Page 10 of Fear No Hell

Sam

The first thing I see when I open the trunk is a fist flying at my face. Fortunately, Arthur is drunk off his ass and most likely concussed. So not only does the punch go wide, but it also almost sends him toppling out of the car and crashing to the pavement without any help from me.

I shake my head, wondering how I spent all of these years afraid of him.

I mean, yeah, it could easily be explained by him beating my mom during my childhood and being the reason for my amputation and two grippy sock vacations.

Standing here now, though, it’s hard to reconcile the larger-than-life abuser with the red-eyed, paunchy man tilted drunkenly out of the trunk, who’s trying to sit himself up and failing every single time.

He's not scary.

He’s despicable.

He’s fucking nothing.

His scrabbling fingers scrape against the exterior of my car as he shoves himself up, his head swaying pitifully from side to side with each move. A low groan finds its way out of his mouth followed by a loud belch and an, “Oh fuck.”

The muscle memory of getting out of the way in advance of a projectile vomit is apparently deeply ingrained because I’m moving before I realize what I’m doing.

Which is good because he pukes right where I was standing a second before.

I wrinkle my nose, stepping further away from the mess. From where I’m standing, it doesn’t look like any got into the trunk. Small victories, I guess. Don’t need any more DNA evidence in there than there already is from the drive over.

While I wait for Arthur to pull himself together, I sneak a glance at where Lila was standing the last time I looked.

She’s already inside, the lights of my dining room illuminating her pacing form.

As I watch her move, my chest aches. She’s gorgeous.

Every fantasy I’ve ever had wrapped in a tall, lithe body.

I could easily watch her for hours and not get bored. I want to join her but…

There’s another splatter of liquid on the pavement behind me.

Unfortunately, there’s a retching mistake of a man in my trunk that I need to deal with first.

Sighing, I turn back to the car and take in the grotesque scene before me.

Purged of what’s at least a fifth of expensive whiskey, Arthur is more mobile now, his hands wrapped around the trunk’s edge.

If I don’t miss my guess, adrenaline and an overwhelming lack of sobriety are the only things keeping him from recognizing the true extent of his injuries.

His bleary gaze darts around, searching for whoever locked him in the trunk.

When they finally catch on me, a confused furrow contorts his brow.

“Not doing so hot, huh, old man?” I greet my father for the first time in eight years.

He doesn’t recognize me immediately, which isn’t much of a surprise. The last time he saw me was when I broke into his house at 19 to get to the woman in the attic. Between med school and general adulthood, I look nothing like the teenager I was back then.

“Listen, I don’t know who you are, but I have money.”

“I don’t want your blood money.” My hands ball into fists at my side.

“What do you want then?” He’s still staring, clearly doing everything he can to place my face.

“I really don’t want anything you have to offer,” I respond calmly. “Except for whatever sacrifice you’re meant to be for the woman you trapped in your attic.”

His mouth drops. “What?”

“She’s only asked me to do three things for her, and one of them—” I grab ahold of his shirt—“is to find a place to hold you captive.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Recognition dawns on his face. “Sam?”

“Look at you, guessing correctly who your son is. Most parents recognize their children on sight, but you always were a shit father, so…” I let the sentence trail off.

“So you're gonna help the beauty then, huh? Should have guessed you would be a lying, opportunistic piece of shit like your whore of a mother. Apple didn't fall too far from that tree.”

I roll my eyes. My mother’s no saint, for sure, but a whore? Try again. “Let’s get you out of my trunk before you fuck things up anymore than you already have.”

I quickly learn deadlifting a kicking, screaming man is difficult. Doing it quietly at midnight? Forget it. It’s nearly impossible.

The good news is that it’s late enough for pretty much everyone to already be asleep.

The not-totally bad news is that I live in a neighborhood made up of mostly of professionals with young kids and older people with Miracle Ears.

Neighbors here are friendly and a little nosy, sure, but they tend to stay indoors after dark because if you don’t see or hear something, you can’t be expected to talk about it.

Whether a screaming man would actually get people motivated and outside rather than bunkered down indoors like it’s the Purge? Yeah, I don’t really want to test that hypothesis.

So I do what any rational, red-blooded adult man in my situation would do.

I smack the fucker’s head against my bumper as I toss him over my shoulder.

His screaming stops immediately, his head lolling against my back as I close my trunk, lock the car, and head up the sidewalk.

All the while, I'm muttering profanities at Arthur's heavy carcass as I stalk around the side of the house to the rusty fence hanging for dear life from a single hinge. Once I resettle Arthur on my shoulder, I push open the gate. It swings inward with a grating squeal that’s almost as bad as Arthur’s hysterics were.

I pause, listening intently for any sounds that shouldn’t be there, in case anyone did decide to be a good Samaritan in the witching hours before dawn.

After a few seconds, I realize nobody’s coming outside.

With a breathless laugh, I dart into the yard and to the basement door nestled underneath the master suite balcony.

Since I gave Lila my keys, I feel around the top of the doorframe for the one I hid after I moved in.

My fingers scrape over dust and what feels like the desiccated remains of several beetles before coming to the sharp metal edge of the key.

I pull it down and slide it into the lock, twisting until the door creaks open to reveal three steps descending into inky black darkness.

I step inside, closing and locking the door behind me before flicking on the light and going down the stairs.

As far as basements go, it’s nothing special.

An unfinished space full of potential but missing anything else that would make it, say, enjoyable or livable.

The only things in here are broken-down boxes from the move, my washer and dryer, and a variety of supplies purchased for home projects I put on the back burner when the first two years of my residency ate up any spare time I might have had.

None of those things on their own would be so bad.

When paired with steel beams running the length of the sunken basement and cement floors stained with an unidentifiable rust-brown liquid, it’s creepy as fuck.

In fact, I realize as I look around with new eyes, it has a distinctly serial killer feel to it.

Seems about right for the vibe we’re going for.

I snicker as I lower Arthur carefully to the floor, protecting his head from striking the concrete with a hand.

Although being gentle with him rubs against every instinct I have, I do it because I know dropping him from my standing height could injure him in a way that might interfere with Lila’s revenge.

I don’t know what she has planned for him, but I’m going to make sure she gets her closure.

Which starts with not dropping him on his head.

As I rise again, I chew on my lower lip, now faced with the third reason why I would be a terrible serial killer.

I have nothing to hang him up with. I don’t have ropes, and the only handcuffs I have are novelty ones my best friend, Dillon, gave me as a Christmas gag gift that are definitely not the grade necessary to hang a grown man from a ceiling.

Leaving Arthur unchained is a risk I’m not willing to take, not when he could attack Lila—or me, I guess, although I’m not overly concerned with that possibility for some inexplicable reason—when she comes down the stairs, which, with the full wall between the stairwell and the basement, would render her blind to the rest of the room.

Or he could escape. The reminder is relevant but unlikely. I remember her incandescent fury, the utter inhumanness of it, when I saw her in Arthur's house for the first time. I highly doubt she’ll leave him able to walk, and that's not even accounting for the damage she has already done to him.

Regardless, I still need to figure out how to tie him up. I take another look around the basement, hoping against hope I’ll see something I overlooked before. Any sort of chains would work… Nothing leaps out at me, although the thought of 'chains' does remind me of something.

It doesn’t come to me, though, so I turn to my next best option: drugging him until I can pick up restraints.

I don’t keep hard drugs in the house, but there are a million household solvents I can use to keep him down.

An oldie but a goodie would be to mix bleach and acetone to make a home-brew chloroform—thanks, organic chem, for that knowledge.

I’m trying to figure out whether I actually have nail polish remover in the house, walking aimlessly in thought around the basement as I do, when a glint of bronze catches my attention.

By the time I process the innocuous flash of metal, I’m already on the other side of the room.

Wait, what was that?

I stride over to the pile of household materials, certain whatever I saw was in this pile of garbage. It only takes a matter of seconds of skimming before I spot what sparkled in the light.

Reaching forward, I shove away the debris covering the items, revealing what they actually are. A choked laugh escapes me as my lips turn up in a smirk. That’ll do.