Solangelo One Shots

Hell House(pt 2)

Hey guys, here's part two of three! Also, like last week kidnapping trigger warning, it gets a little bit darker this time. With that said, enjoy!

Will's POV

The staircase wound up to the second floor and the boards creaked as Nico took his first step, shining his light to the second floor. "What do you think is up there?" he asked, ascending a few more steps and leaving Will to hurry after him.

"Who knows," Will said, wrapping his arms around his body. The broken windows let in the cold from the oncoming storm and he longed for the sweatshirt that he had left in his backpack, still sitting in the empty entry room. "Bedroom, probably. Bathroom, guest room."

"We should check out the bedroom," Nico suggested, his feet hitting the platform of the second floor. "If anything interesting is going to be up here, it'll be in the bedroom. Maybe a diary, or pictures."

"He died in the bedroom, didn't he?" Will asked.

"They didn't find the body for a week and a half," Nico whispered. "My dad collects old newspapers and he keeps the one about Artie's death in this box with all of the interesting ones. He always says he doesn't think it was old age."

"What else could it have been?" They stepped cautiously through the hallway, the lights sitting on the walls long dead.

"My theory was that it was one of his victims," Nico said. "I bet one of them got loose and poisoned him or something. They never did release an autopsy." They fell silent as thoughts rushed through Will's head, images of someone dressed in rags with rope burn on their wrists and ankles rushing through the house in the dead of night with a vial of poison clutched in their hands. "This is it, I think." Nico poked his head inside of the final room, taking a slow step inside and beckoning for Will to join him. The bed could have easily fit four people, covered in a deep red bedspread with a dozen pillows stacked against the headboard. The covers were neatly pulled up, a pair of black shoes that had once been sleek but were now coated in a thick layer of dust pressed against the bed frame. "He really was rich," Nico commented, stepping up to a hulking closet. "Check under the bed for anything interesting." Will got down to his knees, peering underneath as he listened to Nico throw open the doors to the closet.

Will brushed his hands over the floorboards, trying to find anything that might be considered interesting. He was about to give up when his finger knocked a floorboard loose and he heard something rattle. He scrambled to pick it up, digging his fingernails underneath and gently pulling it from its position. "Nico," he called. "Come here. I think I found something." He reached inside of the opening as Nico joined him, their headlamps casting double beams of light.

"What is it?" he asked, sitting up as Will pulled out a small vial. Their lights showed them a cracked glass bottle, something dried up and brown staining the inside. "Do you think it's blood?" Nico asked, his voice shaking.

"Could be," Will said, rolling it over in his hands. He didn't want to take his eyes off of it until Nico came back out from underneath the bed with several more vials, along with a piece of frayed, broken rope and a sock, what was once white lace now dirty and sad.

"This confirms it, doesn't it?" Nico said. "He really did kidnap people." He slipped a vial, the sock and the rope into his sweatshirt pocket, patting them deeper inside. "We need to keep these," he explained. "For evidence." Will was still staring at the vial, seemingly small and insignificant in his hands. "I found something, by the way."

"What is it?" Without looking Will slipped the vials back inside of the hole, pressing the floorboard down on top of it. He didn't want to look at the bloodstained glass any more.