Richard Laymon - Dark Mountain

[dem bones]

Richard Laymon - Dark Mountain (Headline, 1992: originally W. H. Allen, 1987, Star 1988 as Tread Softly under the pseudonym Richard Kelly)

Steve Crisp

Blurb:
Two families join forces fora camping holiday high in the California mountains. It's meant to be fun - a break from city life, a healthy interlude in the hills amid the wonders of Nature. If only they hadn't pitched camp at Mesquite Lake, home to two of the wilderness's most terrifying inhabitants - an aged hag whose loyalty to the Evil One gives her gruesome powers, and her son, a depraved half-beast whose unnatural lusts even she cannot control.

"The corpse under Julie fondled and squeezed her breasts while the one on top strangled her."

Hard to imagine anyone who'd read a previous Riochard Laymon being taken in by so flimsy a pseudonym on this one's publication. Part One - all 200 pages of it - is standard campers-in-peril fare, as troubled Viet vets Scott O'Toole and Arnold 'Flash' Gordon lead their respective broods on a gruelling pleasure hike through the mountains. Scott, deserted by his wife, has recently taken up with the lovely Karen, and the camping holiday should provide ample opportunity for bad sex just so long as they can keep his kids Julie, sixteen, and Benny, fourteen amused. Flash has dragged along frumpy wife Alice, son Nick, seventeen, and the twins Rose and Heather (ten). Scott is mightily relieved when Julie and Nick take an immediate shine to one another. Now he can concentrate on that evasive knee-trembler, or, at least, he could were it not for the old gal and her demented rapist of a son .....

Even before the party arrive, we've already experienced Merle in action on a teenage couple, and it is always the same story; as soon as he catches the merest glimpse of female flesh, his member takes over from his tiny brain, leaving Ma Ettie with yet more corpses to bury and conceal under a witchy cloak of invisibility. But her latest blood prophesy reveals death to them both should Merle molest this latest band of happy campers. Unfortunately, Merle cops an eyeful of three teenage babes swimming in Mesquite Lake, and that's him gone totally gaga yet again. At climax of the ensuing unpleasantness, young Nick has no option but to take Merle out with a hatchet. Even as the panicked hikers are attending a brutalised Karen, Merle's body disappears into the trees. That night, the old hag sneaks into each of their tents ..... When next they catch sight of her, she is hopping about in a raging fury. "Murderers! You're cursed! I have your blood and hair! You killed my son and you'll die, every one of you! Cursed! My curse is on you!"

With part two, we are all safely returned home to civilisation for the real nasty stuff. Ettie's relentless supernatural persecution of the "murderers" is related in a series of tasty horror vignettes involving a disembodied hand in the library, a phantom mad motorist, the grouchy granny on campus, homicidal road-kill, etc.., until we've just the four able-bodied survivors to take the fight to the enemy. Our heroes and heroines return to Mesquite Lake for the final conflict.

In the great scheme of things Laymon according to dem, it's not quite another The Cellar, Funland or Midnights Lair, but Dark Mountain is so much better than All Hallows Eve in every department, you wonder why he didn't stick his name to it from the off. Pop-culture references include Julie's Bruce Springsteen poster, "the new Sidney Sheldon novel", and The Necronomicon, while fellow imaginary film fans will likely enjoy Dick's blow-by-blow account of raunchy high school comedy, Getting It.

[erebus]

A good book this. Laymon treads familiar themes here, the nutcase out in the woods ( The Lake, The Woods are Dark, Blood Games, etc )but this one is perhaps far better at getting the particular theme across. I don't have it under Tread Softly, its original title just the first Headline release with the great artwork above.
The group do indeed go back home after the first incident with the Hag and her retard son. But some return for revenge where we get a great scene underwater in the river if I recall.
I always liken this book a little to one of my favorite old 80s slasher movies Just Before Dawn.

[dem bones]

Danny Flynn

Don't have a copy myself, but here's a scan of the Star 1988 cover artwork by Danny Flynn, whose other horror credits include Laymon's Flesh, Shaun Hutson's Relics, Shadows and Erebus, Joe R. Lansdale's The Drive-In, and Graham Masterton's Family Portrait. Here's his personal site.

Danny Flynn.