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

tries a door that leads to the master bedroom. It opens. The
boy runs inside. Pitch black, then a lamp with a flickering light bulb comes to
life all on its own, stuttering strobe-like before finally revealing HENRY'S
FATHER. He lays serenely in bed, his hands folded across his upper-chest. An
assortment of kitchen knives stick up out of his bloated gut. The man never
woke up. He never saw it coming. Bare teeth and a gum-line stick out through a
mouth that has been meticulously cut into a jack-o'-lantern's smile. The sheets
are soaked red. The wood floor is covered in a reflective crimson puddle. The
clown scrambles, slipping on the dead man’s blood as he runs back out into the
hallway. On hands and knees, he looks up and sees Henry. The older boy smiles.
    "Henry, please don't,"
is all the little clown can manage.                                                            
    From outside the house, we hear a
blood-curdling scream. We see the muzzle flash through an upstairs window. We
hear the gunshot.
    Henry staggers back down the
staircase. Passing a hall mirror hanging on the wall by a coatrack, he lifts
his blood-splattered face to look in. Instead of his reflection, Henry sees the
smiling wicked face of the demon Jeremy, then a flash of images of the dead and
departed. At first, we see a hideous demon lurking in the bathroom. This is
what Henry saw. Henry attacks. The demon becomes merely his terrified mother,
being murdered by her only son. The deformed sideshow freak with three eyes
sleeping in his parent's bed, becomes merely the corpse of his father. The
deadly vampire in the living room turns into just a kid in a costume with fake
plastic glow-in-the-dark fangs. The killer clown melts into just a little boy
in a costume and face paint with a gunshot wound to the head, whimpering as he
dies alone and scared in the upstairs hallway. Fantasy has given way to
reality. The truth. The monsters Henry thought he was slaying were his family,
friends. This Halloween night he has been tricked. The teenager tenses as he
fights his possession with every ounce of resolve he has left. “No.” For a
moment, his face replaces the demon's in the mirror. Henry repeats his solemn
vow again, “No!”
    The house becomes even darker,
all at once, and cold. When the teenager breathes out, he can see his own
breath swirling out, drifting throughout, coming to life. It's as cold as a
tomb. Henry's not alone. He turns and sees the little girl in the white dress
who stands in the living room. She's not a day older than thirteen. She'll
never be a day older than thirteen. The little girl looks lost. Her face is
sad, sad for Henry. The LOST GIRL is pale, like a corpse. Or a ghost.
    "Are you lost?" Henry
asks.
    "Aren't we all?" the
lost girl answers. No breath leaves her mouth when she talks. In a whisper, the
girl recites grim lore, "The demon Jeremy has one eve to compel or trick
you into killing in his name. All Hallow's Eve. Then your soul goes to the hot
place while he’s freed from the inferno- and, he wears your body. He gets to be
you.”
    "None of this is real.
You're not real."
    "I used to be."
    "Used to?"
    "Why'd you bring him
back?" the lost girl says hopelessly through bloodless lips.
    Henry sees the bloody knife wound
in her chest that wasn't there a second ago. Before Henry's eyes, the little
girl's face becomes decayed, dead, eyes shriveling up, sinking into sockets.
She's worm's meat.
    It's not that the lost girl
disappears. It's just that she's no longer there.
    The teenage boy senses the truth
of her words. Remorse fills him. "Mom, dad." He touches his face in
horror at the full realization that eternal damnation waits for him. His life
is over before it's truly been lived, all of it. "Trick! I've been
tricked." Henry feels himself slipping from his own body. He fights this.
A slight breath of humanity momentarily returns to him.
     
    Deep woods bathed in deeper