Necro Files: Two Decades of Extreme Horror

Without thinking, he took a long swallow from the cup, then quickly put it down when he realized what he was doing. He wiped froth from his lips and pushed the cup away. When he looked around, he noticed an older couple standing against the wall, watching him. They were both stout, dressed in formal evening wear, and glittering with jewelry. The woman smiled and nodded to him, a hungry glint in her eye.

Tony remembered seeing their kind the last time. They were not tourists or players, Guy had said when Tony asked about the ones who looked so completely out of place in the club. They were the ones who paid the bills, made the arrangements, worked the bureaucratic magic that enabled Painfreak to appear and disappear without a trace. They were the part of the urban mind that sensed the need for Painfreak in the fabric of the city’s life. They did more than just make arrangements and watch; they filled their own emptiness when others danced on and over the edge. They fed, and when there was nothing more to feed on, they arranged for Painfreak to move on.

More and more, Tony remembered why he had abandoned the scene. He shuddered and looked away.

And found Lisa.

He saw brown hair cut short, a head bobbing up and down in a familiar rhythm, a quick profile that showed the long line of the forehead and nose. Lisa, slicing through the crowd, heading towards a door on the other side of the club floor.

Tony was up and on his feet, shouting her name. The music drowned his voice. Lisa vanished for a moment and he pushed his way through the dancers, frantically searching for her. He caught a glimpse of the older couple standing against the wall; they were laughing and talking to another elderly pair while pointing in his direction.

Someone who might have been Lisa went through the door. Tony staggered as a teenaged girl slammed her body into his back. Her raw-edged howl bored through his mind before hands dragged her back into the dancing pack, lifted her into the air, and carried her to the center of the floor. Tony cast a final quick glance for Lisa, then went through the door.

He passed through a series of sound baffles made of strips of plastic and material hanging from ceiling pipes. He emerged into a darkened cavern lit by hazy fires. Tony froze, looked up, expecting to see stars through the thin smoke. Street grating set into the vaulted ceiling reassured him he had not been transported to some alien world. The place must have been a municipal storage depot at one time, like the ones inside bridge supports and off subway tunnels. Abandoned, the cavern had been transformed into an incubator for Painfreak’s more serious games.

Tony coughed from the smoke tainted air, and he massaged a tearing eye. The music was absent; in its place, human voices cried out, wailed, shouted, screamed, singly and in small groups. Their rhythms were random, the volume nowhere near as high as in the club’s dancing area. Other noises mingled with the voices; metal grinding on metal, chains rattling, water splashing, the hiss of escaping gases, the soft thump of crashing bodies, wood splintering. Or bone. The sounds chilled him, though the cavern was hot and stuffy.

A few people ran past him, their naked feet slapping on the concrete floor. They faded quickly into the gloom, but he had seen enough to know none of them had been Lisa. Tony began trotting to the nearest fire.

He had almost reached the flames when he became aware of someone running alongside of him. Startled, he turned, anticipating seeing Lisa.

The tall, thin man was naked, and his long, white hair trailed behind him as he kept pace with Tony. His face was bony, beardless, and his eyes were black in the dim, flickering light. He smiled, acknowledging his discovery. “I never had the chance to show you the back rooms,” the man said, and his smile broadened. “You and Lisa hit it off so fast the first time you came here.”

It wasn’t Guy. Guy was dead. The toothy smile was his, as was the jutting jaw and the body that had been flesh draped over bones even before AIDS claimed it. The man’s voice sounded like Guy’s, sarcastic and dry, on the edge of a caustic observation. But it couldn’t be Guy. The cavern spun once around Tony, and he nearly fell.

Tony stopped beyond the fire’s inner circle of light, and the man coasted to a stop a few steps later. They faced each other, the man putting his hands on his hips. Through his body, Tony could see the flames jump as if through a translucent curtain.

“See anything you like, sailor boy?” The man wiggled his hips.

“Who the fuck are you?” Not believing, never, it wasn’t possible.