The Devil's Metal (9 page)

How long would it be before I saw them at
their worst?

CHAPTER FIVE

The rest of the evening went quite well. I
didn’t see the band at their worst (I knew that would come later)
but I did get to enjoy one of the most memorable shows of my life.
I guess they could have sat around and banged pots and pans and I
still would have thought it was awesome just because I was there,
and for once, I was special.

With the band getting ready for their
acoustic set, I ended up following Jacob around like a lost puppy.
I didn’t mind it. There was something about Jacob that made people
pay attention to him. He seemed to know everyone at Red Rocks and I
didn’t doubt he probably knew everyone in the music industry. With
him I felt strangely protected, as if he had taken a shine to me,
and it made me feel important. Though it was sad that all I wanted
at times was for Todd or Ryan to see me, see how far I’d come. Todd
because he’d shit himself with jealousy, and Ryan because I wanted
him to know what he was giving up. He thought I was going nowhere?
Well once he saw the article in Creem Magazine, the article I
wrote, he’d see how wrong he was.

But that would have to wait. That evening I
didn’t even take a single note or recording. I was going to,
bringing out my notepad as Jacob and I stood at the side of the
stage, but he made me put it away.

“By the end of this tour, you’ll be sick of
the band and you’ll have more notes than you can shake a stick at,”
he told me with his trademark wink. “Tonight, just watch and
remember. Not as a journalist but as a fan. Take it all in,
Rusty.”

And so I did.

I placed my notebook and pen back in my
purse and looked around me. Looked at where I was. I took in
everything.

When you’re on the side stage of the Red
Rocks Amphitheatre, you might as well be on stage yourself. It’s
that immense and frightening. All you can see is a wall of people,
staring down at you, watching your every move. Behind that wall are
the stars, pinpricks in the emerging darkness. You have a succinct
idea of what it’s like to be wanted and adored, to have fans and
music lovers alike hanging on your every action, revering you,
expecting you to deliver. It’s a strange mix of adulation and
pressure.

Aside from giving me goosebumps from the
sheer immensity of people in Hybrid shirts, lighters waving in the
breeze, the side stage also gives you an in-depth look at the band.
Obviously you’d have a better view from the very front, where
gaggles of groupies and long-haired boys competed for space, but
from the side I got to experience the band like few were able
to.

For starters, you get an inside look at that
moment before the band hits the stage. You can feel that incredible
build-up and tension from the crowd as they wait impatiently for
the band to appear. You can see the anticipation on their stoned
faces, hear the excited talking, the stamping of feet. You also get
to see the band behind the stage. What they do before they step out
into the spotlight. In this case, Noelle and Mickey were in an
embrace, Noelle obviously overcome with nerves. Graham looked bored
at the prospect of handling tambourines while Robbie rubbed his
hands together, jumping from one foot to the other, like an
insatiable bunny rabbit. I had to wonder how much of that energy
was natural and how much was drug-fueled.

Then there was Sage. He was a strong and
silent presence. He stood at the back, watching over everyone,
calculating mysterious things in his head. I had never seen Hybrid
live except on TV, and I knew that Sage played with the cool
confidence of a cat. But at that moment, it seemed like his
confidence was wavering. It was hard to tell, seeing as I had to
look over the soundboard, past Chip, random people, instruments,
and sections in order to get a glimpse of him. It was dark and his
face was cast in shadows half the time. But, as silly as this
sounds, I felt this uncertainty rolling off of him. Like I was
picking up on an unsaid vibe that something was off. Something
wasn’t right. Sage was worried and that wasn’t the Sage I knew.

Then again, I didn’t know Sage at all,
except that he didn’t seem to want me there.

To prove that point, our eyes met at one
instance. I tried to smile. He kept staring right back at me, his
full mouth in a hard line, his eyes glinting dangerously. I had
told myself he was only rude to me earlier because he had other
things on his mind and that I shouldn’t take it personally. Now it
seemed that what Chip had said about Sage not wanting a journalist
among them was true. Sage didn’t like me. He didn’t want me there.
It was personal.

I looked away and tried to bring my
attention back to the atmosphere of the crowd, wanting to get
sucked into the anticipation. The lights went dim, the audience
erupted into applause, and one by one I saw the band leaving the
backstage area to walk onto the stage, a spotlight shining down on
each of them as they took their place.

Sage was the last on the stage, and as luck
would have it, he was the closest to me, just off to the side of
the soundboard and Chip. I tried to pay attention to the rest of
the band, I really did. I tried to sneak glances at Noelle as she
played at the keyboards, trying to hide her nervousness and shaking
hands. I tried to watch Graham as he shook the shaker and beat at
the bongo drums with just the required level of lightness. I tried
to pay attention to Mickey as he flew through his chords with ease,
each strum of the acoustic guitar rising sweetly from the stage. I
tried to keep my eyes on Robbie as he struggled to keep his voice
in check, his manic mannerisms to a minimum. I even tried to watch
Chip as he mixed the sounds of the different mics, brows furrowed
in concentration.

But try as I did, I could not keep my eyes
off of Sage Knightly. I just couldn’t help myself. Seeing this man
on stage was like watching a lion prowl along the crest of his
kingdom. He commanded respect even when he was seated on his chair
with only an acoustic guitar at his fingers, and when he got up,
the Mexican textile strap straining against his neck, every eye in
the crowd followed his every stride. Normally Sage was a background
figure, quietly commandeering the direction of the show, but
tonight, with Robbie subdued, Sage became the star. Without a
doubt, you knew this was the man who made Hybrid what they
were.

I watched as his long fingers expertly
picked along to complex and haunting solos. I watched the intensity
in his eyes as they stared off into the crowd, calling on his
talent from somewhere. I watched his tall frame, his large, rounded
shoulders muscling into the heavier chords. I watched his
flip-flopped feet tapping to some internal metronome.

And I watched a faint shiver roll through
his body. His eyes snapped away from watching Robbie belt out “She
Could Have Loved Me” and his vision made a beeline to the front of
the stage. There, squished up along the barricade, was a strangely
familiar looking woman: long white hair, pale face, feverishly
gleaming eyes. As beautiful as she was, she gave off an immense
feeling of dread that gripped my bones. Sage watched her as if
hypnotized. The woman smiled up at him.

And in that smile I saw fangs. Her face
transformed disturbingly with black holes for eyes, an elongated,
wrinkled face of yellow-white, a wide gaping hole for a mouth,
teeth protruding. A long tongue slid out, crawling with quivering
insects. It licked its absence of lips, curled delicately along
peeling skin. I heard noises deep inside my head: the buzzing of
bees, painful wails, horrific chants that built up to immeasurable
volumes. I felt horror, a terror so complete that I had one
thought: I was going to die there on the stage. I was going to lose
my soul.

I was going to Hell.

I was all fear and only fear, and that’s
what I would be for all my existence.

Then it all stopped. The amphitheater
stopped spinning, the noises ceased and were replaced by an off-key
guitar chord. It was Sage, losing his rhythm for one brief moment.
His eyes had been too focused on the woman in the crowd, who was no
longer demonic, just white-haired and ecstatic. Just a fan. Just a
wannabe groupie.

I felt Jacob’s hand on my shoulder and I
jumped a mile high.

“Are you okay?” he asked, eyes dancing. He
nodded at my hands.

I looked down. I was gripping the barricade
between us and the soundboard like I was hanging on for dear life.
My knuckles were dead white.

I couldn’t speak. Jacob looked at me
thoughtfully, assessing me. I couldn’t get it together to ignore
what had just happened. I felt like I had just tripped on the
headiest of drugs. I kept looking back at the crowd, expecting that
demon face again, but didn’t see it. I watched Sage too and he was
behaving off-balance, shaken. Could he have seen it too? Seen the
impossible?

“You’re overwhelmed,” Jacob assured me, his
eyes flitting between Sage and I. “It happens to the best of
us.”

His hand on my shoulder squeezed firmly. I
nodded, slowly coming out of it. Yes, I fucking was
overwhelmed.

“Set is almost over anyway, do you want to
head to the dressing rooms and get something to eat?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No, I’ll stay. I’m
just…sorry, I don’t know what happened.”

I put my hand to my clammy forehead and
looked back to Sage. He was back in stride, peeling off perfect
licks. The pale woman was still there, now talking to a shorter
girl that had the same perfect white sheet of hair cascading down
the sides of her face. Everything was fine. It was better than
fine. I was onstage with Hybrid.

“You’re right,” I told Jacob with an
apologetic smile. My voice and body had stopped shaking. “I think I
was just caught up in the moment. I thought I saw something
that…well, that certainly wasn’t there.”

A flash of something dark went through his
yellow, hawk-like eyes. Then they relaxed and he grinned with
mismatched teeth. “I’d stay away from Graham’s punch then.”

I smiled uneasily back at him and focused my
attention back on the end of the set. As expected, it went off
without a hitch. Whatever had Sage all shook up earlier wasn’t
affecting him anymore, and when I thought about it, that was
probably in my head too. They were tighter than ever. For their
encore, the song “Wet Lips” was played as heavy as possible, with
the band knocking over their chairs and Robbie jumping about the
stage, wailing and hollering, as if they were all plugged in. The
crowd surged and cheered and I knew the Red Rock owners probably
thought another Jethro Tull riot and extension of the rock ban was
on, but “Wet Lips” ended with Robbie on his knees, singing, as the
lights went down. There was an eruption of applause, whistles and
lighters waving, but the barricade held, everything was contained,
and Hybrid gave their appreciative waves and stepped off into the
darkness of the backstage.

I turned to the crowd and soaked up the
accolades as if they were for me. Then, with a newly found smile on
my face, I followed Jacob backstage, giving Chip a thumbs up for a
job well done as we passed him.

The rest of the night was a bit of a blur. I
can say this was completely my fault, as no one forced me to drink
a fifth of Jameson.

Jacob and I had entered one of the doors
built into the rock face and we emerged in a lounge area that ran
along the dressing rooms. Hap Starts, the straggly singer of Pretty
Mary, was just leaving his band’s dressing room for the stage and
gave Jacob an appreciative head nod. Journalists with media passes
lingered about, picking at the spread of finger foods while
normal-looking patrons, who I could only assume were friends and
family, drank cheap cans of beer from the ice bins. Then there were
the groupies, a gaggle of girls my age or younger who were
drop-dead gorgeous—no special passes needed for them. They eschewed
the food and chose to remain by Hybrid’s door. They only moved when
Noelle came out, her hair wet from a shower, her eyes cutting into
them like a butcher knife. I could see why Noelle was paranoid
about me being a groupie. I really had no idea that so many
beautiful, albeit skanky-looking, girls were after Hybrid. I mean,
Jacob had told Barry that the reason I was there was to lure in
more women, though I suppose he meant more women “fans” not
groupies. There was a difference.

Then again, I couldn’t really blame them.
When I got over the fact that they weren’t about the music, it was
no wonder they were after the band. Robbie had a reputation, and
I’m sure he wasn’t above turning down the occasional groupie. Same
went for Graham; though he was a bit abrasive and scary in his
weirdo faux-Satanist ways, some chicks would dig anything with a
bone. Mickey was taken, but that wouldn’t stop some girls from at
least trying, and Sage, well, once again I had no idea about him,
whether he was a man-whore or not. I had heard somewhere that he
had been married at some point but judging by the lack of ring, I’d
say that definitely wasn’t the case anymore. Secretly, Sage’s love
life was one of the things I wanted to get to the bottom of. Did it
belong in Creem Magazine? No. Did I want to keep the information
for myself, and possibly Mel? Hell yes.

I wasn’t sure what to do while the band was
still in the dressing room. I assumed that people just sort of
waited out here for them after the show and then they’d appear and
everyone would party. I didn’t belong with the heavily bosomed
groupies, nor did I have the casual appearance of friends and
family. Normally I would have said hello to the journalists but
even they all seemed to know each other and they probably wouldn’t
have taken me seriously anyway. I was the odd one out and I plunked
myself down on a single chair, a cup full of potato chips in one
hand, and tried hard to look like I was busy.