Chapter Ten

The San Andreas Fault line was one of the longest fault lines on the planet, running approximately 800 miles. It essentially sliced California into two halves. At its southern end, the line crossed Los Angeles County right along the north side of the San Gabriel Mountains, and it had the potential of causing earthquakes as powerful as a magnitude eight. That fault line was the main reason why the Los Angeles Metro line was so limited, servicing only a very small portion of such a large city. Underground digging in Los Angeles was extremely restricted and it had to follow an immense list of rules and guidelines because if an earthquake hit, and one could at any minute, subterranean tunnels would collapse like a house of cards in front of a wind turbine and the loss of life could be catastrophic.

It was for that same reason that underground parking in Los Angeles barely existed and very few homes in the whole of California had basements or cellars. But this one, located in Hollywood Hills, did.

The house belonged to the man who, at The Varnish, called himself Liam. His parents had purchased it in the early 1980s and they got it for an absolute bargain. The house had been the former home of Todd Meier, a 1970s-era cardiovascular surgeon, who fell from grace in quite a spectacular way for the time.

Despite being a talented doctor, Meier also owned a couple of popular nightclubs on Hollywood Boulevard, and in his clubs, other than just selling alcohol, he also trafficked in prescription drugs.

In the 1960s and 70s, hallucinogens like LSD, mescaline, psilocybin and PCP became enormously popular, as did opioid-based painkillers. Dr. Meier kept the LAPD well greased and in the space of just a few years, his side business had made him a very wealthy man, until his whole life fell apart sometime in the mid-70s, when he began taking too many of his own pills. One morning, right after a heavy night of booze and drugs, Dr. Meier killed a patient on the operating table after slicing through the wrong artery. The long investigation that followed led to a number of wrongful-death suits and, ultimately, criminal charges, but Dr. Meier never went to prison. He chose to take his own life a week before his trial was due to start.

In California, real-estate agents are obliged by law to disclose not only the history, but also any relevant incidents that might've happened inside a property that could potentially influence the buyer in one direction or another.

Unfortunately, Dr. Meier had chosen to end his life with a gunshot to the temple inside his own living room. That information, when revealed, served as a huge sale-deterrent for almost seven years, until Liam's parents, who couldn't have cared less who the previous owner had been, finally purchased the large, two-story house in the summer of 1984 – five years before Liam was born.

The house's cellar – or, better yet, secret cellar – never appeared in the house's floor plan because no one, other than Dr. Todd Meier and the few people he had used to build it, knew about it. That secret lasted until 1988, when Liam's father decided that it was time to finally get rid of those old, chunky and ugly cupboards down in the kitchen. But Liam's father was a man's man. He would've never hired a company, or someone else, to do a job that he could do himself.

It was right on the first day of work, as Liam's father was trying to remove the first of five cupboards on the kitchen's south wall, that he came across a secret lever hidden behind a false panel at the back of the cupboard. He hesitated for a moment before he flipped the lever. As he did, he heard a noise come from somewhere behind him. It took him a few minutes to discover that the noise had come from inside another cupboard, this one under the kitchen sink. In there, another false panel had sprung open, revealing a round, metal button. This time, there was no hesitation. Liam's father immediately reached for the button and pressed it. What he heard next was the thump of a lock opening under the floorboards.

On their first visit to the house, four years earlier, Liam's parents were readily impressed by the Italian-style, Nero Marquina and Bianco Carrara marble replica flooring in the large kitchen. What was different about it was that the squares on the black-and-white checkered floor were of various different sizes and orientation, creating a somewhat disturbing psychedelic effect, something that wouldn't be to everyone's taste; but Liam's parents liked odd and unconventional things.

As Liam's father looked in the direction of the thump he'd just heard, he finally understood the reason for the psychedelic floor design; it perfectly hid a Murphy door – a concealed door designed to blend seamlessly into an existing room. It was impossible to see it, unless the hidden button had been pressed.

The door led down to an enormous secret space – as vast as the property's entire ground floor – which consisted of an entry lobby, a large living room that linked to a comfortable dining room, a spacious study and an ample kitchen with an attached laundry room that offered more than enough storage space.

Part of that secret basement had been decked out like a medical examiner's office, 1970s style. There were two stainless-steel examination tables – both with drains – white metal cabinets with glass doors, surgical lights on the ceiling and two fully equipped instrument carts. The floor and walls had been tiled all in white for easy cleaning. A large sink with an extendable hose tap hugged one of the walls. Clearly Dr. Meier kept his drugs stash down there, but the examination tables and the instruments carts were a surprise.

What else had Dr. Meier been into?

Liam's father was both amazed and shocked in equal measure, but right then he knew that, by pure luck, he had stumbled across the perfect house.

Liam had known about the secret basement since he was a little kid, when his father had shown it to him. After his parents were gone, Liam inherited the property and decided that he needed to renovate his secret cellar.

Due to all the underground work restrictions in California, Liam decided to work alone, using every spare minute he could get. He kept the medical examiner's room just as it was, but he made much better use of all the extra space that surrounded it. And he had loads of it. He learned how to brick-lay, how to wood-cut, how to reinforce walls and doors, how to wire walls, floors and ceilings, how to professionally soundproof a room so that no sound could get out or in… whatever he needed to learn to achieve what he had set out to achieve. The job took him over five years to complete, but in the end, Liam had the perfect cellar. The perfect secret underground prison, torture chamber and surgical room, all rolled up into one. A place no one could escape from.

And it was in exactly that secret underground prison that Terry Wilford woke up just a few hours after he'd been Tasered outside The Varnish cocktail bar. He was lying on a shabby mattress that had been pushed up against a solid wall. The mattress smelled of vomit, blood, sweat and urine, but, to his surprise, Terry hadn't been shackled, tied up or gagged, although his whole body hurt as if he'd been used as a punch bag by a gang of heavyweights.

It was dark in the room where Terry was being held. So dark that it seemed that there was no sound, no light, no reality beyond the frantic beating of his own heart.

Slowly and through the pain, he pushed himself into a sitting position and used his hand to feel around. Past the mattress, all he could feel was the coldness of a concrete floor.

His mouth felt dry… so dry that he almost believed that if he coughed, a mist of dry powder would fly up in the air.

He desperately needed a drink of water.

‘Hello?' he tried calling out, but his vocal cords were so weak, so dried up, that all he got was a meager whisper.

He tried feeling around once again. Nothing. No water. No food.

Terry brought both of his hands to his face. His lips were chipped and cracked… his skin dry and rough… his eyes tender to the touch.

‘What the fuck is going on?' he whispered to himself, allowing his hands to drop down to his thighs like dead weights. ‘Where the fuck am I?'

That was when fear truly took over, crawling into the hollows of his body and pressing outward until he could feel his organs, his bones, his spine shaking inside of him.

Terry wasn't expecting an answer to his question – Where the fuck am I? – but an answer was exactly what he got, because he wasn't alone in that room.

Coming from the darkness just behind him, a guttural voice whispered the words.

‘In Hell!'