With this mountain life, came the small town gossip, folklore, and urban legends. It was in this manner that Loveless first heard the name Mathaluh. The filmmaker was sitting on the couch by the fireplace, writing - or rather trying to write - when he realized what time it was. 8:51 pm. Shit! The local supermarket in Lake Arrowhead, which incidentally also held the only Starbucks on the mountain, closed at 9:00 p.m. He hadn’t made a store run in days and desperately needed food, toiletries, water, soda, and beer. After that, there was only an all night Seven Eleven open and Loveless hated microwavable frozen burritos. The filmmaker had heard there was another market that stayed open until ten in Crestline. So he hurried down, found the market - it wasn’t large enough to be called a supermarket - and stocked up. On the way back, he hit fog.
The mountain fog seemed to defy the normal laws of fog. It came and went when it wanted, where it wanted. The filmmaker saw it as he went around a bend. The girl was the second thing he saw. Loveless swerved right as she spotted him. She was dressed all in black, wearing a beat-up black leather jacket that was big enough to have belonged to her father, assuming she had a father. The girl looked to be about fifteen, but it was hard to tell as the filmmaker turned the wheel hard and she dived out the way. Next, he hit the breaks. Loveless came to a stop with a jerk so violent the filmmaker instinctively braced for the airbag. It didn’t go off. Everything around Loveless became very still. The dirt the filmmaker’s vehicle kicked up swirled around in the pools of light generated by his high beams. Loveless, shaking, jumped out the car and approached the girl who looked nonchalant about the whole thing.
“Are you alright?” he asked as he came forward slowly.
“Sure,” the girl responded with a shrug. “Happens.”
“This is a dangerous place to hitchhike. Not that hitchhiking is all that safe in the first place.”
The girl sized Loveless up, then let down her guard. “Way to get around if you don’t have a car. Not much of a public transportation system here on the mountain, you know.”
“Your parents don’t get mad?”
“My mom? She don’t mind. Long as I’m safe about it.”
From the mention of the mother, the filmmaker guessed there wasn’t a father in the picture. The lull in the conversation made him uncomfortable. The girl picked up the slack. “Can I have a ride? I’m not going very far.” She must have decided he was okay.
Loveless felt uncomfortable about giving the young girl a ride, but he was more uncomfortable about leaving her there.
“You just get in the car with anyone who stops for you?”
The girl took the filmmaker’s response as a yes and headed to the passenger side of the car as she chirped, “Pretty much.”
“How do you know I’m not an axe murderer?”
The girl giggled. “You get a good sense about these things real fast when hitchin.’ Mostly women give me rides. Mothers. When guys stop, I get an instant vibe. If the vibe is creepy, I don’t get in. That’s all. But mostly I hitch with other kids. Safety in numbers.” The girl climbed into the SUV. Loveless got back behind the wheel. Her rules of the road made sense academically. But, since being on the mountain, the filmmaker had seen more than a few gaudy funeral wreaths accompanied by candles, photos and sad handwritten notes on the side of roads commemorating the locations where kids had been struck and killed by motor vehicles.
“Glad to hear I don’t creep you out,” Loveless said with an air of uneasiness.
“You don’t have to worry.” The girl read his conflicted expression. “Nobody’s going to think you’re a perv.”
The filmmaker started the car and put it in drive. “Good to know. Where ya going?”
“The Rock. I’ll show you. It’s only about two miles down. Just keep going this way. I’ll tell you when to turn. I’m meetin’ people.”
The girl’s name was Lizzy, short for Elizabeth. She was about 5’4” and cute with pale sun-starved skin highlighted by small patches of reddish acne on her cheeks, chin, and forehead. Lizzy had braces and jet black dyed hair that the filmmaker guessed was originally light brown. The teen had an outgoing personality, which was good, because Loveless did not. She talked as he drove. Within minutes, Lizzy directed the filmmaker to the turn that took him to the remote Rock. It was a large boulder that sat atop a hill in the woods. Below it, the hill was just a massive collection of more rocks of all sizes and shapes, many covered with graffiti that seemed to be part of another rite of passage for the youth of the mountain. Climb the boulders and leave your legend, the legend that will outlive you. The tags read: VITO 64! SONNY LOVES SHANNA 92 and many more like it. But it was the two words scribed on the boulder that sat atop the hill like a king that held the filmmaker’s attention. MATHALUH LIVE. It was written in balloon style thick yellow letters outlined in black. A letter was added to the end of ‘Mathaluh Live.’ An S. It was the only letter different from the rest. The S was ragged, jagged, spelled in red paint the exact color and viscosity of blood. It was also the only letter that ran, the only letter that bled, changing the pronouncement from the boastful ‘Mathaluh Live’ to the chilling ‘Mathaluh Lives.’
The name rolled easily off the filmmaker’s tongue before he even realized he was saying it, “Mathaluh.”
A beat later, the words of a homegrown nursery rhyme filled the night’s air as they escaped from Lizzy’s pale pink lips and drifted over to the filmmaker like a wraith. “Five members who could not be tamed, sold their souls for fortune and fame. Formed their spell- circle in Satan’s name. In the pit of Hell, they burn by flame.” Lizzy was standing behind Loveless as she finished the lyrics she knew by heart.
“What was that, Lizzy?” the filmmaker asked as he turned and looked at the teen.
“I learned it from a friend of mine. Her mother knew one of the band members.”
“Of Mathaluh?”
Lizzy was already waving at her teenage friends who had appeared in a clearing beneath the Rock. “There’s my buds. There’s a path around the back where we hang. It leads up to the rocks.” She was already heading in the direction of her buds. Lizzy turned around and smiled at Loveless. It was then that he saw the silver Pentagram held by a cheap metal chain around her neck.
“See ya ‘round, man.”
Mathaluh. The word itself seemed to haunt the filmmaker’s dreams for the next two nights. Mathaluh lives! Lizzy mentioned something about a band. Sold their souls for fortune and fame. He couldn’t remember the whole rhyme, but that verse stuck with him. Loveless didn’t know what he was on to, but he was on to something.
A few days later, as the sun was setting, the filmmaker found himself tentatively driving to the rock mountain. Some teenage boys were there, horsing around the way teen boys do, wrestling, chasing each other. The boys stopped when a group of teen girls arrived on foot. Some wore hoodies, hoods up. The weather was already pretty chilly in October up in the mountains. Loveless couldn’t tell if Lizzy was among them. They were all aware of him sitting in his SUV about thirty feet away. The filmmaker felt weird about being there in a teenage domain. But he didn’t know any other way to find out more about Mathaluh. This one time the Internet was a bust. He couldn’t discover anything about the band from it. Apparently mountain folk didn’t embrace the information superhighway the way flatlanders did. Or maybe he didn’t know enough about Mathaluh and what happened to know where to look. Loveless was sure these kids did though.
One of the teen boys finally approached the filmmaker. He had the same disgruntled and troubled teen rocker look and attitude as the rest of them. The boy was maybe sixteen and a half. Two of his friends trailed him, hanging behind as back up.
“Hey,” the teen said challengingly.
“Hi,” Loveless replied feeling foolish. “Is Lizzy around?”
“Naw, man. Who’s asking?”
“I’m a friend of hers. I dropped her off here the other night.”
“And that makes you a friend?”
“I wante
d to ask her something.”
“About what?”
The filmmaker was getting annoyed. But he maintained his diplomatic composure, mainly because he knew teenagers loved to piss off adults.
“As silly as this sounds, a nursery rhyme.”
Instantly the kid went into auto pilot, “Five members who could not be tamed, sold their souls for fortune and fame. Formed their spell-circle in Satan’s name. In the pit of Hell, they burn by flame.” When he finished, he held up his hand, the index and little finger extended in the trademark rock and roll salute, “Mathaluh lives!” It echoed throughout the night.
“That’s it.”
“Lizzy’ll be here in a bit. Name’s Brent. Me and my friends can tell you all about that- for a case.”
Loveless sighed. He wasn’t puritanical. In fact, in his own way, he was a rebel. He had a fake ID himself when he was seventeen and had chased a case on a number of occasions. The filmmaker was just worried about drunk teen hitchhikers getting hit by a mack truck or something. Still, he reasoned with eight or nine teens already there and more showing up, they wouldn’t get more than two beers apiece. Hardly enough to make their judgment or attitude any worse than it was now.
“Awright. But you better not be shittin’ me.”
On the drive to the store, Loveless saw Brent’s face in his mind’s eye, heard him say ‘Mathaluh lives’ once more and throw out the universal rock salute. This accessed something deep in the filmmaker’s memory banks. Something he had researched once. The rock salute had an older, more sinister meaning, a different significance in ancient times. In the occult world, it was known as the sign of the horns. The horns of the Devil, said to have been used during Black Masses in pagan times. The sign was the mainstay of hardcore rockers for decades until pop music fans started recklessly throwing the symbol in the air at Britney Spears concerts. After that, a number of rock icons began abandoning the symbol. Could you blame them? In what context had Brent used the symbol? Was he giving Loveless the rebellious music equivalent of a thumbs up? Or was he signifying his standing in the Knights In Satan’s Service. The filmmaker remembered with a grin how once upon a time religious zealots from America’s Bible-belt had believed that was what the name of the rock band KISS actually stood for. That it was an acronym that revealed their true intent and mission here on earth. That they were emissaries for the dark side. What a load of crap.
Except for his uneasiness about buying beer for minors, Loveless was positively giddy. He had that feeling again. He was on to something, the filmmaker was sure of it.
Loveless stopped at a gas station in Twin Peaks. Under his faded baseball hat, the attendant was old with hard lines and a big pockmarked nose. His face had a dark hue as if he had worked in mine shafts all his life and could no longer wash the black coal off his skin, where it was permanently etched into the crevices of every age line. Still, the man was all smiles, happy to have the sale on a slow night. As Loveless paid for the case of beer, he decided to test the waters. “Ever hear of a band called Mathaluh?”
The smile didn’t slide off the man’s face so much as drop off of it. His hard mug got even harder. He didn’t say a word as he gave the filmmaker his change, looking him in the eyes the whole time. The attendant's eyes burned with fury. Behind this Loveless sensed fear. The filmmaker took the case and left quickly. So there was history here. And bad blood.
When Loveless got back to the Rock, he didn’t see the kids. He remembered that Lizzy had told him there was a path around back where they couldn’t be seen from the road. Of course they would want to drink back there. If local sheriff’s deputies showed up, the kids could just run off into the woods, which they probably knew like the back of their hands. Around back the filmmaker found the kids sitting around a campfire that had been made in a dug out stone fire pit that looked like it had been there for decades. Large flat rocks had long ago been laid out in a circle around the fire pit for seating. The kids turned and looked at Loveless as he approached with the case.
Lizzy was among them now, “See. I told you he’d come back. Hey, J.D.”
The kids eagerly devoured the case. Lizzy pointed to a flat rock next to her.
“I never told you my name,” Loveless said as he sat down. The kids all giggled at this.
“Small mountain.”
“Don’t understand.”
“You told Carla.”
Carla, a petite girl with a floppy hat and a hoop nose ring, held up a peace sign by way of identifying herself.
“Carla works at Starbucks. You told her your name when you were getting your venti red eye. She told Brooke. Brooke told Katie. Katie told me. Small mountain.”
“Wow. So I guess that means everybody knows about Mathaluh,” Loveless dove right in. He wanted information while the alcohol was loosening their tongues.
A hush went through the group and all eyes turned downward for a moment, the warm glow of the fire chasing shadows across their faces.
“Everybody,” Brent echoed. “Doesn’t mean anybody talks about it. ‘Cause they don’t.”
“But you do?”
“Sometimes,” Lizzy offered timidly. “They were local mountain kids like us who grew up here in the seventies. Formed a band. Named it Mathaluh. They were good. Really good. Tight group too. Did everything together. When they turned eighteen, they even all lived together in this big ole’ house out in Running Springs. Pressed a bootleg record they released up here. Were gonna take it to Los Angeles and play for some hotshot record people. Everybody on the mountain knew they were gonna be big.”
“But they weren’t,” Brent said roughly. “Some stupid kid on the mountain listened to their record, flipped out and killed three other kids, then shot himself in the head.”
“You’re telling it all wrong, man. After listening to one of their songs, he made a Ouija board. The Ouija board told him to play the song backwards. After he played it backwards, that’s when he flipped out. And he only killed two kids. Not three,” Lizzy corrected.
“How do you know, big mouth? Were you there?”
“Shut the fuck up, Brent. Were you?”
A chubby faced kid named Toby piped in, “He called the Ouija board the Hell board.”
“You forgot about the fire,” Lizzy said.
“I was getting to that. Cops were getting reports that Mathaluh was like this Satanic cult.
That they were doing things. Out in the woods.”
“What kind of things?” Loveless asked.
The kids all looked at each other, then to Brent. He answered for them, “Black Masses. Animal sacrifices to the altar of Lord Satan.”
“Lord Satan?” the filmmaker echoed before he could stop himself.
“Not just animal sacrifices,” Lizzy spoke up.
“That’s bullshit. Don’t be a gossipy little bitch, Lizzy,” Brent barked as he stood up, threw his beer can and stomped off.
“Fuck you, Brent,” Lizzy struck back, then turned to the filmmaker. “The drummer was his mom’s uncle.
“Cops suspected the band in the disappearance of a local girl who had run away from home. When they went to the band’s home to question them, it was on fire. The band members were inside. They all died in the blaze. Just like that. No record deal. No fame. No fortune. Never even left the dumb mountain,” the chubby Toby concluded sympathetically.
“Supposedly the record was back-masked,” Lizzy added.
“Back-masked?” Loveless wasn’t familiar with the term.
“You know, Satanic lyrics you can hear when you play certain record backwards. Like Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.”
"Oh yeah. The whole rock is devil music thing." Loveless once had a girlfriend who was into shit like that. She had made him listen to the now infamous section of “Stairway,” while holding a séance to talk to her recently deceased pet cat Mister Cuddles. The filmmaker didn't understand how Mister Cuddles, who couldn't talk while he was alive, was supposed to talk now that he was 'corpse-ified' and
in the hereafter. But he went along with it for one major reason: his girlfriend was hot as hell. Still, Loveless had to admit that the lyrics did sound to him like, ‘Oh here’s to my sweet Satan. The one whose shallow path would make me sad, whose power is Satan. He will give those with him 666. There was a little tool shed where he made us suffer, sad Satan.’ Then again, he was stoned when he heard it. At the very least, freaky shit for sure.
“Most copies of the record burned up in the blaze.”
“Most,” Toby chimed cryptically.
“Any of these band members have a name?”
“Jeremy Jared. That’s the only name you’ll need to know if you go digging,” Lizzy informed Loveless. “He was the lead singer.”
“Front man eternal,” Toby punctuated Lizzy’s sentence as if quoting scripture.
Before the filmmaker could formulate his next question, he heard the all too familiar whoop of a police siren. Jesus! Next came the flashing lights. Johnny Law was on the scene. The kids had it down to a science. In a collective effort they threw dirt on the fire, extinguishing it in seconds. Next came the mad scurry through darkness into the woods. When two sheriff’s deputies came through, flashlights playing over beer cans and litter, only Loveless was left standing there.
“What’s going on here?” one of the deputies asked.
The filmmaker held up the small digital camera he already had in his hand. “Just taking photos of the natural wildlife.” He knew enough about the authorities to remain calm, pleasant, and respectful.
THE BLACK ALBUM: A Hollywood Horror Story Page 4