Search Worlds Without End

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1993) - essay by Ed Gorman
• Desert Pickup - (1970) - short story
• Roadside Pickup - (1974) - short story
• Oscar's Audition - (1975) - short story
• Paying Joe Back - (1975) - short story
• Out of the Woods - (1975) - short fiction
• A Good Cigar Is a Smoke - (1976) - short story
• The Direct Approach - (1977) - short story
• The Champion - (1978) - short story
• Stiff Intruders - (1980) - short story
• Barney's Bigfoot Museum - (1981) - short story
• Blarney - (1981) - short story
• Spooked - (1981) - short story
• The Grab - (1982) - short story
• Eats - (1985) - short story
• The Bleeder - (1989) - short story
• The Good Deed - (1993) - novelette
• Joyce - (1993) - short story
• Stickman - (1993) - short story
• The Mask - (1993) - novelette
• A Good, Secret Place - (1993) - novelette

Alice enjoys house-sitting for her friend; she has the place to herself, a huge TV, a swimming pool. But one night, just after midnight, a man walks out of the woods and throws himself into the pool. Alice knows about men, so she fetches the Civil War relic that hangs on the wall: an old cavalry sabre...

The Sherwood house has been deserted since the horrific killing of a local family in the sleepy town of Ashburg. When invitations to a mysterious party to be held there are sent out, nobody is particularly surprised - after all, everyone wants to party in a house of death on Allhallow's Eve.

An ancient beauty...

Amara was once the Princess of Egypt, the beautiful wife of Mentuhotep the First. Now, 4000 years later, she and her coffin are merely prized exhibits of the Charles Ward museum. Her lovely face and strong, young body are no more. If you were to look at her today you would see only a brittle bundle of bones and dried skin. But looks can be very deceiving...

A missing mummy...

Barney, the museum's night watchman, is the first to make the shocking discovery that the mummy's coffin has been broken open. He immediately assumes it's the work of grave-robbers who care nothing about the sanctity of the dead. But Barney doesn't have a chance to do anything about it. Then two security guards come upon the open coffin and they too believe that the mummy has been stolen. What else could sane men think? By the time they realize the unbelievable truth, it's far too late for them to do anything... ever again.

The walking dead!

Now Amara is once again freed from the cramped confines of her coffin, free to walk the earth, free to stalk her prey. Free to kill. Nothing can satisfy her deadly bloodlust. And no one can stop her. You cannot kill what is already dead.

Contains stories by the editor Laymon and all 18 contributors, including Ed Gorman, Bill Pronzini, Jack Ketchum, Nancy Holder and F. Paul Wilson; 2 pages of autographs. Numerous full-page B&W interior illustrations by various artists. 18 stories about characters who are "bad news." The late Richard Laymon contributes interesting Introduction and a novella.

The supermarket shouldn't have been shut - it wasn't normal for Elsie to quit early. But then it wasn't normal for a meat cleaver to fly through the air by itself. Or for a guard dog locked in overnight to end up as hamburger meat. Or for Elsie herself to feature on the butcher's slab, neatly wrapped and jointed... There's weird things happening in the town of Oasis and certain folks - like hotshot local reporter Lacey Allen - had better... BEWARE!

Something deadly has come to town-a slimy, slithering... thing like nothing anyone has seen before. With its dull eyes and its hideous mouth, it's always hunting for a new host to burrow into, and humans are the perfect prey. But the truly shocking part is not what it does to you when it invades your body-it's what it makes you do to others.

The Funland Amusement Park provides more fear than fun these days. A vicious pack known as the Trolls are preying on anyone foolish enough to be alone at night. Folks in the area blame them for the recent mysterious disappearances, and a gang of local teenagers has decided to fight back. But nothing is ever what it seems in an amusement park. Behind the garish paint and bright lights waits a horror far worse than anything found in the freak show. Step right up. The terror is about to begin!

When the new librarian, Jane Kerry, receives a letter enclosing a 50-dollar bill and a note signed MOG (Master of Games) with a clue to another pay-off, she is hooked. But when violence begins to occur she has second thoughts and wants to quit, but MOG has other ideas.

When the horror becomes real.

Dani Larson is the queen of horror movie special effects. Grisly murders and mutilated corpses are all in a day's work for her. Nothing frightens her--not even watching herself torn to pieces on the screen. But now the gore is real, and Dani is terrified. She's being stalked by the Chill Master, a psychopath who wants to be Dani's apprentice, her lover, and eventually... her replacement. Can Dani find a way to survive? Or will this real-life horror movie scare Dani to death?

The vampire movie came first - the girl died in a welter of blood as the vampire bit clean through her jugular. Then came the spider film, followed by the story of the axeman. This was a horror movie series to end them all. The action seemed real, but it couldn't be - could it?

Whitechapel, November 1888: Jack the Ripper is committing his last known murder and beneath the bed on which he's butchering his victim cowers a fifteen-year-old boy. So begin the adventures of Trevor Bentley: a boy who embarked on an errand of mercy and ended up on a quest for vengeance, a boy who will bring the horrors of the Ripper to the New World.

In an abandoned hotel in a Californian ghost town, horror writer Larry Dunbar and his friends make a chilling discovery. By chance they stumble on a coffin hidden under the stairs. Within lies the corpse of a naked female - with a stake through its heart. Was she the innocent victim of a gruesome murder? Or was she a vampire? There's only one way for Larry to solve the mystery - he must pull out the stake...

When the one-night-only Traveling Vampire Show arrives in town, promising the only living vampire in captivity, beautiful Valeria, three local teenages venture where they do not belong, and discover much more than they bargained for.

In the woods are six dead trees. The Killing Trees. That's where they take them. Innocent travellers on the road in California. Seized and bound, stripped of their valuables and shackled to the Trees. To wait. In the woods. In the dark...

Early editions of this novel were heavily cut, as of 2008 editions bases on Laymon's original manuscript are available.

Arguably Laymon's most celebrated and most infamous novel, The Cellar is the first book in his Beast House Chronicles. Only the bravest tourists dare to venture inside the sealed-up Beast House, long rumored to be haunted. But the creature that lives in the cellar is no ghost, and its hungry!

The Beast House has become a museum of the most twisted and macabre kind. On display inside are wax figures of its victims, their bodies mangled and chewed, mutilated beyond recognition. The tourists who come to Beast House can only wonder what sort of terrifying creature could be responsible for such atrocities.

But some people are convinced Beast House is a hoax. Nora and her friends are determined to learn the truth for themselves. They will dare to enter the house at night. When the tourists have gone. When the beast is rumored to come out. They will learn, all right.

For years morbid tourists have flocked to the Beast House, eager to see the infamous site of so many unspeakable atrocities, to hear tales of the beast said to prowl the hallways. They can listen to the audio tour on their headphones as they stroll from room to room, looking at the realistic recreations of the blood-drenched corpses...

But the audio tour only gives the sanitized version of the horrors of the Beast House. There are some facts too gruesome for the average thrill seekers. If you want the full story, you have to take the Midnight Tour, a very special event strictly limited to thirteen brave visitors. It begins at the stroke of midnight. You may not live to see it end.

The last novel in the Laymon's BEAST HOUSE series. Michael would do anything to get a date with Alison - anything. Alison has just one condition for guys that want to date her - they have to spend a night with her in the legendary Beast House. To Michael a night alone with Alison is a chance of a lifetime but if the stories about the Beast House are true it may also be a chance to die. As he waits for Alison, in the cellar of the macabre museum, Michael tries to keep his first date nerves in check. But what he's feeling now is nothing compared to the terror he'll face before the night is out...