ONCE UPON A HALLOWEEN

Laymon’s boundlessly vulgar novels (Quake, 1995; Come Out Tonight, 1999, etc.) enjoy rape, murder, skinning people alive, making you sick to your stomach for reading such dreck, and always slide in slime toward a big sweet hell of orgasm and pain. On Halloween night, Shannon and Laura, two girls who live in the Witherspoon house at the dead end of a dark street near the graveyard, allow 16-year-old Hunter Gordon into their house when he cries in fear that a whole bunch of people from the graveyard, all clumped together and wearing dark robes, are after him. But this is not a good idea, letting Hunter in—not in a Laymon novel. Soon we are into the usual Laymon slashings and flashing blades and beheadings and find ourselves drenched with a faceful of blood spouting from a headless woman’s neck as smirking girls with sabers ready themselves to finish us off, and other enjoyable treats from the Laymon butcher shop.

The Master of Yuck wades through gore to give us a Halloween to remember.