Necro Files: Two Decades of Extreme Horror

The hook was attached to a cable and was thrown over the side of the boat. A couple of the men laughed loudly.

Cole’s eyes were so wide they hurt as he gawked at the men. He felt as if he might throw up.

A man at the other end of the boat holding an enormous fishing pole—like no fishing pole Cole had ever seen before—shouted, “Oh-ho, well, I guess we’ll see what I get here, huh?”

One of the men bent over Cole then, clutched him with both hands and lifted him up.

“I’ll hold him,” he said to another. “You cut the ropes.”

Another of the men some distance away bellowed, “You know, I never thought about it before, but hey, this way we’ll make the liberals happy ’cause we ain’t killin’ any dolphins, right?”

The others, including the one holding Cole, roared with laughter.

Someone cut the ropes and his limbs were free.

Big hands with fat, rough fingers ripped his shirt off and peeled his pants from his legs like the thin seal from a sausage. They pulled his shoes and socks off and tore his underwear away until he was completely naked and shivering.

“Okay, you take him,” the man said. “Give ’im to Corny—he’s good at hooking the bigger ones.”

Moments later, Cole was looking at a big man with huge moles on his face. He smiled at Cole. “Tell ya what, kid, I ain’t gonna hit any a your organs or arteries or nothin’. It’ll hurt, but you’ll be okay, I promise.”

The man stabbed a large barbed hook through Cole’s right shoulder. The excruciating pain made him scream for an instant, then he passed out.

He woke to big hands slapping his face.

“Kid! Hey, kid!” the man slapping him shouted. “You gotta be awake for this, okay? You gotta be awake and kickin’!”

Once Cole was alert and crying out for help, one of the big men wrapped his thick arms around Cole, sending explosions of pain from his pierced shoulder through his entire body, lifted him and threw him over the side of the boat and into the cold water.

Under the water, Cole held his breath, cheeks puffed out like little balloons on each side of his face. The pain was unbearable, but at the moment, he was more interested in breathing.

He began to thrash and kick.

He found the surface, got his head above it and cried, “Help me! Please help me help me help me help—”

Through bleary, watery eyes, he saw the men looking over the edge of the boat, grinning at him.

“Go get ’em, boy!” one of them shouted with a laugh.

He went under again, quite unexpectedly, still kicking and flailing, mouth closed and eyes open. He saw it.

The shark.

It came out of the darkness aimed directly at him, its predatory, dead-black eyes staring, teeth showing in his half-open mouth, rows and rows of crooked razors.

Cole felt the impact and was jerked through the water.

His own blood clouded the water around him until the silent predator looked like a nightmarish ghost moving through the night.

Cole let out his breath and screamed under the water as the shark’s face came out of the darkness again, mouth open.

Closer and closer …

Painfreak

Gerard Houarner

“Painfreak” was first published in Into the Darkness #1, April 1994.

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Gerard Houarner works in a psychiatric institution by day and writes at night, mostly about the dark. Recent publications include “Tree of Shadows,” in the Crossroads Press electronic edition of the novel The Beast That Was Max, “Mourning With the Bones of the Dead,” Horror Library 4, “The Flea Market ,” Eibonvale Press anthology Blind Swimmer, “Lightning Can’t Catch Me,” Darkness On The Edge: Dark Tales Inspired by the Songs of Bruce Springsteen, and “Dead Medicine Snake Woman,” Indian Country Noir. He also serves as fiction editor for Space and Time magazine.

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Painfreak started as a (slightly) warped view of an elite club scene and the not-so-elite desires such scenes serve to satisfy. The club has since appeared here and there in my work, sometimes as a kind of gateway to hell, other times a crossroads between worlds and desires. It’s not a place where good things happen.

Fear knotted Tony Lambert’s stomach as Lisa hopped out of the cab that had stopped in front of the closed Brooklyn warehouse half way down the block from his hiding place under the Belt Parkway. Once again, she was going to Painfreak.