Free THE BLACK ALBUM: A Hollywood Horror Story by Carlton Kenneth Holder Page A

filled several bowls with an assortment of
candy. He returned to the front door and distributed the treats liberally. As
the monsters thanked him and ran off gleefully to their next house, Loveless
had a realization and called after one of the dashing witches, “See ya later,
Lizzy.”
    The girl looked back once and
giggled before disappearing into the dark.
    “Guess I’m not going to get much
work done tonight.”
    This did give the filmmaker an
idea as he returned to his writing. Since the movie takes place pretty much all
in one night, why not make it a special night indeed. His hands typed away on
the laptop with this new thought.
     
    We close on the jack-o’-lantern
sitting on the porch of the house with the stained-glass window. In slow
motion, in the foreground, bodies flit and dance past screen to surreal effect:
witches, zombies, mummies. On any other night this would have been strange. But
not on this night. Halloween night.
    Music drifts up from the
basement. Things always tended to drift up from basements. Camera moves in on
the basement window. Inside, fifteen year old HENRY KRASSNER - longish blond
hair, thin chin - sits rocking out to a fast-paced song playing on the record
player turntable. From the unmade twin bed and disheveled youthful belongings
in view behind him, it is clear that Henry has made the basement his own
private teenage sanctum. Angle on spinning record. The name of the band on the
label is Mathaluh. The setting is given an eerie pall by the green light
emanating from the moon colored lava lamp in the corner, its twisted creations
casting unearthly shadows on the wall as they rise and fall. On this wall,
amidst these shadows, we see a string of newspaper articles, cut out, taped up.
From them, we learn the following: legendary rock band Mathaluh is two months
dead. Their private plane crashed into the Arrowhead Mountains with all band
members aboard, including the enigmatic lead singer Jeremy Jared. A night after
the plane crash, the warehouse containing all the copies of Mathaluh’s
unreleased new album burnt to the ground. On the same night, the recording
studio containing the masters of all the songs on the album, was also destroyed
by a blaze the fire department deemed suspicious. Authorities believed the
fires to be the work of a Christian fundamentalist group who had accused the
rock band of allegedly murdering a missing underage groupie during a satanic
ritual. The girl was last seen backstage with the band after a concert, six
months prior. Police investigated, but found no evidence of the band's
involvement in the girl's disappearance. Without a body or witnesses, there
wasn't much to go on. Rumors of their apparent involvement in the occult merely
served to sky-rocket the band's legend and popularity even more. Only three
promotional copies of Mathaluh’s album still existed somewhere out there in the
world, given away to three fans as part of a radio show contest days before the
plane crash.
    Those fans and the albums they
won would never be heard from again after tonight. Henry is one of those
contest winners.
    But the teenager is thinking
about none of this now. He’s too busy painting a homemade Ouija board. The
sharp folding knife the boy pulls out of his pocket glints moon green light as
he flips it open and runs the sharp edge of the steel blade slowly across his
left palm, making a thin incision. Henry closes his hand tightly and lets the blood
run down through his clenched fist into a little paint jar, commingling with
the bright red paint already in it. Taking a paint brush, the boy stirs both
blood and paint together, then uses it to write Mathaluh across the top of the
Ouija board. The finishing touch. Henry smiles, tilting his head as if
listening to someone or something. He can hear things now we can't. This is his
Hell board. It calls to him. The boy places both hands on the planchette,
fashioned cartoon-ishly after a bloodshot eyeball. The planchette