Dark Star: Confessions of a Rock Idol

  PRAISE FOR DARK STAR

  “Confidently written. Dark Star is an impressive debut.” — Best-Selling Author James Scott Bell

  “Worthy of any Grisham novel, this book was riveting from start to finish. Mapes is a rare find.” — Focus on Fiction

  “Dark Star is a gripping page-turner of a debut.” — Infuze Magazine

  “A rock and roll thriller sure to keep readers in suspense.” — CCM Magazine

  “Mapes forges a powerful tale. 4 Stars - Top Pick!” — Romantic Times Book Club

  “Genuine tension . . . a real page-turner.” — Akron Beacon Journal

  “Difficult to put down . . . a wonderful book. Give this one a chance!” — Armchair Interviews

  “An unvarnished look at sin and redemption, confidently written. Dark Star is an impressive debut.” — Best-Selling Author James Scott Bell

  “Not in a very, very long time, have I had as much joy and pleasure with reading a book as I just had with Dark Star.” — HollywoodJesus.com

  “Dark Star, Creston Mapes’ first novel, is probably the best book I have read so far this year.” — In the Library Review

  “Dark Star takes the prevalent work of Satan and brings it into a very real context.” — HM - The Hard Music Magazine

  “Mapes’ books are instantly intriguing. My daughter had this to say about Dark Star: ‘It is one of my favorite books. I’m really into music, so the fact that Everett Lester is a rock star is really interesting to me. This book shows what can happen when you’re on drugs, when you mess with a psychic, and what you feel like living your life without God. I would recommend this book to anyone over the age of 13. It’s amazing.’” — SPIRE Reviews

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  DARK STAR

  © 2005 by Creston Mapes, Inc.

  Cover art by Dan Pitts / facebook.com/danpittsdesign

  Scripture quotations are from:

  New American Standard Bible © (NASB) © 1960, 1977, 1995 by the Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

  Holy Bible, New Living Translation (NLT) © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.

  The Holy Bible, New King James Version (NKJV) © 1984 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.

  The Holy Bible, New International Version (NIV) © 1973, 1984 by International Bible Society, used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House

  The Holy Bible, King James Version (KJV)

  Published in the United States of America

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission.

  For Mom and Dad,

  A lifetime of thanks for your patience, generosity, and unconditional love—and for encouraging me to dream big.

  Acknowledgements

  Deepest gratitude to my agent, Mark Sweeney; his wife, Janet; and my editor at Multnomah, Julee Schwarzburg. You three believed in this manuscript early, and for that, I will always be grateful. I’m honored to work with you.

  Special thanks to Multnomah’s Don Jacobson and family, and Doug Gabbert and family—for reading, enjoying, and getting behind Dark Star.

  To Kristina Coulter, Sharon Znachko, Chad Hicks, and the whole team at Multnomah—thanks so much for your great work.

  I am indebted to Joseph Cheeley III for your time and legal expertise.

  Thanks to Bern, Min, Vibe, Frank, Phil, and all my friends for your prayers and encouragement.

  Finally…thank you, Patty (the steady one). I hope you enjoy the book; you can finally read it now! Abigail, sincerest thanks for your creative input. Hannah, Esther, and Creston—thanks for your patience and prayers while Daddy concentrated on “the book”!

  But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, some for honor and some for dishonor.

  2 Timothy 2:20, NKJV

  1

  IT WAS A GLORIOUS blaze, the fire we set. A wicked, glorious blaze.

  Its flames leapt as tall as we were at fifteen years of age, however tall that was. Dibbs was short, so the flames even went above his head.

  We stood like some kind of untouchable demons with our backs to the fire, legs locked apart, and forearms crossed above our heads with fists clenched. Our white-, black-, and red-painted faces were lowered, our eyes staring at the wet, almost freezing Ohio street beneath our booted feet.

  As cars approached our black, soldierlike silhouettes and the burning wall of fire behind us, they slowed and turned around to find another way to their part of the neighborhood.

  Ah, the power. Adrenaline pumping. Hearts pounding. Fear mixed with fascination.

  We felt like gods.

  Then we heard the sirens, a bunch of them, coming it seemed from every direction.

  We took off, sprinting down the middle of the street in the direction of my house, malt liquor coursing through our bloodstreams, frantically looking for the first sign of headlights or flashing red lights in the blackness.

  There. Red lights. Painting the trees in the distance.

  Dibbs dove headlong into a pack of thornbushes at the side of the road. I laughed when I saw him stuck in midair, arms stretched out in front of him like he was diving into a pool. He screamed from the pain of the prickers.

  I lit down a side road near the city park and did a ten-foot baseball slide through the wet grass up to the base of a big willow tree. Lou Brock couldn’t have done it better.

  After the first fire truck and squad car passed, Dibbs came thumping down the dark street, his breath pumping steam into the frigid night. “Where are you, man?”

  I darted to meet him, and we ran toward my house again, smack-dab down the middle of the street.

  Out of nowhere, headlights catapulted toward us.

  Next, the screeching of tires as a Dodge Charger’s rear skidded toward us. In unison with the stop, the Charger’s passenger door banged open and the dome light came on, illuminating my older brother Eddie who was—that night—our savior.

  My name is Everett Lester. I’ve been asked by a New York publishing house to pen these memoirs. The experiences and encounters you’re about to read are true, I can assure you of that because I was there for all of it. And the story isn’t finished yet.

  I am presently seated in a rather sterile courtroom in Miami-Dade County, Florida, at a long-awaited murder trial, portions of which are being shown on major network television.

  It’s a media circus.

  As I write this, mobs of press people with phones, recorders, shoulder bags, and bulky equipment flood courtroom B-3. Presiding judge Henry Sprockett, who resembles Dick Van Dyke, has had to settle the movement along the perimeter of the wood-paneled courtroom several times already. The hype is nothing unusual for me—I only wish it came under different circumstances.

  Late that night, after our little experiment lighting the road on fire, I distinctly remembered staring at the white sink in my basement bathroom as the black, white, and red makeup swirled down the drain. I simply stared.

  Eddie had shown up at just the right moment, as he would many more times during the days of my youth.

  What if the cops had nailed you? What would Mom have said? What would my father have done?

  The cold fact was, it just didn’t matter.

  As far back as I could remember, I was going to be somebody. I realiz
ed at a young age that I would have one pass at life—and I was going to make it a showstopper. A raging youth, I was brimming with emotion: everything from fear and anger to pride and insecurity. I felt like a big, bad, bodacious thunderhead ready to send out my lightning across the universe. A whole world awaited me out there, and my desire was to take it by storm.

  Ever since my older brother, Eddie, sold me his worn-out KISS Alive! album for two dollars, I was hooked on rock ’n’ roll. My friends—Dibbs, Scoogs, Crazee, and me—had a band called Siren. We played clubs throughout northeast Ohio, from Akron and Cleveland to Canton and Youngstown. We did numbers from bands like Queen, Rush, Bowie, Kiss, and Springsteen, plus a bunch of our own tunes.

  Early on, promoters came out to see us at bars like the Agora Ballroom, Backstreets, The Big Apple, and The Bank. We were one of the few amateur bands back then to use pyrotechnics in our shows. After several years, we changed our name to DeathStroke. By the time the band was five years old, I was twenty, and we had landed our first record deal with Omega Records.

  Blastoff.

  Before we knew it we were warming up for stars like John Cougar Mellencamp, Joan Jett, AC/DC, and Pat Benatar. The first record, DeathWish, sold 500,000 copies within six months of its release, and we were playing concerts on the road 260 days a year.

  It’s all a blur to me now. Like a dream. Large bits and pieces—even years—are simply missing, probably never to be recalled.

  That was for the better, I was sure.

  Miami-Dade prosecutors were having a field day with former DeathStroke drummer David Dibbs, who had occupied the witness stand for the past fifty minutes and was nervous as a cat.

  Dibbs looked old now. White beard stubble showed distinctly on his tan face. He wore a light blue, cotton-silk shirt with a pointy collar, no tabs, unbuttoned to his chest; its long cuffs were unbuttoned also. Dibbs repeatedly threw his stringy brown hair off his face, back behind his right ear. He fidgeted with his hard hands and bit at the cuticles of his stubby, calloused fingers. Looked like he could use a smoke.

  No wonder Dibbs was antsy. The bulldog, county prosecutor Frank Dooley, had led witnesses to reveal incriminating evidence from the past about Dibbs himself. The drummer had been forced to confess that all of us in the band, except Ricky, used drugs in excess during the heyday of DeathStroke—including marijuana, Valium, hash, cocaine, and heroin.

  In reality, however, Dibbs had nothing to worry about. After all, he wasn’t the one on trial here.

  I was.

  Scores of DeathStroke groupies camped out at record stores coast to coast, awaiting the release of our second heavy metal album, Our Own Religion. Needless to say, sales figures went ballistic, with the title track making it to the top of the charts within two weeks. Here are the words to that hit, which I penned, sang, and shared guitar duty on alongside John Scoogs:

  Ain’t no god above,

  Ain’t no god below,

  Ain’t no god in the afterlife,

  Ain’t no god gonna keep me in tow.

  We got ourselves a new religion,

  One we call our own,

  It’s about taking life by storm, my pilgrims,

  It’s about livin’ in the danger zone.

  If you want a little taste of heaven,

  Come with me after the show,

  I’ll take you to kingdoms above and beyond,

  Anything you have ever known…

  Dibbs, Crazee, Scoogs, and I were gods. Fans worshiped us. We were on a pedestal so high, none of us knew how we got there or how to get back down to reality, even if we wanted to. Any drug, any girl, any meal, any instrument, any car—anything—was ours for the asking. Our manager, Gray Harris, saw to that as he took DeathStroke to breathtaking new heights.

  By the time I was twenty-three, I was so strung out on booze, pot, uppers, and coke that I often got confused about what city we were playing. More than once I would grab the mike in, say, Baltimore, and yell to the crowd, “How ya doin’, Pittsburgh? Are you ready to rock?”

  I was ugly, all right, spitting into the crowd one night, stomping offstage another. I was drugged out and utterly insensitive. And I made no attempt to hide the fact that I was making time with as many women as possible while we rode the crest of this fame-driven wave.

  Dibbs, our drummer and my best friend since childhood, was the first to approach me about my unbridled antics—and my growing dependency on drugs, which was beginning to vex even the regular users in the band.

  “Dude!” Dibbs cornered me one night in Vegas between sets. “Clean it up, man. You’re a zombie! You’re ticking these people off. They’re not gonna take this kind of abuse forever.”

  “Dibbs, chill, man! These groupies would follow us straight to hell if that’s where we were playing. Now get out of my face!”

  “Do you hear ’em?” he screamed above the roar. “I’m hearin’ boos out there! They made us who we are, Lester. You need to clean up your act. I mean it!”

  Clueless was I to the fact that Gray and the boys in the band had been putting out feelers to see if there were any other lead singers who might be able to take my place—a thought I would have both cursed and laughed at, had I known.

  It was during this period that I started getting the letters from Karen. Don’t get me wrong, we got thousands of letters each day from fans, not to mention hundreds of flowers, gifts, clothing, hotel room keys, and other strange paraphernalia. We also received death threats from angry parents, suicide notes from strung-out teens, and hate-filled letters from so-called Christian community leaders.

  Amidst it all, Karen’s notes stood out. Part of me passed them off as the fanatic obligation of some wigged-out cultist. But another part of me—a very tiny, unreachable part buried beneath layers of steel and stone—wanted to cling to the words like a suffocating person clings to oxygen, as if they were life itself.

  Dear Mr. Lester,

  Unlike most of the mail you receive, this is not a fan letter. I am not a fan of yours, but I would like to be your friend. My name is Karen Bayliss. I am sixteen years old and live in Topeka, Kansas. Most important, I am praying for your salvation. I will not stop praying for you. It is my desire for you to surrender your life to Jesus Christ and for you to lead your following of fans to Him.

  You will hear from me often. Until next time, may the Holy Spirit begin to draw you to Himself.

  Sincerely,

  Karen Bayliss

  No return address, no phone number, nothing. Just a crooked gray postal stamp on the envelope confirming that it came from Topeka.

  Prosecutor Frank Dooley was a piece of work. Thick, dark brown hair, not one out of place. Dark blue suit with a white hankie sticking up out of the breast pocket. Long face. Always tugging at his sleeves out in front of him, making sure about three inches of white cuff could be seen, as well as two big gold cuff links. His Southern drawl was as thick as Coca-Cola syrup; every word had at least two syllables.

  “Your Honor,” he said in response to an objection from my attorney. “It is my intention to make it crystal clear to you what kind of individual we are dealing with here. Everett Lester has been a troubled soul since the day he was born, and I am simply asking the witness, who has been a lifelong friend, to answer some specific questions about Mr. Lester’s youth.”

  Judge Sprockett pinched at his protruding Adam’s apple and overruled the objection.

  “So then, Mr. Dibbs, is it true that the defendant, Everett Lester, was excessively violent as a boy?”

  “I don’t know if you would call it excessive. Boys are—”

  “Mr. Dibbs,” Dooley interrupted, “is it true that Everett Lester had three large pet piranhas when he was a teenager?”

  “Objection Your Honor,” said my attorney, Brian Boone, almost laughing. “What could having a few pet fish possibly have to do with—”

  “Overruled. I’m going to humor you, Mr. Dooley, but let’s make this quick.”

  “Mr. Dibbs,” Dooley ze
roed in on the witness, “is it true that Everett Lester had three large pet piranhas when he was a teenager, and that friends would pile into his basement bedroom to watch these flesh-eating creatures devour live fish and mice, and even rats?”

  “Yes...”

  “And is it true that Everett smashed mailboxes, shot guns at street signs and picture windows, set roads on fire, and tipped over cars with the help of friends?”

  “Pellet guns. He used pellet guns, not real ones.”

  “That is not the question, Mr. Dibbs. The question is, did Everett Lester destroy mailboxes, shoot at homes, set fires, and roll automobiles?”

  “Well…yes.”

  “And is it true that when you and Everett Lester were boys, he was known to sell drugs?”

  “At times, yes, but his family—”

  “Steal cars?”

  “Yes, but you need to—”

  “Sleep around?”

  “Yes.”

  “And beat the living tar out of other boys for even looking at him wrong?”

  Shaking his head and looking down, as if he were being disciplined, my old best friend managed one more yes, and Dooley was done with him.

  2

  AS IT TURNED OUT, the band members in DeathStroke did not kick me out of the group. It wasn’t that I quit the drugs or alcohol, but over the years I built up such a tolerance that I was able to perform while flat-out stoned.

  Besides, my compatriots were not about to get rid of their cash cow. They realized my popularity was the major factor in the success of DeathStroke. I was not only the group’s charisma, but also the musician who had written the lion’s share of our top hits. For their own good, my “buddies” chose to dance with who brung ’em, even though they were watching me disintegrate in the process.

  Our third album, Deceiver, sold more than the previous two albums combined, going platinum in one year. At that stage of my life, I had everything anyone in the world could want. Between the income from concerts, records, gift sales, and endorsements, all four DeathStroke band members were millionaires. Imagine it—I was only twenty-four.