THE BLACK ALBUM: A Hollywood Horror Story (20 page)

“J.D!” Charlotte shouted,
startled.

As the filmmaker held fast to
Brent, he looked over at Charlotte. “You want your daughter back, right? He
knows where she is.”

Brent glowered at him, then
glanced over to Charlotte for help. The mother looked from Brent to Loveless,
then stepped back, out of the filmmaker’s way.

Loveless squeezed tighter. “Where
the fuck is she?”

“The altar,” Brent squawked.

Loveless let go, giving the kid a
shove to send him on his way. “She better be there.”

“She is, man. She is. Just don’t
tell Lamont I told you.” Brent backed away towards the woods that were as much
home to him as the rundown family house he lived in with his mother and two
sisters. Right before the forest swallowed him, Brent pointed an accusatory
finger at Loveless. “You’ve got a real attitude problem, man. You know that.”

“I know,” Loveless said quietly
as he and Charlotte were already heading towards the SUV.

The storm clouds ruptured
simultaneously. The first wave of snow hit on the way to the altar. Charlotte
knew how to get there during the day, but with daylight all but gone and the
first snow starting to fall, she was panicking. It seemed like forever before
they even found the spot where her and Loveless had parked the first time they
had hiked to the arcane altar in the middle of the timberland. The filmmaker
pulled out two flashlights - he had gotten into the habit of carrying them
during the shoot as they were always needed for something or the other - and
gave one to the worry-stricken mother.

“I’m not sure I remember how to-”

Loveless, seeing the doubt in her
face, cut Charlotte off, “Don’t panic. Think through it. You know how to get
there. You’ve been there before.”

“In daylight.”

“You know how to get there. Now
which way?”

Charlotte focused as she looked
around. “Okay, there. That trail.”

The trail wasn’t much of a trail.
It was overgrown with bushes, weeds and the like. The first time they had made
their way to the altar, the filmmaker hadn’t even realized they were on a
trail. The woods were now covered with a layer of fresh snow. Charlotte and
Loveless heard rock music as they approached the small clearing in which the
ugly stone atrocity sat. It was that same black death metal the filmmaker had
heard twice before on the mountain. Loveless took the lead.

The altar was covered by a canvas
tarp. One end of the tarp was tied around the stone demigod’s neck and covered
the altar like a tent, the other ends anchored to the shackles. The ropes that
held it were taunt and held fast against the wind whistling past. Underneath
the canvas, in the little homemade camping tent, laying on an unrolled sleeping
bag, were Lamont and Lizzy. The older teen was on top of the fifteen year old,
kissing her, pulling at her clothing. Lizzy looked all but oblivious.

In one fluid motion, the
filmmaker picked up the portable stereo that sat on the altar spewing
unintelligible lyrics and smashed it against a boulder. The death rock died
abruptly. Next, he ripped Lamont off of Lizzy, flung him around and tossed him
to the ground hard.

“FUCK,” Lamont screamed like a
wild animal.

Charlotte was relieved to see
that Lizzy and the boy’s clothes were still pretty much intact. They hadn’t yet
gotten to where Lamont wanted to go. The dark sky opened up and the falling
snow tripled in volume and density. The teen saw Charlotte as he got to his
feet. The woman was already headed over to her daughter. Loveless kept both
eyes on Lamont. A lesson he had learned in Brooklyn was: once you put your
hands on someone, you don’t take your eyes off of them. It was at that moment
that the filmmaker saw the
blood dripping green thorn bracelet
tattoo on
Lamont's right arm and realized he was the executioner outside Gary's Arcade
Asylum who had pummeled another boy on Halloween night in front of other feral
youth.

“Come on, man. We weren’t doin’
anything, lady.”

Charlotte examined Lizzy, whose
only reaction was, “Mom.”

The mother looked at Loveless,
“She’s on something.”

The filmmaker looked Lamont in
the eyes as the teen got to his feet, “What’d she take?” “Just some weed, man.
Blazin’
.
That’s all.”

Charlotte looked at her daughter
again, then back to Loveless, “He’s lying.”

“What’d she take?” the filmmaker
growled, closing the gap between him and Lamont. The teen pulled a knife as he
backed away, thinking about his options. Loveless shined the light in the teen’s
eyes and kept moving forward. In a lucid moment, Lamont realized they were more
concerned about helping Lizzy than hurting him.

“Acid,” the teen said as he
lowered the knife. “We dropped a tab.”

“Acid!” Charlotte said mortified.

“I didn’t force her. She wanted
to.”

“Let’s take her back to my place
and stay with her. There’s not much more we can do.” Lamont saw that they were
done with him. He rushed past Loveless towards the path.

The filmmaker tripped the teen.
The knife went flying into bushes. Next, Loveless snatched the car keys out the
teen's other hand and ripped the cell phone out of his pocket. From the ground,
Lamont kicked at Loveless, but the filmmaker had already backed out of range.

“What the hell, man?”

“I’m not letting you go so you
can slash our tires before we get to our car. Or call your backwoods cult
buddies.” Loveless tossed the teen’s keys and cell into the woods. “Go fetch,
fucker!”

“You can’t leave me out here like
this. I told you I dropped acid.”

“Call a cop. ‘Course then you’d have
to tell him what you were doing out here with a minor.”

Lamont screamed at the filmmaker
even as he scrambled around wildly looking for his car keys and phone, “You’re
dead, man. DEAD! Don’t think we don’t know about you. You ain’t making it off
this mountain, Loveless.”

The filmmaker had already
dismissed Lamont. He was too busy helping Charlotte get Lizzy back to the car.
Loveless would have carried the girl, but he thought it was a good idea that
she walk.
Get the shit through her system that much sooner.

The roads had become treacherous.
The temperature dropped and the slushy snow that had already touched down was
turning into thick, slick ice. The accumulation was building. There was a foot
of snow, maybe more. Without chains on the SUV’s tires, the truck fish-tailed
at any mild turn of the steering wheel. Charlotte - in the back with Lizzy -
had one arm pressed across her daughter’s chest, even though the girl was
wearing her seatbelt. The woman braced her other hand against the vehicle
ceiling. The breath went out of her with each glissade.

“We’re almost there,” Loveless
tried to reassure Charlotte. He had snow chains for his tires in the back of
the SUV. But the filmmaker didn’t want to waste time stopping to put them on.
They would be buried by the time he got the chains on. The filmmaker didn’t
dare stop. It was getting worse by the minute and this was only the beginning.
Charlotte looked out the window in disbelief. Before living on the mountain,
she had spent many long weekends and vacations up here with her ex. They would
always spend the winter holidays in their condo retreat huddled up by a fire
with baby Lizzy. Since moving here two years ago, Charlotte thought she had
seen everything nature and the mountain could throw at them: wild fires, barks
beetles infesting the forest and killing a quarter of all the trees on the
mountain, snow, and rain storms. But the actress and mother had never seen
anything like the storm that was raging outside her passenger side window. In
all the time she had spent in Lake Arrowhead and the surrounding mountain
townships, she had never experienced a blizzard. The snow was piling up right
before her eyes. Loveless had to drive around snow drifts that were too
substantial to drive over.

Lizzy glanced out the window,
“Isn’t the snow beautiful, mommy?”

At the cabin, the stairs down
were just a steep ski slope of snow. Fortunately the filmmaker had had the
foresight to leave a shovel at the top of the stairs. He used it to clear step
after step as he made his way down, Charlotte helping Lizzy down right behind
him. The front door was essentially buried in an arch of snow. Loveless cleared
it out as fast as he could, his hands growing numb under the gloves.

Inside, he built a roaring fire
as Charlotte helped her daughter change into dry clothes and set the girl up
with blankets and pillows on the couch in front of the fireplace. The filmmaker
and the actress took turns changing out of their wet clothes into dry things,
while the other remained with Lizzy. Afterwards, Loveless sat on the throw rug
on the floor by the fire sipping a glass of merlot, while Charlotte massaged
and doted over her daughter. Lizzy had a huge dreamy smile on her face. The
girl was having a good trip. The filmmaker was thankful for that and hoped it
continued. Things could get so much more worse if her acid trip became a
bummer.

After some thought, Loveless got
up. He went around the house locking all the doors and windows. Securing the
perimeter. Downstairs, in the same closet in the game room where he had found
the record player, the filmmaker hunted for what he knew he would find there: a
large long metal box with a padlock. He pulled out the set of keys he had been
given by his buddy for the cabin. Loveless found a small key that looked like it
would fit the padlock. It did. He pulled the double-barrel shotgun out of the
box. Along with it was a silver revolver and boxes of ammo for each of the
weapons. The filmmaker loaded the revolver first and stuffed it into his pants
under his belt like he had seen in countless movies. For a fleeting moment he
wondered if any notorious gunslinger had ever accidentally shot his own dick
off. Next the filmmaker loaded the shotgun and hefted it over his shoulder. At
that moment, Loveless felt powerful; the power one felt when they knew, without
a doubt, that they could take the life of another. The filmmaker just hoped it
wouldn’t come to that. But his gut kept telling him otherwise. Loveless felt
the cold veil of death riding in on the storm. When he returned upstairs,
Charlotte took the sight of the armed man in in stages.

“Expect the best. Prepare for the
worst.”

“I don’t like guns, J.D.”

“The blizzard would make a
perfect distraction.”

“For what?” Charlotte said, not
sure she wanted to know.

“For something to happen to us.
Local law enforcement and the fire department are going to have their hands
full with this storm.”

The actress waited for a long
time before she said, “Do you really think anyone wants to harm us?”

“You heard what Lamont said,”
Loveless replied grimly. “You and your daughter lived on this mountain for two
years. Why did he wait for now, the day we finished filming, to make a move on
your daughter?”

“As soon as this storm is over,
Lizzy and I are out of here. I talked to my sister in Santa Monica. She told me
we could stay with her for as long as we want while we look for an apartment.
She’s got plenty of room and is out of town a lot for her job. These hillbilly
fucks can have this damn mountain. I’m selling my condo and never coming back.”

“I think that’s a wise decision.
When this storm is done, I’ll help you pack up. When you leave for Los Angeles,
I’ll head to Vegas.”

“Why Vegas?”

“A college buddy of mine lives
out there. He edits commercials for the casinos. Has a complete editing bay in his
house. He told me I could crash there while we finish editing the film. It’ll
only be a few weeks at this point. I wouldn’t have to worry about finding a
place to live while trying to finish the movie.”

“Are you sure you want to finish
the movie?”

Loveless saw the look of fear in
the woman’s eyes. He knew what she felt because he felt it too. When they were
shooting, they were so worried about not finishing the movie. Now that they
were finished filming the movie, they were just as scared, if not more, about
releasing it out into the world. This perturbation stemmed not from the worry
that the film was no good - it was good, they knew it was good, as well as
scary - but that the misfortunate and bizarre events of the shoot would follow
them for the rest of their lives. A sort of damnation on earth. Loveless put
down the shotgun and closed the gap, resting his hands caressingly on
Charlotte’s shoulders. He would have to be the strong one here. He would have
to lie to her and himself, at least pretend that it was alright. Hell, maybe it
even would be. “We see it through, to completion. That’s the deal. Right? This
is our investment. Our stake. Our future.”

“If we’re still alive to
capitalize on it, J.D.” Charlotte looked deeply into the filmmaker’s eyes, searching
for any signs of uncertainty in them. “I don’t want to become an urban legend.
I don’t want you, me or my daughter to be a cautionary tale they tell around a
campfire to scare the hell out of misbehaving children.”

“We won’t.”

“How do you know?”