Beware! is a novel by Richard Laymon first published in 1985. It was paired up with Dark Mountain in volume 4 of the Richard Laymon Collection
Synopsis[]
Elsie doesn't normally shut shop early, but neither is it normal for meat cleavers to fly through the air by themselves, or for Elsie to wind up on the meat counter neatly wrapped and jointed. Something very strange is happening in the small town of Oasis and everyone had better...BEWARE!
Plot[]
Lacey Allen is a journalist who hears rumours of prowlers in Elsie's mini-market. When she goes to investigate, she finds Elsie butchered. Lacey is then knocked unconscious, stripped naked and raped.
Dukane is a bounty hunter sent to retrieve a teenage girl from a cult obsessed with orgies and blood rituals. He encounters the leader, Laveda, who is worshipped like a demi-goddess by the others. After sending the girl back to her parents, the members of the group try to hunt him down.
Elsie arrives home, thoroughly spooked from her encounter. She suspects her rapist is hiding in her car, but she can't see anything. When she goes home and takes a bath, she's knocked out and raped again. The next morning, the rapist reveals himself to Lacey; he's an invisible man who has been stalking her for longer than she's known. Lacey manages to stab him in the back and runs away, hiding out at a hotel in Tucson. While in Tucson, Lacey attracts the attention of a mystery novelist named Scott. Scott charms Lacey enough to hear her story. Intrigued, Scott calls his friend Dukane and tells him to meet them at the hotel. That night, Scott spends the night in Lacey's room to catch the rapist. He arrives and chases them throughout the hotel, managing to start a fire that causes mass panic. Lacey and Scott catch the invisible man, knock him out and cover parts of him with spray paint. When Dukane arrives, they smuggle the invisible man out of the hotel, but are chased by the police, who seem interested in taking him in. The police are revealed by their prey to be part of the group that Laveda leads. Lacey shoots one and they escape. Lacey, Scott, Dukane and the invisible man seek refuge in a secluded house out in the country. The two women who live there refuse to let them in, but then members of the group arrive and kidnap the tenants. The four hide and avoid capture. Scott spends the night with Lacey and they make love.
The next day, Scott gets the invisible man to tell his story. The man reveals himself to be Sam Hoffmann, a former classmate from Lacey's high school. After raping their teacher, Sam went on the run before joining the group. Laveda assigned Sam the role of their personal assassin. As part of his role, Sam had to undergo a gruesome ritual involving a severed head being used to cultivate some beans. After leaving burying the headand then digging it up days later, Sam puts one of the beans in his mouth and becomes invisible. He decides that instead of working for the group he'll go out on his own. He rapes and murders Laveda's girlfriend and spends the next few months hiding out, raping and killing whenever he can. He eventually came back to his home town and hid in Elsie's market, where Lacey encountered him.
The group come back, having killed one of the house's tenants and are torturing another. Scott and Dukane try to fight them off, but in the commotion Sam attacks them and rapes Elsie again. He then throws Elsie outside for the group to torture. Scott and Dukane recover I time to find Sam raping the woman that the group had been torturing while Laveda personally tortures Elsie. They charge outside, guns blazing and killing off all of Laveda's followers. Laveda disappears in the commotion. As Elsie and the others go back inside, they hear Laveda torturing Sam. Dukane and Scott ush to the bathroom where the noise is coming from, but are engulfed in an explosion.
Sometime later, Elsie has returned home. She has nightmares that Sam might still be out there. One night, a badly burned man comes into her house. Luckily, it's Scott. Scott tells Elsie that Dukane is alive as well and Sam is most likely dead and that Laveda has been killed.