Horror Review: Funland by Richard Laymon (1989, Headline UK/1990, Onyx)

If you travel to Boleta Bay, California you'll find a fantastic main attraction waiting for you. On the beach, down by the ocean, just a short walk from the parking lot and down the boardwalk, lies Funland. Like a west coast Coney Island, Funland has all the stuff you'd expect to find in a year-round theme park attraction: delicious, high-calorie fairground food; a midway filled with games of skill and chance; rides like the classic Ferris Wheel and Tilt-A-Whirl, plus the one-of-a-kind Hurricane roller coaster; and yes, even a small sideshow with pictures of old carney freaks as well as real stuffed and mounted oddities from around the globe.

One other thing you'll find in Funland that isn't on any of the glossy, tri-fold brochures or slick poster ads though are the Trolls. Derelicts, winos, and mental cases infest Boleta Bay and its environs--and while every city has its share of down-on-their-luck homeless folks, something about Boleta Bay and Funland attracts them like stink on ass. Sixteen year old Jeremy Wayne has just moved to Boleta Bay with his mom, and he's desperate to ditch the loser label he held at his previous school and strike up a new band of friends. Funland seems like as good a place as any to begin looking, and it doesn't take long before he meets Cowboy, another guy his age, who helps him fend off a Troll then shows him around the park.

Cowboy (so nicknamed for the enormous Stetson he wears, along with his Southern accent) runs with a small band of high school kids who call themselves the Trollers. Led by the statuesque and charismatic lifeguard Tanya, the Trollers prowl the boardwalk after hours as a vigilante squad playing cruel pranks on the homeless as inspiration for them to "move on". After his first encounter with a money-begging Troll, and his first look at Tanya, Jeremy decides these are just the sort of people he needs to impress in order to be part of the cool crowd.

But the homeless of Boleta Bay congregate there for a reason. One very specific reason, in fact. If Jeremy passes his initiation, sooner or later he and the rest of the Trollers are going to come face to face with that terrible, horrifying reason, and the ones who die will be the lucky ones...the ones who live will only live long enough to regret it.

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Funland is, along with Island and The Midnight Tour, one of Laymon's longer works (my UK edition clocks in at 500 pages, while my US edition published by Onyx in 1990 hits 397--the UK version isn't uncut or anything like that, they're just typeset differently). It's also one that rarely gets mentioned in discussions about Laymon books. Not that this is terribly surprising, as only a handful of his books made much of an impact, at least here in the US. Thus, when you see Laymon's name bandied about in discussion, it'll likely be in reference to The Cellar, The Travelling Vampire Show, and Night in the Lonesome October, which were, respectively, the first book he wrote, and two of the last manuscripts he completed before his death in 2001. Late 80's and early 90's Laymon titles like No Sanctuary, Out Are the Lights, and The Stake just don't see the same level of attention.

Unless you're me, that is.

But you aren't.

Just in case there was any confusion.

So, uh, anyway, now that we've cleared that up, I'm here to vomit forth a few thousand words about Funland. If you've read this far, you might as well finish. ;)

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Part of the reason Funland is such a sizable tome is that Laymon wrangles up three separate plots across its length. The main plot is the one described above, concerning Jeremy meeting and joining up with Tanya's Trollers and the variety of mischief they get up to after hours. This plot follows a mass of characters: not only Jeremy, Tanya, and Cowboy, but there's also Cowboy's girlfriend Liz; Tanya's boyfriend Nate; Samson the strong man of the group; Randy the nerdy lookout who worships the ground Tanya walks on; Karen who does the same; Heather, who joined just to feel like part of a team; and the tomboyish Shiner who has a score to settle with the Trolls for what they did to her sister. Ten kids is a lot of keep track of, but Laymon only gives us Jeremy's limited perspective on what's going on with the group, and most of the teenagers are background player who don't even get last names. This makes it hard to really feel all that much for them once they start getting picked off during the book's climax, but considering Laymon was juggling other plot threads through the novel, it's understandable. It just would have been nice to learn a bit more about each kid--as it stands, most of them are one-dimensional (Samson's the body builder, Karen's the lesbian, Randy's the hanger-on, Heather's the slob, etc...), so in other words, it's just like reading a B-grade slasher flick once the bodies start hitting the floor.

Thread two of the plot involves Dave, a recent transplant to Boleta Bay, and his partner Joan. They're both local cops who walk a beat around Funland during the day, watching out for troublemakers and making sure the homeless don't bother the paying customers too much. The drama in Dave's life come from his girlfriend Gloria, a reporter for the local newspaper, who has been stirring the pot by publishing editorials critical of the Trollers and their efforts to reduce the indigent population of the Bay. This sentiment is not shared by most of the community, who would just as soon see the complete relocation of the Trolls, which forces Dave to walk a fine line with the rest of the department who tend to side with the Trollers despite the laws they break by roughing up the occasional bag lady and bum. That he's falling for his partner more and more every day isn't helping his personal life. Joan's not exactly doing well for herself in the male department either, so it's only a matter of time before the sparks between them ignite something. Dave just hopes they don't wind up burning anyone else in the process, especially Joan's younger sister Debbie who's still grieving the loss of their mother.

Plot thread three involves Robin, a wayward teenage drifter whose hitchhiking travels have brought her to Boleta Bay. Fancying herself as something of a wandering minstrel, Robin sets up shop on the Funland boardwalk, picking a banjo and performing for donations from the crowd. She crosses paths with Dave and Joan early on who warn her that she needs to find a place to sleep indoors, but she doesn't take them seriously until she's robbed of nearly all her money after spending the night on the beach. Robin's thread then intersects her with the Trollers, as she interacts with Jeremy (who views her as just another vagrant) and Nate (who wants to keep her safe). Stage thus set, the sun rises over the boardwalk, and it's time to enjoy the classic Laymon staples of rumps, sociopaths, and carnage as all three groups hurl towards one another at breakneck speed, and we wait around to rubberneck after they crash together as we know they inevitably must.

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I really enjoyed Funland. The last time I'd read it was well over ten years ago, and enough time had passed that I had forgotten virtually everything that happened so it was like reading it for the first time. That's one of the best parts about getting old, you know, but I still don't recommend it.

If you aren't already inclined to like Laymon, this one could be a hard sell. Much of the book is a slow-burn towards the climax, and during that time a lot of stuff happens that feels like filler. That said, this is just how Laymon writes: his characters will have interactions comprised of mostly dialog, interspersed with plenty of voyeuristic peeking and adolescent sexual fantasies. Occasionally though, these are interrupted with some fast-paced, ridiculous, and fun action scenes, and it's Laymon's ability to drag readers through a ten-page scene and leave them with the impression only two pages have gone by of which I am constantly in awe.

That, and his twisted imagination.

Deep in Laymon's chest beat the heard of a boy who never quite grew up. There's a saying that men never really grow up, they just buy bigger toys, and this applies perfectly here. Much of Funland is characters walking through the amusement park, getting lost in their own fantasies, or wondering about things to come. It should be boring, but it's not, because Laymon plays to the strengths of his breakneck pacing. Reading Funland, I often got the feeling Laymon himself didn't have any idea what was going to come next, that he wasn't working from any sort of outline except perhaps in the loosest sense. This gives the book a certain quality I find lacking in many other horror stories and writers. If Laymon's winging it, he's doing so with verve. If he's not, he's certainly adept at making it seem like that's the case. And when he's pushing the envelope, you feel there's a good chance you'll come away with a nasty papercut or two if you aren't careful. This is why I love the guy, and why I had so much fun with Funland. Laymon's not the only one who wrote a horror story set at a carnival--Dean Koontz beat him to the punch by nine years with The Funhouse--but as with every other time he pulled a genre trope out of his hat, he certainly gave it his own personal and unique spin. I guarantee you, no other work of carny horror does what Funland does. I wouldn't be surprised to learn Brian Keene was inspired to write Urban Gothic by the climax of this book, where the Trollers enter the old, boarded-up fun house and find themselves in a house of true horrors.

However, for as much as I enjoyed Funland, I can only give it four grinning clown faces out of five. While it's fiction, and horror fiction at that, I can't shake the fact this book was written in an era when massive government cuts to mental healthcare forced tens of thousands of individuals out of in-patient treatment programs and on to the streets. The character of Gloria is meant to be the stereotypical "bleeding heart" sort who is shown the error of her ways when it's proven she doesn't understand things the way she thinks she does, but the editorial Laymon has her pen has an awful lot of solid points to it. Namely, these homeless individuals are all people, dealt brutal hands by life, trying to play them as best they can in a world where everyone would prefer them to go somewhere else.

Yes, it's also true that many of these vagrants are shown to be reprehensible creatures, and there's a reason for that, but it's still difficult to reconcile the prevailing attitude of the main characters with today's sensibilities where the homeless, who are often veterans or children from broken and dysfunctional homes, are concerned. I don't believe Laymon's intentions were to issue a blanket condemnation of homelessness in such a blame-the-victim fashion, it's just a bit discomfiting to read, that's all.

Best Scene

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Funland features a number of great set pieces, but for my money, the award for most pulse-pounding yet squirm-inducing scene has to go to Jeremy's official induction into Tanya's Trollers. Jeremy's story has been leading up to this point for most of the book, and when it happens it's every teenage boy's wildest fantasy writ large...but there's just enough 'off' about Tanya and her antics to give it nightmarish quality as well. In the aftermath, Jeremy's left elated but massively torn between his 'bond' with Tanya and his feelings for Shiner, and the reader isn't so sure Jeremy didn't make a pact with the Devil herself. Given the way the book ends, one almost has to lean more towards the latter. Tanya may not be as charming a sociopath as, say, Patrick Bateman, but she's a damn memorable one nonetheless.