THE BLACK ALBUM: A Hollywood Horror Story (17 page)

“Why’s that?” Loveless found
himself saying, thinking some sinister conspiracy was about to be revealed.

“He works construction in San
Bernardino. At first, we thought commuting wouldn’t be that bad. But it’s been
hell on him, going up and down that mountain everyday. This is the start of our
second year. Wait until it snows. You have to put those pain in the ass chains
on your tires. The roads are treacherous. Sometimes they close the highways
because of mud and rock slides. And the fog, thick as hell. Have you been up
here for the snow yet?”

“No,” Loveless said. The woman’s
nonstop talking was making his head spin.

“Oh. This is for you,” Dorothy
said, remembering the bottle of wine she was holding in her hand. It had a gift
ribbon around its neck. She handed it to the filmmaker.

“Thank you.”

“If you don’t mind my asking.”
Dorothy bit her lip. “What kind of movie are you making?”

“A horror film.”

“Drats!"

"Huh?"

"Sorry. I’m home alone a
lot. So I get a little bored.”

Loveless still didn't understand.

Dorothy nodded, understanding his
expression as she removed the baby from her back and plopped down on the couch.
“I was hoping you were shooting a porno.”

Before Loveless could think of a
response of any kind, the woman popped out her right breast and began feeding
baby Chloe. The infant grabbed the mammary with both hands as she suckled.
Dorothy smiled at Loveless sweetly.

Trying to take his mind and eyes
off the woman’s D cup sized breast, the filmmaker asked, “This might not be the
right moment to ask something like this, but have you ever heard about Satanic
or occult practices in the backwoods up here on this mountain?”

“Only Joe when he gets a
snootful. He’s Irish. So it brings the Devil right out of him.” Dorothy saw the
disappointment on the filmmaker’s face. “Seriously, J.D., this is one bizarre
mountain. Once you get outside Lake Arrowhead,” a pall of deep shadows fell
over her face like a shroud as she leaned forward, “I wouldn’t be surprised
what goes on in those woods.”

Later that night, Loveless was
still thinking about what Dorothy the bored housewife had said as he drove back
to Arrowhead from Crestline. He had dropped some equipment off at a house they
had rented there for additional shooting. It was half the price of the
Strawberry Lodge, yet the rooms would still match the look and feel. The
housewife definitely had
mountain fever
. As far as the filmmaker was
concerned, he was the one who had coined that gem of a term. He heard about
people in Hawaii who got island fever and desperately needed to get off the
island. Loveless never understood it though. How could you get cooped up in
paradise? He could however understand mountain fever. Charlotte probably had it
as well. The filmmaker could see it in both women’s eyes: they wanted the hell
off the mountain.

He was contemplating this when a
flashing red light appeared in his rearview mirror. “What the hell?” Loveless
said to himself out loud. The police vehicle whooped only once as it pulled the
filmmaker over. This was one damn isolated stretch of road, the filmmaker noted
to himself with a sudden tinge of paranoia before dismissing it.

There was only one officer in the
vehicle. He got out pulling up his belt with bluster. He approached Loveless
with one hand on the gun in his hip holster. In the other hand was a long
silver metal flashlight, which also would have made a great baton.

“License and registration
please.”

The filmmaker fumbled for several
seconds while producing the items as the sheriff’s deputy took a walk around
the SUV. Through the semi-tinted back windows, the officer saw a box of props
on the backseat. Next to this was some wardrobe for the actors.

“Not sure what I did, officer,”
Loveless said holding his ID out the window.

The sheriff’s deputy took the
items, looked at them, then back to the filmmaker to confirm he was the man on
the driver’s license. The officer pocketed the IDs as he spat out a wad of
chewing tobacco. Loveless could see that the man had teeth stained bright
brown. Oddly, his two front teeth were missing. The man was clearly a backwoods
hick who had probably never been off the mountain. The more the filmmaker
observed the officer, the less he felt like he was dealing with a man of the
law. This joker just didn’t fit the profile.

“You always go joyriding through
these woods at night like you’re in the Indianapolis 500?”

“I wasn’t going fast, officer.”

“You always drive around at this
time of night?”

“I was just dropping some things-
”

“Got an answer for everything,
don’t you, smart-ass?” The sheriff’s deputy stepped back suddenly, shined his
flashlight in the filmmaker’s eyes, unsnapped his holster and drew his gun.
“STEP OUT OF THE VEHICLE, NOW!”

“What?” Loveless said in utter
shock, even as he was complying with the man who had a gun pointed at his face.
The filmmaker got out the car, now sensing true danger in this armed stranger.

“On your knees.”

“What?” Loveless’ internal panic
was rising fast.

“I SAID, ON YOUR KNEES!”

The filmmaker sank down to his
knees. He knew enough at this point to keep quiet. Maybe that would defuse the
situation.

“Big city boy. Think you know
things, huh? You don’t know jack shit!”

Loveless had no idea what the man
was talking about.

“Come up here to our mountain and
act like you’re a big shot. Like you’re running the show.” The sheriff’s deputy
closed the gap and stuck the gun in the filmmaker’s face. It was beginning to
feel like an execution scene straight out of a movie to Loveless. “Well you
ain’t running shit now, is you?”

Loveless remained quiet. He
didn’t realize the officer was expecting an answer.

“IS YOU?”

“No.”

“Got bodies buried in these
hills. Stupid fuck-ups just like you.”

The filmmaker looked down, not
wanting to engage the psycho officer. Loveless saw the man’s shoes.
Sneakers
.
They weren’t even close to regulation attire for a sheriff’s deputy. It was
then that the filmmaker began trembling uncontrollably.

“Stand up.”

Loveless got to his feet slowly.

“Walk.” the officer waved his gun
towards the woods.

“What?” The filmmaker cried with
total alarm.

“WALK,” the sheriff’s deputy said
as he moved behind Loveless and gave him a swift kick in the butt to get him
going. An adrenaline surge kicked in. Instinctively, the filmmaker knew this
was a funeral march, that he was walking to his own execution. The sheriff’s
deputy was something right out of a God damn Nicaraguan death squad.

“I’ll leave,” the filmmaker found
himself blurting out. “I’ll leave this mountain right now, tonight and never
come back.”

The officer spit tobacco on a
tree as they passed, “Damn right you’re leaving. Only not the way you think.”
The hick cop actually laughed.

They were coming to an area where
the trees thinned out, walking along the edge of an embankment. Lumber jacks
had cut down a number of tagged trees in the vicinity, leaving only smooth
stumps. With the aid of the hick officer’s flashlight, the filmmaker could see
the dark hole ahead of him, at the edge of this clearing. It was a freshly dug
grave. A shovel rested next to it against a tree. This was planned. Loveless
came to a dead stop about twenty feet away from the hole.

“Go on now. Keep moving,” the
sheriff’s deputy kicked the filmmaker hard in the butt, shoving him forward
again.

“You don’t have to do this. Please,
don’t do this,” Loveless now pleaded as he walked. The officer cackled. '
Go
ahead. Laugh, shithead,'
the filmmaker thought, now furious. He was already
planning to run in another step or two. He’d rather be shot in the back trying
to escape, than knowingly climb down into his own grave. There was no way he
was going to do that. Loveless tensed, ready. Suddenly, he heard a branch snap
behind him. The sheriff’s deputy had lost his footing at the edge of the
embankment. The filmmaker turned to see the man sliding down the steep hill,
trying to grab onto tree branches to stop his descent and keep his balance. In
this scramble the man lost his flashlight.

Loveless couldn’t tell if the man
still had his gun or not, but he turned and started hauling ass back in the
direction of his SUV. The filmmaker jumped back out onto the road, scrambled
into his truck and drove out of there as if his life depended on it.
Considering the circumstances, Loveless was most likely right.

The filmmaker went straight to
Charlotte’s condo and told her everything. Lizzy was asleep in her bedroom
upstairs.

“What the fuck is going on?”
Loveless said in an anxious low tone so as not to wake Lizzy.

“I don’t know. But if he’s got
your ID, they probably have an APB out on you by now. “How do you know that?”

“Had a few run-ins with the law
myself, when I was young.”

“I haven’t!”

“You’re going to have to head
this off by going to the sheriff’s station first.”

“That lunatic was going to kill
me! Had a grave dug for me. He’ll probably say I attacked him or something. ”

“They’ll look for you at your
place. Stay here the rest of the night. We’ll go to the station together in the
morning. During the light of day. If they take you into custody, don’t say
another word. I have a friend, a high powered ass-kicking attorney. I’ll have
her call from Los Angeles and light a fire under their hillbilly asses.”

Loveless looked at the woman. She
was strong. He had known that about her. He just hadn’t realized how strong she
was until now. “Thank you, Charlotte.”

“Hey, we’re in this together,
right?”

They were in it together alright.
But the question was, what were they into?

The next morning, when Charlotte
and Loveless went to the sheriff’s station, there seemed to be some confusion.

“We don’t have an officer fitting
that description working here. Never have,” stated a tall, barrel-chested
officer with thinning blond hair, a thick mustache and an official demeanor.

“What about one of the other
stations?” Charlotte asked.

“We don’t have an officer like
that at any station on this mountain.”

“So there’s no record of my being
pulled over?” Loveless asked both perplexed and relieved.

“No. Would be in our computer.
You say this officer was driving a sheriff’s vehicle?"

“Yes.” Loveless thought for a
second. “No. I didn’t get a good look at the car. I just saw the flashing
lights behind me. He turned his lights off when I stopped my car. It was dark.”

“I don’t know what to tell you.”
The officer didn’t look like he believed the filmmaker’s story much.

Loveless was about to say
something. Charlotte stepped in. “Let’s go, J.D. Thank you, officer.” The
actress pulled the filmmaker away. They left the sheriff’s station quickly.

“He definitely knew more,”
Loveless said shaking his head as Charlotte drove.

“Maybe. But it’s not like he’s
going to tell you or me.”

“Maybe we should postpone the
rest of the shoot for a few weeks. Let things calm down.”

“You joking? We have maybe five
days left of shooting. Look, they were either trying to scare you or really
kill you. What they did was planned out. We can’t give them time to get even
more organized. Let’s finish this hell shoot, get the fuck off this bullshit
mountain and never look back.”

Loveless was staring at Charlotte
blankly, his face suddenly drained of blood.

“What?” the actress asked, trying
to read the expression.

“Can you pull over?”

Charlotte pulled her truck over.
Loveless opened the door, leaned out and got sick on the side of the road.

A few nights later, having run
out of craft service for the troops, Loveless and Charlotte made a food run to
the only store still open on the mountain at that late hour. Seven Eleven. They
had gotten into the habit of driving together at night, for safety's sake.
Della, the large Cherokee woman, stood behind the counter with her arms folded.
She looked like she was expecting them. Loveless had forgotten she worked the
graveyard shift. The heavyset Native American woman studied the filmmaker and
his actress as they paid for their groceries. An air of uncomfortableness
settled in over the two of them.

“How’s ole’ Jer, these days?”
Della asked with just the right sardonic tone in her voice.

“He seems fine,” Loveless replied
with feigned nonchalance. Jerry, Delilah and Karen were no longer staying at
his cabin home. They had found new residency in a small shack on the edge of
Arrowhead a couple of weeks earlier thanks to the money they were making from
the movie shoot.