They meet up for one week every year: Helen, Cora, Vivian, Finley and Abilene - five former co-eds in search of thrills and adventure. Just like they enjoyed together at college. This time it's Helen's choice. Helen, the fat girl with a taste for horror, the brainy one with a fear of being caught alone in the shower by an unknown assailant with a sharp knife and a thirst for blood…For this year's reunion, Helen has picked The Totem Pole Lodge, a deserted hotel in the backwoods with a sinister past. She's looking forward to the moment when she'll tell the others the gory details. But that's before night falls and the girls find the Lodge is not as deserted as they thought. And before Helen goes into the shower. Alone.***From Publishers WeeklyIn the early 1990s, as the horror market bottomed in the U.S., several established American authors, including Laymon (To Wake the Dead, etc.), were unable to find domestic publishers for their work. Laymon continued to hit bestseller lists overseas during this period, though, and this is one of the novels he wrote during that time. Like so much of his mid-career work, it's a middling effort, and it's also a mixed bag-nearly literally, as it offers a present-day scenario interspersed with flashbacks that are, in effect, standalone short stories. In the present, five young alumni of Belmore University are on their annual get-together; this year, the choice of what to do has fallen to Helen, a horror buff, who arranges for the group to camp out at a deserted backwoods lodge where guests were slaughtered by locals several years back. In time, the group encounter various townsfolk, including a witch, whom they must fight for their lives, resulting in a characteristic Laymon bloodbath. The action here is fast but predictable. Of greater interest are the flashbacks, showing first how the gang got together, then detailing their various exploits-taking revenge on some frat guys by setting fire to their house, on a cruel dean by trashing her office, on a nasty homeowner on Halloween by destroying his living room; seducing a young male surfer during a foggy nighttime trip along the California coast, etc. It's in these scenes that Laymon displays some, but not much, of the surreal nightmarish sensibility that hallmarked his great later work (The Traveling Vampire Show, etc.). Overall, then, this is brisk but routine entertainment from the controversial author, who died in 2001.
Richard Laymon
Blood Games
***
CHAPTER ONE
‘Where are we going?’ Finley asked. ‘To grandmother’s house?’
Helen, behind the steering wheel of the rented Wagoneer, grinned over her shoulder and sang, ‘Over the river and through the woods…’
‘Hoping we’ll run into the Big Bad Wolf?’ Abilene said.
‘Finley’d like that,’ Cora said from the front seat.
‘Gimme a break. I’ve sworn off guys.’
‘Since when?’ Abilene asked.
‘Since last summer and surfin’ Sam, or whatever his name was.’
‘You don’t even remember his name?’ Helen asked.
‘He was just another hunk to the Fin-man,’ Abilene said.
Finley jammed an elbow into her side. ‘Rick. His name was Rick. But I’ve reformed. I promise to be a good girl.’
‘I’ll believe that when I see it,’ Cora said.
‘Where we’re going,’ Helen explained, ‘I don’t imagine we’ll be running into any fellas.’
‘I sure hope this isn’t a camping trip,’ Vivian said.
‘What’ve you got against fresh air?’ Cora asked.
‘Fresh air’s fine. But I can get it without flying three thousand miles.’
‘You sure don’t get it living in L.A. ’
‘Viv’s just afraid she’ll get her clothes dirty,’ Abilene said.
Vivian leaned forward to see past Finley, who was sitting between them in the back seat, and told Abilene, ‘If I wanted to rough it in the great outdoors, I would’ve joined the Girl Scouts.’ Wrinkling her nose, she settled back and muttered, ‘This sure has all the earmarks of a camping trip.’
‘You just never know,’ Helen said, sounding pleased with herself.
‘It should’ve tipped you off,’ Abilene said, ‘when she told us to bring sleeping bags and grubbies.’
‘That could mean anything.’
‘It meant we weren’t going to a Marriott.’
In spite of that, Abilene doubted that they were being taken on a camping trip. A week in the wilds might’ve been Cora’s idea of fun, but this trip was Helen’s choice and Helen was neither athletic nor a fan of Mother Nature. She was more inclined toward sedentary, dark pursuits: reading scary novels and true crime books; watching movies that usually featured mad killers using knives, axes and chainsaws to slaughter teenagers. If her choice of adventures involved camping, it was likely to be done in a graveyard. ‘I know where we’re going,’ she said. ‘To the Pet Semetary.’
Helen laughed. ‘Close, but no prize.’
‘Close?' Vivian muttered. ‘Oh, terrific.’
‘Wherever I’m taking you, we’ll be coming up on it pretty soon.’
‘How soon?’ Finley asked.
‘According to the odometer, it should be about three more miles.’
‘Pull over and let me out, okay? I’ll get our arrival for posterity.’
‘Oh, great,’ Abilene said. ‘The epic. Thank God we didn’t have to suffer through that last night.’
‘Gimme a break. You love it.’
‘I hate some of it.’
‘I’d like to see it again,’ Helen said. ‘Maybe the night before we fly out.’
‘My friend.’ Finley leaned forward and patted her on the shoulder. ‘Now, let me out.’
Helen stopped the car without pulling over. There was no need to leave the road, since it had been devoid of traffic for the entire half hour they’d been on it. While Vivian opened her door and climbed out, Finley twisted around and reached over the seat back. She grabbed her video camcorder, scooted across the seat and got out. Vivian climbed in.
Finley went to the front of the car, stepped from its bumper onto the hood, and walked toward the windshield. The thin metal sank under each footstep and popped up when her weight was gone, making quiet bongey sounds.
‘Christ,’ Cora muttered.
‘Boys will be boys,’ Helen said.
Abilene realized that Finley, today more than usual, looked a lot more like a kid than like a twenty-five-year-old woman. She was small and slender. Her brown hair was cut very short. Her outfit masked what she had of a figure and would’ve been just the thing for a young fellow embarking on a safari; the baggy tan shirt hung loose nearly to the cuffs of her baggy tan shorts, and sported not only shoulder epaulettes but a multitude of deep pockets, flaps and brass buttons.
Of course, most boys probably wouldn’t be caught dead wearing hot pink knee socks.
The knee socks and white Reeboks were all that Abilene could see of Finley now that the girl was perched on the roof of the car, calves pressed against the windshield.
‘Let’s roll, gang!’ she called from above.
‘You oughta really step on it,’ Cora whispered.
‘She might fall and break her neck,’ Helen said.
‘Even worse,’ Vivian said, ‘she might break her camera. Then there’d really be hell to pay.’
Helen started the car forward. Slowly.
‘Turn the wipers on and give her a squirt,’ Abilene suggested.
‘That’d be cruel,’ Vivian said.
Cora, looking over her shoulder, said, ‘Abby, you’re a genius.’
‘Just mean.’
