In Laymon's Terms

You and I do though, don’t we? Richard Laymon sure as hell did, and for that we can all be grateful.

William D. Carl

WASN’T LUCKY ENOUGH to ever meet Richard Laymon, as he died before I started scribbling words on paper and attending conventions. I discovered his writing by chance when I purchased a used copy of In the Dark at a local store. It wasn’t long before I was racing to my local chain and eBay and buying all the rest. I was hooked. This occurred at the same time I took up writing short stories, tired of having all these ideas bouncing around in my head, pleading to be set free. One of Laymon’s books was on my bedside table the whole first six months, and I know he was influencing me. From beyond, as it were. With his story structure, his fast pacing, and, especially, with his female protagonists (women who went through hell but fought it the whole way, kicking ass like it was nobody’s business), he guided my hand, helping another new writer through those difficult early times.

William D. Carl

IG.”

The word was like a bullet to her head. It was strange how a single word could affect her, make her break into a cold sweat in the middle of a July heat wave. Still, here she was, shovel in hand, and he’d just told her to “Dig.”

If only her car hadn’t broken down. If only she hadn’t thumbed a ride with this particular man, a character the newspapers had labeled “The Digger.” If only she’d not been looking out the window when she should have been watching him, when he’d whacked her over the head with something.

There were a hell of a lot of “if only”s.

She’d read about The Digger in all the newspapers. Who hadn’t heard about him since the first body had turned up in Yosemite nearly a year ago? The M.O. was always the same. Young women who had been reported as missing were discovered buried in five-foot graves trapped within cardboard refrigerator boxes. Upon closer examination, the coroners had discovered huge, broken blisters on their hands, and the police had come to the conclusion that these women had been forced to dig their own graves, then buried alive. They had been left to suffocate in cardboard boxes. In all, twelve bodies had been discovered by various park rangers and tourists in the past year, all of them young, beautiful women. Women who had once had lives filled with promise. Women who had gasped their final breaths, lungs full of dirt and dust, their broken hands pounding against the earthen walls that surrounded them. No clues had been found as to the identity of the “The Digger,” the man who now held a shotgun on Maura Kennedy. If they ever got to ask her, though, she could supply plenty of details.

He had brown hair, softened by prolonged exposure to sunlight, that swept down over his eyes in a rakish fashion. The nose on his face seemed large, Roman, but it didn’t dominate his other features. His eyes were a deep blue, as though someone had picked a piece of sky and hidden it behind them. In fact, his eyes were what had first attracted Maura to him, what had given her the courage to accept a ride from a stranger. With eyes like that, he couldn’t be dangerous. Could he?

“I said to dig, goddamnit,” he shouted in his rasping voice. “If I have to tell you again, I’m just going to shoot.”

She was still grasping the handle of the shovel when she looked him in the eye. “Well, then go ahead and shoot me. I know who you are, and it’ll be easier if you just kill me now.”

“Ah,” he grinned. “My fame precedes me. Still, wouldn’t you like the chance to survive? What if I change my mind? What if you manage to scratch your way out of the box? What if someone comes along in time to discover you? If I just shoot you now, you’ll never know, will you? You willing to take a chance like that?”

Begrudgingly, she knew he was right. There was always a possibility of escape, a chance that he might let his guard down for long enough to get away. Somehow, she knew that this was how he got his rocks off, the gamble that one of his victims would manage to escape. He probably sat in the bed of that truck on a lawn chair and just waited, watching the newly-dug grave, hoping one of those women would actually manage to get out.

And she didn’t want to die. As long as there was some fighting chance, no matter how absurd the odds, she was going to fight for her life. Maura had always been a fighter. Orphaned at a young age, she had been passed from foster family to foster family, each becoming successively worse in its abuse of her. Her body was a roadmap of scars, belying her past injuries at the hands of her so-called families. Still. She had maintained good grades in school, and she soon found herself in college on a full scholarship, where she had met the man of her dreams. Soon after college, she was a woman in a top position at her law firm, respected by her peers and desperately loved by her adoring husband.