Free Necro Files: Two Decades of Extreme Horror by Cheryl Mullenax (Ed)

next to the dog and cried silently. Pork and Vinnie went over to the Impala and opened the doors and stood so they could get a grip on the car to push. Vinnie reached in and moved the gear from park to neutral and he and Pork began to shove the car forward. It moved slowly at first, but as it made the slight incline that led down to the old bridge, it picked up speed. From inside the trunk, Farto hammered lightly at the lid as if he didn’t really mean it. The chain took up slack and Leonard felt it jerk and pop his neck. He began to slide along the ground like a snake.
    Vinnie and Pork jumped out of the way and watched the car make the bridge and go over the edge and disappear into the water with amazing quietness. Leonard, pulled by the weight of the car, rustled past them. When he hit the bridge, splinters tugged at his clothes so hard they ripped his pants and underwear down almost to his knees.
    The chain swung out once toward the edge of the bridge and the rotten railing, and Leonard tried to hook a leg around an upright board there, but that proved wasted. The weight of the car just pulled his knee out of joint and jerked the board out of place with a screech of nails and lumber.
    Leonard picked up speed and the chain rattled over the edge of the bridge, into the water and out of sight, pulling its connection after it like a pull toy. The last sight of Leonard was the soles of his bare feet, white as the bellies of fish.
    “It’s deep there,” Vinnie said. “I caught an old channel cat there once, remember? Big sucker. I bet it’s over fifty-feet deep down there.”
    They got in the truck and Vinnie cranked it.
    “I think we did them boys a favor,” Pork said. “Them running around with niggers and what they did to that dog and all. They weren’t worth a thing.”
    “I know it,” Vinnie said. “We should have filmed this, Pork, it would have been good. Where the car and that nigger lover went off in the water was choice.”
    “Nah, there wasn’t any women.”
    “Point,” Vinnie said, and he backed around and drove onto the trail that wound its way out of the bottoms.

Diary
Ronald Kelly
----
    “Diary” was first published in
Cemetery Dance
magazine #3 in 1990.
    ‡
    Ronald Kelly is the author of such Southern horror novels as
Hindsight, Pitfall, Something Out There, Father’s Little Helper, The Possession, Fear
, and
Blood Kin
. His audio collection,
Dark Dixie: Tales of Southern Horror
was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1992 for Best Spoken or Non-Musical Recording. His first short story collection,
Midnight Grinding & Other Twilight Terrors
, was published by Cemetery Dance Publications in 2009, and his latest novel,
Hell Hollow
, was released in 2010. His upcoming publications include
Undertaker’s Moon, After the Burn, Cumberland Furnace & Other Fear-Forged Fables
, and the
Essential Ronald Kelly Collection
.
    He lives in Brush Creek, Tennessee with his wife and three young’uns.
    † † †
    This was my first truly extreme horror story. Upon publication, Richard Chizmar of Cemetery Dance Magazine said “This tale is much darker and nastier than your typical Ronald Kelly story”, and he was right. I broke past some personal barriers, fiction-wise, with Diary and I haven’t let up since.
----
    August 21
    They want to know why I killed those people in Tennessee. They want to know why a no-account bum like Jerry Weller crossed paths with the All-American family and systematically tortured, raped, and slaughtered them, one by one. They seem very insistent for answers. But I give them none. I only counter their questions with questions of my own. Why did Satan drive me to commit such atrocities? Why did God allow such atrocities to take place?
    They think they have me pegged. They brand me a violent psychopath and spout their psychiatric crap, but they’re still missing the point. If they weren’t so damned stupid, they would be able to look into my eyes and see the squirming, maggot-infested