H is for Hell: A-Z of Horror, #8

By P.J. Blakey-Novis

H is for Hell, the eighth book in an epic series of twenty-six horror anthologies. In this book you will find a collection of thirteen horrific tales from some of the most talented independent horror writers on the scene today. Each tale brings to life a different vision of Hell, each unlike anything you have read before. H is for Hell will take you to the depths of the Underworld and you may not return unscathed. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Cape Publishing
• Release date: Feb 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201288778

Book preview

Red Cape Publishing Presents...

The A-Z of Horror: H is for Hell

DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2021 Red Cape Publishing

All rights reserved.

Cover Design by Red Cape Graphic Design

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Title Page Artwork by Art Mystic

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Among the Benighted

Daniel R. Robichaud

The chuckling sound was just water or acid running through the multiple sets of pipes in the Hell Library's walls. Jethro Jedidiah Miller knew that as well as he knew he was dying, but the knowledge did not change the fact that the walls themselves seemed to be laughing at him. Why shouldn't they?

A bullet to the gut. Never saw that coming.

Miller managed to shove the heavy double doors closed and trip the secret lock before the pain became too much and pitched him backwards upon the floor. There he lay like a helpless turtle, the benighted master stretched out in his equally benighted domain, coughing up blood by the mouthful. Was this irony or coincidence, him suffering in the very room he nurtured suffering in others during his pursuit of pleasing distraction, brighter moods and even, dare he admit, laughter these last three decades?

H. H. Holmes made himself a murder palace in Chicago to sate his thirst for blood and provide general amusement in sadder days. His home held all manner of pastimes and peculiarities. All Miller needed for his amusement was a single room: this, his Hell Library, so named for the terrifying texts adorning the shelves and the secrets tucked inside its walls and beneath its floor. Tonight, alas, he found no solace among these chuckling walls.

A madman stalked through the halls of Miller's mansion. He must have gained access by now. The front door was a heavy thing, the locks stout and expensive. While having one swung into the face would daze even a Kodiak bear, it would not stop the vengeful creature that made his way to Miller's doorstep.

The two men could not be anything less alike. Oh, they had two arms, two legs, two eyes, and hands eager to do the Devil's work, but the madman was a hulking figure while Miller was slight, perhaps a little paunchy but at least a full head shorter. The madman's brown mane was unkempt, as wild as his brilliant green eyes. Miller kept his dark hair the same professional shortness and slickness as when he ran the third largest Oil Field Services company ten years back. The madman had not seen half of Miller's sixty years, either.

Vestmann, the madman called himself. Said he had come about Luann, a name Miller recalled as belonging to one of his more recent playthings. She was long gone, of course, deposited in the quicklime pit beneath the library. When Miller demanded to know how this barrel-chested giant managed to get through the security fences, the man swept his duster to the side, revealing a cowboy's brown leather holster along his right thigh, drew an antique pistol, and shot him in the belly.

Miller was safe for the moment. This was his comfort place for so many reasons. The walls were lined with built in shelves, each of them supporting a dozen or more volumes on various subjects. Miller's personal wealth hit the high eight figures well before the oil collapse in the oughts, and he was not foolish enough to sink all his eggs into that unsteady basket. While his former colleagues scrambled ahead of the falling stock prices in the unsteady years since then, Miller took time to indulge his passions to the degree they required. He mastered so many subjects in his sixty years, but all the academic rewards these books provided the owner paled when compared to the rewards found past the shelves, within the walls themselves. Now, he wished he mastered the mystical art of becoming bulletproof.

Sense of safety vanished the instant something hammered on the southern wall's double doors. Even before the madman hollered for his blood, Miller knew it was Vestmann out there. The son of a bitch found me. It had not taken long at all, which was surprising given the size of the house. Then, he saw the trail of blood his belly leaked and realized the bastard did not have to be Davy Crockett to follow his progress.

The pounding had a strange, artificial quality to it. This was not a fist hammering upon the doors. This sounded more like a judge's gavel pronouncing sentence. Probably the butt of the hogleg responsible for putting the little lead chit in Miller's gut.

The house's master crawled to the Hell Library's center, spitting out mouthfuls of blood along the way. When he reached the table there, he manipulated the underside and exposed a sliding panel. The room's control box, a slender rectangle adorned with three buttons, waited within. It was the sort of control mechanism seen on many factory floors, a guidance device for overhead cranes or other heavy equipment.

The uppermost button operated a sliding bookcase to the west behind which Miller kept a chair modeled on the original executioner's seat, the one first dubbed Old Sparky. Of course, it could deliver the deadly currents to anyone seated therein. However, over the years it saw modification so its occupants could endure an expanded range of torments. The straps secured a body with unparalleled ease and did not care one whit if the eventual method of demise involved electricity or not. The latest occupant, a bland woman who called herself Diane Lopez the Chief Chairperson for Houston's Ecological Preservation and Protection Society--and didn't HEPPS sound like a venereal disease--arrived on his doorstep with a petition and demands he sign the line as well, applying his influence and pressure to cease oil industry efforts in the fields outside of the city as well as those in west Texas, North Dakota and The Republic of Congo. Nature, she said, demands a reckoning.

To show her how little Nature cared for her cause or one thousand seventy-nine signatures, he welcomed her inside, rendered her unconscious with a well-aimed pot of coffee, stripped her unconscious body nude with the help of a pair of fabric shears and belted her into the chair. She started coming to as he finished fitting a steel helmet over her head--a quirky design that was part gimp mask and part cage for one of the many starved, vicious animals he kept in storage. As she asked what was happening, he made his decision and fetched one of the animal boxes, which he fitted to one side of the apparatus encasing her head. When she heard the starved rat's scrabbling and squeaking inside, the woman grew suddenly silent, giving Miller the opportunity to say, We are going to test Nature's desires for a reckoning. If your purpose is true, then Nature will allow you to convince the beasty inside this box not to race out and toward your face. Can beauty, such as you are, soothe the savage beast? Diane Lopez tried, well-meaning little idiot that she was, to sooth the vermin with soft voice and gentle words. Only after the thing began its feast with her nose, did she stop the sweet attempts at placation and give way to shrieks. In the end, her good will evaporated and survival instinct kicked in. She bit the creature harder than she got bitten. The dead lump lodged in her bloody mouth, but she still managed a lunatic laugh. Her triumph dissipated when he released the next rat in line, which finished what the first started.

The control box's second button operated a secret door fixed in the east wall, which covered the steel chute leading to a subterranean chamber large enough for two. A click of the controls hidden behind a false copy of Frederick Douglass' Narratives could seal that subterranean chamber off completely, could remove all air from that space or fill it with whatever caustic chemical he lucked into on that given month. A camera feed showed the fate of any victims relegated to that purgatory, pumping night vision green images to a series of screens tucked away behind another of the shelves on the north wall. The latest victim was still in there, an attractive young man whose dark hair was kept trim and whose skin had gone from a lovely shade of rust to something far grayer when the atmosphere whisked from the room. During his slow demise, the boy shifted from a shrieking joke to a modern mummy bereft of gaudy gauze wrappings. He fell against the chamber wall in such a way to point his death-glazed eyes up into the camera, as though aware of its presence despite spending his last few hours in a pitch-black space, alone and oh so terrified.

The control box's third button, though. Ah yes, the third was what he needed now.

While Miller released the box, the madman changed his efforts. The big man stopped hammering with his pistol butt and applied what could only be his sizeable shoulder. The doors jolted in their frames.

Finally, Vestmann's efforts won him entry, smashing open the portal to this private, sacred space. The Hell Library's doors both swung inward, slowed by the weight of the world's finest literature of damnation. The big bear of a madman heaved breaths on the other side, wild mane and unkempt beard shiny with sweat. Not a man for the boardroom, this man seemed to have come off the set of some cheap western. He wore a tattered white shirt, leather pants and a duster, the ragged fringe along his limbs had seen better days. Scruff on his face suggested a month gone without shaving. Of course, Vestmann looked the sort of buck who could wrestle a bull into submission. In the shadows, he seemed twice the size of Miller himself. The shooting iron was still in the gunslinger's hand as Miller predicted. In fact, the madman showed just how far he'd gone by shouting, I'm calling you out, Miller. I will have satisfaction for Luann.

Playing the broken-hearted cowboy to the hilt. How pathetic.

I can't walk, Miller said. He was tucked behind the table, but it offered little cover. So, call all you want, but I'm staying right here. Leave or come and get me.

What's in your hands? Vestmann kept the pistol trained on his prey even as he took one step into the Hell Library. With a glee chortle, Miller thumbed the final button. The floor swung out from beneath the intruder's feet. Vestmann's finger pulled the trigger, hoping to gun down his opponent for this bushwhack. Unfortunately, surprise turned the necessary squeeze into a jerk, and that sudden muscle flex pulled the barrel aside, sending the round intended for Miller's noggin into the leg of the table he hid behind. Then, the intruder disappeared up to the shoulders. His gun spun away across the floor, having been discarded to allow his hands the chance to find precarious purchase on the hardwood. His fingertips made squeals on the polished wood. Vestmann scowled through his week's growth of beard, calling Miller the foulest names, but his eyes... His eyes were perfect, wide and filled with the dread knowledge that he screwed up bad. A twinkle of hope burned inside those greens, still. Vestmann was the hero of this dime novel, after all, which meant he would claw himself up from Hell if needs be for his lady fair.

Didn't you want satisfaction? Miller asked, forcing the words out between mouthfuls of his own life's blood. Well, you'll have it. What satisfies more than a reunion? Your gal is waiting for you down there. Well, whatever remains of her awaits you.

Miller laughed as loud as possible. Sometimes a sound alone blew out a victim's last flickering hope. Miller knew how to laugh because he loved his work here.

The big man's hands slipped, and his shoulders dropped below the edge. The knuckles on his fingers went white, his nails and chin holding him from a plummet twenty feet down into the lime pit.

I don't know how you tracked your precious dove here, Miller said. You weren't the first bereaved to make his way to my doorstep. He paused to hack up more blood, disappointed at how brilliant scarlet it all was. But you were the first, he continued, to come guns blazing.

You killed her, Vestmann said through gritted teeth. One hand lost purchase and scrabbled to find a new spot to cling to. Did he believe Miller would have her chained up somewhere, debauched and perhaps mutilated but alive? Idiot. The big man sank another few inches. Gut shot or not, Miller still found delight in the man's predicament, especially when the big man mumbled through his tears. You killed my Luann.

No sir. The quicklime did that, Miller chuckled. I dropped her in the pit. Let her come apart over hours. The fall broke her spine and maybe her skull. Her body trauma was pleasant to witness. As I am sure yours will be.

I'll see you in Hell, Vestmann snarled. Best believe... I'll be waiting.

Son, I've got a first-class seat waiting, Miller said. You'll suffer with the chattel, roast in a pit of feces or submerge into hungry rocks. You'll walk the trenches of Malebolge, while I will sit upon a noble's throne We won't ever meet, though I might witness your torment.

And there it was. The despair swooped in.

When the big man's fingers gave out once more, his head slipped down out of sight. All that remained were those tired, fat fingers of his, clutching to the trapdoor's edge. How long might they stay? One minute? Five?

Not even that, Miller discovered. Thirty seconds and two pained bellows later they vanished into the hole. The man flailed as he plummeted. His fists and feet hammered against the chute's steel shaft. He did not scream, though. Soon, the banging stopped, as he passed out of the chute and into the chamber. Vestmann met his end silently, without crunch or splashdown upon arrival. Ah well.

Miller hammered the button again to draw the trapdoor shut, as the engines whined as they drew the thing back up into position. However, the damned thing did not swing all the way back into place. The motor hummed, but the trapdoors stopped moving with about thirty degrees of rotation to go. Miller's thumb drove tip first into the button, harder than before, more directed. Another valiant hum followed by no effect. The blood on his digit erased friction, making it slide aside. The damned thing was stuck. Stuck? This never happened before.

Miller dragged himself into a sitting position. Peered over at the open door. Scowled. It was guaranteed to work. At the time of installation, the local yokel offered a money back guarantee if the blasted thing failed within fifty years. Despite being nowhere near that anniversary, it seized up. He vowed to drop that son of a bitch down the trapdoor himself. Him and his children, if the bastard managed to sire any, that was. His wife, too. Maybe his parents, if they were still around--

With a sudden wrenching sound and the shriek of steel-upon-steel, the trapdoors fell open again. The mechanism failed. Miller gasped. Why was this happening tonight of all nights? Why now?

A hand thrust from the hole, rising up and then immediately slapping down upon the hardwood floor. The hand did not belong to Vestmann. It was fish belly white and encrusted with some kind of hard particulates. Ruined rags clothed the wrist and arm. Miller's eyes widened enough to bulge from their sockets.

The hand did not bother digging nails into the floor to find purchase, relying instead on simple pressure. A low, grunting sound preceded the second hand's appearance. This one shared the same lousy condition as the first. As it landed and heaved, a head came into view, and what a horrible visage it bore.

A few strands of hair managed to escape being eaten away by the quicklime below, hanging like waterlogged ropes in front of the horrid visage. The face was that same pale color, glistening in the Hell Library's lamps as though dusted with glitter. That face once belonged to a woman. Now it adorned a sexless living corpse. The eyes were gone, gaping sockets now home to twin flickering flames. Encrusted lips strained away from teeth and the dissolved pulp of a tongue as the thing pronounced, Jethro Jedidiah Miller, your hour has come with the sinister intonation of a judge bought by the opposition.

Who... who are you?

The thing did not answer, but he knew it was the Luann Vestmann came about. The corpse continued to pull itself up from the hole. Its clothes were all rags, material eaten away by exposure to the quicklime below. Its body was in a strangely sorry yet preserved state, and nevertheless horrid. What corpse stink he could detect was subtle, far less than what he would have expected.

A sudden flickering in the west wall managed to drag his attention that way. His thumb was nowhere near the first button, but the sliding panel was already gliding open. He thought: It's a glitch of some sort. It turned out not to be a glitch at all. A woman with no face left and the discernable shape of a rat carcass between her jaws stood on the other side. Diane Lopez wore the same smart but cheap skirt suit she arrived at his door in, but the signed HEPPS petition was long gone. Her eyes were gone as well, replaced with a pair of impossible blue glows burning inside her sockets--unlike the first ghoul, these lights were not flames but buzzing electric filaments sizzling in the darkness. She too said, Jethro Jedidiah Miller, your hour has come round at last as though delivering a summons to appear in court.

Miller lay where he was, blood oozing from his gut, fingers poised to rise and jam the buttons on the control box. However, he could not will himself to move.

A clunking and scraping clatter arose from within the east wall, a weight drawing itself up along the chute to the sealed room below. That door opened and the gray-complexioned youth dragged himself from within. His mouth made words, but there was no air in him to make them audible. It was Jethro Jedidiah Miller's full name and the promise of his hour come around. As the corpse drew in a deep breath, his emaciated body inflated like a beach ball after the first puff.

The three most recent corpses for each of his deathtraps emerged from their individual torture chambers. They plodded across the room toward him, hands extended, eyes glaring with hellish light.

Sudden understanding rushed in and eased away Miller's terror. The lead in his gut worked its final poison, of course. He nurtured no illusions about being saved in the last minute. Vestmann executed his work well, and it was a matter of minutes before enough blood evacuated and the organs shut down. He must be dead, and these three gruesome figures were his guides to the next world. At least I outlived Vestmann!

The next world. Three figures such as these would not be the angels calling him to the pearly gates.

Hell was a real place, then? It seemed a violation of Miller's ethos. Sure, he paid lip service when Vestmann offered to meet him there, but that was some coldblooded nonsense to provoke the man. If Hell were real, then Heaven must be true as well. God must be an actual thing. How, how disappointing that concept was! Goodness was more than a ruse to keep the sheep pacified? Bah.

Your seat awaits, the first of the three arriving cadavers said. Was she really the Luann Vestmann came to avenge? Did it matter in the final analysis?

He said, I will have a prominent seat, right? The words should have come out strong, cadenced as though by an emperor. However, his voice was as weak and pause-riddled as during that final exchange with the madman gunslinger. I must have delivered so many souls to Hell. I should get first class lodging there. Did Hell have Jacuzzis and lovely views? If so, his deeds must've bought him a seat in the finest building in the finest neighborhood. Surely, he should get a lovely companion or two, scarlet skinned demoness slaves who would bring him victims and perform for his delight.

Quite prominent, the rat-eaten Diane Lopez said.