THE BLACK ALBUM: A Hollywood Horror Story (3 page)

It was now dark. Night fell
quickly here in the mountains. Loveless would have to remember that. As his
eyes became accustomed to the night, he noticed there was someone on the
balcony of the house nearest him. Small cigarette clouds rose from the balcony
like smoke signals. The person, merely a shadow figure, waved and went inside.
Loveless got the distinct impression that it was a woman, but this was only a
guess.

Inside, the filmmaker decided to
mark his first night in this new temporary residence by starting a fire. It was
cold enough already here in the mountains, despite only being October, and J.D.
had always liked fires. He made sure the flue was open, lit the starter log,
placed small branches and then a real log on top of them. In no time, a fire
was blazing. The filmmaker looked around. The fire warmed the decor. With wood
furnishings, carvings of bears and wolves and a reddish wood floor, the fire
gave the place the finishing touch needed to complete the classic rustic
mountain look. There was a staircase to the side that led up to a small loft
that looked like it had once been a child’s play room. Loveless remembered that
Griffin had lived up here when he was married and had a small son. He moved
back to LA during the divorce. His wife moved to Fresno with the kid.

Although Loveless really didn’t
want to, he knew he had to check the basement before he went to bed. The
filmmaker had already decided to sleep on the big, soft couch in front of the
fireplace for his first night. It was becoming nice and toasty there. He would
bring his things down from the SUV in the morning. But Loveless knew he
wouldn’t be able to sleep if he didn’t check the basement.

The light switch at the top of
the staircase didn’t work. The light bulb was probably burnt out. Probably. For
a second, the filmmaker was tempted to turn back. After all, movies were his
business. In how many thrillers, horror movies, and gritty dramas was a
midnight stroll through a dark basement the undoing of many a cinematic
day-player? The basement was always the place where hideous, grisly acts -
affronts to God and man - were carried out in secret, outside the light of day
and goodness. It’s where evil dwelt. Where demons crept up out of. But that was
the movies. This was the real world. The really real world. Loveless got out
his flashlight and proceeded down into a dank darkness, where the temperature
seemed to drop a few degrees. At the bottom of the stairs there were two rooms,
one to the right, one to the left.
Damn, why couldn’t it have just been one
wide open area I could surveil with a single sweep of my flashlight?
the
filmmaker thought. He felt inside each room for the light switch, but couldn’t
find them. They weren’t near the entrance.
Great
. A few feet in front of
him was the back door. He saw a light switch there and flipped it on. A light
bulb outside the door stuttered then lit up. Light immediately shone in through
the small window on the door. The window was broken, the glass had fallen
inward. There was also a small trickle of blood. Someone had cut themselves
while reaching in to unlock the door. Loveless tensed. His breathing quickened.
Options were running through his head. One was to get the hell out of there.
The other was to find the light.

The filmmaker swung the
flashlight around towards the room on the left. What if they were still here?
Loveless stood completely still for a full minute, barely breathing. Finally,
lacking any further patience, he pushed forward. Entering the room, he finally
saw the light switch and turned it on. It was a few feet deeper in the room
than he had expected, not as close to the entrance. Now Loveless remembered
something else his friend Griffin had said. Something about converting part of
the basement into a guest bedroom, which is what the filmmaker stood in. The
bedroom was small and functional. Oddly, nothing in it looked like it had been
disturbed by the vandals. Loveless turned his investigation to the other room.
Loveless looked in exactly the same place for the light switch and found it.
What the hell was it Griffin had converted this part of the basement into? Then
a thought bubbled to the surface. He remembered that his friend Griffin had a
dark side. Loveless hadn’t seen Griffin’s wife Helen since the divorce, which
was odd since they had all frequented the same haunts at one time. Months
later, he was told she had moved out of town. Convenient. Maybe his friend’s
dark side was darker than he had imagined. Divorce was a twisted bitch. Maybe a
bitter Griffin had converted the basement into a torture chamber. Maybe parts
of Helen were hanging on meat hooks right in front of him. In the moment before
he flicked the switch, the filmmaker got the impression that this room was
large.
Click!
The light bulb dangling naked from the ceiling, gave off
dim light. It was a large family room. A Foosball table sat in the corner. A
big old projection TV, couch, ping-pong table, and a cabinet full of board
games filled out the rest of the place. The walls were painted a bright
cheerful yellow. Framed photos of the family and crayon drawings by the kid
hung on the walls. There was a closet in the corner where Loveless later
discovered cardboard boxes full of old baby clothes, worn suitcases, an antique
record player, and a large metal lock box.

The filmmaker stepped a little further
into the room and felt a crunch under the heel of his boot. He saw a lamp on an
end table and turned it on. It lit the area directly in front of him. On the
floor was a shrine of some sort, candles on little trays set out in the shape
of a circle. Inside the circle, smaller candles made what was unmistakably a
Pentagram, the Satanic star. The candles alternated between black, red, and
white. They were all burnt down to leaning gobs of dried wax, which Loveless
had stepped on. While freaky, the filmmaker dismissed it as the work of bored
mountain kids looking for kicks. This probably happened months ago. It had been
awhile since Griffin had been up here. Loveless didn’t blame him: divorce
tended to taint places with an overabundance of memories, both good and bad.
For a second, the filmmaker could see his friend in his mind’s eye, laughing
with his wife and son in the room as they played foosball, cheated at board
games, and watched movies on video. A wave of empathy washed over Loveless with
the stolen moment. If it had been a flashback scene in a movie the filmmaker
was directing, he would have lit it hot, with stirring shadows, shot it shaky
handheld with a grainy stock of film to give it a home movie look. But this
wasn’t a movie. Griffin didn’t have the heart to return to his former family
home by himself and just wanted Loveless up there to make sure the place was
still in one piece.

The filmmaker smiled at the
candles, an overused stereotype. What was it about rural area teenagers and
Satanic worship that went hand in hand so wonderfully? How many news reports
had he read about teenagers cavorting in the woods with drugs, heavy metal
death rock, a Satanic Black Mass ritual or two, and sex-capades. Loveless
supposed there wasn’t too much to do in the small communities and the
surrounding woods aside from that. Rite of passage stuff, that’s all. Just
something to grow out of, a fleeting rebellion against daddy, mommy, God, and
country. The cities had street gangs, extended families. The woods had Satan,
the ultimate father figure, who would never disappoint because he so blatantly
embraced evil, chaos, and perversion.

Loveless locked the back door. He
found a plank of wood, a hammer and a box of nails and nailed the board over
the broken window on the door. Eerily enough, this reminded the filmmaker of a
scene out of the most terrifying movie he had watched as a kid, “Night of the
Living Dead.” It was all the more terrifying because it was shot in black and
white which made it seem shockingly real. It was the scene where the hero -
oddly enough an African American man in 1960s Pennsylvania - boarded up a
house, fortifying it so that the freshly resurrected zombies could not burst in
and eat his flesh. What was the saying?
“When there was no room left in Hell,
the dead will roam the Earth.”

Loveless felt silly when he
noticed the goose bumps on his arms. It was a cool night he told himself.

Chapter
Two

Mathaluh
Lives

After two weeks in Lake
Arrowhead, Twin Peaks, Rim Forest, and the surrounding mountain townships, the
filmmaker was acclimating nicely, although he hadn’t yet visited the town of
Crestline. Each day was slightly cooler than the one before it and a little
more Halloweenie. Despite this, Loveless still hadn’t come up with a story for
his movie or even an idea for a story. He hadn’t written a lick since he had
quite literally climbed to the mountain top. The filmmaker had decided on a
genre: horror, probably due to the time of year and the fact that Halloween was
unequivocally his favorite holiday. Having grown up on a steady diet of comic
books, horror films, and sci-fi novellas, Loveless loved Halloween. Halloween
had a way of waking people up to the possibility of the fantastic in life, if
only for a month. The likelihood of the existence of UFOs, psychic spies, and
angry spirits not only became more real, but fun as well. J.D. Loveless carried
this Halloween spirit with him all year round. Although highly skeptical about
the actuality of these incredulous forces, he loved the possibility of them
anyway. For the filmmaker, it somehow made life a little less mundane.

So Loveless decided to do a
horror film. However, he planned on approaching it with an art-house
sensibility. He didn’t want to do some ‘B’ straight to video slasher film with
a big jiggly boobed actress, rapidly descending towards an unsavory career in
porn, bouncing across screen before the opening credits had even faded. He
wanted whatever film he made to have an independent spirit and a fresh
perspective on the classic horror movie. Something that was entertaining, took
a realistic approach to the horror, and spoke to its audience metaphorically
with a spattering of psychological horror. Since he was currently in the
mountains, Loveless decided he wanted to do a claustrophobic small town horror
movie with few locations and a big theme. Like “Night of the Living Dead” or
“Halloween.” These movies not only scared the bejesus out of you, but also
explored such weighty themes as racism and how and why human monsters are
created. The filmmaker felt secure in his decision to commit to the horror
genre by virtue of the fact that it was one of the few genres that did not
demand name actors. After compiling a list, the filmmaker confirmed his
suspicions. Out of the top twenty best horror films of all time, only two or
three of them were studio fare with known stars.

Loveless had decided to write a
horror film exactly five days after arriving in the Arrowhead Mountains. He had
entertained a number of ideas. None held his attention for more than an hour.
The hard thing about writing a horror script is that just about every
conceivable subject matter has already been turned into a film. Loveless wanted
something original, a subject that had never been made into a movie before.
That’s what eluded him. That’s what stone-walled him. Just when the filmmaker
would think he had something good and ideas started to bounce around his brain,
he would remember a film that had already been made about that concept. This
went on for nine days.

On the tenth day something
happened. Loveless ventured into Crestline. Whereas Lake Arrowhead was the
upscale community of the mountains, Crestline leaned heavily towards poverty
and White trash. It was a world of broken down homes, junk-filled backyards
fiercely defended by dirty dogs, and adult residents with elementary school
level educations and more than a few teeth missing from years of Meth abuse.
The kids were all restless and disenfranchised, echoing the same whiny lament,
‘When
I turn eighteen, I’m gonna get off this damn mountain.’
In that regard,
Loveless could relate to them. Growing up in a ghetto in Brooklyn, he often
heard the same sentiment. The odd thing of it was, J.D. Loveless was one of the
few people he had ever known to leave his neighborhood. He told everyone he was
moving to Hollywood and then actually moved. The filmmaker knew most of these
kids would never leave the mountain. It was a world unto itself. It wasn’t
practical to commute. It was too far down the mountain to San Bernardino and
once it got cold, between the ice, fog, snow and mudslides, it became a
perilous proposition. Ironically, many families actually moved to the mountains
with that bright notion of having the best of both worlds. Their kids would
grow up in a small, friendly, safe, and affordable community, while they would
commute and make big city money. Most of these families held up for about six
months max before begrudgingly placing ‘for sale’ signs on their front lawns.
Those who stayed became mountain people. This was their life now and the world
below became a distant memory.

With this mountain life, came the
small town gossip, folklore, and urban legends. It was in this manner that
Loveless first heard the name Mathaluh. The filmmaker was sitting on the couch
by the fireplace, writing - or rather trying to write - when he realized what
time it was. 8:51 pm.
Shit!
The local supermarket in Lake Arrowhead,
which incidentally also held the only Starbucks on the mountain, closed at 9:00
p.m. He hadn’t made a store run in days and desperately needed food,
toiletries, water, soda, and beer. After that, there was only an all night
Seven Eleven open and Loveless hated microwavable frozen burritos. The
filmmaker had heard there was another market that stayed open until ten in
Crestline. So he hurried down, found the market - it wasn’t large enough to be
called a supermarket - and stocked up. On the way back, he hit fog.

The mountain fog seemed to defy
the normal laws of fog. It came and went when it wanted, where it wanted. The
filmmaker saw it as he went around a bend. The girl was the second thing he
saw. Loveless swerved right as she spotted him. She was dressed all in black,
wearing a beat-up black leather jacket that was big enough to have belonged to
her father, assuming she had a father. The girl looked to be about fifteen, but
it was hard to tell as the filmmaker turned the wheel hard and she dived out
the way. Next, he hit the breaks. Loveless came to a stop with a jerk so
violent the filmmaker instinctively braced for the airbag. It didn’t go off.
Everything around Loveless became very still. The dirt the filmmaker’s vehicle
kicked up swirled around in the pools of light generated by his high beams.
Loveless, shaking, jumped out the car and approached the girl who looked
nonchalant about the whole thing.

“Are you alright?” he asked as he
came forward slowly.

“Sure,” the girl responded with a
shrug. “Happens.”

“This is a dangerous place to
hitchhike. Not that hitchhiking is all that safe in the first place.”

The girl sized Loveless up, then
let down her guard. “Way to get around if you don’t have a car. Not much of a
public transportation system here on the mountain, you know.”

“Your parents don’t get mad?”

“My mom? She don’t mind. Long as
I’m safe about it.”

From the mention of the mother,
the filmmaker guessed there wasn’t a father in the picture. The lull in the
conversation made him uncomfortable. The girl picked up the slack. “Can I have
a ride? I’m not going very far.” She must have decided he was okay.

Loveless felt uncomfortable about
giving the young girl a ride, but he was more uncomfortable about leaving her
there.

“You just get in the car with
anyone who stops for you?”

The girl took the filmmaker’s
response as a yes and headed to the passenger side of the car as she chirped,
“Pretty much.”

“How do you know I’m not an axe
murderer?”

The girl giggled. “You get a good
sense about these things real fast when hitchin.’ Mostly women give me rides.
Mothers. When guys stop, I get an instant vibe. If the vibe is creepy, I don’t
get in. That’s all. But mostly I hitch with other kids. Safety in numbers.” The
girl climbed into the SUV. Loveless got back behind the wheel. Her rules of the
road made sense academically. But, since being on the mountain, the filmmaker
had seen more than a few gaudy funeral wreaths accompanied by candles, photos
and sad handwritten notes on the side of roads commemorating the locations
where kids had been struck and killed by motor vehicles.

“Glad to hear I don’t creep you
out,” Loveless said with an air of uneasiness.

“You don’t have to worry.” The
girl read his conflicted expression. “Nobody’s going to think you’re a perv.”

The filmmaker started the car and
put it in drive. “Good to know. Where ya going?”

“The Rock. I’ll show you. It’s
only about two miles down. Just keep going this way. I’ll tell you when to
turn. I’m meetin’ people.”

The girl’s name was Lizzy, short
for Elizabeth. She was about 5’4” and cute with pale sun-starved skin
highlighted by small patches of reddish acne on her cheeks, chin, and forehead.
Lizzy had braces and jet black dyed hair that the filmmaker guessed was
originally light brown. The teen had an outgoing personality, which was good,
because Loveless did not. She talked as he drove. Within minutes, Lizzy
directed the filmmaker to the turn that took him to the remote Rock. It was a
large boulder that sat atop a hill in the woods. Below it, the hill was just a
massive collection of more rocks of all sizes and shapes, many covered with
graffiti that seemed to be part of another rite of passage for the youth of the
mountain. Climb the boulders and leave your legend, the legend that will
outlive you. The tags read: VITO 64! SONNY LOVES SHANNA 92 and many more like
it. But it was the two words scribed on the boulder that sat atop the hill like
a king that held the filmmaker’s attention. MATHALUH LIVE. It was written in
balloon style thick yellow letters outlined in black. A letter was added to the
end of ‘Mathaluh Live.’ An S. It was the only letter different from the rest.
The S was ragged, jagged, spelled in red paint the exact color and viscosity of
blood. It was also the only letter that ran, the only letter that bled,
changing the pronouncement from the boastful ‘Mathaluh Live’ to the chilling
‘Mathaluh Lives.’

The name rolled easily off the
filmmaker’s tongue before he even realized he was saying it, “Mathaluh.”

A beat later, the words of a
homegrown nursery rhyme filled the night’s air as they escaped from Lizzy’s
pale pink lips and drifted over to the filmmaker like a wraith.
“Five members
who could not be tamed, sold their souls for fortune and fame. Formed their
spell- circle in Satan’s name. In the pit of Hell, they burn by flame.”
Lizzy was standing behind Loveless as she finished the lyrics she knew by
heart.

“What was that, Lizzy?” the
filmmaker asked as he turned and looked at the teen.

“I learned it from a friend of
mine. Her mother knew one of the band members.”

“Of Mathaluh?”

Lizzy was already waving at her
teenage friends who had appeared in a clearing beneath the Rock. “There’s my
buds. There’s a path around the back where we hang. It leads up to the rocks.”
She was already heading in the direction of her buds. Lizzy turned around and
smiled at Loveless. It was then that he saw the silver Pentagram held by a
cheap metal chain around her neck.

“See ya ‘round, man.”

Mathaluh. The word itself seemed
to haunt the filmmaker’s dreams for the next two nights.
Mathaluh lives!
Lizzy mentioned something about a band.
Sold their souls for fortune and
fame.
He couldn’t remember the whole rhyme, but that verse stuck with him.
Loveless didn’t know what he was on to, but he was on to something.

A few days later, as the sun was
setting, the filmmaker found himself tentatively driving to the rock mountain.
Some teenage boys were there, horsing around the way teen boys do, wrestling,
chasing each other. The boys stopped when a group of teen girls arrived on
foot. Some     wore hoodies, hoods up. The weather was already pretty chilly in
October up in the mountains. Loveless couldn’t tell if Lizzy was among them.
They were all aware of him sitting in his SUV about thirty feet away. The
filmmaker felt weird about being there in a teenage domain. But he didn’t know
any other way to find out more about Mathaluh. This one time the Internet was a
bust. He couldn’t discover anything about the band from it. Apparently mountain
folk didn’t embrace the information superhighway the way flatlanders did. Or
maybe he didn’t know enough about Mathaluh and what happened to know where to
look. Loveless was sure these kids did though.

One of the teen boys finally
approached the filmmaker. He had the same disgruntled and troubled teen rocker
look and attitude as the rest of them. The boy was maybe sixteen and a half.
Two of his friends trailed him, hanging behind as back up.

“Hey,” the teen said
challengingly.

“Hi,” Loveless replied feeling
foolish. “Is Lizzy around?”

“Naw, man. Who’s asking?”

“I’m a friend of hers. I dropped
her off here the other night.”

“And that makes you a friend?”

“I wanted to ask her something.”

“About what?”

The filmmaker was getting
annoyed. But he maintained his diplomatic composure, mainly because he knew
teenagers loved to piss off adults.