Back in the days when I bought new non-classical music on a regular basis — ah, youth — my theory was that if at least three songs were keepers on an album containing a dozen attempts, that was a good album.
Now I feel much the same way about horror. In movies, I follow Howard Hawks’ definition of a successful picture: three good scenes and no bad ones. In a short story collection, I want a third of the pieces to be memorable. In a novel, I’ll settle for consistent suspense, a few prickly moments, and at least one scene that’s a real ball-buster — which makes Richard Laymon’s FLESH one of the good ones.
We’re never quite sure just what the monster is. It’s described by the cops and coroners (who know it exists by the damage it does to human bodies) as snake-like. It must have teeth, because it chews its way through its hosts’ bodies with the speed of a copperhead crossing the creek, and it gets into the brain and causes people to do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do. Bad things. Really bad things.
As the book opens, a young woman named Celia is riding her bike along a country road when a van aims at her and speeds up. The driver fully intends to run her off the road — why, we don’t know. Celia goes flying through the air, but the truck smashes into a bridge abutment, and the driver is killed. A trail of blood is left behind as someone or something escapes out the back of the van.
Next, a couple is renovating an empty roadside restaurant. Ron and Peggy Smeltzer dream the American dream of reinventing their lives as successful eatery entrepreneurs. Jake Corey, the cop who was called to the scene of the van crash and has been trying to follow the blood trail, wanders up to the restaurant and warns the couple of a possible attempted murderer in the vicinity. The news spooks Ron, who thinks going home until the next day would be advisable. Jake agrees, but Peggy is annoyed.
Later that evening, the Smeltzers return to the restaurant to get some more work done, and this is where Laymon piles on the creeps, which he could do so well at his prime. His short, choppy paragraphs flash before us, illuminating horror like a strobe light in hell.
Jake, who has been trying to locate whatever it was that got away from the wreck, has returned to the restaurant. As he approaches the front door, he hears a gunshot:
He dove through the doors, tumbled into the kitchen, came up in a squat and took aim.
He didn’t fire.
The woman in the red shorts was sprawled on the floor, faceup. Faceup? She didn’t have a face. A chin, maybe.
Ron was hunched over her, his face to her belly.
No one else in the kitchen.
The cellar door stood open.
“Ron? Ron, which way did he go?”
Ron lifted his head. A bleeding patch of his wife’s flesh came with it, clamped in his teeth, stretching and tearing off. He sat up straight. He stared back at Jake. His eyes were calm. He calmly chewed. Then he reached back for the shotgun.
Please don’t think I’m giving away the book’s climax. I’m quoting from page 35.
The Smeltzers are not central characters. They’re just used to introduce the concept that this thing, whatever it is, gets into you and then controls you in order to feed itself. And it’s very hungry. The fact that most of this feeding action takes place in a restaurant is just Laymon having a little sick fun.
The rest of the novel introduces us to a small cast of characters, any one of whom could become host or meal. None of these characters are particularly deep, but we get to know them well enough to care what happens to them, which is all we expect from this kind of pop horror.
This Leisure Books edition of FLESH republishes a novel originally printed in the late 1980s, a time when Laymon was at his peak. The book was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers of America as the best novel of the year.
When he was at the top of his game, Laymon was one of the best of the generation of horror writers to come along after Stephen King’s breakthrough success. Flesh may be weak, but FLESH is as strong as they come. —Doug Bentin
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• AFTER MIDNIGHT by Richard Laymon
• THE BEAST HOUSE by Richard Laymon
• BEWARE by Richard Laymon
• THE CELLAR by Richard Laymon
• COME OUT TONIGHT by Richard Laymon
• CUTS by Richard Laymon
• ISLAND by Richard Laymon
• THE LAKE by Richard Laymon
• SAVAGE by Richard Laymon
• TRIAGE by Jack Ketchum, Richard Laymon and Edward Lee
Related posts:
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I’ve seen this on a couple of bookstore shelves and ponder picking it up. I think this review just tipped me over the edge.