It Came from the Garage! Read online

  It Came From The Garage!

  An Anthology of Automotive Horror

  Stephen King ♦ Guy N. Smith

  Antonio Simon, Jr. ♦ Apara Moreiya

  Stephanie Kelley ♦ David Owain Hughes

  Paige Reiring ♦ R. Perez de Pereda

  Sarah Cannavo ♦ Alana Turner

  Douglas Fairbanks

  Jonathan Edward Ondrashek

  Richard Ayre ♦ Michael Warriner

  Nicholas Paschall

  It Came From The Garage!

  Published by Darkwater Media Group, Inc.

  8004 NW 154 Street #623

  Miami Lakes, FL 33016

  Copyright © 2019 Darkwater Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission.

  All stories are under copyright by their respective creators and are reproduced here with permission. “Trucks” from NIGHT SHIFT by Stephen King, copyright © 1976, 1977, 1978 by Stephen King. Used by permission of Doubleday, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Stephen King’s biographical information is reprinted here courtesy of Wikipedia.

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents contained in this book are either products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, and people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Darkwater Media Group, DarkwaterMediaGroup.com, the Darkwater device and other Darkwater Media Group logos and product names are trademarks of Darkwater Media Group, Inc.

  www.DarkwaterMediaGroup.com

  ISBN: 978-1-954619-35-7

  Electronic Edition

  Story Copyrights

  A Moment in Time with Black Shadow Tess, Copyright 2019 Richard Ayre

  The Black Engine, Copyright 2019 Nicholas Paschall

  The Cavalier Cavalier, Copyright 2019 Jonathan Edward Ondrashek

  The Driver, Copyright 2019 Alana Turner

  Faster than Anything, Copyright 2019 Apara Moreiya

  The Highway Phantom, Copyright 2019 Michael Warriner

  The Horseman Comes Riding, Copyright 2019 Stephanie Kelley

  M.A.D. Mobile, Copyright 2019 Antonio Simon, Jr.

  Out on Arrowhead Road, by Sarah Cannavo

  Prodded, Hot-Rodded and Garroted, Copyright 2019 Douglas Fairbanks

  Special Delivery, Copyright 2019 David Owain Hughes

  Sprites and Violets, Copyright 2019 Paige Reiring

  Trucks, Copyright 1976, 1977, 1978 Stephen King

  Ugly Joyride, Copyright 2019 R. Perez de Pereda

  Wheels of Evil, Copyright 2019 Guy N. Smith

  Table Of Contents

  Trucks, by Stephen King

  Wheels Of Evil, by Guy N. Smith

  M.A.D. Mobile, by Antonio Simon, Jr.

  Faster Than Anything, by Apara Moreiya

  The Horseman Comes Riding, by Stephanie Kelley

  Special Delivery, by David Owain Hughes

  Sprites And Violets, by Paige Reiring

  Ugly Joyride, by R. Perez de Pereda

  Out On Arrowhead Road, by Sarah Cannavo

  The Driver, by Alana Turner

  Prodded, Hot-Rodded And Garroted, by Douglas Fairbanks

  The Cavalier Cavalier, by Jonathan Edward Ondrashek

  A Moment In Time With Black Shadow Tess, by Richard Ayre

  The Highway Phantom, by Michael Warriner

  The Black Engine, by Nicholas Paschall

  Foreword

  By: R. Perez de Pereda

  It says something about a writer when his body of work develops a pattern. Judging by his books and their adaptations, if there is anything Stephen King seems to like more than evil clowns terrorizing New England hamlets, it’s cars behaving badly. A cursory glance at his work will tell you this is true: Christine, From A Buick Eight, Maximum Overdrive… and the list goes on.

  In this same spirit, we at Darkwater Media Group have developed this anthology of automotive horror.

  Gearheads, rejoice! This one’s right up your alley. Inside you’ll find an eclectic mix of horrifying tales sure to rev your panic throttles and send your nerves into redline. Ever heard of a bloodthirsty ambulance? How about a motorcycle that murders across time and space? Or a driver who’s so fixated on being the fastest that he’s willing to race a ghost train? You’ll find all that in here, and more.

  Some old timers—older than me, even—say that when you reach a certain age, nothing surprises you anymore. As of this writing, this old man is well into his eighth decade. Never did I think I’d find my name alongside such literary titans, not to mention some fine new blood in the genre. Was I surprised? The news alone that I’d be featured among Stephen King and Guy N. Smith nearly sent me into ecstatic paroxysms.

  All kidding aside, King and Smith—both of whom I esteem greatly—are legends in their own time. Having grown up reading their work, it is truly an honor to see my name alongside theirs on the cover page. What’s more, I am just as honored to be published with some of the finest up-and-comers in horror, some of whom have taken to calling me their adoptive Cuban uncle—an accolade which I accept graciously, and with much love for my literary nephews and nieces.

  Okay, now, for the fun part.

  Strap in and hold on, because we’re going pedal to the metal. The way ahead is dark, with no help for miles, and all road signs point to blood-soaked terror. It’s horror or bust, and we aren’t stopping for anything.

  You’re in for a ride.

  Trucks

  By: Stephen King

  The guy’s name was Snodgrass and I could see him getting ready to do something crazy. His eyes had gotten bigger, showing a lot of the whites, like a dog getting ready to fight. The two kids who had come skidding into the parking lot in the old Fury were trying to talk to him, but his head was cocked as though he was hearing other voices. He had a tight little pot-belly encased in a good suit that was getting a little shiny in the seat. He was a salesman and he kept his display bag close to him, like a pet dog that had gone to sleep.

  “Try the radio again,” the truck driver at the counter said.

  The short-order cook shrugged and turned it on. He flipped it across the band and got nothing but static.

  “You went too fast,” the trucker protested. “You might have missed something.”

  “Hell,” the short-order cook said. He was an elderly black man with a smile of gold and he wasn’t looking at the trucker. He was looking through the diner-length picture window at the parking lot.

  Seven or eight heavy trucks were out there, engines rumbling in low, idling roars that sounded like big cats purring. There were a couple of Macks, a Hemingway, and four or five Reos. Trailer trucks, interstate haulers with a lot of license plates and CB whip antennas on the back.

  The kids’ Fury was lying on its roof at the end of long, looping skid marks in the loose crushed rock of the parking lot. It had been battered into senseless junk. At the entrance to the truck stop’s turnaround, there was a blasted Cadillac. Its owner stared out of the star-shattered windshield like a gutted fish. Horn-rimmed glasses hung from one ear.

  Halfway across the lot from it lay the body of a girl in a pink dress. She had jumped from the Caddy when she saw it wasn’t going to make it. She had hit running but never had a chance. She was the worst, even though she was face down. There were flies around her in clouds.

&nbsp
; Across the road an old Ford station wagon had been slammed through the guardrails. That had happened an hour ago. No one had been by since then. You couldn’t see the turnpike from the window and the phone was out.

  “You went too fast,” the trucker was protesting. “You oughta—”

  That was when Snodgrass bolted. He turned the table over getting up, smashing coffee cups and sending sugar in a wild spray. His eyes were wilder than ever, and his mouth hung loosely and he was blabbering: “We gotta get outta here we gotta getouttahere wegottagetouttahere—”

  The kid shouted and his girl friend screamed.

  I was on the stool closest to the door and I got a handful of his shirt, but he tore loose. He was cranked up all the way. He would have gone through a bank-vault door.

  He slammed out the door and then he was sprinting across the gravel toward the drainage ditch on the left. Two of the trucks lunged after him, smokestacks blowing diesel exhaust dark brown against the sky, huge rear wheels machine-gunning gravel up in sprays.

  He couldn’t have been any more than five or six running steps from the edge of the flat parking lot when he turned back to look, fear scrawled on his face. His feet tangled each other and he faltered and almost fell down. He got his balance again, but it was too late.

  One of the trucks gave way and the other charged down, huge front grill glittering savagely in the sun. Snodgrass screamed, the sound high and thin, nearly lost under the Reo’s heavy diesel roar.

  It didn’t drag him under. As things turned out, it would have been better if it had. Instead it drove him up and out, the way a punter kicks a football. For a moment he was silhouetted against the hot afternoon sky like a crippled scarecrow, and then he was gone into the drainage ditch.

  The big truck’s brakes hissed like dragon’s breath, its front wheels locked, digging grooves into the gravel skin of the lot, and it stopped inches from jackknifing in. The bastard.

  The girl in the booth screamed. Both hands were clamped into her cheeks, dragging the flesh down, turning it into a witch’s mask.

  Glass broke. I turned my head and saw that the trucker had squeezed his glass hard enough to break it. I don’t think he knew it yet. Milk and a few drops of blood fell onto the counter.

  The black counterman was frozen by the radio, a dishcloth in hand, looking amazed. His teeth glittered. For a moment there was no sound but the buzzing Westclox and the rumbling of the Reo’s engine as it returned to its fellows. Then the girl began to cry and it was all right—or at least better.

  My own car was around the side, also battered to junk. It was a 1971 Camaro and I had still been paying on it, but I didn’t suppose that mattered now.

  There was no one in the trucks.

  The sun glittered and flashed on empty cabs. The wheels turned themselves. You couldn’t think about it too much. You’d go insane if you thought about it too much. Like Snodgrass.

  Two hours passed. The sun began to go down. Outside, the trucks patrolled in slow circles and figure eights. Their parking lights and running lights had come on.

  I walked the length of the counter twice to get the kinks out of my legs and then sat in a booth by the long front window. It was a standard truck stop, close to the major thruway, a complete service facility out back, gas and diesel fuel both. The truckers came here for coffee and pie.

  “Mister?” The voice was hesitant. I looked around. It was the two kids from the Fury. The boy looked about nineteen. He had long hair and a beard that was just starting to take hold. His girl looked younger.

  “Yeah?”

  “What happened to you?”

  I shrugged. “I was coming up the interstate to Pelson,” I said. “A truck came up behind me—I could see it in the mirror a long way off—really highballing. You could hear it a mile down the road. It whipped out around a VW Beetle and just snapped it off the road with the whiplash of the trailer, the way you’d snap a ball of paper off a table with your finger. I thought the truck would go, too. No driver could have held it with the trailer whipping that way. But it didn’t go. The VW flopped over six or seven times and exploded. And the truck got the next one coming up the same way. It was coming up on me and I took the exit ramp in a hurry.” I laughed but my heart wasn’t in it. “Right into a truck stop, of all places. From the frying pan into the fire.”

  The girl swallowed. “We saw a Greyhound going north in the southbound lane. It was… plowing… through cars. It exploded and burned but before it did… slaughter.”

  A Greyhound bus. That was something new. And bad.

  Outside, all the headlights suddenly popped on in unison, bathing the lot in an eerie, depthless glare. Growling, they cruised back and forth. The headlights seemed to give them eyes, and in the growing gloom, the dark trailer boxes looked like the hunched, squared-off shoulders of prehistoric giants.

  The counterman said, “Is it safe to turn on the lights?”

  “Do it,” I said, “and find out.”

  He flipped the switches and a series of flyspecked globes overhead came on. At the same time a neon sign out front stuttered into life: “Conant’s Truck Stop & Diner—Good Eats.” Nothing happened. The trucks continued their patrol.

  “I can’t understand it,” the trucker said. He had gotten down from his stool and was walking around, his hand wrapped in a red engineer’s bandanna. “I ain’t had no problems with my rig. She’s a good old girl. I pulled in here a little past one for a spaghetti dinner and this happens.” He waved his arms and the bandanna flapped. “My own rig’s out there right now, the one with the weak left taillight. Been driving her for six years. But if I stepped out that door—”

  “It’s just starting,” the counterman said. His eyes were hooded and obsidian. “It must be bad if that radio’s gone. It’s just starting.”

  The girl had drained as pale as milk. “Never mind that,” I said to the counterman. “Not yet.”

  “What would do it?” The trucker was worrying. “Electrical storms in the atmosphere? Nuclear testing? What?”

  “Maybe they’re mad,” I said.

  * * *

  Around seven o’clock I walked over to the counterman. “How are we fixed here? I mean, if we have to stay awhile?”

  His brow wrinkled. “Not so bad. Yest’y was delivery day. We got two-three hunnert hamburg patties, canned fruit and vegetables, dry cereal, aigs… no more milk than what’s in the cooler, but the water’s from the well. If we had to, the five of us cud get on for a month or more.”

  The trucker came over and blinked at us. “I’m dead out of cigarettes. Now that cigarette machine…”

  “It ain’t my machine,” the counterman said. “No sir.”

  The trucker had a steel pinch bar he’d gotten in the supply room out back. He went to work on the machine.

  The kid went down to where the jukebox glittered and flashed and plugged in a quarter. John Fogarty began to sing about being born on the bayou.

  I sat down and looked out the window. I saw something I didn’t like right away. A Chevy light pickup had joined the patrol, like a Shetland pony amid Percherons. I watched it until it rolled impartially over the body of the girl from the Caddy and then I looked away.

  “We made them!” the girl cried out with sudden wretchedness. “They can’t!”

  Her boy friend told her to hush. The trucker got the cigarette machine open and helped himself to six or eight packs of Viceroys. He put them in different pockets and then ripped one pack open. From the intent expression on his face, I wasn’t sure if he was going to smoke them or eat them up.

  Another record came on the juke. It was eight o’clock.

  At eight-thirty the power went off.

  When the lights went, the girl screamed, a cry that stopped suddenly, as if her boy friend had put his hand over her mouth. The jukebox died with a deepening, unwinding sound.

  “What the Christ!” the trucker said.

  “Counterman!” I called.
“You got any candles?”

  “I think so. Wait… yeah. Here’s a few.”

  I got up and took them. We lit them and started placing them around. “Be careful,” I said. “If we burn the place down there’s the devil to pay.”

  He chuckled morosely. “You know it.”

  When we were done placing the candles, the kid and his girl were huddled together and the trucker was by the back door, watching six more heavy trucks weaving in and out between the concrete fuel islands. “This changes things, doesn’t it?” I said.

  “Damn right, if the power’s gone for good.”

  “How bad?”

  “Hamburg’ll go over in three days. Rest of the meat and aigs’ll go by about as quick. The cans will be okay, an’ the dry stuff. But that ain’t the worst. We ain’t gonna have no water without the pump.”

  “How long?”

  “Without no water? A week.”

  “Fill every empty jug you’ve got. Fill them till you can’t draw anything but air. Where are the toilets? There’s good water in the tanks.”

  “Employees’ res’room is in the back. But you have to go outside to get to the lady’s and gent’s.”

  “Across to the service building?” I wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.

  “No. Out the side door an’ up a ways.”

  “Give me a couple of buckets.”

  He found two galvanized pails. The kid strolled up.

  “What are you doing?”

  “We have to have water. All we can get.”

  “Give me a bucket then.”

  I handed him one.

  “Jerry!” the girl cried. “You—”

  He looked at her and she didn’t say anything else, but she picked up a napkin and began to tear at the corners. The trucker was smoking another cigarette and grinning at the floor. He didn’t speak up.