Darkness, Tell Us [Mass Market Paperback]

Richard Laymon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2003

A horror story about a group of college students who are persuaded by a spirit they contacted using a Ouija board to go to the mountains in search of a hidden fortune.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When horror author Laymon (Island) died in 2001, he left behind several unseen novels (and all signs indicate that he, unlike some other dead authors who continue to publish, actually wrote these books). This newest is middling Laymon-which means that it moves like a bat out of hell and features gobs of titillating sex and jaw-dropping gore, plus a gentle underpinning of emotional truth. Laymon's strength is writing about adolescents; the six highlighted here are college students, three male and three female, who, during a party at the house of one of their professors, are prompted by a Ouija board to look for a "4-T-U-N-E" at a remote California locale, Calamity Peak. Road-tripping there right away, the six students-two of whom mate in the book's affecting romantic subplot-eventually encounter a machete-wielding madman who terrorizes them. Meanwhile, as depicted in cross-cut chapters, the professor and her new lover, concerned about the students' impetuousness, follow the six, only to fall prey to the madman themselves. A skeleton, a family secret, several surprising revelations and two more crazies thicken the plot, which is no more realistic than a fever dream but is embedded in hard reality through the sensuous immediacy of Laymon's prose. Any reader averse to high tension and rampant salaciousness should skip this over-the-top tale, but Laymon fans-an ever-growing group-will embrace it as wild, dirty fun.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 392 pages
• Publisher: Leisure Books (March 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0843950471
• ISBN-13: 978-0843950472
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #909,545 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Somewhere on the scale of 3 or 4 for the "horror master"., November 13, 2004

By 

coachtim (Indiana, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Darkness, Tell Us (Mass Market Paperback)

Let me qualify this review by saying that I have probably read 12-15 Richard Laymon novels so I feel fairly confident that I can give a fair and honest appraisal of his work. "Darkness, Tell Us, while not near the top of my list, is certainly not a bad book and will have many readers turning the pages rapidly. Laymon sticks to his "tried-and-true" formula of semi-believeable characters involved in unbelieveable plots with plenty of chills, thrills, and gore thrown in.

The setting is a mountainous area far away from civilization that contains a treasure that 6 college students are in search of. The quest begins after the students begin playing around with a Ouija board at the home of one of their professors during their summer break. The Ouija board begins to "speak" to the students and tells them of a great treasure hidden away that no one else knows of. Now being rather gullable college students, the intrepid adventurers set off on a treasure without telling the professor of their intentions. As soon as the professor discovers what has happened, she and her former brother-in-law (and now lover) set after the kids.

The rest of the book is spent in the mountains as the students search for the treasure. Along the way, we learn a little more about each of them as Laymon develops their characters. It's these characters that generate the bulk of my criticism for the novel. There are very few likeable or redeeming qualities present in any of them. The reader is supposed to feel sympathy for a few of them, I suppose (including the overweight and bitter, Doris, and the sexually-abused heroine, Angela), but this reviewer couldn't muster up much empathy for this group. The three males are especially lame and uninteresting. How did this group link up with the extremely unlikeable Keith, and why didn't they knock him off and bury him in the mountains while they had the chance?

This criticism of Laymon is unusual because he normally creates a "hero" that readers can support. The hero in this book, Howie, is an oversexed, hypocritcal milktoast who can't decide his feelings about his new love, Angela. One minute he's enthralled and the next he's imagining another girl (Lana) and the professor naked. Laymon dropped the ball on the characterization of these six which is so unusual because character development is a strength of his writing.

Also included in the novel are the ever-present creeps and ghoulish characters. Both of them in this book are memorable.

If you're a Laymon fan and haven't read "Darkness, Tell Us" yet, them I would certainly recommend that you do so. It is not a BAD book it's just a little below par for Laymon. If you're new to Richard Laymon, then I would suggest that you skip this book and look for some of his earlier works. My recommendations would be:

Beware - 4 stars
The Stake - 4 stars
Bite - 4 stars
Night Show - 4 stars
Island - 4 stars
The Traveling Vampire Show - 5 stars
The Beast Houst series - 5 stars
The Woods Are Dark - 5 stars
Midnight's Lair - 5 stars
Funland (and my personal fav.) - 5 stars

And that's just to name a few. Good luck however, because the older books are becoming increasing more difficult to find as collectors are snatching them up.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Suspensful as ever, but lacking in reality., March 10, 2003

By 

DanD - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Darkness, Tell Us (Mass Market Paperback)

Okay: you've heard of an Ouija board, haven't you? That's the thing you use to communicate with dead spirits. Anyway, six college students come across one, and say, what the hell, let's try it out. So when they do, they come into contact with a spirit named Butler, who promises a fortune somewhere in the moutnains. His messages are cryptic, but the students figure again, what the hell, they'll go looking for the gold.

Their professor is against it, of course, and so is her lover, but hey, the students are young and rebellious. So they go into the mountains. Now there're a few complications in their search: one of the students has a past that literally comes back to haunt them; the professor, guilt-driven, heads into the mountains to find them; and oh, yes, there's a maniac with a really big knife.

Okay, so it's not too realistic; not that any horror novel ever is. However, Laymon usually manages to convince us that yes, indeed, those vampires are out there. This novel lacks that power to convince, but hey, it IS suspensful, and it is a gory ride. Richard Laymon always thrills; "Darkness, Tell Us," is no exception. Dig in; you might find the treasure...or you might find a maniac with a knife.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Darkness, you been told!, March 23, 2003

By 

Steve Vernon (Nova Scotia, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Darkness, Tell Us (Mass Market Paperback)

I'm not a rabid Laymon fan, but his books are usually a good bet for a fun spooky read. Still, a couple of his novel's have muddled endings. Laymon claimed to write without an outline, and sometimes it showed.
But not this one.
DARKNESS, TELL US is a read that I finished in a sitting. A rollercoaster ride through a house of horrors constructed by axe murdering architects and chainsaw wielding carpenters. It gets deeper and murkier as it goes. There's a bit of the supernatural, in the form of the Ouija board and Butler. Laymon often steers away from this side of things, being kind of finicky about ghosts and the like, but this one has its share. A fun read. I passed it onto my wife, Belinda, which is always a sign of my approval. Buy it. I did, and I didn't regret it.