'The Cellar' – Richard Laymon (Headline)

Page Count: 254 pages

Sometimes, it takes a while to find the right book... I'd given Richard Laymon a go, a few years ago now, with 'Flesh' and 'One Rainy Night' and they weren't bad books but they didn't grab me either. I really wanted to enjoy Richard Laymon but it wasn't looking good at that point.

So I left it a little while and being honest, completely forgot about it until I read Brian Keene's 'Castaways', the other day, and found out a little about the story behind that book. Once I knew where the inspiration for 'Castaways' came from, I had to go and grab a copy of 'The Cellar' and dive in .And I'm really glad I did. It does take a while to find the right book (and that's no-one's fault, just the way that the dice lands) but if you do find that book, it's well worth the wait. I really wish that I'd read 'The Cellar' first...

Visitors flock to see the Beast House with it's blood soaked corridors and creaky doors. Armed with Instamatics and video camcorders, these poor souls enter the forbidden house, never to return. The deeper the tourists go into the house, the darker their nightmares become. The men are dealt with quickly. The women have to wait longer...

But the worst part of the house is actually beneath the haunted structure. There lies an even more terrifying presence waiting for it's next victim. Don't even think about going into the cellar...

My edition of 'The Cellar' is only 254 pages long and as such, it doesn't hang around. People start to die pretty much straight away, a mother goes on the run with her child and before you know it, both plot strands meet up again for a final fling in the Beast House itself. Right from the start, it's a mad race to the finish line but Laymon doesn't lose control of either plot, not for a second. Everything is there for a reason and it's a lot of fun seeing those two plot strands doing their thing but getting closer to one another, almost without them realising it.

And watching Laymon decorate those strands with the necessary horror trappings is a lot of fun as well. It's all there clearly to shock the reader (and it did, you might to approach the 'Mum and Daughter on the run' strand with a little caution once you realise why they're running) but it's not just there to shock, there's a tale to be told and Laymon really needs us to know that this shit is horrifying so he doesn't pull any punches, just gets on with the business of laying it on the line and leaving it in plain sight for us to take in. I'll say one thing for this approach, it keeps your eyes on the page and it's good to see that some things still hold true; no matter how horrifying the secret of the Beast House, good old humans can always find a way to make it worse.

I'm a little bit in awe of how much story Laymon manages to fit into not a lot of page count. There's mystery, suspense, horror and even a little romance (pulp but then, what were you expecting?) all politely letting each other have their turn. 'The Cellar' is a very solid little read that may not do anything new but does what it needs to so well that it's not an issue. The first thing I did, on finishing 'The Cellar', was to buy myself a copy of the collected 'Beast House' series, that should tell you everything you need to know.

If you're looking to read some Laymon for the first time, 'The Cellar' should be your first port of call. It's that simple.