MORE THAN THREE HOURS HAD PASSED since that maniac had left the dungeon, carrying with him the echo of his footsteps and leaving behind a slow, viscous, dark trail: blood spread across the cold floor, droplets gleaming like small medallions in the gloom.
Will had counted—in silence, in his head—every minute, every attempt. He had tried hundreds of numerical combinations, his fingers stiff, sweat dried on his palms; the padlock remained stubbornly locked, as though mocking him. Sitting in the small hole that served as his cell, his back pressed against the damp wall, he stared at the macabre shelf.
From that distance and under the poor lighting, he could not distinguish the contours of the exposed organs; he saw only shadows. Yet he knew, with chilling certainty, that those human hearts rested there, lined up like trophies, silent and preserving their own horror. He wished for only one thing: a quick death, a painless blackout, an end that would not prolong the agony.
The silence was torn apart by footsteps. First a faint creak, then the groan of hinges, followed by light cutting into the room like a blade. Will's heart raced—not like a primitive pump, but like a rusted mechanism suddenly forced back into motion.
He looked up. The staircase spat out a shadow, and the nightmare descended the steps with the dangerous calm of someone savoring every moment.
— I forgot to tell you I'm protected by powerful charms, boy! — LaVey shouted, his voice reverberating against the cold walls.
The bandages covering his face revealed only two eyes shining with a sickly light; the rest was hidden beneath stained cotton. There was arrogance in that gaze, and a savage pride as well.
— The stab wound you gave me in the back was stopped by a rib. It was only a superficial puncture.
Will felt the words cut through him all over again. He took a short breath.
— I've always had bad aim, —he shot back, the response coming more from instinct than courage.
— The cut on my face was the best you could manage. Do you know how many stitches I got? —LaVey stepped closer, his large frame blocking the light.
Every step left a mark on the floorboards; every mark felt like a sentence.
— How many? — Will replied, forcing curiosity to disguise his fear.
— Thirteen. My lucky number.
A short, dry laugh followed.
— An unlucky number for almost everyone, including me, — the teenager countered, trying to maintain a dignity that might make him seem less fragile.
— Foolish superstition, — LaVey said, spreading the words as though distilling contempt. — If you had tried the combination zero, zero, one, three on the padlock, it might have changed its mind. But now it's far too late to escape.
He moved closer to the bars. Will's breathing shortened; he felt the man's presence like physical pressure against his chest.
— Are you going to kill me? — Will asked, the question trembling somewhere between rage and panic.
— You've seen my face, you know my house, and you're angry with me. —LaVey spoke as if reciting an inventory. — And?
— And?
— I've got all the reasons in the world to do it, don't you think? —the jailer replied, his eyes sparking. There was a long, unspoken history in that sentence, an entire handbook of reasons that justified cruelty.
— What if I promised to stay quiet? — Will offered, his voice low, hopeful in the way only someone appealing to broken logic could be.
— Why should I trust you? I learned to trust only one person.
The statement hung heavily in the air.
—Yourself? — Will asked, searching for a thread of sanity in the conversation.
— I'm not that crazy, — LaVey replied without abandoning the smile that never reached his eyes.
— Then get it over with, — Will growled, a challenge distilled from fear.
LaVey did not answer with violence immediately—he answered with irony.
— You're a lucky kid. My father wants me to let you go. Let's have a drink to celebrate your freedom.
That was enough to leave Will stunned. For a moment, contradiction dulled the terror: the offer of a toast blurred the nightmare. LaVey picked up a bottle of twelve-year-old Chivas Regal from the table, its label reflecting the yellow glow of the lamp, and poured two glasses. The bottle creaked with a sinister promise of normality in a place where normality no longer existed. He handed one glass to the prisoner and raised his own with grotesque ceremony.
— A toast to your sister, — LaVey announced, driving the knife deeper into an open wound.
Will felt the air leave his lungs. The word sister became a hammer striking his body. Everything spun for an instant—memories, photographs, distant laughter—and rage ignited in his throat.
— Leave her alone! — Will shouted, a desperate command that did not sound convincing even to himself.
LaVey smiled in the way storms announce themselves.
— Nothing will happen to her if you keep your promise: stay quiet. — His voice softened, as though sharing an intimate secret. — But if you lie to me, boy, I'll make your sister suffer until she understands the price of your dishonor. I'll take from her what she values most. I'll turn her world into a file cabinet of sorrows, and you—you'll know exactly where I placed the trophy.
The silence that followed was so dense that Will could hear his own blood pounding. The threat was there, raw and tangible. LaVey had plans, and Will knew they were not empty words meant merely to frighten him. The teenager shuddered at the thought of his sister inside that prison. It did not matter whether the image was real or born from verbal sadism; the psychopath would delight in turning imagination into reality.
He forced himself to appear calm. Mimicking the jailer's gesture, he downed the drink in a single gulp, trying to burn away his fear with the hot liquid scorching his throat. His stomach was empty; the alcohol surged through him like poison, spinning through his brain. Dizziness overtook him.
A song drifted through the air—Dazed and Confused—an echo of Led Zeppelin that seemed to laugh at his misery. The music swirled, the walls shifted, and his perception dulled.
He asked for more whiskey and emptied the glass within seconds. The alcohol was a crude anesthetic. Suddenly, the bars of the cell were no longer rigid; they seemed like tightropes, flexible, alive.
The world is swaying, he thought, through fractured lucidity.
He closed his eyes.
Something seized his left hand. A sharp pain forced his eyes open. A violent sting sliced through the edges of his senses. Will saw blood—a thin stream flowing like ink—and then the horror materialized: his little finger lay on the floor, small and pale, detached from the rest of him.
A pair of pliers gleamed in LaVey's hand, displayed with the satisfaction of a man showing off a trophy.
— You son of a bitch! — Will screamed, his voice slurred because shock tangled his words.
— You didn't think I was going to let that slide, did you? — LaVey asked, irony sharpened like a blade. He pointed to the bandages covering part of his face, the mark that now justified—at least in his eyes—revenge.
— Shit... — Will muttered, clutching the place where the finger had once been, searching uselessly for what no longer existed.
— But look at it as a favor: I made your left hand match your right one, — LaVey added with a low, almost musical laugh that sounded as cold as steel.
Will repeated the phrase in a whisper, a mantra of pain and indignation.
— Son of a bitch...
He bent down, trembling, trying to retrieve the severed finger. The sight was grotesque; the tiny digit contrasted sharply with the barbaric surroundings. The metallic smell of blood flooded his nostrils, bringing nausea and vertigo with it. Physical pain now competed with moral pain—the humiliation of being reduced to this, of having his body dismantled on a whim.
— How did you guess my mother was a whore? — LaVey asked with genuine curiosity, as though it were a casual discovery, a piece of trivia on a macabre game board.
The question sounded absurd. Will tried to form a reply, but the world closed in around him. The sound of LaVey's boots receded down the corridor. The jailer's voice, distant now, blended with the music still playing—this time Black Dog—and everything seemed to move in slow motion.
Will lost consciousness.
He collapsed heavily into the pool of blood, his breathing threading across the cold floor. Before darkness claimed him, his final thought was of his sister—small, vulnerable—and the terrible certainty that, in that place, promises were not salvation.
They were contracts signed in flesh.
LaVey opened the cell door with a gesture that seemed like the farewell of a man putting away a toy. He stopped in the doorway, observed the teenager's unconscious body, and with a smile of twisted affection remarked:
— I liked you. It's a shame you have to go home.
And as the music grew louder, he walked away, leaving behind Will's chest rising and falling in a fragile, uneven rhythm.
It was Black Dog.