THE BLACK ALBUM: A Hollywood Horror Story (16 page)

“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 surface. 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.

The filmmaker broke the crew for
twenty while he went off to talk to Charlotte, who was sulking on the balcony
by herself smoking a cigarette.

“Hey,” Loveless said quietly.

“Hey,” she responded at equal
volume without turning around.

“How’s the finger?”

Charlotte spun and gave Loveless
a wry expression. “Now you ask?”

“Look, I know I’m excessive by
nature. And this movie means a lot to me.”

“And you don’t think it means a
lot to me?”

“You didn’t let me finish. You
may be the star, but I’m the director. If the film never sees the light of day
or if it bombs, you’ll still be regarded based on your performance. Which is
excellent, as you already know.”

Charlotte’s eyes sparked at that.

“Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The
Next Generation,” the filmmaker spouted definitively. “What?”

“The movie. A mediocre sequel at
best. But it starred an unknown Renee Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey. Their
standout performances rocketed them to stardom.”

“Huh. Didn’t know that.”

Loveless continued. “But a
director only gets one first film. Which, ninety percent of the time, is also
their last film. I love writing and shooting. I don’t want to do anything
else.”

Charlotte was quiet, nodding her
head, sensing the filmmaker had more to say.

“You know who Ed Wood was?”
Loveless asked.

“No.”

“He was this filmmaker back in
the nineteen-fifties. Loved horror and sci-fi. The studios wouldn’t touch him.
He made bad B films, always finding some sucker investor to put money up. Well,
he made a film called “Plan 9 From Outer Space.” The day he finished it, he
turned to his future wife and said with total conviction, ‘
This is the film
I’m going to be remembered for.’
Ed Wood was right. It made him
infamous
.
“Plan 9” is widely regarded as the worse film ever made. I mean it’s so bad
it’s good. Anyway, my point is, I’d rather be Ed Wood than Bryan T. Alexander.”

“Who’s Bryan T. Alexander?”

“Exactly.”

“What? I’m lost again.”

“He was a guy in film school with
me at NYU. He and I were the two most talented guys in our class. We came out
to Los Angeles together. But in the end, after two really tough years, Bryan
gave up on Hollywood, moved back to Arkansas where he was from, and took over
running his father's dry cleaners. Bryan always hated the family business. Now
he has a string of dry cleaners and is pretty successful financially.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I’d rather be Ed Wood. I’d
rather suck doing something I love than be successful at something I hate.”

Charlotte was silent for a time.
“I get that.” She hesitated. “What about us?”

“I’m hoping to succeed and that
the rest all falls into place. Nobody likes being with a struggling artist.”

“I don’t care about money. My ex
had money. He was a douche bag.”

“What about Donovan?”

Charlotte stopped and looked at
Loveless. “You jealous of him? Yeah, I guess you are. Lizzy told me what she
said to you. Donovan and I aren’t blood related. He was my brother’s best
friend. We hooked up for a short time in high school. Ancient history. Now
we’re just friends. And that’s all. Period.”

Loveless felt relieved hearing
that.

“You and I have spent a lot of
time together because of the movie,” Charlotte went on. “I've kind of gotten
used to that. What about after? I know you’re going to go back to Los Angeles.”

“Eventually.”

“Well I’m planning on getting off
this damn mountain too. I used to love it here. It was a haven to protect my
Lizzy from all the ills that can befall teenagers. But I realize those ills are
everywhere. Maybe it’s time to stop hiding out and move back to LA. I could
increase my income there. Plus, I don’t feel safe around here anymore.”

“I was going to ask. Are you
getting phone calls?”

Charlotte’s voice lowered
considerably as she answered, “Yes. Started with just hang-ups. At first I
thought it was Lizzy’s friends pranking me. But then came the threats. When
Donovan’s place was vandalized, I realized it was because of the movie.”

Loveless looked at the ground as
he asked, “Do you believe there really are Devil worshipers on this mountain?”

“Guess that’s the million dollar
question.”

“Why didn’t you tell Donovan?”

“Same reason you didn’t. I want
to see this movie made.”

Matty called out from inside the
house, “We’re ready.”

Before going back inside,
Charlotte looked at Loveless and confided, “I just don’t want to die doing it.”

Loveless was about to follow the
actress back into the house, when something below caught his eye. A silver and
brown coyote sat at the edge of the woods, gazing up at the balcony. The coyote
was staring right at the filmmaker. Lights from the house reflected off the
animal’s eyes, giving them a blood red otherworldly tint.

“You must be looking for that
ole' dog Jerry,” Loveless said with a stiff smile.

The animal must not have liked
his humor. It bared its teeth, a thick growl escaping from its throat. The
filmmaker went inside quickly.

It was a rare night. Rare because
cast and crew had the night off from shooting. Most of the movie took place
during the course of one night. Halloween night. So naturally most of the
shooting had to be done at night. The crew would begin setting up for the
scenes in the early evening while it was still light. If they were shooting an
indoor scene they could start shooting earlier, but Loveless preferred when it
was dark. There were a number of times they began shooting an interior scene
early and things were moving right along. Then, when they would turn around to
get coverage from the reverse angle there would always be a telltale window or
balcony with glass doors in the shot, still full of daylight, to bring things
to a grinding halt. Then the wait would begin for nightfall. The filmmaker
hated that. He hated stopping in the middle, having to wait. It was far better
to begin shooting after dark. But today, they had the night off. They had to
shoot some daylight scenes - like Grace driving into town - so the cast and
crew needed a turn around (eight hours of rest in between shooting days).

Loveless was putting away lights,
camera equipment, props, and electrical cords from the previous night’s
shooting. They had filmed at his cabin home, shooting until the wee hours of
the morning. Loveless, taking pity on his crew, told them to just leave
everything. He’d put it away the next day. The filmmaker ended up sleeping in
most of the next day and was just getting to the equipment at nightfall. He
turned on a couple of movie lights to help him see. It gave the cabin home a
warm atmospheric glow.

Thirty-seven minutes later, there
was a knock on the front door. Loveless answered it to find a pretty, buxom
blond in her mid thirties standing on his doorstep. She had a bottle of wine in
her hand and a baby strapped to her back.

“Hi. We haven’t formerly met. I’m
Dorothy Flynn. We’re neighbors. I live next door.” “Oh, hi. Right. I’ve seen
you smoking out on your balcony. I’m J.D.”

“My husband hates it when I
smoke, J.D. He’s got the most sensitive nose in the world. Can’t stand it when
the house smells even the teensy bit like smoke. So I sneak a smoke every now
and then out on the balcony. I’m trying to quit,” Dorothy announced as she
walked past Loveless into the house looking around at all the lighting and
equipment. “I knew it. You’re filming something, J.D. I saw the lights the
other night. Then again tonight.” She turned and saw the filmmaker’s stupefied
expression. “I’m sorry. I’m intruding, aren’t I? I’m such a snoop.”

“It’s okay. I don’t mind. We’re
shooting a movie.” Loveless didn’t know quite what to make of the woman with
the baby on her back.

Even as she apologized, Dorothy
continued to press forward, inspecting the premises.

“That your daughter? She’s
pretty.” Loveless only knew it was a girl by the pink onesie she wore. The baby
was bald except for a wisp of hair and reminded the filmmaker of the cartoon
character
Elmer J. Fudd.

“Oh, yeah. Thanks.” Dorothy
laughed. “I almost forget she’s there sometimes. This is little Chloe. She’s
one year next month. My husband Joe and I are from Philly. We wanted a simpler
life for our daughter." Dorothy frowned. "Don’t know how much longer
we can make it on this mountain though.”