Night Show
Authors: Richard Laymon
Richard Laymon
ContentsCopyright © 1984 Richard Laymon
The right of Richard Laymon to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2012
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cover photograph © Konstanttin/Shutterstock
Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
eISBN : 978 0 7553 9158 5
HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP
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Richard Laymon wrote over thirty novels and seventy short stories. In May 2001,
The Travelling Vampire Show
won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Horror Novel, a prize for which Laymon had previously been shortlisted with
Flesh, Funland, A Good, Secret Place
(Best Anthology) and
A Writer’s Tale
(Best Non-fiction). Laymon’s works include the books of the Beast House Chronicles:
The Celler, The Beast House
and
The Midnight Tour
. Some of his recent novels have been
Night in the Lonesome October, No Sanctuary
and
Amara
.
A native of Chicago, Laymon attended Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, and too an MA in English Literature from Loyola University, Los Angeles. In 2000, he was elected President of the Horror Writers’ Association. He died in February 2001.
Laymon’s fiction is published in the United Kingdom by Headline, and in the United States by Leisure Books and Cemetery Dance Publications.
Praise for Richard Laymon:
‘This author knows how to sock it to the reader’
The Times
‘A brilliant writer’
Sunday Express
‘No one writes like Laymon and you’re going to have a good time with anything he writes’ Dean Koontz
‘In Laymon’s books, blood doesn’t so much as drip as explode, splatter and coagulate’
Independent
‘Stephen King without a conscience’ Dan Marlowe
‘Incapable of writing a disappointing book’
New York Review of Science Fiction
‘A gut-crunching writer’
Time Out
‘This is an author that does not pull his punches . . . A gripping, and at times genuinely shocking, read’
SFX Magazine
Also by Richard Laymon and published by Headline
The Beast House Trilogy:
The Cellar
The Beast House
The Midnight Tour
Beware!
Dark Mountain
The Woods are Dark
Out are the Lights
Night Show
Allhallow’s Eve
Flesh
Resurrection Dreams
Alarums
Blood Games
Endless Night
Midnight’s Lair*
Savage
In The Dark
Island
Quake
Body Rides
Bite
Fiends
After Midnight
Among the Missing
Come Out Tonight
The Travelling Vampire Show
Dreadful Tales
Night in the Lonesome October
No Sanctuary
Amara
The Lake
The Glory Bus
Funland
The Stake
*previously published under the pseudonym of Richard Kelly
A
CAR
slowed down, keeping pace with Linda. She didn’t look. She walked faster, hugging the books more tightly against her chest.
She wished, now, that she had accepted her father’s offer to pick her up. But she’d hoped to run into Hal Walker at the library. She had waited at a table near the entrance, trying to study, her heart racing each time the door opened. Betty came in. Janice and Bill came in. The nerd, Tony, came in and made a pest out of himself until she told him to get lost. But Hal never showed up.
‘Hey Linda, want a ride?’
Her head snapped toward the car. A dumpy old station wagon. Tony’s car. She might’ve known. She counted three vague figures in the front seat.
‘How about it?’ a boy called through the open window.
‘Bug off.’
‘Aw, come on.’
She picked up her pace, but the car stayed beside her.
‘Think you’re hot shit.’
She ignored the remark, and tried to place the voice. Not Tony. This had to be one of his jerk-off friends. Maybe Joel Howard, or Duncan Brady, or Arnold Watson. A bunch of scuzzy misfits.
‘Get out of here!’ she yelled.
‘Don’t think so,’ said the boy at the window.
‘Look guys, you’re gonna be in big trouble if you don’t cut it out.’
‘Cut what out?’
‘Her tongue?’ asked a different voice.
She reached the corner and stepped off the curb. The station wagon swung in front of her.
‘I’m warning you . . .’
Her voice stopped as the door flew open.
Two boys leaped out. In the streetlight, she glimpsed their twisted, flattened faces. She whirled around to run, but even as she sprang for the curb an arm hooked her waist. Her books tumbled. She was yanked backwards. She tried to yell. A hand clutched her mouth, mashing her lips into her teeth. She squirmed and kicked. A boy lunged against her legs, grabbed them and lifted.
She was carried to the car. The third boy swung open the tail door. The other two wrestled her inside, and the door thunked shut.
She was in darkness, one boy under her back, one on top of her legs. She tried to pry the arm loose from her belly. The hand on her mouth pinched her nostrils shut. She couldn’t breathe. The car lurched forward. She tugged at the smothering hand. The other arm eased its
clench
, and a fist hammered her belly. She felt as if a bomb had exploded, bursting her lungs and heart.
‘Lay still.’
She grabbed her chest, struggling to breathe. The boy’s hands, she realised, had moved down to her hips. He was holding her firmly, but no longer crushing her.
‘You okay?’ asked the boy on her legs.
She couldn’t answer.
‘You weren’t supposed to hurt her, asshole.’
‘She was fighting me,’ said the one beneath her. She recognised his whiny voice – Arnold Watson – and decided she might be better off keeping the knowledge to herself. At least until she got away.
Arnold held her steady as the car took a corner fast.
She found that she could breathe again, though her lungs still ached. ‘Let me go,’ she said. ‘Please.’
Arnold laughed, his belly shaking under her back.
‘What do you
want
?’
‘You,’ he said. ‘And we’ve got you, haven’t we? The one and only Linda Allison.’
‘Please, just let me go. I promise I’ll never speak a word. Honest.’
‘You had your chance.’
‘Huh?’
‘Should’ve been nice when you had the chance. Think you’re hot shit, always dumping on us.’
‘I don’t either. I never . . .’
‘We’ve got feelings, you know. The question is, do
you
?’
‘Of course I do. For godsake . . .!’
‘You’re gonna get it, now.’
‘What are you . . .?’ She couldn’t bring herself to finish, this time; she didn’t want to hear the answer.
‘We’ve got plans for you.’
‘No. Please. Just let me go. Please!’
‘Real interesting plans.’
‘Tell her,’ said the boy on her legs.
‘Hell no. Let her worry about it. Right?’
‘Right,’ said the driver. ‘She’ll think of all kinds of neat stuff.’ Though the voice was low and husky, apparently to disguise it, she knew it came from Tony. ‘What do you think we’ll do to you, huh, bitch?’
‘Please. Just let me go. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.’
‘Too late for sorry.’
‘Please.’
‘Who knows?’ Tony said. ‘Maybe you’ll get yourself raped, or tortured. Maybe your pretty face is gonna get all fucked up with battery acid or a knife. How would you like that?’