No Sanctuary

RICHARD LAYMON

RAVE REVIEWS FOR RICHARD LAYMON!

“A brilliant writer.”

—Sunday Express

“Laymon doesn’t pull any punches. Everything he writes keeps you on the edge of your seat.”

—Painted Rock Reviews

“One of the best, and most reliable, writers working today.”

—Cemetery Dance

“Laymon is incapable of writing a disappointing book.”

—New York Review of Science Fiction

“Laymon lets out the stops in typically ferocious fashion. The Traveling Vampire Show contains some of the wisdom of King’s The Body or Robert R. McCammon’s Boy’s Life, but the book belongs wholly to Laymon, who with his trademark squeaky-clean yet sensual prose, high narrative drive and pitch-dark sense of humor has crafted a horror tale that’s not only emotionally true but also scary and, above all, fun.”

—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

“Laymon always takes it to the max. No one writes like him and you’re going to have a good time with anything he writes.”

—Dean Koontz

“If you’ve missed Laymon, you’ve missed a treat.”

—Stephen King

“If, like me, you consider Ray Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes an American classic, you are in for a real treat. The traveling Vampire Show will put you in the same vicarious world that no one has entered since the master.”

—Denver Rocky Mountain News

“Laymon is an American writer of the highest caliber.”

—Time Out

“Laymon is unique. A phenomenon. A genius of the grisly and the grotesque.”

—Joe Citro, The Blood Review

Other books by Richard Laymon:

DARKNESS, TELL US

NIGHT IN THE LONESOME OCTOBER

ISLAND

THE MUSEUM OF HORRORS

IN THE DARK

THE TRAVELING VAMPIRE SHOW

AMONG THE MISSING

ONE RAINY NIGHT

BITE

Copyright © 2001 by Richard Laymon

Chapter One

Saturday May 24

The sound of breaking glass shocked Rhonda Bain awake. She went rigid on the bed and stared at the dark ceiling.

She told herself it wasn’t someone breaking into the house; a framed picture or a mirror had fallen off one of the walls.

She didn’t believe it.

Someone had smashed a window. She’d heard glass hitting a floor, so it was the kitchen window; the other rooms had carpet.

Rhonda imagined herself bolting from the bedroom, racing for the front door. But as she rushed past the kitchen, a dark shape would lurch out and grab her.

I can’t just lie here and wait for him!

She flung the sheet aside, sat up, snapped her head toward the bedroom window. The curtains were open, stirring slightly in the breeze. She shivered and clenched her teeth, but not because of the mild night air on her bare skin.

I’ve gotta get out of here!

The window was no good. The damn thing was louvered. There wouldn’t be time to pull out enough slats, remove the screen and climb through. If she barricaded the bedroom door and smashed an opening with a chair ...

She flinched at the sound of a footstep—a shoe crunching broken glass.