18.
THE DEVIL’S MUSIC
The studio shook violently. The glass trembled and the floor rumbled furiously with the pounding skins and wailing string screeches of an angry youth rebellion.
Donnie Biggs stared through the glass at the painted demons before him as their twisted faces burned with effort and rage. Their impossibly skinny late teen frames imbued with raging metabolisms that Donnie’s paunch could only dream of.
He lowered the faders further as the piercing screams stabbed mercilessly at his hangover, refusing to heed the volume controls from his booth. He glanced up at the recording studio clock and was appalled to find that it wasn’t even lunchtime yet. He wondered where the good old days had gone; of rock stars with nocturnal body clocks and pale faces scared of the daylight.
Donnie was fifty three and way too old for this crap anymore. These days his independent studio was occupied by a revolving cavalcade of wannabes with too much time on their hands and too little talent. The constant succession of so called talent shows on the TV had led to every spotty little wanker thinking that just because their mothers told them they could sing they were going to make it big. His ears were blissfully damaged by the golden days in the industry and his hearing was not the best anymore; the natural dampening was usually most welcome. Today’s offering was “Redrum” with a backwards letter “R” at the beginning in reference to the Stephen King novel “The Shining”. They were typical of the new thrash metal - all power chords and noise with no soul.
He stared through the glass. Four teens paraded and preened as they played; Donnie wished that at least one of them could possess a mirror so that they would stop leaving their houses dressed in such a manner. All wore the obligatory black; drainpipe tight leggings and jeans were the order of the day. Bony chests protruded through black vest tops that were actually designed for showcasing muscles. Several bullet case chains adorned the puny hips glinting under the studio lights. All of the boys wore high bouffanted hair, dyed a thick syrupy black and jutting at carefully casual angles. All four wore white pancake makeup and heavy black eye shadows. Their sunken skinny faces looked rat-like to Donnie and not in the least intimidating. Their scrawny bodies were almost totally covered with various tattoos, bright colorings standing out against ivory skin.
Donnie caught the eye of the lead guitarist accidently and forced an enthusiastic thumbs up expression towards the teen. They were paying customers after all.
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Jerry Dandridge smiled happily, breaking character for a split second as the producer provided encouragement through the window. He knew they were good and now a legend like Donnie Biggs was giving them the seal of approval. He played harder and faster, caring little that he was leaving the time keeping drumbeats behind. It was several minutes before he realised that he was playing alone.
“What the hell are you doing?” he snapped, jerking his head up angrily. He was the unofficial/official leader of the band and he wasn’t pleased to be made to look a fool in front of Donnie Briggs.
He was the oldest at seventeen and had the domineering personality to run the band. There had never been a vote, but one had never been needed. Charlie Brewster and Billy Cole both went to his school. Charlie slapped the bass and Billy struggled with the drums. Both of them were a year younger at sixteen and in the year below him. They were easy to control and walked in a state of almost constant fear and awe of Jerry, which suited him just fine. The only anomaly in the band was Pete Vincent.
Pete went to a different school to the three of them; he was a year younger again at fifteen and the quietest member of the band. Pete sang the vocals and Jerry was often amazed by the roaring thunder that sprang forth from Pete’s reedy chest. Most importantly though, little Petey had the money. Jerry had never bothered to ascertain much about Pete’s home life, any more than he cared about his other underlings away from practice. Charlie and Billy tagged along, fetching and carrying as Jerry instructed. They were typical shy teens, eager to stand out from the crowd under the safety of a little war paint. Their dreams were of girls and little else. Jerry’s dreams however were of grander treasures; he wanted the world and was happy to use anything or anyone to achieve his dream.
Pete was quiet and shy and he always seemed to be nervous at anytime other than when he was singing. Jerry thought that Pete might be secretly gay and was happy to just hang around with someone. He never seemed to join in any of their reindeer games and clammed up tightly whenever the subject of sex reared its head.
Pete went to some private school on the other side of town and had only worn his uniform to practice once, before being ribbed so mercilessly that he never made the same mistake again.
The one thing that Jerry had managed to guess was that Pete’s father was a tyrannical force of nature, and Pete often had to sneak around beyond the veil of knowledge. Pete was always terrified about his father finding out about his extracurricular activities and he was always quick to leave after practice and he was always furtive.
Jerry knew that their music was not always well received by the masses. He knew that their style could sell given the chance, but he had little time for those who could not comprehend their message. He longed for a time when music was dark and violent and there really was a reason for housewives to fear for their children’s souls. He was desperate to bring the hellfire back into the world and he could achieve this through his music. For so long the devil worshipping aspect of metal had been corrupted by the corporate machine. Jerry felt blessed with the black caress of their dark father, and his was a destiny born of fire.
Unbeknownst to those around him, Jerry was a worshiper of the devil. His life was a constant search to open the communication lines between the two worlds and bring forth the end of the world. He had spent most of his fledgling years buried deep in research, attempting to separate fact from fiction, myths from truth. He had no idea just how anyone had managed before the internet. He could sit in his darkened bedroom and access the entire world with a flash of his fingertips, however, he was yet to find anything of concrete certainty. He had found rituals purporting to be ancient rites to open the very gates of hell. He had found summoning spells and incantations, all supposedly genuine and effective, only he was to be disappointed time and time again. Jerry had soon learned the hard way that there were only so many household pets that could disappear in his own neighborhood before people started asking questions. His appearance and wardrobe had soon led to him being eyed with suspicion at every turn. Fortunately his father was an important man, a successful lawyer with a similar domineering personality to his own. His father had quashed any rumors violently underfoot, and Jerry had learned the art of discretion.
“What are you doing Jerry?” Billy the drummer snickered nervously, “Did you change the arrangement again?”
“Dammit Billy, if you can’t keep up, then I’ll find someone who can,” Jerry barked, staring hard at Charlie the bassist and the timid vocalist Pete, stamping down hard on any potential dissention.
“Sorry Jerry,” Billy mumbled, apologizing without need.
“Sorry doesn’t cut it William,” Jerry sneered. “None of you understand, we have to be better than anything else out there, better than everyone.”
“Hey we’re trying Jerry,” Charlie chimed up hopefully, “We can get it right, I know we can, we all want to make it.”
“Yeah, we all want to make it rain women,” Billy laughed, high fiving Charlie.
“Limousine riding, jet flying, scene stealing monsters of metal!” Charlie laughed back.
“Shut the hell up,” Jerry said in a low angry tone. “This isn’t about record deals and MTV; this is about so much more.”
“Like what?” Pete asked timidly.
“Never you mind,” Jerry said quickly, fearing that he had said too much already. “We’re done for today.”
“But Jerry, I paid for the full day,” Pete whispered with as much defiance as he could muster.
Jerry silenced the question with only a look, and then he was storming noisily out of the studio, slamming the doors in an artist’s huff and leaving the band looking anxiously on.
Jerry sat in his dark room; the walls were adorned with the expected posters of the current flavors of the day. Metal bands and movies, bikini clad models in laughably seductive poses, all designed to project the perfect picture of the average teenager. Jerry despised the images; the embodiment of decadence and corruption, wafer thin dreams of the ignorant masses. Jerry longed to kneel before Aguares, an ancient demon that commanded thirty legions of devils in hell and was also the Grand Duke of Eastern Hell. Or Guaricana, a devil from Brazil honored by the Yurimagua by flogging young men until the blood flowed. Jerry knew that such dark desires could never be understood by those peons around him; he would be locked away by his constricting father to save his embarrassment.
“JERRY!” A voice bellowed from downstairs.
Jerry heaved himself away from his research, hiding the files on his computer under a blanket of revolting pornography. He knew his father would at least think that that such filth would be supposedly normal in his eyes.
He headed quickly out of his room and down to meet the usual disapproval. The house was large and luxurious; the reward for a career spent at the expense of family ties. Jerry’s mother had died whilst giving birth to him, a sign that Jerry took as his first sacrifice and the start of his father’s icy distance.
“You had a delivery earlier,” his father stated coldly.
He was a tall ramrod of a man, late forties with salt and pepper hair and a buttoned up demeanor. Jerry could never remember seeing his father out of a three piece suit; a grey ensemble to match his personality. He was lean and tight in mind as of body, tall and rigid with a precision trimmed white moustache and every hair in its place.
“What was it?” Jerry asked.
“Do I look like your secretary?” His father withered, flapping a hand towards a large brown package on the kitchen table. “Open your own damn mail.”
Jerry smiled politely as his father departed for the club. His father seemed eager to spend as little time in his company as possible, and that suited Jerry just fine. He snatched up the package and charged back up the stairs to the safe anonymity of his bedroom.
His hands sweated and trembled as he tore the brown paper from the box in a furious flurry. This was his last hope, his last stab at realizing his dreams and fulfilling his dark destiny. His long and arduous research had finally been rewarded when he had managed to track down a copy of The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses. It was an 18
th
century magical text allegedly written by
Moses
, and passed down as hidden books of the
Five Books of Moses
or Pentateuch. It was reputed to be a
Grimoire
, a text of magical incantations and seals, purporting to instruct the reader in the spells used to create the miracles portrayed in the
Judaeo-Christian Bible
. The work was printed with annexes or reputed
Talmudic
magic names, words and incantation. Many were taken from Christian biblical passages. It was said to show diagrams of seals, which were magical drawings accompanied by incantations intended to perform various tasks, from controlling weather or people to contacting the dead or Christian religious figures. Copies had been traced to 18th century German pamphlets, but an 1849 printing - aided by the appearance of the popular press in the 19th century - had spread the text through Germany and Northern Europe.
Jerry had facilitated his father’s American Express gold card to purchase the copy. He knew that when the bill arrived his father would explode and he had faced a race between the book and the bill’s arrival; fortunately the book had won the race.
He lifted the ancient book out of the careful wrappings and his fingers throbbed with the power within. The cover felt like coarse leather and he could only hope that it was indeed flayed flesh as the legend perpetuated. He eased the book open with gentle care as though handling a new born babe. The pages were scrawled with a deep dark red text; words flowed in chicken scratches like a demonic doctor’s notes. For the next ten hours, Jerry fell into the pages and the power within.
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Billy waited patiently, Charlie less so. They were standing outside the darkened studio doors. Jerry had summoned them to appear at midnight, having professed to have obtained the correct permissions.
Billy stamped his feet against the cold. “Damn it Charlie, where is he?”
“Beats me, you know Jerry, always the man of mystery,” Charlie waved his hands in exaggeration.
“Pack it in, it’s creepy enough without you dicking about.”
“What’s the matter William, not getting scared are you?”
“No, just cold and getting pissed off,” Billy snapped, “I tell you something, I’m getting sick and tired of Jerry and his games.”
“Yeah, you’ll tell me but not him I’ll wager,” Charlie smirked.
“Like you would,” Billy challenged to Charlie’s sudden downward stare.
“Alright guys,” Pete’s small voice suddenly piped up behind them.
“JESUS!” Billy jumped, “Why are you always creeping around Pete?”
“Didn’t mean to,” Pete sniffed quietly.
“How the hell did you get out of the house anyway?” Charlie asked, “I thought your old man kept you on a short leash?”
“He’s away for the night, so what he doesn’t know can’t hurt me,” Pete smiled.
“What is it with your old man anyway?” Billy asked.
“Oh he’s alright, just a little overprotective I guess.”
“Doesn’t want you hanging around with delinquents like us eh?” Billy teased gently.
As quiet and shy as Pete was, both Billy and Charlie genuinely liked the younger boy, and even Jerry had to admit that Pete had a set of lungs on him.
“You girls going to stand out there all night?” Jerry’s voice from the studio window above suddenly startled them all.