THE BLACK ALBUM: A Hollywood Horror Story (22 page)

Epilogue

Re-ignition

White hot sunlight.

The kids zoomed around the desert
whooping and hollering on their ATVs as they kicked up dust trails. One slowed
as he neared the remains of a recent campfire. Everything in it was a melted
gob of black guck that still smelt of burnt plastic, metal and wires. When the
kid poked the blackened Hell board with a stick, it disintegrated into ashes.

A few feet away, the kid found
the record, which had somehow slipped out of its sleeve and rolled away,
escaping the blaze. The kid stopped his ATV, got off, removed his helmet and
picked up the record.

“Dark Ballad,” the kid read the
inscription, spun the record on his finger and slipped it into his backpack.
“Cool.” He jumped back on the ATV and raced off to catch up to the others.

Somewhere in the desert,
“Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones was playing.