Loveless wondered if the hanger was for her towel, since she didn’t have anything else with her. “Sure.” The filmmaker went to the closet. He could sense Karen right behind him. Loveless turned around. Karen was right in his face, intimately close.
“They’re gonna kill you for what you’re doing,” Karen said in a low and seductive voice, almost as if saying ‘I love you,’ then dropped her towel, revealing her naked body to the filmmaker. Loveless froze in complete shock. Karen took his hands and put them on her breasts. The sensation of this made her head roll back, her eyes rolling back in her head. Loveless felt momentarily guilty, then an image of Charlotte in bed with Donovan popped in his mind. He squeezed Karen’s breasts hard.
“I shouldn’t be doing this.” The filmmaker tried to retract his hands, but Karen held them tightly in place.
“Fuck me!”
“I shouldn’t be doing this,” Loveless repeated.
“Fuck me hard,” Karen said, then added, “For him.”
“For who?” The filmmaker asked in a tiny voice, not sure he wanted to know the answer.
“Lord Satan.” Karen let go of the filmmaker’s hands and backed away from him. She climbed onto his bed, lay back and spread her legs wide open. Her wet pubic hair sparkled in the sunlight that spilled in through the bedroom window. “Fuck me for Lucifer.”
Something deep inside Loveless told him not to have sex with this woman. His rational mind spoke up, She’s troubled. This didn’t keep him from becoming hard. He was harder than he had remembered being since he was a virginal teen. It was so hard it hurt. So hard that it cried out for relief. Relief between Karen’s legs.
“What the hell’s happening to me?” The filmmaker said out loud. He backed away.
Karen looked at him as she cocked her head and listened. She could see now that Loveless was not going to succumb. Her face took on a whole new quality. It was a mask of pure evil as she spat, “Fuck me like Satan’s gonna fuck you.” A second later, Karen flipped out, going into convulsions, flopping around like a fish. It was an epileptic seizure of some sort. For a micro-second, the filmmaker thought of the immortal scene in “The Exorcist” where a possessed Linda Blair hovers above her bed screaming, ‘Make this stop, Momma. Make this stop!’ Then Loveless launched forward and held the woman down so she wouldn’t hurt herself. Abject fear extinguished his desire. After about a minute, Karen’s body stopped spasming. She looked around disoriented, before realizing Loveless was on top of her and that she was naked.
“I- what’s going on?” Karen seemed to have no idea of the things she had done. The things she had said.
Loveless rolled off of the woman and the bed, “You had some kind of seizure. Are you okay?”
Karen climbed off the bed and wrapped herself once again in the towel. “I- I’m fine. It happens. I've had epilepsy since I was little. But I haven't had a seizure since they put me on new meds over two years ago."
"Scared the hell out of me." Loveless wasn't going to mention Satan if she wasn't. In his heart, he believed she didn't remember a thing.
"I’m okay. Thank you.” The woman wandered out of the filmmaker’s room in a bewildered state. Loveless was no less bewildered than the woman.
Later that night, when Charlotte had returned to the mountain, Loveless practically attacked her. It was a savage night of ravenous love making. After the spent actress had fallen asleep, the filmmaker, still wide awake, wandered out onto his balcony, wondering once more, What the hell is happening to me? He saw the neighbor he had never met on the far away balcony of the next home, in the dark, smoking a cigarette. The neighbor was again aware of Loveless. She - he was sure it was a she - waved at him and went inside. When she had sparked up a smoke, the filmmaker had also seen that she was a blond. A few minutes in the cold night air and Loveless returned to bed and the warm naked form of Charlotte.
Like Jerry, Collin also did double duty on the movie set. Because of his lithe Goth appearance, from early on Loveless intended on using him as Zombie Number One. He could have easily done the role without make-up, but when the make-up artist had finished with him, Collin was truly terrifying. Mottled skin hung off his rotted fleshy corpse face. He had the stiff, lumbering zombie walk down pat. When he and zombie Karen appeared in a scene together, it was a match made in Hell.
Working on the side of the mountain was slow going. It was covered in mud and half the time, while moving lights and cords, you had to practically crawl hands and knees through it. Matty, the DP, kept his composure, standing nearly knee deep in mud, checking his equipment and preparing for another shot like a big game hunter waiting for the next charging rhino.
On a particularly cold and dreary night, Loveless talked Collin into letting him bury him alive. Donovan wasn’t there. Charlotte was. She sometimes had trouble with the envelope the filmmaker was constantly pushing. Her maternal instinct - for seemingly all mankind - kicked in from time to time. Charlotte raised some concerns about what they were about to do. Burying a human being alive was something that only a bunch of people standing around on a film set wouldn't think was strange. But, despite her concern, Loveless absolutely had to have the scene where a zombie comes bursting up out of the grave. Zombie number one would be the demon Jeremy's first emissary to rise from the graves of Lord's Lane and position himself outside Grace's home, soon followed by a small army of other recently risen corpses, cutting off the humans inside from the outside world and leaving them virtually no hope of escape. Loveless didn’t want to cheat the scene with quick cuts or a funky angle. The filmmaker wanted the scene in one shot, full frame, dead on and in slow motion. For that, everything had to be perfect. Collin performed spectacularly and they got the shot on the first take. After Loveless yelled cut, Collin keeled over in stages. Apparently he had inhaled prematurely and breathed in a sizable dose of dirt. For a few moments it looked like they were going to have to take him to the emergency room. But Charlotte flushed his nostrils over and over again with saline. Collin vomited out the rest.
Three days later, Gavin, a local who had been playing the role of a zombie in “The Black Album,” didn’t show up for work. When Jerry and Collin went to his trailer park home to check on him, they found the door unlocked. Gavin was in his living room on the couch. He looked ever bit the zombie, only he wasn’t in make-up. Gavin was dead, the apartment littered with bottles of beer and Jack Daniels. In the dead man’s hands, resting on his lap was a photograph of him at ten years old, as a Catholic school altar boy. The official coroner’s report listed it as: Death by misadventure. Accidental alcohol poisoning.
At the time, everyone was saddened by the man’s death. But it was still too early. Too little had happened. No one thought to connect it to the movie shoot.
So the show went on.
Another night, while running power to the movie lights on the hill from the house, they kept blowing the house's power. Jerry and Collin took turns turning it back on at the circuit box. The lights went out again in the middle of a shot. But this time Loveless looked around and noticed that all the lights for miles around were out. The entire neighborhood and area was experiencing a blackout.
“Holy shit! We blew the entire friggin' power grid,” Jerry whistled in amazement.
It was Matty who understood the ramifications first, “Quick, get all this equipment off the hill. NOW! Con Edison is going to be here soon.”
A mad dash ensued in which crew personnel and actor alike, raced to break down the lights and equipment and get it all into the cabin home. As the last piece of equipment was brought into the house, a huge Con Edison truck appeared on the street at the top of the stairs. It had so many spinning colorful lights on it, for a second it looked like a grounded UFO.
“You guys alright?” a voice from the truck shouted over.
“Yeah,” Loveless called back nonchalantly. “What happened?”
“The power went down in this area for some reason. Have no idea why. We’ll have it back on in a few minutes.�
��
“Thanks.”
“Not a problem. Have a good one.” And the spinning, flashing lights were gone. True to the man's word, a few minutes later, the power came back on.
“Maybe we should call it a night,” Loveless said as he and Charlotte shared a collective sigh of relief.
Two days later, Loveless and Charlotte found the cherry bomb red Camaro outside a home in Twin Peaks. They knocked on the door and were greeted by a chorus of barking dogs, followed by a coarse voice telling the animals to shut their damn pie holes.
“Yeah?” a thin hick covered in piercings and tattoos answered the door.
At that moment, Loveless thought, No way in hell are we getting this car. But Charlotte was extraordinary as she buttered up the man whose name was Dallas. He proudly showed them photos of how he had totally restored the car. Charlotte segued perfectly into the topic of the movie they were making and how they wanted to feature his car in it. In the end, she negotiated a good price for the two days they would need the vehicle.
When the filmmaker and his star got back to his cabin home, they found Donovan unexpectedly waiting for them.
“My house in Palm Springs was broken into,” Donovan started right in. “They trashed the place and splashed what the police told me was pig’s blood on the walls and painted ‘Die Blasphemer’ next to a Satanic star."
"What?" Charlotte asked in shock.
"You serious?" Loveless followed, half thinking the man was joking.
"Yeah. Of course! It's fucked up. I've got blood stains on my carpet, on my couch, my wood floors. And I don't know if I'll ever get the smell out. You ever smell pig blood? It stinks to high hell. I had to sleep in a hotel last night."
"Do the cops suspect anybody?"
"Come on. You gotta be kidding. They fingerprinted the place, but the creeps musta been wearing gloves. Also, despite the damage, nothing was stolen."
"Which means if it was a random act by people you've never met before or have no connection to, the cops'll never catch them." The filmmaker knew the drill. He had researched police methodology extensively for a number of cop drama and action screenplays he had written over the years for low budget producers.
"That's pretty much what they implied," Donovan confirmed. He shook his head. "I don't get it. Why me? Why did they write that in my home? Die blasphemer? I'm no Bible-thumper, but it's Palm Springs for Chris-sake. They have casinos out there."
Loveless began to dismiss his theory about Charlotte and Donovan being part of a Satanic cabal. If Donovan was targeted, then he wasn't a member. Unless this was some ploy to deceive the filmmaker. Still, even if his actress and producer weren't demons in disguise, it didn't mean they weren't sleeping together behind his back.
"What about you two? Has anything like that happened to either of you?” Donovan had continued his line of reasoning and it led him straight to "The Black Album."
Loveless hadn't wanted the conversation to take this turn. Someone had been calling the filmmaker’s cell phone in the evening and hanging up after he answered. But they didn’t hang up right away. He could hear their breathing on the other end as he asked repeatedly who was there. Finally, there would be the telltale click, followed by the dial tone. The last time they called, a husky voice said, ‘You’re gonna die’ to Loveless and hung up. Before the attack on Donovan's home, the filmmaker just figured some local was pissed off about all the racket they were making around town with their silly filming. There was no shortage of simple-minded small town backwoods hicks who resented their big city asses. They could easily have gotten his cell number from any one of the classified ads he had placed in newspapers around the mountain looking for cast and crew. Loveless didn’t think to relate it to Devil worshippers. Now he was thinking that. But there was no way in hell he was going to tell any of this to his sole investor. He wasn’t going to let Donovan pull out halfway through the shoot. Not when they had come so far, when success was at hand.
Instead, Loveless lied, “I haven’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. I’m not sure this has anything to do with the movie. Could just be a coincidence.”
“That’d be one big ass coincidence,” Donovan responded suspiciously.
“I haven’t had anything unusual happen either,” Charlotte responded as well. But by the way she glanced sideways uneasily at Loveless, he wondered if she had been getting the same hang-ups and death threats that he had.
Loveless looked away. "I'm really sorry about your house."
"Insurance will cover it," Donovan conceded with a shrug. He had vented and was ready to move on.
“Charlotte and I were getting ready to look at a rough assemblage of a number of the scenes we’ve already finished shooting. Come join us.” Loveless had an editor on the mountain working on an editing system the filmmaker had set up in the loft of his cabin home. He had learned from the unscrupulous producer that he had worked for in Europe to never trust anyone with your footage. The producer had had his footage held hostage on past projects by editors renegotiating for more money. So, the editor would come over to Loveless’ place, edit on Loveless’ system, receive his pay at the end of the day and leave everything there when finished- footage, hard-drives, and all. Until now, the filmmaker hadn’t had a chance to review anything they had shot. While shooting, once the hard-drive was full, they would just download it to a laptop. A production assistant would run a hard-drive with a copy of the raw footage down to a post-production house in San Bernardino. Since they were shooting full resolution high definition, the footage would have to be down converted so that it would fit on their editing system. They could always bump it back up later if they wanted to. If converted back to full resolution, the final result would be of a quality that could be played in movie theaters on a big screen.
In the loft, the editor cued up scenes on the computer to play on a forty-six inch flat screen for Loveless, Charlotte and Donovan to watch from the comfort of a futon couch the filmmaker had placed up there.
"J.D." It was Jerry on the staircase.
"Yeah?" Loveless said as he looked down from the loft.
"Sorry to interrupt. But I've got some music for you and Charlotte to listen to. I think it's really good. But I want your input before I continue, so I know if I'm on the right track or not."
"You want my input too?" Charlotte asked.
"Yeah. It's the scene where you choose good over evil."
"Come on," Loveless said to Charlotte. He turned to Donovan. "You wanna hear it?"
"Nah," the fledgling producer said. "I trust whatever you and Charlotte think."
"Cool." Loveless and Charlotte headed down.
The editor turned to Donovan. "I'm gonna step out on the balcony for a smoke. Be back in a second."
"Yep." Donovan nodded. He stretched out on the futon after the editor left. After Donovan heard the balcony door open and close, a hum started coming from the large flat screen. The producer was startled when a moment later, the edited footage started playing on its own. He looked around. The scene where the singer played the Ouija board was onscreen. Grace smiles and places her hands on the planchette. When her hands jerk across the board, the woman jumps up in fear. She studies the Hell board for a long time before returning to it. Slowly she places her hands on the divining device again. Once more her hands are dragged across the board. This time the singer doesn't let go. She's scared and exhilarated all at the same time The hands move again and again. Finally, they stop. Grace looks up, putting all the letters together, "Play it backwards." The record player and record burn into focus on the dining room table in the foreground. Behind Grace, we see the demon Jeremy's face appear in the balcony window amidst night time fog. Grace, sensing something, spins around. The face is gone. Suddenly, the movie footage starts playing backwards and in slow motion.
"What the- "
On the screen, Grace looks out at Donovan and smiles. The scene went black. A wave of nausea washed over Donovan instantly. His breathing became shallow. D
espite the tepid weather, sweat started to role down the producer's face. Loveless, Charlotte and the editor returned to find Donovan in this state.
"The movie was running backwards."
"What?" the editor said as he went over to the editing system and began checking the computer. "This stuff's all offline now. Did you touch anything?"
"Me? No! I haven't left the couch." Donovan's face looked drained of blood.
"What happened? Charlotte took Donovan's face in her hands and began inspecting his left eye. It looked like a blood vessel had burst.
"You okay, man?" Loveless asked concerned.
"Yeah, yeah. Probably just low blood sugar. Didn't have breakfast."
"I'll make something," Charlotte started for the stairs.
"No. I don't want to hold you guys up. I know you've got other things to do. Let's check out some scenes first."
"You sure?" Loveless was skeptical. Between what happened in his house in Palm Springs and this latest event, it seemed the horror had singled Donovan out for a private screening.
"Yeah, man. I'm sure."
For a rough assemblage, without music or the filmmaker’s input and editorial direction, the scenes were really good. The coverage was solid, the acting natural, the scenery perfect. They had shot a lot of the bigger scenes. Now that they were done with most of the zombie sequences, it would get down to Grace. These would be the most important scenes of the movie. They strategically saved these for the second half of the shoot. Loveless wanted the crew to gel together first, the actors to get comfortable in their roles, and for him to have made all his fledgling filmmaker mistakes. They were now ready for the intimate scenes where Grace returns home, reunites with her sister, finds the Hell board and a surviving copy of “The Black Album,” which she inadvertently plays backwards, releasing the demon Jeremy back into this world, who wants to send Grace’s soul to the hot place in place of his while he remains here on earth in her body.
THE BLACK ALBUM: A Hollywood Horror Story Page 13