Flash forward twenty years. I’m now an aspiring writer in the horror genre, thanks to the books I read in my teen years. I attended KeeneCon 2000, looking forward to making new friends and meeting writers whose work I admired. I was especially anticipating meeting Richard Laymon, because I had recently read several of his books, including The Cellar. That book had been forbidden by my dad when I was young. Since Dad didn’t care if I drank beer with my friends and was permissive in most other ways, I knew The Cellar had to be awesome. It was, of course, and I couldn’t wait to meet the obviously twisted man who wrote it.
I also brought my daughter Sarah to the gathering. She was eleven at the time, and had a story published by Brian Keene in Jobs in Hell. Those of us who attended KeeneCon became friends over the course of that weekend.
But Sarah and Richard took a special shine to each other. She thought it was so cool to hang out and talk to a writer whose books were on her mom’s sacred horror bookshelf. Richard took the time to encourage Sarah in her writing and offered her tips and advice.
A few weeks later, Sarah received a package from the Laymon family. Richard had enclosed a letter urging Sarah to keep up with her writing, plus a couple of books he had written for younger readers.
When I looked at the books, I was amazed and delighted to find Your Secret Admirer among them. However, he had written it using the pseudonym Carl Laymon. I wasn’t familiar with the Laymon name when I was fifteen, and didn’t make the connection until I was “old enough” to read Richard’s adult stuff.
I’m so glad I found out Richard wrote books I can introduce to my other daughters when they’re a little older. While I’m not as uptight as my mother when it comes to reading material, I do realize Richard’s books are for an older audience. And he himself told me not to let Sarah read Among the Missing until she’s at least thirty.
But when my daughters are old enough, I will happily share my treasured Laymon books, and hope they’re as captivated by Richard’s words as I continue to be.
Tom Piccirilli
HE NOISE TORE me out of bed. The lady next door’s cats had gotten up into the pomegranate trees again and were wailing their scrawny asses off. They did it a couple of times a day, but by now I’d grown used to their screeching. It reminded me of police and ambulance sirens in Brooklyn and even made me a little homesick.
Monty’s place had two main floors, an attic and a mother-in-law apartment around the rear. The landlord and his wife lived in the house proper, but they were always on the run in Mexico from drug dealers they’d burned in East L.A. Monty Stobbs stayed in the attic, and I lived out back directly below his window. He wouldn’t waste time walking down all the stairways and would just call me on my phone instead.
I’d left New York after having a couple of shows presented off-off Broadway, written under a pseudonym. They were both well-received by critics but didn’t draw enough of an audience to stay afloat for long. Monty Stobbs had been hustling the same backers as the director, and he’d invited me to come stay with him in Hollywood to write him a screenplay. He’d made a few no-budget horror flicks in his time: Yokohama Zombie Mamas on Hondas and Cutie Critters from Beyond the Edge of Naked Space.
It was a chance to get out. I wasn’t naive enough to believe it might amount to anything, but for the first time in my life I let myself fall into the starry-eyed Hollywood trap. My wife had left the year before and my day job had gone skidding into the toilet. She’d taken the kid, the dog, and the goldfish, but she’d left me with a case of crabs. The fuckers were so big I could identify them well enough to give them names, and after the cream started to work and they died off, I fell into sobbing fits.
So there wasn’t much holding me in New York.
My phone rang and I picked it up. “What?”
“Listen, I need a little help,” Monty said. “I was scouting locations for the sequel to Cutie Critter. Needed a primeval setting for the crash-landed Love UFO. My car died and I’m stuck out here in the middle of the fucking desert.”
“Monty, all I know is what I’ve seen in the movies. Is this desert like the Sahara, with Bedouins and camels? Are you going to be forced to drink wiper fluid to stay alive?”
“You prick. I’ll give you directions.”
“I don’t have a car.”
“Take the landlord’s. He’s got a ’69 Mustang under a tarp in the garage. It’s not cherry but it’ll work and the keys should be under the floor mat.”
“Can’t you call a cab?”
“A cab?” I could hear his blood pressure climbing. “You’re 3,500 miles from Brooklyn now. Cabs don’t come pick you up in the desert. Cops don’t come. Triple A doesn’t come.”
“How long should it take?”
“A couple of hours.”
“You’ll be all right for that long?”
“Yeah, just try not to get lost. Bring your cell phone.”
“I don’t have a cell phone.”
“How long you been in Hollywood now?”
“Four days.”
“And you still don’t have a cell phone? The hell is wrong with you?” He gave me a set of vague directions that led me out of Los Angeles and towards an even greater unknown. I took the 10 freeway past the sprawl of L.A. and all the chain restaurants and tire stores and strip malls. I hit the 15 North, and the buildings started to thin out as I reached the top of the Cajon Pass. The first billboards for Vegas put in an appearance around then. After I hit Barstow there was pretty much only rest stops and gas stations, then just plain nothing. I was surprised at how quickly the city had fallen away and I was suddenly into raw, rugged, burning territory. You had to be fuckin’ crazy to live in a place like this.
Empty desert, cacti, and endless stretches of highway. I drove for another hour and finally found what I figured must be the general area.
Monty’s 1995 Mazda MX-5 Miata Roadster sat at the side of the road. A few years ago it had been flashy, like Monty himself, but now there was wear and rust and a widespread fade to the car. I got out and checked it over. The doors were unlocked but the keys weren’t in the ignition. Monty was nowhere around. I popped the hood and spotted the problem immediately. The fuel pump was shot.
Either he’d gotten lucky and found himself a ride or he’d gotten tired of waiting and had tried to hoof it.
There was nothing behind me on the road so I decided to drive on a little further. In fifteen minutes I spotted a dark shimmer in the distance. Soon I could discern the outline of a small desert town.
The place looked like every ghost town I’d ever seen on Gunsmoke and The Rifleman reruns. The dust roared around me and sagebrush kicked over and tumbled in the fierce wind.
A heavily weathered wooden sign hanging from twin chains proclaimed MASONVILLE.
Some of the buildings were so decayed that they shuddered and leaned like drunks. Porches had caved in and most of the windowpanes were empty, siding boards and shingles scattered across the tiny streets. Shards of glass reflected sunlight from the dirt.
I got out of the Mustang and wandered around for a bit. I shouted Monty’s name and yelled hello a dozen times and expected vultures to be circling overhead. I was about to turn back when I noticed a half-filled trough out in front of a former feed store. I put my hand in the water—it was warm but not hot the way I would’ve expected it to be. Somebody had to have filled it recently. This couldn’t be rainwater even if it was true that immense storms sometimes passed over the desert drenching everything in brief deluges.