In Laymon's Terms

He imagined Hank rising from the dead like Jason Voorhees.

Crazy.

Thing was, Will could just see it.

It would be a defiance of reality every bit as absurd as the notion that he’d managed to successfully vanquish the monster that was Hank.

So he kept stabbing him.

After a while, he rolled the big body over and stared at the dead man’s unseeing eyes.

A chilling sight.

But then Will experienced another flash of inspiration.

He grinned. And he started cutting again.

Daylight.

The house and immediate vicinity was crawling with cops and evidence techs. The authorities had been summoned by the concerned night manager of a Pizza Zone restaurant. One of their delivery boys had gone out on a run last night and never returned.

Detective Mitch Roth suspected no one would ever see the pizza boy again. He was officially missing, but he had a feeling his body would be discovered in a ditch or ravine sometime in the coming hours.

He leaned against the archway leading into the blood-splattered living room.

He was trying to stay out of the way of the evidence techs—Lord knew they had their hands full with this one.

He heard footsteps on the hardwood floor behind him.

Detective Cooper moved into his field of vision. “Looks like some shit out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”

Roth nodded. “Yeah, what they did to the one guy, the big one in the leather pants...you just don’t want to believe people capable of sick shit like that are out there.”

Cooper grunted. “You know they are, Mitch. The world’s fulla scum.”

One of the evidence techs gagged behind his mask.

Another tech leaned over his shoulder, grimaced at what he saw, and looked at the detectives. “You guys should see this.”

Roth and Cooper exchanged wary glances.

Both men started moving toward the techs.

The first tech said, “Careful where you step. Stay off the marked areas.” Roth said, “So what is it?”

They were looking at a pizza box.

The lid was emblazoned with the familiar red and green Pizza Zone logo. Someone had scrawled PEEK-A-BOO across it in big letters with a marker.

A tech lifted the lid.

Cooper shuddered.

Roth could barely breathe. “Oh...Jesus...”

The remains of a barely-eaten pizza were at the bottom of the box. Stretched from crust to crust was something that resembled a mask.

Except it wasn’t.

Cooper said, “It’s the big guy’s face.”

There was more.

Two bloody orbs that had to be eyeballs had rolled into the corners of the box.

Roth couldn’t suppress what happened next. He upchucked all over the box and coffee table, tainting a shitload of evidence and soiling his new suit. He tendered his resignation later that afternoon.

Will Hopkins’ body wasn’t discovered in a ditch or ravine.

He was very much alive—more alive than ever, in fact.

He rode off into the night with “Starlene” (whose real name turned out to be Nicole), Crystal, J-Dog, and a woman in a nightgown they jokingly renamed Patty.

As in Patty Hearst.

The gang had many adventures together in the coming years.

Will avoided the dreaded fate of a life in mundane suburbia.

And they all lived happily ever after.

The same could not be said for some of the people they encountered on the endless highways and byways of the land of the free.

Kimberley Hill

HO KNEW THAT Richard Laymon would become an intricate part of my life? The first time I saw one of his books was in junior high school. It was a worn and battered copy of The Cellar and I didn’t own it. After reading the back, I coveted that book until I could obtain my own. I don’t remember much after that since I never did get a chance to get my own copy. Years later I met my future husband, Richard. Imagine my delight when I found out that he owned the book and had, in fact, done a book report on it in high school. Albeit, a much edited book report!

Both of us ended up being huge Richard Laymon fans. We sought out used bookstores and anywhere else we could find to complete our ever-growing collection of Laymon titles. Then, the magic of the Internet entered our lives. Richard Laymon was one of the first names I looked up on the information highway and the Richard Laymon Kills site was a jewel of a find. Through the sites, the Laymon e-mail list, eBay, and some other bookstores, we were able to get our beloved collection to the point it is today.

I’ve met some wonderful people that are also Laymon fans and will now be friends of mine for life. On top of that, I’ve spoken to Mr. Laymon himself via e-mail. It was so electrifying to be actually corresponding with such a talented and undeniably nice person. At first, I couldn’t believe that he would want to write me back, but over time (and a short time at that) I found out what a truly amazing person he was.