THE BLACK ALBUM: A Hollywood Horror Story (15 page)

“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. Despite 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.

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.”