“You gonna record this?”
“Yeah. If you don’t mind. I also usually take notes too. I don’t like to rely on any one thing when I-”
“Can I get you something?” the harsh looking waitress blared, cutting me off mid- sentence as she dropped two greasy plastic menus on the table. The lines in her Mount Rushmore stone face were covered over in so much pancake make-up that not a single pore was visible. Her poor pores. The waitress looked like a grotesque Geisha from hell. The poofed-up bright orange hair clashed brutally with the blood red lipstick. The long hairs sticking out of her nostrils and the cigarette dangling from her lips completed the perfect picture of the last person in the world you would want serving you food. Forty years ago, she was probably a headlining showgirl. Now she was a harpy who waited on bums, an on-the-run filmmaker, and one shock jock journalist.
“Coffee.” Loveless looked like he wanted to get rid of her as fast as possible, as if he didn’t trust her. He watched her every move. His eyes darted around the midnight Denny’s and its low rent, low life denizens. The Denny’s was in a bad area: Downtown - the place you go when the Strip is finished with you. But that’s not what put him on guard.
“I’ll have a coffee too,” I chimed in while we still had the witch’s attention. She um-hummed and walked off with a limp like Igor in drag.
Loveless turned his attention back to me, “So just what is a midnight review?”
“It’s what I call the stories I investigate or review. I call them midnite reviews. Midnite spelled m-i-d-n-i-t-e.”
“You’ve got a whole rock & roll thing going, don’tcha?” Once again the native New Yorker speak your mind attitude.
“I’m not your father’s paranormal detective.”
Loveless’ eyes gleamed. I figured that was as close as I was going to get to a chuckle. I turned on my recorder. “I’ve interviewed everyone else: Matty, your director of photography, Jerry, your composer and special effects person, grips, actors.”
“Did you interview Charlotte?” Charlotte was the star of the movie. Loveless asked it so casually my journalistic antenna popped up.
“Yes.”
“How are her and her daughter doing?”
“They looked fine to me.”
Loveless nodded, ready to move on. I made a mental note to revisit this later, after I had gained his trust. If I gained his trust.
“I have compiled a chronology of everything that happened from the beginning up until now,” I said trying to sound reporter-ly.
“Then what do you need to talk to me for?”
“Well, you were the catalyst for everything that happened from the very beginning. Everyone else came into the picture after you. Everyone else knows less than you. Without you, this review is incomplete. Without you, I have nothing.”
Yeah, Loveless was intelligent and analytical. He had the discerning eye of a filmmaker. Despite a quiet nature, when it came to manipulating people in front of a lens, he definitely had vision. Now he had me squarely in his lens and was determined to direct me towards his ends.
“You think we’re all crazy?”
“I haven’t formed an opinion.”
“Yet.”
Loveless looked around the Denny’s and frowned. “This place was Ricky’s idea. I hate Denny’s. He knows I hate Denny’s. I would have had us meet in a casino.”
“You like casinos?”
“Despise them.”
I had a moment of insight. “But you like being in them because you can get lost in a crowd.”
“I at least have the illusion of being safer.”
I decided to press early. “Do you think your film is cursed?”
Loveless froze, smiled quietly and took a long time to answer. “I don’t know. Sounds stupid, doesn’t it? When you say it out loud like that. The death threats we got on the mountain weren’t the work of demons. That was flesh and blood people.”
“Can they be responsible for everything that’s happened?”
“Some of it. Not all.” Not having the answers made the filmmaker frustrated. “I don’t know. Do you think if I had all the answers I’d be sitting in a Denny’s in this neighborhood? I grew up in bad neighborhoods. I tend to avoid them nowadays.”
I leaned forward and put my elbows on the greasy table, trying to bridge the large chasm between me and the haunted filmmaker. “I’ve investigated the occult before.”
“And?” Loveless fired back.
“And I know there’s more than meets the eye. There’s more than just what can be seen.” Loveless was not convinced that I wasn’t bullshitting him.
I pressed more. “There’s evidence that the Columbine killers were Devil worshippers. A number of detectives on the Son of Sam case, including the lead investigator, believed that David Berkowitz was a member of a Satanic cult, and that the killings were ritualistic in nature. Two of the murders took place at almost the exact same time in two different locations across town from each other. How is that possible if there was only one man? An eye witness identified a different man before one of the killings. Not Berkowitz. They say Berkowitz kept quiet because if he didn’t, the cult would have had him killed. Better a life in prison, than no life at all.”
Loveless shook his head, “Yeah, and all of this is academic. You can find any of this on Wikipedia without leaving your bedroom.”
I took a deep breath. “Then there’s what happened to me.”
Loveless smiled without realizing he was smiling and leaned over the table. Cold conjecture was going to have him heading for the door. Theorizing wasn’t going to get him to open up. Commonality would. I would have to join the brotherhood of the damned. The fraternity of the truly fucked. Become his blood brother. Knowing that I had shared a somewhat similar experience was going to open the door. If the door was going to be opened at all. It was what Loveless was looking for.
At that moment, the shrew returned with two cups of burnt java. “Your coffee,” she announced as if we were blind. The woman took out a pad to take our orders. “What will you have?”
“Coffee,” Loveless said coldly. He noticed there was no silverware on the table. “Can we have a couple of spoons?”
The waitress took two poorly washed, water stained spoons out of her apron and deposited them on the table harshly. Apparently, she didn’t like Loveless’ attitude. That made them even. Loveless picked up his spoon and looked at it. “I guess the boiling coffee will sterilize it.”
The waitress walked away abruptly.
“Better not order anything to eat now. She’ll probably fart on it,” Loveless said.
“Not to worry. I just lost my appetite,” I retorted honestly after inadvertently visualizing the witch waitress performing such a wondrous task.
I spent the next twenty-five minutes relating my own brush with the macabre in extreme detail to Loveless. This mattered. I don’t talk about this incident much. Actually, not at all. Ever. Frankly, because it is too unbelievable for even my conspiracy junky Internet audience. Plus, there was a strong likelihood I would be locked up in a padded cell and given a very strait jacket. Lastly, as long as I didn’t talk about it, they were satisfied to leave me alone. They believed my Internet site and upcoming college radio talk show worked in their favor. They fed the public ridiculous disinformation like the World Trade Center attack was the result of Hollywood computer-generated special effects. This preposterous theory made all the less extreme theories look slightly ridiculous as well in comparison. This type of misinformation inevitably ended up on my site too. There was no denying that. They were counting on me not to be able to tell the difference. To run around on wild goose chases.
Recently, they had even launched a smear campaign against me that was impossible to trace back to them. Almost impossible. I started receiving anonymous messages on my site calling me the Freak King. Kind of an anti-branding campaign based on my last name Freidkin. It back-fired on my detractors though, when devotees of my site took it up as a rallying ba
ttle- cry. THE FREAK KING! Enough so, that the producers of my upcoming radio show want it included in the name of my show. I’m not sure how I feel about the nickname. But then again, I guess, like it or not, for better or worse, that’s what I have become: King to all the freaks in the freak kingdom. God bless Hunter S. Thompson, may he rest in peace in gonzo heaven. It must piss my enemies off to no end, that they created me. Kind of like the Joker creating Batman in my favorite version of Batman. Tim Burton’s version. Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson. The Joker creates Batman. Then Batman creates the Joker.
When I finished my story, Loveless sat back. The waitress started to come over but he warned her away with a look that said he didn’t want to be bothered. She was street smart. You had to be when you worked in a neighborhood like this. She took the hint. When the filmmaker turned back to me, his face was indiscernible. I couldn’t tell if my story had won him over or lost him all together. I half expected him to get up and walk away. That’s the chance I knew I was taking when I told the story.
Loveless stood up suddenly. “Wanna grab a drink somewhere?” He quickly added, “In a better part of town.”
We ended up in one of the best station casinos in Vegas. Red Rock. A station casino is a casino that’s not on the Strip. Where the locals go. Within a mile of it was Red Rock, a popular hiking and rock climbing destination. Loveless used to go rock climbing there, before things got hairy. We sat at a circular bar that was very red and very dark. Still, although we weren’t uncomfortably crowded, there was no end of people flowing through. The female bartenders and waitresses were all young and either hot or at least buxom. The skimpy outfits helped. A far cry from Witchie-poo at Denny’s.
Loveless ordered a Stella and a shot of Jameson Irish whiskey. He held up the shot. “A habit I picked up in Belfast.” He downed the shot. Next he picked up the beer. “And one I picked up in Antwerp.” Stella was a Belgium beer. Curiously, Loveless was well-traveled. I met his toast with my Bud Light.
“Can you tell me your story now?”
Loveless looked around to make sure no one was in ear shot and settled in for a long tale he wasn’t sure if he believed himself.
Sensing something much bigger than an article or review, I compiled and provided my notes to my good friend and screenwriter Carlton Kenneth Holder. I thought this parable needed to be a full-blown novel. A novel with a film-esque narrative. Carlton authored the rest of this wicked high-octane cocktail you are about to imbibe. The following chapters of this book are told from the perspective of the filmmaker, because, in the mysterious case of "The Black Album," J.D. Loveless is the Midnite Review.
The Midnite Review of a Freak King.
Chapter One
Flatlander in Highlands
Like any good horror story, this one starts with a road trip.
He awoke right as the road up the mountain curved north and his car went south. Time bent at the exact instant before he should have hit the worn guard rail, which would not hold at this speed. He would have plummeted the full three thousand feet that he had just ascended up the mountain so far, to his death. In the thick and knotted forest below, the SUV would quickly be hidden in dense brush and foliage. If a passerby didn't witness the accident firsthand and no one immediately noticed the mangled metal wreckage of the guard rail, it would be days before the man’s body would be found. Probably after the animal and insect population had its way with his freshly rotting corpse.
The bending of the time continuum gave him the added instant he needed to make a last second swerve back onto the road. He fish-tailed twice and skidded roughly to a stop on the unpaved shoulder. A beat later, the man was enveloped in a cloud of dirt kicked up by his vehicle’s tires. Okay, so maybe time and space hadn't displaced. But it sure felt like it to him. It was adrenaline that had made the world stop. The fight or flight mechanism had kicked in deep inside his cerebral cortex, making time seem to move at an altogether surreal pace. A pace where the whole world went silent, except for the amplified beating of his own telltale heart. He sat in his SUV on the side of the road and fought to catch his breath. His veins were pounding in time with his heart. One internal symphony of terror, his terror. The terror of J.D. Loveless: would be filmmaker. It took him five minutes to catch his breath, for his hard-driving Techno beat to fade.
Loveless caught sight of the little pale yellow post-it note stuck to the dashboard and his fear diminished a little more, replaced by the excitement that newness brings with it. The post-it read “Lake Arrowhead 2day!” He was getting out of Los Angeles, his adopted home and object of an ongoing love/hate relationship, for a sabbatical, a self-imposed writer's retreat. Indefinitely. Actually Loveless no longer designated himself a writer, even though he had written for a handful of colorful independent film producers; colorful in this instance meaning crazy muthafuckahs. The new distinction for Loveless was this: a writer writes. Period! A director directs scripts that a writer writes. J.D. Loveless now saw himself as a filmmaker. According to him, a filmmaker was a director who directs screenplays that he himself writes. Or at least, he wanted to be a filmmaker.
Loveless had a good friend named Griffin who had a home up in the mountains roughly one hundred miles away from sunny Los Angeles. He didn't go up there much and offered it to Loveless for a six or seven month excursion free of rent if he maintained and fixed the place up a little while living there. Griffin was indebted to the filmmaker for getting him a key supporting role in a low budget feature film - Loveless knew the casting director - and enticed him with tales of tranquility and serenity in a setting of lush nature. Seeing as how the five-day-or-quit notice on the filmmaker’s apartment door was four days old, he took his friend up on the offer.
Besides, Loveless wanted to write. More than that, Loveless wanted to write a screenplay that he could direct. The would-be filmmaker only had two hurdles. One: he had no idea what he was going to write about. Two: Loveless didn't know where he was going to get the money to turn a bunch of words on a page into a tangible motion picture. Artistic creativity meets harsh reality in a head on collision - sans seatbelt or airbag.
Anyway, Loveless decided to deal with one hurdle at a time. His first hurdle was coming up with an idea. So Loveless suppressed what he referred to as his inner spouse. That's the nagging little voice in your head that tells you, You're no good. Stop dreaming. Grow up and get a real job. I should have listened to my mother and married Thomas. He was well-grounded, came from a good family and had a steady job.
Nevertheless the filmmaker’s excitement was running high. He had never actually been to Lake Arrowhead before, so this was all grand adventure. Grand adventure was sure to spark creativity. There was something about uncertainty and the lack of routine that got the juices flowing. In his mind, he would be cranking out page after page on his laptop keyboard in no time, like Amadeus obsessively banging out "Requiem" on ivory piano keys. Yeah! Loveless thought to himself, this would be just like the time he was flown out to Belfast, Ireland to write a screenplay about the Irish Republican Army. Loveless had been set up in a flat with a bunch of IRA members, or rather, former IRA members. The other three Americans were the maverick producer/director who wanted to film this ultra-violent art-house gem, his cinematographer, and his vice president of development, i.e., assistant. After a few weeks though, they had to hightail it out of there, chased out by death threats. From whom they didn’t know. But at three o'clock in the morning, they hastily tossed their belongings into a black van and drove down to Dublin. Later, they took a ferry to Wales and a train to London. Loveless basically wrote the screenplay on the run. The day it was done, he handed it off to the producer and took a plane back to America.
Juices flowed another time when Loveless was in Antwerp, Belgium doing rewrites on a World War II movie about the V-1 rocket program - the Vengeance rockets that Hitler used to bomb Europe at the end of his mad run. It was good times, hanging with raging Frenchmen, Dutch artists and Swedish actresses. Juices. Beer. Brainstorms.
Women. Story ideas. Beer.
But since Loveless had been back in Los Angeles, nothing was flowing. Before, in Europe, when ideas were oozing out of him like blood out a wound, he didn't have the time to write. He was too busy living the adventure. Now that Loveless had all the time in the world, nothing materialized. Zilch! He had even been denied employment at Starbucks. Maybe they already had their quota of struggling writers and out-of-work actors.
A trip out of town to parts unknown was just what the doctor ordered. The question was, is the doctor a quack? Loveless’ writer's block was so severe that he couldn't even decide what genre he wanted to choose for his directorial debut.
Relax, J.D. You're getting ahead of yourself. It's all waiting up there for you, he told himself as he drove. He looked up ahead and saw the mountain tops, his “Stairway to Heaven." It was a long ascent. Arrowhead sat at an elevation of roughly 5,500 feet. It was the first of October and Loveless was feeling optimistic. October was his favorite month of the year because he loved Halloween and horror movies. Loveless particularly liked possession stories and zombie flicks. “The Exorcist” and “Night of the Living Dead” were two of his all time favorites.
The road was winding and locals returning home up the mountain, whizzed past Loveless at break-neck speeds. At about 4,000 feet elevation, the filmmaker encountered something he hadn’t expected. Fog. This was not Los Angeles canyon fog either. This was mountain fog, thick and scary. Loveless had never seen anything like this. It was straight out of John Carpenter's eighties horror classic "The Fog."
‘They say when the fog comes rolling in, the dead shall rise again.’
THE BLACK ALBUM: A Hollywood Horror Story Page 2