James

“Unlike the rest he had seen of the bungalow, the hall beyond the door was dark. He could see the glimmer of three doors and several framed photographs lined up along the walls. The sound of flies was louder, though they didn’t seem to be in the hall itself. Now that he was closer they sounded even more like someone groaning feebly, and the rotten smell was stronger too.”
― Ramsey Campbell, Alone With the Horrors: The Great Short Fiction, 1961-1991

“Wielding a hammer, however, you’re at the very heart of the experience, being flooded with wonderful sensations that simply can’t be yours if you use a firearm. Now, you might be asking yourself how I came to discover the splendors of hammer attack. I’ll tell you. You won’t want to hear it, though.”
― Richard Laymon, The Museum of Horrors

“I guess they’re having what you might call panic attacks. It’s an old place and smells a little musty. The hallways are sort of long and narrow. The exhibits are gory. The people are listening to some creepy, nasty stuff on their earphones. It apparently just overwhelms some of them, especially on a busy day when there might be some congestion in the rooms and hallways. You’ll have flippers, fainters and barfers every so often.’
‘It’s sounding more fun all the time.’ ‘Not as much fun as the heart attacks.’ ‘You get heart attacks?’
‘I don’t, they do. Not often, though.”
― Richard Laymon, The Midnight Tour

“It was a hideous ancient thing that stood on tiger feet in the middle of the floor. Like a showpiece. And he did enjoy showing it. He would bring his friends upstairs to the master bathroom so that they could admire the monstrosity while he told them the whole long boring story of how he’d gotten it at an estate sale in Hollywood. Some bimbo actress from the silent-screen days had supposedly slit her wrists while she was in the thing. ‘Cashed in her chips,’ Harold liked to say. ‘In this very tub.”
― Richard Laymon, Hotter Blood: More Tales of Erotic Horror