THE BLACK ALBUM: A Hollywood Horror Story
Page 19
Next, Loveless opened the barrel of the gun and put a bullet in every other chamber. Three bullets. Three empty chambers. A fifty-fifty chance. The filmmaker spun the chamber like a roulette wheel, put the gun to his head, trembling finger on the trigger. “I surrender myself to a higher power." If the only luck he had left was bad, then Loveless preferred to go there and then rather than drawing it out over the course of one long lonely miserable lifetime. His finger began to squeeze the trigger. Right before he pulled it, Loveless blurted out something purely spontaneous, something he didn’t know he was going to say until he said it, “I love you, Charlotte.” He pulled the trigger as he squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his teeth.
Ten seconds later, the filmmaker opened his eyes. His brain matter was still in his head. He was still alive. However, not ten feet in front of him sat a rather large and sullen bobcat. It was staring directly at the filmmaker. For a second, Loveless was unsure if it was going to attack or not. The filmmaker didn’t know what to do, then he looked into its eyes. Was this a sign? Six seconds went by this way, animal and man gazing into the orbs of the other, then the bobcat yawned, turned and walked into midnight. Had this been an emissary of the dark side sent to give the filmmaker an eleventh hour reprieve? Were they, whoever they were, satisfied that he had no intention of finishing the film? Like the vampire of legend, his movie would never see the light of day. Had the curse finally been broken? It must have, the filmmaker thought. A cursed man would have surely died. The next thing he thought of was the last words that he had uttered before pulling the trigger. ‘I love you, Charlotte.’ And Loveless did. He did love Charlotte. The only woman he had known who didn’t care whether he was rich or poor. The only woman who had supported his dreams and inspired him to go on. It was easy to make love to a pretty woman. But to wake up next to her the following morning and want to spend not just that morning, but the rest of the day with her, was something else all together. That was how he felt about Charlotte. Loveless had never told the woman he loved her. And, in return, Charlotte had never whispered those powerful intimate words to him, whether she felt them or not. He regretted not having said the words. He regretted not having been brave enough to risk having his heart broken.
Suddenly, the filmmaker heard a weird sound echoing throughout black desert. The sound was laughter. It took him several more moments to realize it was his own laughter.
Beauregard Freidkin jolted back to reality in the unkept university dorm room that was his domicile, to the sound of Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell.” It was his ring tone. The shock jock journalist had had just enough time to get back from Vegas, wolf down some frozen burritos, two cervasas, do a bong hit and fall into the sack. Beauregard was fatigued from his journey. He had a meeting with the school radio station director the next day to discuss the format and content of his radio show, which would be debuting in a couple of weeks on campus radio.
“Hello?” Beauregard said groggily, squinting at the cell phone display trying to make sense of the time. It was 3:37 AM.
“Where is she?” It was Loveless.
The journalist recognized the voice instantly. He sat up. This review was not quite over.
“Loveless, that you?”
“Where’s Charlotte Rae? You said you interviewed her? You have an address on her?
“Yeah. Hold on a second. Lemme find my notes.” The journalist fumbled around for a moment before finding his agenda book. He rattled off the Los Angeles address to the filmmaker. “Are you alright, J.D.?”
“Gotta go. I’ve got a long drive ahead of me,” was all Loveless said. Then he added, “Thanks, Beauregard. Good luck on the radio show.”
Beauregard was going to say something, but Loveless had already hung up. The journalist decided that the tenor he had detected in the filmmaker’s voice was optimism. He laid back in bed in the dark, phone on his chest. After several minutes, a smile spread across the Freak King’s face. Beauregard fell asleep smiling. That night, for once, he didn’t have a single nightmare.
It was early on the Three Street Promenade in Santa Monica, Los Angeles. The sea air from the nearby Pacific sent a gentle breeze wafting down sunny blocks. Here it was almost always blue skies and sunshine. It was April and spring was in the air. Charlotte lived on Fifth Street next to the Whole Foods. Like any creature of habit, she would wake up every morning jonesing for Starbucks. The mother would drive her daughter to school and hit the coffee shop on the way back to her sister’s apartment, which had recently become her apartment. Charlotte’s sister Rita had met an architect who swept her off her feet. Rita moved in with him and became pregnant and engaged in that order. The couple were currently figuring out the logistics of planning a wedding and a birth, hopefully in that order. So, Charlotte took over her sister’s lease.
The woman, wearing designer sweat pants, hoodie, hood up, and sunglasses, stepped into the Starbucks. She was not a morning person. Charlotte usually had her coffee while surfing the Internet, before getting down to work. Her work consisted mostly of phone calls.
“I’ll have a-”
“Venti vanilla mocha with whip cream,” a voice from behind finished the order for her.
Charlotte spun around to find J.D. Loveless standing behind her. Although elated to see him and relieved to find that he was safe - the filmmaker had not returned her phone calls after the first couple of weeks of being out in Vegas - the woman weighed whether she should be pissed off or not. Charlotte chose the middle ground with a guarded, “What happened to you?”
“Did you have any events here in Los Angeles?” Loveless asked concerned.
Charlotte realized the filmmaker wanted to know if she still wore the chain of bad luck around her pretty little neck like an albatross. “Not a thing. Everything has been normal. Lizzy’s even adjusted to her new school and has some really nice friends this time around.”
“Good.” Loveless was relieved to hear that. He stopped staying in contact with the woman because he felt that by continuing to do so, the stench of the curse would continue to cling to both of them.
“What about you?”
When Loveless didn’t immediately answer and looked away with a fragmented smile, Charlotte realized the filmmaker hadn’t fared as well. “Things didn't go well in Vegas. It didn’t stop, until I stopped.”
“So you didn’t finish the movie?”
“No,” Loveless said feeling like a complete and utter loser. “It’s toast.”
It was Charlotte who surprised him. “Good. Some things are just not meant to be. We woke something up messing around with things we weren’t supposed to.”
“I guess.” Loveless shuffled his feet uncomfortably. “How have you been?”
“If you’re asking me if I’m seeing anyone, the answer is no. What about you?” Charlotte was as direct as ever.
“Me? No.”
“Good. What are your plans?”
“Keep writing. Maybe I’ll even write a book someday.”
“I mean today. Right now. I’m going back to my place. You can join me if you want. I was going to work for a couple of hours, then hit the beach before I have to pick Lizzy up from school. Catch some rays.” The beach was beautiful, covered in warm weather and sunbathers. “How ‘bout it? You wanna burn with me?”
“Absolutely.”
They exited the Starbuck hand in hand.
If this had been a movie, at that moment the camera would have pulled out as the happy couple walked down the boulevard, as the music swelled, and the credits ran. But it wasn’t a movie, merely two people’s lives. Two people who had been through a real life horror story and lived to tell about it.
Epilogue
Re-ignition
White hot sunlight.
The kids zoomed around the desert whooping and hollering on their ATVs as they kicked up dust trails. One slowed as he neared the remains of a recent campfire. Everything in it was a melted gob of black guck that still smelt of burnt plastic, metal and wires. When the kid poked the blackened H
ell board with a stick, it disintegrated into ashes.
A few feet away, the kid found the record, which had somehow slipped out of its sleeve and rolled away, escaping the blaze. The kid stopped his ATV, got off, removed his helmet and picked up the record.
“Dark Ballad,” the kid read the inscription, spun the record on his finger and slipped it into his backpack. “Cool.” He jumped back on the ATV and raced off to catch up to the others.
Somewhere in the desert, “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones was playing.