Necro Files: Two Decades of Extreme Horror

by Cheryl Mullenax (Ed)

  “Wh … why …”

  “When you exit your home, you will walk to my car and enter the front passenger side,” Harvey continued. “I will take you to the job I’ve mentioned. Do you understand?”

  Dennis didn’t know what to say. His eyes darted around his study, trying to find something out of place, some clue that would tell him where the tape was planted.

  “Dennis?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do we have an understanding?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Fifteen seconds, Mr. Hillman. From the time I hang up. I’m hanging up now. I expect to see you shortly.” The line went dead.

  Dennis was up and out the study in a flash. He grabbed his wallet and keys and left the house, locking it behind him, and headed down the front walkway and saw Harvey’s silver Mercedes parked at the curb across the street. He walked around the front of the vehicle, feeling the dread build inside, entered the car and sat down in the front passenger seat. Harvey started the vehicle and pulled away from the curb. “Good,” Harvey said as he drove out of the neighborhood. “I’m glad you came out.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Dennis asked.

  “I want to help you,” Harvey said as he piloted the Mercedes out of the neighborhood. He headed toward the 210 Freeway. “Relax. You’ll be well taken care of.”

  Dennis found it hard to relax. He kept thinking, what did I get myself into? as Harvey took the 210 into the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains. Harvey’s demeanor was casual and laid back. He was dressed in casual business attire—tan slacks and a white polo shirt. The interior of the Mercedes was spotless. For the first time, Dennis wondered what Harvey did for a living.

  “What do you do for a living?” Dennis asked, trying to sound casual.

  “I’m in the insurance industry,” Harvey said. He kept the car at the speed limit. “I’m just a corporate drone like yourself. That’s all.”

  “What’s this job you told me about?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Forty minutes later Harvey pulled the car up to a ranch-style house nestled in a small valley deep within the San Gabriel mountains. He turned off the engine and got out of the car. “Come, follow me,” he said.

  Dennis followed, still wondering what this was about. He’d managed to get Harvey to admit that the work in question was for a fellow member who needed a database built of various hardcore pornography media. “We’re building a lending library,” Harvey had said. “It’s still in the early stages, but neither of us have the time to build something sophisticated. That’s why you’re here.”

  “And you’ll pay me?” Dennis asked. Despite how things were shaping up, he still felt a trifle nervous as he followed Harvey to the front walkway.

  “Of course,” Harvey said. He unlocked the door. “Perhaps we can get you to make some money at this as well. How would you like that?”

  “I don’t know,” Dennis said.

  “If you had an opportunity to make twenty-five grand screwing a dead chick, you wouldn’t do it?”

  “I just like to watch,” Dennis said. “I don’t want to actually do these things.”

  “Ah! You’re merely the customer, right?”

  Dennis shrugged. “I guess.”

  “Wonderful!” Harvey grinned. “Come this way, Mr. Hillman.”

  Harvey led Dennis through a large foyer to the rear of the house. Dennis could hear the sound of a television and he saw the flickering light of the screen spilling in the shadowed room. Whatever was playing it was either a horror movie of some kind or—

  Dennis stopped at the threshold of the room as the image on the large screen TV rolled on. What appeared to be the elderly woman from the necrophilia film was being brutally beaten by two masked men. Her cries of pain were real, genuine. Dennis could tell that the minute he laid eyes on the film. He turned to look at Harvey and as he did so, his eyes rested on two figures lying on the floor like large, bloated lumps. Dennis took a step forward and recoiled, his stomach roiling as he saw that the figures were two adult dead males. They were naked, their bodies livid and white. Dennis noticed one had a small hole in the center of his forehead. His eyes were half-open, the lids like droopy shutters. Dennis took an involuntary step backward. “Hey, look, I don’t think this is—”

  “You don’t think this is what, Mr. Hillman?” Harvey stood at the threshold to the large den, smiling. The old woman on the large screen TV screamed in pain as something horrible happened to her.

  Dennis turned to Harvey, his heart racing. “Those guys …” He couldn’t finish what he was going to say.

  “Are dead. Yes, I know that Mr. Hillman. I thought that’s what you liked.”

  “I’m not gay,” Dennis said quickly. He wanted to get the hell out of here, but something kept him rooted to the spot.

  “Of course not,” Harvey said. “Andy Wilkes, one of the dead men you see there, was very much into young men, though. Take a look at the other one. Surely you’ll recognize him.”

  A spike of fear dripped down Dennis’s spine as he took another look at the bodies. One of the bodies was that of a fat middle-aged man with thinning gray hair. He looked familiar … vaguely familiar. He looked like the type of guy who’d be …

  Dennis put a hand to his mouth to hold back the scream. “Oh my God! That’s Carl Grossman!” His knees threatened to buckle and Dennis leaned against the wall.

  “Yes, that’s Mr. Grossman. He was the supplier. Nice that we have all three of you here, don’t you think? Customer, supplier, and the manufacturer.”

  Dennis looked at Harvey. He was shaking so badly. “Wh-wha-what are you talking about?”

  Over the agonizing screams of the old woman on the screen, Harvey continued. “Almost twenty years ago my mother and son were kidnapped. My son was only eight years old. They were never found. I looked everywhere; the police, the FBI, they looked everywhere. I used every available resource I could. I became so obsessed with their disappearance that my wife left me. There was no sign my mother took my son and changed their identities. There were signs that they were taken against their will, though. A witness reported that on the last day they were seen, two men were observed talking to my mother and son at Alondra Park in Gardena. My mother was a very accommodating, very helpful woman. This same witness saw my mother and son walking with the two men out to the parking lot. Perhaps they told her they needed some kind of help. We’ll probably never know. Needless to say, they disappeared from that park. My mother’s car was found still parked there without a trace of them. Later, much later, about thirteen years ago while chasing down a lead, I came across this tape.” He motioned toward the TV screen. One of the masked men was cutting the old woman’s throat while another one forced a small boy, who appeared to be eight or nine years old, his face red and wet from crying, to watch.

  “Don’t ask me where I got it,” Harvey continued. He reached into his slacks pocket and pulled out a gun. He pointed it at Dennis as he continued. “To make a long story short, I did more research and found out my son later died. He’d been held as a sex slave for a group of perverts and eventually ran away. He was so scarred, so traumatized, that he became insane. He was tracked down by this ring of pedophiles and perverts and again abused horribly for profit.” Harvey picked up Dennis’s rape tape from the top of the large screen TV. “Your tape, Mr. Hillman. You have the only copy. My son’s suffering was made for your pleasure. You paid to watch my son suffer!”

  “No!” Dennis said. “I swear, I didn’t!”

  Harvey’s face was twisted with rage and grief. “I’ve waited a long time for this … to get back at the people responsible for this … this filth! It took me years to track down Carl Grossman, but I did. I got him, and I got the bastard who killed my son, and now I’ve got the sonofabitch who paid for it.” He pointed the gun at Dennis.

  “Please …” Dennis stammered. “Y-Y-you don’t want to … to … d-d-do this!”

  “Sure I do,” Harvey said, his grie
f suddenly as gone as fast as it came, his face erupting into a sick smile and then he pulled the trigger.

  The .38 caliber slug tore into Dennis’s head, ejecting brain and bone into the wall behind him. The force of the shot propelled Dennis back and he slumped against the wall, eyes opened and glazed. Harvey watched as Dennis’s dead body rolled over and beat a convulsive tattoo on the carpeted floor before finally stopping.

  Harvey knelt down and felt for Dennis’s pulse. Except for the dwindling sound of the dying woman’s screams coming from the snuff film on the TV, the house was silent.

  Harvey grinned. He felt good. Wonderful. He never thought it would have felt so great, so fulfilling, so powerful! He stood up and replaced the revolver in his front pants pocket. He turned the VCR off with the remote control and rewound the tape and began making preparations for the owner of the house to arrive. According to his research, they were due back home in about three hours. Harvey had already set up all the video cameras at strategic places in the house, and he would turn all of them on with one flick of the remote when it was showtime. Then, he would wait for them to walk in and welcome them home, all four of them: mother, father, two adorable kids. Then they’d have some fun. He was looking forward to it now that he’d gotten warmed up. And getting warmed up was important. He’d gone through this stage with Carl, Alan, and Dennis to make sure he had the stomach for it. It was one thing to watch this shit everyday for the past twenty years; it was quite another to actually cross the line and do it.

  Marveling at how well his fabricated story about his mother and son had gone over with Dennis Hillman, Harvey Panozzo made sure all the weapons were ready. Then he sat down in the darkened living room and waited.

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  Table of Contents

  Introduction

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  Bait by Ray Garton

  Painfreak by Gerard Houarner

  Lover Doll by Wayne Allen Sallee

  The Spirit Wolves by Charlee Jacob

  Godflesh by Brian Hodge

  Every Last Drop by John Everson

  Blind in the House of the Headsman by Mehitobel Wilson

  An Experiment in Human Nature by Monica J. O’Rourke

  The Burgers of Calais by Graham Masterton

  Ecstasy by Nancy Kilpatrick

  Pop Star in the Ugly Bar by Bentley Little

  The Sooner They Learn by Wrath James White

  Addict by J.F. Gonzalez

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