THE BLACK ALBUM: A Hollywood Horror Story

by Carlton Kenneth Holder

  On top of that, Grace Lynn wasn’t an easy person to be around. Especially when she drank Jack. Now the singer had reached the end of the line. When Grace ran out of friends who would put her up or deal with her shit, the singer was literally out on the street.

  The woman became a number one customer of pawn shops downtown, at various times taking loans on everything she owned except the clothes on her back, her guitar and her Chevy Nova, which she ended up sleeping in for her last two months in Los Angeles.

  When she could finally take it no more, the singer admitted defeat, packed up her stuff and left the city for good.

  She didn’t know what kind of homecoming she would receive upon her return. Her father was dead. When he died of liver failure from habitual heavy drinking four years earlier, she didn’t return to attend the funeral. He was a hard-drinking Irishman who worked lumber in the mountains his whole life. Grace and her father weren’t particularly close. For her high school graduation, he gave her a black eye. The singer’s mother didn’t deal with her husband’s death very well. Although in Grace’s eyes the old woman should have thrown a party. Her father smacked her mother around every time he got drunk, which was damn near every night. Her mother was in and out of rehab and the psychiatric ward. Her grieving for her late husband was ongoing.

  As for Katherine Lynn, Grace’s little sister Katie who was four years younger, the singer had no idea what her life was like now. Hopefully she hadn’t followed in the family footsteps. The siblings had been close until Grace left Katie behind. The day Grace left the mountain, she never heard from her sister again. The singer would call, but Katie wouldn’t take the calls. Grace would write, but never heard back.

  As for the family home, her late grandfather had paid off the house and land around it. Moreover, her grandfather, knowing the instability of her parents, left the place in Grace and Katie’s names. Only the two of them together could sell the huge old house. Therefore Grace knew there was still a house left to return to, unless her mother had burnt it down during one of her binges.

  The coupe de grâce, as far as Loveless was concerned regarding the backstory he had concocted for Grace Lynn, was that the singer was born on October 31st. Halloween night.

  She had returned home on her birthday.

  Later that night, after falling asleep at the computer and trying to drag himself to bed - he made it no further than the couch - Loveless woke to a symphony of howling coyotes. It was well past midnight. After taking a piss, the filmmaker stumbled out onto the balcony to view these creatures of the night. There they were up on a distant hill, baying to a star-filled velvet sky. Loveless was actually fascinated by the coyotes of the Arrowhead mountains. They weren't like any other coyotes he had seen before. At one time, the filmmaker had lived in Calabasas in Los Angeles, just beyond Woodland Hills. Calabasas was populated with ranches, horses and soccer moms in screaming beamers. In the hills around his condo there were plenty of coyotes roaming wild. They were mangy and ugly. However, in Arrowhead, the coyotes were actually, in the filmmaker's opinion, beautiful. Their brown coats shone. They looked fit and healthy. The coyotes didn't run when you passed them on the road or in the woods. Loveless guessed that people just left them alone here on the mountain. Coyotes were just wild dogs after all. The filmmaker loved dogs. After his dog of fourteen years died quietly in his arms, he didn't have the heart to get another. Even after many years, Loveless still carried the grief of this loss inside of him.

  Although the coyotes were predatory, he still enjoyed their company, from afar. This gave the filmmaker an idea. A deceased family pet would be the perfect catalyst to catapult the story forward.

  Earlier that day Loveless had written the scene where Grace returned home and had a bittersweet reunion with her sister Katie, who was torn emotionally about having her big sister back. Katie, who was eking out a dismal existence working as a retail clerk in a clothing store by the lake, had always been overshadowed by her big sister's popularity in high school. Grace was the hip cool rebel everyone looked up to. Although Katie loved Grace and had outgrown being mad at her sister for leaving her, she had only been able to step out of the shadow of being Grace's little sister once the singer was gone. Their mother was currently doing a voluntary stint in the mental ward wing of the tiny hospital in Twin Peaks and Katie had been living in the big old house all alone. To make Katie's emotions even more fragile and conflicted, Loveless concocted a story vehicle where Katie was now dating Russell, Grace's former high school sweetheart whose heart the singer had crushed when she left him and the mountain. Of course Russell would play a central role in this tale of possession and otherworldly seduction.

  Then there was the major plot point of the movie to be dealt with. A plot point was the device or event that spun the story in a whole different, unexpected direction. Grace's unearthing of the album was the adventure's main plot point. The filmmaker wanted Grace's discovery to be interesting and atmospheric. That's where the dead dog came in.

  Grace unpacks in her childhood bedroom, old memories swirling around her. Perhaps that was all ghosts were: old memories brought back to life by familiar places. Taking a break to go out onto an upper deck balcony to smoke, Grace sees a metal foot locker sitting on the railing. Curiosity draws her to it. Upon opening the box, Grace recoils in horror. The old family pet dog is inside of it, her small corpse cold and stiff.

  "You just got back. I couldn't find a way to tell you before," KATIE says as she steps out onto the balcony to join her sister. "Pumpkin died two days ago. She was the only family I had left. I haven't had the heart to bury her." Katie lowers her head. "I was trying to work up to it."

  Grace reads her sister's pained expression and senses what she wants. "Don't worry, Katie. I'll take care of her."

  "Really? Thank you so much. You don't know what this means to me."

  "Yes I do. Pumpkin was my dog too."

  "Bury her somewhere nice, so she'll have a good view." Tears run down the younger sister's face.

  In the dark, we see Grace hike into the woods with the metal box, a flashlight and a shovel in hand. The singer makes sure she goes far enough away from the house so Katie won't see the grave marker - a stick with Pumpkin's collar and dog tag hanging from it - until she chooses to visit it. The woman drops to her knees as she puts the metal box down. She has found a resting place for the family pet atop a small hill. 'A nice spot.'

  Grace lifts the shovel and brings it down into hard earth. Low-level fog clings to the ground around her. The woman begins to dig. It isn't long before she realizes there is already something buried there. Scared at what she may find, but too fascinated not to dig it up, Grace finds a package wrapped in plastic. She pulls it out of the earth. It's the record album Henry had buried.

  Grace reads the name on the record out loud, "Mathaluh?" This is the second time today, she has been reminded of the old rock band. "Weird freakin' coincidence."

  Grace buries Pumpkin, takes the album, and makes her way back to the house.

  Grace enters the house through a glass balcony door leading into the living room. She is greeted by a number of lit candles around the room, mood lighting. A small store bought cake with lit candles sits on the floor table by the couch. Next to it is a birthday card.

  "You didn't really think I'd forget it was your birthday, did ya? Kinda hard when it falls on a day like today," Katie says as she sits up on the couch.

  Grace smiles, touched.

  With the rest of the story in place - the set-up, introduction of major characters, and main plot point that determined the direction of the story in act one, the twists and turns in act two, and a good portion of act three worked out - Loveless became practically obsessed with the screenplay's villain. Grace was the best protagonist he had ever written. There was no doubt about that. The movie's antagonist would have to be just as solid. For every hero there had to be a villain. The demon Jeremy was Grace Lynn's nemesis. However, this character wasn't fleshed out nearly enough
in the short story the filmmaker had written during his lost weekend. Also, Loveless didn't want the demon Jeremy to be some cliché boogeyman, bursting out of closets like a cheap vaudevillian in a cut-rate horror movie. He wanted this character's threat to lie not in his physical ability to tear a person limb from limb or rip their throat out. He wanted him to be dangerous in an entirely different way. The demon Jeremy needed to be a proxy for Lucifer himself here on earth. To accomplish this, Loveless would have to fictitiously recreate the characters of both Satan and Jeremy, so that he could better understand their motivations. These scenes would of course not be in the movie. The budget absolutely would not allow for it and they were better left to the imagination. But it was important for Loveless to know that these scenes had taken place when he wrote the demon Jeremy's dialogue. Then the audience could feel the creature's pain and emphasize with him, while at the same time being repulsed by him and wanting to see him sent back to the inferno. In all the good movies he had seen, the filmmaker found himself at one point in the movie rooting for the bad guy, or at least being able to identify with his motivations. Loveless had once read an article about an actor who had been cast as Adolf Hitler in a film. The actor had no idea how to play this heinous, evil, and twisted historical character, until he approached the role with the assumption that the Fuhrer was right. Then it all clicked for the actor. It was scary, but true.

  While once researching Satanic mythology, the filmmaker had read about a holy relic called the Lapis Exilii. The rough translation for this from the Latin was the stone of exile. This was said to be a jewel from the crown of Lucifer lost during the battle in Heaven. That's how Loveless chose to see the Devil: as a dissenter, a traitorous rebel lost in sin, flesh, and earthly desire. The first fallen angel. How God must have wept at the betrayal. The Devil was also a reneger. When Jeremy Jared and the band members of Mathaluh performed the ceremony to sell their souls to Hell for the price of a thirteen year old girl, Satan tricked them. They wanted fame. He gave them infamy. The kind of legend one only achieved when one died a fiery death at the threshold of what could have been a brilliant career. Also, in a sense, the Devil gave them immortality. For generations to come, people would listen to Mathaluh's music and talk about what could have become of the band, had they lived.

  Loveless could just see a backstory scene playing out in Hell. In the filmmaker's eyes he saw Hell not as a pit of fire, but as a surreal void: one endless, disjointed, sickening, perverted dream; an ever-changing landscape that metamorphosed from one nightmare into another as more souls joined. In this backstory, the Devil, upon hearing the sound of singing coming from the bowels of his kingdom, is first amused, then fascinated with the brooding, restless Jeremy whose angry angelic voice rings out, exclaiming his melancholy and discontent. This fascination becomes desire, bordering on a near homosexual relationship. The Devil eventually wants to take Jeremy's pain away, so he gives him a way back into the world of the living, if he can corrupt another soul into murdering in his name. The music would bring the demon Jeremy back to earth, the murdered corpse of another would keep him there. The demon Jeremy would be less a soulless automaton like Michael or Jason and more akin to the evil and seductive Pinhead character in Clive Barker's "Hellraiser" movies. In that series, those who played a sinister puzzle box would be cast into a Hell of torture chambers, where they would be transformed into hideous sadomasochistic Cenobites.

  In the demon Jeremy's eyes, Grace Lynn was the perfect surrogate for his re-entrance into this world. In her body, with her beautiful and alluring voice, Jeremy could have another shot at the fame and fortune he was short-changed of all those years ago. His supernatural manipulations of the woman thus far had caused her to return home on this day, caused her to find the album. Getting her to play the Dark Ballad backwards and slay her own sister or some other hapless soul would be child's play.

  In the context of the movie, the demon Jeremy would be more a presence than a full-blown entity, glimpsed only in shadows, mirrors, fog, or dreams. He would be a whisper, rather than a word. His voice would come through others momentarily possessed to carry out deeds leading to Grace's manipulation and possession.

  This creature was also capable of using the dead. He would re-animate corpses from the outlaw cemetery Lord's Lane to inhabit the woods around the Lynn house to keep the humans inside prisoner for the night. These prisoners would include Grace, Katie, and Russell. While they're locked inside, the demon Jeremy would have an entire night to enthrall or trick Grace into killing in his name.

  But Grace would have otherworldly allies of her own who want to help her fight the creature. These confederates are the ghosts of the boy Henry and the lost girl who was murdered by Mathaluh to fulfill their pact with Hell.

  The filmmaker had his build up. It was now time to release hell on earth. But it was just as important to Loveless not just to make a good horror movie, but to explore the boundaries of human nature and man's capacity for violence and corruption.

  The filmmaker struggled greatly with whether or not to let Grace give into the darkness and embrace evil or fight it to the very end, even if it meant her demise. Throughout the story, she is cajoled by the unseen deejay, whose voice lives on ghost radio and the demon Jeremy, sometimes speaking through Katie, Russell or one of the walking corpses she encounters. This evil even begins to torment the singer by sarcastically calling her 'amazing Grace' after the Christian hymn. The irony is that the hymn is about forgiveness and redemption regardless of the sins you've committed throughout your life.

  In the end, the filmmaker decided to let Grace rise to the occasion and renounce evil. The singer rallies against the demon Jeremy even after he tricks her into believing she has killed Russell and is about to take her own life to keep the creature from possessing her body. In the final confrontation, moments before sunrise, Grace turns the tables on the demon Jeremy and tricks him.

  Grace stands before the demon Jeremy as he slithers back into the shadow of the forest, which is growing smaller with each passing second as the sun rises. His army of rotting corpses have already climbed back into their misbegotten graves.

  "You can't scare me anymore, Jeremy. I know the truth now. And all evil really is weakness."

  "Slut."

  "You lose."

  "See you next Halloween."

  "No. You won't."

  But the demon Jeremy is already gone, fading with the last shadow as sunlight signals the start of a new day. With every new day is new hope, a second chance. Rebirth.

  Grace stands in front of the fireplace. In the roaring blaze, we see both the record album and the Hell board as they are consumed. Behind the singer, on the couch, Katie sleeps peacefully, recovering from the ordeal. Grace turns on the radio. The song "Amazing Grace" is playing. Grace begins to sing along, "Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, was blind, but now I see-"

  FADE TO BLACK. End credits roll.

  Loveless closed the laptop, exhausted, elated. He looked out the window. The sunlight was blinding. It was the start of a new day, filled with new possibilities. He had worked completely through the night. The filmmaker, although tired, was wired. There was no way he could sleep.

  Loveless drove to Starbucks. Carla was working the counter as he ordered.

  “Killer party, Loveless.”

  “WHAT?” the filmmaker replied in complete alarm as she handed him his drink. Shades of the nightmare party of weeks earlier returned to him, along with the accompanying fear. He still didn't know if it had really happened or not. He had almost convinced himself that it hadn't. This jolted him.

  “I said, want something to eat with this?”

  Loveless whispered low, “Did you come over to- ? How- Did you- ?” His words trailed off as feelings of foolishness rose up. What if he had dreamt it? Carla was looking at him puzzled as he left.

  Outside the supermarket, Loveless saw Lizzy standing next to a shopping cart full of groceries
. She hadn’t seen him yet. The filmmaker approached slowly. “Lizzy, I’m glad I ran into you. Do you know where I live? Did you come by my place?”

  "Of course."

  The filmmaker's heart began to beat faster.

  "Trick-or-treating," the girl continued.

  "No. I mean a few weeks ago."

  Before the teen could answer, an old Bronco truck backed into the parking space in front of them. Lizzy looked at Loveless with eyes that seemed to warn him off his present line of questioning. A pretty brunette woman in her early thirties got out the truck to load the groceries Lizzy had been babysitting into the vehicle. The woman looked at the filmmaker.

  “J.D., this is my mom,” Lizzy said.

  The woman smiled at Loveless, “Hi. I’m Charlotte.”

  Chapter Four

  Werewolves of Rim Forest and Other Cast & Crew

  It turned out Charlotte Rae and Lizzy Rae were also transplants from Los Angeles. Charlotte, a young mom - she had Lizzy when she was only sixteen - was divorced and had been raising her daughter on the West side. That was until Lizzy started running with a bad crowd. Charlotte had a cozy little vacation condo in Lake Arrowhead left over from the divorce. She liked the small town atmosphere and made the decision to move her daughter to the mountains. Charlotte - who had come to Los Angeles from a small town in Northern California with aspirations of being an actress - currently made a living in sales, which she could do from pretty much anywhere. Once a month she had to drive to Los Angeles to meet with clients personally. Other than that, she could do most of her work via phone and Internet. Charlotte was quizzical, bright and had a very outgoing nature.