THE BLACK ALBUM: A Hollywood Horror Story

by Carlton Kenneth Holder

  While Loveless and Charlotte were extremely excited about the quality of what they had shot so far, Donovan looked like the life force had been sucked out of him.

  “I’m thinking, after we have a few of the important Grace scenes shot, we put together a two minute sizzle reel.”

  "Sizzle reel?" Donovan queried through a stream of sweat that was pouring down his brow and dripping off like a waterfall.

  "It's like a trailer. You know, a commercial. You sure you okay, man?" Loveless was watching rashes form on Donovan's face and neck before his eyes. He threw a quick glance to Charlotte, who was witnessing the same thing.

  "Are you allergic to something?" The actress looked highly concerned.

  "No."

  "You sure?"

  "Yeah."

  "Your face- "

  "Yeah. Yeah. I'm cool."

  "Okay." Charlotte looked at The filmmaker and shrugged.

  "We can take the reel down to LA and view it for some of the distributors I know. As well as some bigger ones I don’t know,” Loveless thought out loud.

  “You don’t want to wait until we have the whole thing done?” Donovan replied.

  “Better to build anticipation now. Getting industry people to watch an entire movie is extremely difficult. An upward battle. Better start campaigning now.”

  “I agree,” Charlotte weighed in. “I can also get my ex to reach out to his contacts and start building hype with the reel.”

  “Then by the time we screen it, we’ll have a room full of people who'll actually want to see our movie.”

  “Makes sense.” Donovan winced. He caught Charlotte's immediate look of empathy, “Got a splitting headache, is all. Came out of nowhere. But everybody gets headaches from time to time, right?”

  "Want something to eat?"

  "Honestly, I don't think I could hold anything down."

  “You can rest up here. I’ll get you some Advil.” Loveless started to head down from the loft.

  “It’s alright. I’ll come downstairs.” Donovan looked at the editing system and the flat screen. He seemed scared.

  “Oh, okay.”

  Charlotte helped Donovan down to the couch in front of the fireplace. He had goose bumps and a chill. Charlotte put a starter log in the fireplace and lit it. Loveless returned with Advil and a glass of water. He also brought Donovan’s travel bag over from by the front door. Donovan leaned back, a pillow behind his head, and pulled a laptop out of his pack. “Whatever this is, came out of nowhere. Kicking my ass.”

  “No worries. Stay put as long as you need to, Donovan,” the filmmaker said with genuine concern.

  Charlotte squeezed Donovan’s shoulder, “We’re gonna run some errands for tomorrow’s shoot.” She placed a blanket over Donovan and tucked him in.

  “Thanks. And don’t worry, okay. I’m sure I’ll feel better in a little bit.”

  But Donovan wasn’t going to be okay in a bit. After Loveless and Charlotte left, Donovan opened his laptop. He looked at the screen for a very long time, then typed in a search: BACK-MASKING. The screen lit up his face with the multitude of results for his query.

  Charlotte looked at the shooting schedule for the week. She was in most of the scenes now. For the scene where Grace finds the Hell board in the basement, Loveless took the cast and crew back to the band’s original home in the woods. Or at least the burnt down remains of it. The filmmaker had loved the look of the dirt floor basement and wanted it in his movie. They could blast blue light down through the holes in the basement ceiling, creating atmospheric shafts of light. Since it didn’t appear that anyone still owned or cared about the property, Loveless doubted they would be bothered. If local law enforcement did show up, he would just play the dumb director, apologize profusely, pack up and leave. He’d done this many times before in his indie filmmaking career. Actually, the filmmaker would have made a pretty solid actor, if he had decided to go that way.

  With Matty’s lighting, the basement looked scary as hell. The blue light from above made it look like a moonlit night. The way the dirt floor and wooden beams caught the lighting in the basement, gave them a brownish red tint. Loveless sat the Hell board on a crate in the corner. Jerry tied a near invisible piece of filament around the eyeball planchette that sat on top of the Ouija board. The set designer covered it all in fake spider webs. During the shooting of the scene, while Charlotte, as Grace, wandered around the basement, Jerry would, on cue, pull the planchette with the filament, moving it to attract Grace’s attention. In post production, the filmmaker would add a scary scraping noise every time the planchette moved. The sound is what would draw Grace to the discovery of the Hell board.

  Grace was perfect. In between takes, However, Charlotte did not appear happy. She seemed agitated. Loveless couldn’t tell if she was moody or just in character. Charlotte wanted the scene over. In point of fact, she wanted to get the hell out of there. The woman was spooked.

  Donovan, who was still on the mountain recovering at the filmmaker’s house, had elected to skip this night’s shooting. Loveless noticed the man was spending a lot of time on his laptop. Donovan seemed distant and in pain. The drugs were not taking the skull splitting pain away. Charlotte was going to bring him some prescription medicine she had left over from one of her many ailments. For all her bluster and out-going cheerfulness, Charlotte was a bit of a closet hypochondriac. Her daughter Lizzy would be the first to admit it.

  Charlotte wanted to postpone shooting the scene where she is momentarily possessed in the basement. But the filmmaker told her that would mean coming back to the burnt down house in the middle of the woods. The authorities may get wind of their illegal shoot and be ready for them next time. If for some reason, they couldn’t get back into the basement for that additional scene, it would void the scene they had just shot and they would have to reshoot it somewhere else. Which simply wasn't in the budget. The filmmaker could be persuasive. Charlotte finally relented. After a couple of cold starts, the actress nailed the scene.

  Loveless couldn’t be happier. “You hit it, babe!”

  Charlotte was happier when they were packing the equipment up. On the way back to town, in a moment of inspiration, the filmmaker decided to get some shots of the bootleg cemetery at Lord’s Lane. Loveless had released most of the crew after the basement scenes. He kept only Matty, Collin, Jerry, and Charlotte. They all drove together in his SUV. Matty and Collin set the lights using power from the inverter in the filmmaker’s truck. Jerry set up the smoke machine and filled the cardboard box. On action, he would release the fog and waft it past the tombstones which Matty had lit particularly eerily. Charlotte was content to stay in the truck, until Loveless had a brilliant stroke of further inspiration.

  “I’ve got it. After you bury the family dog, you come across this bootleg cemetery. Instead of finding the album buried in the woods, you’ll find it buried here, in Lord’s Lane. In a grave.”

  “You’ve gotta be kidding,” Charlotte retorted. "What possible reason would Grace have to dig up a grave?"

  The filmmaker was momentarily stumped and it looked like his brainstorm was about to be stillborn.

  Then Jerry spoke up, "Grace would dig up a grave if she came across one with her name inscribed on it."

  "Brilliant, Jerry. She'd think it had to be a joke. That's it!" Loveless was ecstatic.

  “Enough’s enough already, J.D. I like pushing the envelope as much as the next artist, but this is getting just plain morbid.”

  “Don’t you see, Charlotte. This is perfect!” Loveless answered back, slightly wounded.

  “It would make a helluva shot,” Matty chimed in. The director of photography never added his two cents. This had an effect on Charlotte.

  “There are people buried in those graves,” the actress said defensively, feeling outnumbered.

  “They’re buried pretty deep. If they weren’t coyotes would have dug ‘em up long ago,” Jerry added.

  “We’ll bury the album right below the sur
face. There’ll be no chance of you digging up a corpse. Okay?” Loveless tried to sound tender and concerned, but all he really felt was a need to get this scene.

  “Fine,” Charlotte sighed. “Let’s just get this over with.”

  Jerry rigged a tombstone cross to temporarily read: GRACE LYNN. He then buried the album, wrapped in plastic, right below the surface of the grave as Matty tweaked the lighting on it. Jerry looked at Charlotte and smiled kindly, “See. No dead people.” His kind smile made him look like a sad clown.

  The filmmaker blocked the scene with Charlotte. A few minutes later, they were rolling. It looked beautiful to Loveless through the monitor. The character Grace looked apprehensive as she dug into the grave, mirroring the actresses’ own anxiety. They got it on the first take.

  “Awesome. Let’s go in now and get some tighter coverage,” Loveless said.

  Charlotte looked at him. “Really?”

  “We’ll be done in a few minutes, Charlotte.”

  They got a close up and medium shot of Grace digging up the album, an insert shot of the album and her name on the tomb marker, and an over the shoulder shot.

  That’s when the music started. It came out of the woods. Everyone stopped and looked around. It was rock music. Black rock. Satanic rock.

  “Where the hell is that coming from?” Loveless said as he looked around.

  “The way sound bounces around these woods and hills, there’s no telling which direction it’s coming from,” Jerry replied.

  Matty lit a cigarette. “But it’s close.”

  “HELLO,” Loveless called out.

  “You might not want to be doing that, J.D.” Even Jerry the lycan looked rattled.

  “Let’s just pack up and go,” Charlotte said with her arms folded tightly.

  “Good idea,” Matty said stoically as he blew out a ring of smoke.

  The music seemed to come and go, from here to there. Almost as if the people playing the music were constantly on the move. And although Loveless wouldn’t admit it to himself, the music was very familiar to him. Nordic. It sounded just like the music that was played at the party at his cabin home the weekend he wrote his seed of a screenplay. The party he wasn't sure had really happened.

  Within five minutes, the film crew had their equipment packed and were pulling out. Everyone’s nerves were frayed. Charlotte bummed a cigarette from Matty.

  The vehicle slowed as Loveless said, “There’s something in the road ahead.”

  “What now?”

  An animal skull with sharp canines and large horns glued to its head, sat on a man-size stick frame that stood up in the middle of the road. A white cloak was draped around the stick skeleton to give it the impression of a body. The animal skull was on fire. Flames were spitting out the eye sockets.

  “Don’t stop,” Charlotte practically cried out.

  The car slowed and went around the effigy. Not a soul in the SUV could take their eyes off the figure, until it was in the rearview mirror.

  Loveless felt compelled to finally ask, “Jerry, you ever hear of any Devil worshippers in these mountains?”

  “No. But then again that wouldn’t be unusual. Satanists don’t like to mix with lycans.”

  Somewhere in the woods, a coyote howled. Jerry howled back.

  Two days later, Charlotte and Loveless took Donovan to the Lake Arrowhead Hospital for an MRI. The test revealed nothing out of the ordinary in the producer’s brain. At the end of the visit, the doctor charged Donovan and wrote him a prescription for Divalproex. Back at the cabin home, Donovan asked the filmmaker if he had ever seen the movie Poltergeist.

  “The one directed by Tobe Hooper in the early eighties? Sure. I loved it. Was part of a trilogy.”

  “Did you hear about the curse?”

  Loveless didn’t know where his producing partner was going with this, but he didn’t like the implications. “Hype to sell movie tickets.”

  “Was it hype that the actress who played the older sister died within weeks of the first movie’s release?”

  Loveless was well aware of Dominique Dunn’s death. At one time he had had a lot of interest in the urban legend. “She was strangled by her boyfriend after she dumped him. That’s all. Bad judgment in men. Not the occult.”

  “And what about the little girl who was in all three movies?”

  The filmmaker sighed. “Heather O’Rourke.”

  “She was rushed to the hospital with what was thought to be the flu. Twenty-four hours later, she died on the operating table. How does that happen?”

  “The eighties, man. Doctors were probably hopped up on uppers, coke. Coincidence.”

  “There were two other actors.”

  “Older actors. People involved in movies die all the time. Look at Heath Ledger.”

  “It’s a fact that they used human bones as props in the Poltergeist. Some people say that’s what triggered the curse.”

  “Donovan, there is no curse! As much as I love horror movies, I don’t believe in them or the supernatural.”

  “What about the pig’s blood in my condo? What about the Devil worshippers in the woods? Lizzy told me what happened to you and Charlotte the other night.”

  “More likely rednecks or kids with nothing better to do.”

  “We shouldn’t have used the Ouija Board and the song. Definitely shouldn’t have played it backwards. We shouldn’t have used the name Mathaluh, the incantations in those occult books or so much factual stuff. We were playing with fire. Just asking for trouble.”

  “Authenticity. People want to feel it's real. Look, man, we just have a little bit more filming to do. Please don’t get cold feet now. We’re in the home stretch. Almost there.”

  Donovan was starting to wane now, in the face of Loveless’ relentless logic.

  “We’re gonna make money. Names for ourselves. You, me, Charlotte. You want that, don’t you?”

  “Sure. Sure. Just after this, no more horror films.”

  “You have a deal. We’ll do a comedy next. Promise.” Loveless shook on it with Donovan.

  Chapter Six

  Martini Shot

  “Sound speeding.”

  “Camera rolling.”

  “And action!”

  Grace steps into frame and puts the record on the old worn record player. The record and player that had once belonged to Henry, a teenager who had shot and killed two of his friends before turning the gun on himself and taking his own life. The room’s black shadows fall perfectly across Grace’s face, accentuating her picture perfect jawline, revealing conflicting emotions as she considers for a moment what she is about to do. The wind whips outside, screaming no. The coyotes in the hills howl don’t! Grace lifts the needle and puts it on the record. “Oww,” Grace says, moving her hand quickly away from the record player.

  Loveless’ eyes narrowed instantly, “Push in.”

  Matty looked at Loveless for a second. This wasn’t the shot.

  “Push in on her finger,” the filmmaker repeated urgently.

  The cameraman did. The small droplet on Grace’s finger sparkles as she turns it into the light. Blood. She puts her finger to her lip.

  “Perfect,” Loveless stated. “Cut!”

  “What do you mean perfect? I just cut myself. I didn’t see that anywhere in your script.” Charlotte said, no longer Grace.

  “A fortuitous happenstance.”

  “Me cutting my finger is a fortuitous happenstance? Who even talks like that anymore?”

  “For the shot. For the movie. I should have thought of it myself. Grace cuts herself at the exact moment she decides to give in to the darkness. To the unholy evil. The blood consummates the re-igniting of “The Black Album” and in turn the resurrection of the demon Jeremy.”

  “Can someone get me a paper towel?” Charlotte said with some annoyance.

  “You went with it. You understood this was a good thing for the shot. For the movie.”

  “I didn’t want to have to reshoot it. That’s
all. And you’re right. It probably is a great added touch. But all you were thinking about was the damn movie. It would have been nice if you had been thinking about me for a change. You never even bothered to consider I might be hurt. Hope I don’t have an infection from that rusted piece of junk.”

  “I cleaned the needle off myself, with alcohol.”

  “Well don’t you have all the answers,” Charlotte answered in a huff as the make-up artist brought her a tissue for her finger.

  This was it, Loveless thought. Her blow-up. It had been coming for a few days now and the filmmaker totally expected it. It had happened on every movie set since the beginning of movie-making, all the way back to the silent film era. It was the dynamics of the director/starlet relationship. As the filmmaker became more engrossed with the picture they were shooting, Charlotte began to feel she mattered less and less to the director. That she was just a means to an ends. While it was true Loveless wouldn’t be standing there directing a movie at that moment if it wasn’t for her, he did care about Charlotte. He cared more than he dared to admit. But the last thing the filmmaker wanted to do right now was get involved in a serious relationship. His last relationship was a disaster that ended in shambles. The lesson he took away from that tragedy was that he wouldn’t commit to any woman ever again until his career and finances were successfully positioned. He didn’t have to have Spielbergian size success. He would just have to be able to make a decent living at his chosen profession as a filmmaker. Money killed his last relationship. Or rather bills did. He and his former fiancée drowned in them. Loveless had felt like a failure. He couldn’t take care of things because of all the money he didn’t have. It was one thing if you lived in a little hamlet like Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, a small town that nearly died when the steel mill closed down some years ago. Most people there were hovering above the poverty line. And misery loved company. Broke guys still had girlfriends, broke girlfriends. But not having money was a doubly bitter pill to swallow when you lived in a city like Los Angeles. It seemed like every other guy had made it. And they gleefully reveled in rubbing it in your face. Maybe this was a residual effect left over from when they themselves were struggling. If they had struggled. When you took your best gal out, there was always some other guy with an exotic sports car and a black card buying drinks and taking every opportunity to hit on your girl when you went to the bathroom or to order drinks or whatever.