a place to live while trying to finish the movie.”

  “Are you sure you want to finish the movie?”

  Loveless saw the look of fear in the woman’s eyes. He knew what she felt because he felt it too. When they were shooting, they were so worried about not finishing the movie. Now that they were finished filming the movie, they were just as scared, if not more, about releasing it out into the world. This perturbation stemmed not from the worry that the film was no good - it was good, they knew it was good, as well as scary - but that the misfortunate and bizarre events of the shoot would follow them for the rest of their lives. A sort of damnation on earth. Loveless put down the shotgun and closed the gap, resting his hands caressingly on Charlotte’s shoulders. He would have to be the strong one here. He would have to lie to her and himself, at least pretend that it was alright. Hell, maybe it even would be. “We see it through, to completion. That’s the deal. Right? This is our investment. Our stake. Our future.”

  “If we’re still alive to capitalize on it, J.D.” Charlotte looked deeply into the filmmaker’s eyes, searching for any signs of uncertainty in them. “I don’t want to become an urban legend. I don’t want you, me or my daughter to be a cautionary tale they tell around a campfire to scare the hell out of misbehaving children.”

  “We won’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  Loveless opened his mouth, not sure what answer, if any, he had for her, when he was interrupted by Lizzy’s disconcerting little girl giggle. “Marshmallows go good with campfires. You know that?” The teenager frowned slightly as she looked deep into the fire. “You just have to be sure not to burn your mouth. And you can’t listen when they say things to you. Crackle and pop. Marshmallows always say things to you. They say bad things when they think you’re not listening.”

  Loveless ended up sleeping on the floor in front of the fireplace atop a sleeping bag, under two thick blankets. The fire hadn’t yet gone out. As the starter log had burned down, it had ignited the fat wood log Loveless had thrown on top. Now the log no longer spun flames. It merely glowed orange as it smoldered, becoming less dense with each ash that flew off it. Charlotte fell asleep on the big, soft couch curled up around her daughter. They were covered in the down comforter the filmmaker had tucked them in with.

  It was the slight scraping that first woke the filmmaker up. He looked around groggily, then remembered where he was. Snow was still falling outside the window, engulfing the walls and windows of the cabin home. Loveless marveled. They were truly being snowed-in. He absently felt for the gun in his belt, then stiffened when he realized it wasn’t there. The filmmaker sat up. From where he was he could see that Charlotte, still asleep, was alone on the couch. Loveless grabbed the shotgun that lay next to him and stood up. Lizzy was sitting at the dining area table. The candles she had lit illuminated her and the Ouija board that sat in front of her. It was the Hell board. The one the filmmaker had found in the ruins. The one with Mathaluh painted across its face and the accompanying bloodshot eyeball planchette. Lizzy’s two hands rested on the planchette.

  “Lizzy- Lizzy, do you have my gun?” Loveless said as calmly as possible as he made his way slowly towards her, like a police officer inching forward while trying to talk a suicidal citizen down off a ledge.

  The planchette jerked suddenly, taking Lizzy’s hands with it, making the filmmaker jump.

  “No,” Lizzy said decidedly with a girlish giggle as the planchette rested on the word no. In her mind, the filmmaker could tell, she was merely playing a board game.

  Loveless felt something wet under his feet. Over his shoulder, he could hear Charlotte starting to stir. He wanted to get to Lizzy before her mother woke up and became alarmed. The filmmaker didn’t want the girl to become rattled.

  “Do you know where my gun is?”

  Instantly the hands jerked across the board with the planchette again. “Yes,” Lizzy giggled, nodding her head diligently. She was having fun playing the game.

  “J.D.” Charlotte’s voice drifted over lazily. “Where’s Lizzy?”

  Loveless was almost to the table. He couldn’t see the gun. Charlotte climbed off the couch. She looked in the direction the filmmaker was looking and saw her daughter. “Lizzy?”

  “Jeremy wanted you to know. You have it all wrong. He’s not a demon at all.”


  “Lizzy, what are you talking about, baby?”

  “Lizzy, please tell me where my gun is.”

  Charlotte’s face paled at the thought of her acid-tripping teenage daughter with a firearm.

  The teenage girl nodded past Loveless, to the balcony door. “He has it.”

  At that moment, the filmmaker felt another wet puddle through his socks. This time he realized what they were: footprints. Footprints that had carried in with them snow and ice. From outside. Loveless turned and raised the shotgun as he barked at Charlotte, “Take your daughter, go into the bedroom and lock the door.”

  “But-”

  “Go!”

  Charlotte grabbed her daughter and dragged her into the bedroom. Loveless felt relief as he heard the click of the lock. He followed the tiny puddles to the balcony door. The filmmaker couldn’t see anything but white snow and black sky on the other side of the glass. He braced himself and threw the balcony door open. Wind and snow snarled and whipped at Loveless as it poured into the living room. The filmmaker pushed against the wind as he stepped out onto the large balcony.

  Donovan stood at the far end, completely naked, hands behind him. A frosty bottle of tequila rested on the railing next to him. The bottle was half empty. How long Donovan had been standing there, Loveless couldn’t be sure. But the snow was up to the man’s kneecaps. His skin was a blistered red, icicles forming on his body. The man had to already have frostbite by this point. Donovan shivered. His eyes were rolled back in his head. Upon sensing Loveless' presence, his eyelids flickered and his eyes returned, looking mournfully at the filmmaker. Donovan’s teeth chattered when he spoke. “You should have seen it, J.D. The road to Big Bear. The highway was impassable. All the cars, trucks nearly covered over in snow. People frozen to death in their cars, like popsicles. Their faces- just masks of fucken horror. All you could see left of some vehicles were the snowboards and skies sticking up out of their sunroofs, on their ski racks, like god damn tombstones. I’d have been there with them if rangers in tractors hadn’t pulled me out.” Tears running down his face were frozen by the time they hit his jawline.

  “Donovan, come inside before you freeze to death, man.”

  “NO!” The blood-curdling screech came from the man whose throat was nearly frozen solid. “It’s all your fault, J.D. You just had to make this movie. The only reason I’m here now, the only reason I’m alive, is ‘cause he wanted you to see. He wanted you to feel it. He wanted you to bear witness, be responsible, be held accountable. He saved me because he wanted you to watch.”

  Loveless had a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Watch what?”

  Donovan was full on sobbing now. “He just wanted you to see- this.” The fledgling producer drew the gun from behind his back, put it to his temple and pulled the trigger in one deft motion. "Martini shot."

  Loveless jolted with the sound of the gun blast that echoed throughout the forest as the exit wound on the other side of Donovan’s head geysered blood and the man fell back, flipped over the balcony railing and disappeared out of sight.

  The howling in the hills began suddenly, filling the woods, traveling closer, becoming louder, echoing throughout the filmmaker’s skull. It was a full ten seconds before Loveless could make himself move. He shuffled through the snow, across the deck. When he could force himself to peer over the railing, he saw a swarm of coyotes starting to devour what was left of Donovan.

  “GET AWAY FROM HIM!”

  The coyotes didn’t leave until the filmmaker fired a shotgun blast into the ravenous pack. They scattered into the shadows, their eyes shining out of this darkness, waiting to see if Loveless would leave so they could return. Their hot meal was left undone, getting cold.

  The filmmaker sank down to his knees, resting his forehead against the side of the still warm shotgun. Out the corner of his eye, he could see the neighbor Dorothy on her balcony. Loveless, blood in his throat, screamed, “CALL 911!”

  Dorothy ran inside the house. Loveless looked up and saw Charlotte standing in the balcony doorway. She was looking at the blood pattern in the snow. A cherry slushy. “Wha-”

  “Donovan,” was all the filmmaker could say. He was now covered in snow himself.

  Charlotte ran to the balcony railing and looked over. If it had been a scene Loveless was directing, the woman’s air-piercing, blood-curdling, night-shattering scream would have been the exact same punctuation he would have put on it. Cut and scene.

  The snow continued to fall, covering everything and everyone. A white blanket for a cruel world, erasing the evidence of its own indiscriminating savagery. A bandaid for a bloody stump. The world bled white.

  White.

  All white.

  Chapter Seven

  I Will Burn With You

  Loveless stood in the Red Rock Casino parking lot and watched Beauregard Freidkin, all his questions finally answered, drive away. The dingy white van pulled off leaving a trail of gray exhaust fumes billowing in its wake. In direct contrast to the mountains, the desert night air was hot and dry, the landscape flat, the velvet sky full of dead stars that looked very much alive. It felt good to the filmmaker to have unburdened his soul as they say, to have confessed his sins. Loveless had spent so long burying and trying to forget these memories, the past three odd months. He had quit the editing of the movie nearly three weeks after arriving in Vegas. Trouble had followed him down off the mountain and found his friend as well. Tim Spring, his college buddy who edited commercial spots for a number of casinos, began experiencing a string of bad luck upon Loveless’ arrival. Tim accidentally erased a hard drive with the master copy of a commercial he had just finished editing for a major casino, along with all the raw footage for the project. Strangely enough, all the back-ups were gone as well. Then his fiancée of three years, a woman who had been healthy her whole life, suddenly became extremely ill, finally being diagnosed with a strain of an African disease not seen in half a century, despite the fact she had never been outside the continental United States. They had been planning their June wedding. His fiancée wouldn’t live to see June. Loveless finally abandoned editing “The Black Album” altogether the day his friend’s Prius was sideswiped by a tractor trailer. Tim had survived, but had to wear a body cast for eight months and a nasty scar down the side of his face for the rest of his life.

  That was it for Loveless. Like any hapless pug from palookaville who was on the ropes and about to go down for the count, he knew when to throw in the towel. It was just too much. The filmmaker boxed up the movie, put it in storage, rented a cheap room by the week and began drinking heavily while working on a crime action screenplay he was hired to write by one of his regular indie producers who commissioned him from time to time. Actually, the writing of the crime script was what had been keeping Loveless going, functioning. The filmmaker always enjoyed the concept of making a deadline and receiving a payday. The problem was he had finished the screenplay, sent if off and been compensated for it two days before the Freak King paid him a visit.

  Now there was nothing left to do.

  After talking to Freaky, the ghost memories were once more alive and well, swirling to the surface of his cerebral cortex, reanimating, circulating, resurrecting. ‘We want more life, fuckah,’ these phantoms seemed to be saying. Loveless no longer had the will to fight them. He was dogged tired. The worse part was he was going out as a failure.

  I made such a damn good movie. A truly scary movie,’ Loveless thought quietly. ‘The scariest movie no one will ever see.

  The filmmaker drove to the seedy part of town one more time that night. This time he went to a shitty little pawn shop he had heard of, a pawn shop of questionable ethics where few questions, if any, were asked. Which is what Loveless counted on. Without benefit of paperwork or ID, he bought a cheap black dented and scratched snub nose .38 - what they used to call in his neighborhood in Brooklyn a Saturday night special. The shop owner, a hell of a guy, very generously threw in a box of ammo for free. Next Lov
eless hit an all night liquor store and bought a fifth of whiskey. Then he drove into the desert.

  Loveless had always wondered what it was that had coursed through Donovan’s mind right before the bullet coursed through his mind. Was he possessed, just a graveyard marionette in the hands of the Devil’s manipulations, or just truly scared to death? The filmmaker wanted the answer. He needed it. And for that answer, Loveless was now willing to gamble everything. He was in the right city for it.

  Loveless pulled off a long lonely road and drove a mile into the desert. He got out, sat on the hood of his truck and drank liberally of the whiskey. When he couldn’t stomach anymore. He lined the bottle up, walked a distance away, then turned and fired at the bottle. He hit it on his second shot, satisfying two concerns: 1) that he could hit the side of a barn. 2) that the cheap revolver actually worked.

  It was time.

  Loveless made a toasty little fire. It sizzled and popped as he tossed all the hard-drives with all the footage for the movie onto the flames. He added the Hell board and all the other stuff from the band’s crate as well. The filmmaker watched everything spark and melt. A piece of him melted with the hard-drives.

  “Good riddance.” When everything was good and gone, he snuffed out the fire with handfuls of dirt.