Krishna
We have reviewed this author’s book, Blood Games, before. This one is a novel but feels like a collection of short stories because of the small pieces of parallel threads that run all through the book. But then you realize that even though the first story is long, there is indeed a collection of short stories at the end.
You may remember that we didn’t like that book, the distaste extends to this one too. To see why, read on.
The first story is the titular one, called Out Are The Lights. Ray and Tina take up on Todd’s offer to stay over at a dilapidated house Todd had bought before. The house looks creepy and even has bars on the windows. As they go exploring (in the prolog) a man jumped out of a previously locked room, baring his fangs! (yes there is sex in the first two pages as well, what did you expect from a Richard Laymon story? Lots of young people, sex and fright).
Multiple threads seem to overlap in this story but for the sake of this review, I will string them back into coherent threads.
Connie and Dal have been together for six months and when Dal wants to go for a boy’s night out, Connie agrees, even though she is lonely. But Dal is going to meet a girl who took his breath away that very day in his shop. Elizabeth. He goes to the address she gave him since she said ‘she wanted him’. Laymon’s sex and fright with absolutely no complexity at all. (‘Fright? What fright?’ you ask. Fright because the house seems to be odd and weird, like an old castle)
The twist? When he has done the act, Elizabeth brings forward a twisted old man in a wheelchair who was watching and introduces him to Dal as ‘her husband’. She is taking her revenge for the torture she endured when he was well.
Pete and Brit go for a horror show. Multiple horror films and then a “special treat” promised by the emcee. OK, the story is again a tiresome clone of the same book elsewhere. Mary and her boyfriend going to a scary castle to spend the night. She takes clothes off and they have sex. (Sounds familiar? You need to go up only a few paragraphs to find it). Then Schrek – yup a monster – comes out of a coffin and beheads a rat to drink its blood. Go figure). He kills the man, predictably, and drinks Mary’s blood. The end. (Really? Yes.) But then you Pete and Brit discuss how much like Brit’s friend Tina the actress is. So we are supposed to go ‘Oooh! It is the same couple we met earlier’. But all I can think is ‘How did it get into a movie?’. Completely insane story.
Confusingly, Brit calls Tina and gets a new ‘roommate’ called Frey who is looking for other people as roommates! Rejects everyone. Wait, what? How does she know that Tina is dead?
Brit is annoyed that after three dates, Pete had not got intimate with her. What a slowpoke! She realizes that Frey talked exactly in Tina’s voice. She decides to call her one more time before going to the police and Frey picks up the phone and says Tina is home. Relieved, Brit informs Frey that she is coming over to talk to Tina. Frey open the door, gives Brit a drink (which she accepts without qualms despite all her “earlier” misgivings) and when Brit drinks it, is knocked unconscious.
Connie and Pete meet when their paths cross and Connie is saved by Pete from being run over. She is worried about Dal and why she feels he is ‘slipping away’ at that time. We learn that Connie is deaf and Pete is very interested in her.
Dal is told by Connie that she now likes Pete. This is when Elizabeth has induced Dal to pretend to love Connie and marry her so that they can carry on.
Meanwhile, a drab and ugly Chelsea forces Frey to take her in and Frey calls a friend to – Todd – convince him that he can use Chelsea, though not pretty, to use as the model for the next movie. (So you smell the plot and go ‘who cares anymore?’)
Todd has found another girl to kill in front of camera and Frey gets to watch the gruesome murder.
OK, then Freya takes Chelsea and has her served soup with human meat in it and has Schreck (don’t ask) the vicious murderer kill her. And Dal hires an actress to act as Pete’s devastated wife to get Connie to break up with Pete and – yes – come back to him. What a stupid plot. Gets more and more cliche by every page.
Totally weird. Picture this. Write a sex scene. Then a gruesome violence. Then sex. Then violence. Don’t worry about the plot. As long as there are slightly ditzy and nubile young girls willing to strip and die on demand in great supply, you can write any story of this author.
Should I go on? Dal tries to get back Connie by insinuating that Pete is married. All the while he has sex with Liz and suddenly they hit Pete with Liz’s Mercedes and then sex and then they kill Liz’s husband (‘Because it is time’. Yeah? Suddenly? )
It goes on in that vein. Peter is injured but survives. Dal comes to ‘sympathize’ with Connie who had already seen him driving the Mercedes but he swears that he never was part of the attack. But Connie follows him and finds about the apartment where Liz stays and even watches the bed full of blood (where her husband was murdered but presumably just the body disposed of).
OK, now Freya finds a very Chelsea like girl come in and claim she is Chelsea’s twin sister. Freya claims Chelsea has gone away. When the twin (forgot her name) wants to go away, she gives away her own car keys but calls Todd. Todd advises her to wait until she comes back and arrange for a meeting with “Chelsea” in the old house. But the twin gets stopped by a police officer and they both return to the apartment. The moment Freya sees them both, she thinks her game is up, rushes out, falls, hits her head and dies. (‘Wait, what?’ you say. Exactly.)
Finally Connie goes to the movie and realizes that the girl who is being burnt is not saying what the recorded dialog is. She is mouthing her name and that she has been kidnapped. Connie realizes this because she can read lips. She goes to the projection room to warn the operator but is kidnapped – it is actually Schreck (What?) and Todd.
They take her to a secluded spot with a plan to kill her but things go awry.
Weird from the beginning to the end. Did you want more? Yes, there is more. There are some short stories to fill the “void”. The next one is called Mess Hall. Jean goes alone, depressed, and falls into the clutches of the serial killer Reaper. (Did you see how Laymon always names his people something simple? Connie, Rhea, Liz… Interesting. Even men are Peter and Dal.
Anyway, she totally has given up on her chances of survival when a bizarre form of help arrives. One that, after dealing with the Reaper, turns against Jean and she manages to escape. (The End.)
Next, called Dinker’s Pond, is the story of a trio : George, who lusts after Lucy but she is with his close friend Jim, Totally uninterested in George. George and Jim have been prospecting for gold for a long time together. Lucy seems to loathe George. He tries to scare her when he catches her having a bath and what happens next is not even worth relating (A character called Clem Dinker, a criminal who was beheaded by mistake while hanging him figures in it).
The next one is called Madman Stan. Two kids, Rich and Billy, have their regular babysitter unavailable and so their parents arrange for a new one. She is fat and appears mean. She asks them to go to bed earlier than other times and when they protest, threatens them with Madman Stan who takes kids into the forest and no one knows what happens after except a lot of people have heard horrible screams from the middle of the woods after each kidnapping. She says that if they make any noise, she will unlock the front door. Billy cannot help but whisper and she comes up and says that she decided to unbolt the door because the kids flouted her rule. Then Billy goes creeping to find if she really locked the door and what happens at the end when the parents come back is the rest of the story. Not a great twist. Sorry.
Then comes Bad News. This has a supernatural twist. When Paul gets his morning paper, oddly in front of the neighbour Applegate, a gun freak. A weird creature half like rat comes out and with a terminator like focus, tries to come after him. It seems to be near indestructible. After asking his wife Joan to take the kid Timmy (again simplistic names) out he battles it. Finally he manages to destroy it in a gruesome way and when they go out, a big twist awaits them. A different kind of story from this man. Gore, yes, sex, not a lot. Joan realizes that she is going to the neighbour’s house with a very flimsy negligee, that hides nothing to a casual observer. You cannot have any Laymon story with no sex, that would be totally out of character, right?
The Tub is the last story. Howard is a peace loving wimp in his wife Joyce’s opinion. She is carrying on with the hunk Kenny. When Harold goes out to get an award for a novel, Joyce phones Ken to come over and says she’ll leave the front door unlocked. She is planning a very sexy welcome when he arrives. Ken comes and it ends horribly with Joyce trapped in the tub.
Weird as hell.
What does a Richard Laymon story feel like? Think of a children’s horror with no story but mindless gore. Now add so much sex that it is not fit for children to read. Now many adults also hate it because of the lightweight story. It falls between two stools, so to speak.
But this is a very famous author with a large following. What am I not seeing?
2/10
— Krishna