It Came from the Garage! Read online

  I switched the pump to “on” and pulled out the nozzle; unscrewed the first gas cap and began to pump fuel.

  It took me half an hour to pump the first tank dry and then I moved on to the second island. I was alternating between gas and diesel. Trucks marched by endlessly. I was beginning to understand now. I was beginning to see. People were doing this all over the country or they were lying dead like the trucker, knocked out of their boots with heavy treadmarks mashed across their guts.

  The second tank was dry then and I went to the third. The sun was like a hammer and my head was starting to ache with the fumes. There were blisters in the soft webbing between thumb and index finger. But they wouldn’t know about that. They would know about leaky manifolds and bad gaskets and frozen universal joints, but not about blisters or sunstroke or the need to scream. They needed to know only one thing about their late masters, and they knew it. We bleed.

  The last tank was sucked dry and I threw the nozzle on the ground. Still there were more trucks, lined up around the corner. I twisted my head to relieve a crick in my neck and stared. The line went out of the front parking lot and up the road and out of sight, two and three lanes deep. It was like a nightmare of the Los Angeles Freeway at rush hour. The horizon shimmered and danced with their exhaust; the air stank of carburization.

  “No,” I said. “Out of gas. All gone, fellas.”

  And there was a heavier rumble, a bass note that shook the teeth. A huge silvery truck was pulling up, a tanker.

  Written on the side was: “Fill Up with Phillips 66—The Jetport Fuel”!

  A heavy hose dropped out of the rear.

  I went over, took it, flipped up the feeder plate on the first tank, and attached the hose. The truck began to pump. The stench of petroleum sank into me—the same stink that the dinosaurs must have died smelling as they went down into the tar pits. I filled the other two tanks and then went back to work.

  Consciousness twinkled away to a point where I lost track of time and trucks. I unscrewed, rammed the nozzle into the hole, pumped until the hot, heavy liquid splurted out, then replaced the cap. My blisters broke, trickling pus down to my wrists. My head was pounding like a rotted tooth and my stomach rolled helplessly with the stench of hydrocarbons.

  I was going to faint. I was going to faint and that would be the end of it. I would pump until I dropped.

  Then there were hands on my shoulders, the dark hands of the counterman. “Go in,” he said. “Rest yourself. I’ll take over till dark. Try to sleep.”

  I handed him the pump.

  But I can’t sleep.

  The girl is sleeping. She’s sprawled over in the corner with her head on a tablecloth and her face won’t unknot itself even in sleep. It’s the timeless, ageless face of the warhag. I’m going to get her up pretty quick. It’s twilight and the counterman has been out there for five hours.

  Still they keep coming. I look out through the wrecked window and their headlights stretch for a mile or better, twinkling like yellow sapphires in the growing darkness. They must be backed up all the way to the turnpike, maybe further.

  The girl will have to take her turn. I can show her how. She’ll say she can’t, but she will. She wants to live.

  You want to be their slaves? the counterman had said. That’s what it’ll come to. You want to spend the rest of your life changin’ oil filters every time one of those things blats its horn?

  We could run, maybe. It would be easy to make the drainage ditch now, the way they’re stacked up. Run through the fields, through the marshy places where trucks would bog down like mastodons and go—

  —back to the caves.

  Drawing pictures in charcoal. This is the moon god. This is a tree. This is a Mack semi overwhelming a hunter.

  Not even that. So much of the world is paved now. Even the playgrounds are paved. And for the fields and marshes and deep woods there are tanks, half-tracks, flatbeds equipped with lasers, masers, heat-seeking radar. And little by little, they can make it into the world they want.

  I can see great convoys of trucks filling the Okefenokee Swamp with sand, the bulldozers ripping through the national parks and wildlands, grading the earth flat, stamping it into one great flat plain. And then the hot-top trucks arriving.

  But they’re machines. No matter what’s happened to them, what mass consciousness we’ve given them, they can’t reproduce. In fifty or sixty years they’ll be rusting hulks with all menace gone out of them, moveless carcasses for free men to stone and spit at.

  And if I close my eyes I can see the production lines in Detroit and Dearborn and Youngstown and Mackinac, new trucks being put together by blue-collars who no longer even punch a clock but only drop and are replaced.

  The counterman is staggering a little now. He’s an old bastard, too. I’ve got to wake the girl.

  Two planes are leaving silver contrails etched across the darkening eastern horizon.

  I wish I could believe there are people in them.

  About The Author

  Stephen King

  Stephen Edwin King is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, science fiction, and fantasy. His books have sold more than 350 million copies, many of which have been adapted into feature films, miniseries, television series, and comic books.

  King has published fifty-eight novels (including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman) and six non-fiction books. He has written approximately 200 short stories, most of which have been published in book collections. He has been described as the “King of Horror.”

  Wheels Of Evil

  By: Guy N. Smith

  “That’s it,” the tall, attractive woman indicated the car which stood amongst her late husband’s collection of classic makes. “I… I want to get rid of it as soon as possible. Make me an offer and it’s yours, Mister Coltman.”

  Kevin Coltman had been restoring classic cars for private owners over the past fifteen years and was something of an icon in his trade. Tall with stooped shoulders, his lean features were oil stained from a job he had been working on when he had received Marie Johnston’s phone call. It was not one to be ignored, and with no small amount of difficulty he restrained his excitement. Her late husband, Carl, had been a regular customer of his, so he was obviously top of her contact list.

  “Let me have a look at it.”

  She stood back as he approached the car in question. He had never worked on a Jaguar XK-120 before, and right now he could not believe his luck. And actually to be offered the chance to buy it was unbelievable. Of course, he would probably not be able to afford it, but it never hurt to ask.

  Overall, it was somewhat worn. It would need replacement wings for a start. It dated from around 1949 and was one of the most famous sports cars of all time, originally built as a limited production model with the new dual overhead camshaft, in-line six-cylinder 210 cubic inch engine with hemispherical combustion chambers.

  It had been designed by William Lyons, chief of Jaguar. He had introduced an engine allowing high speed cruising, the most powerful in its day, with 160 horsepower.

  Kevin pursed his lips, he was trembling slightly. What an acquisition it would be!

  “What do you want for it?” He braced himself for her reply.

  She hesitated, stepped back from the car. “I… I hadn’t even considered a price. You see, I just want to get rid of it as soon as possible because…” Her voice quavered, “my husband died in it!”

  Kevin nodded solemnly. “So I heard. A crash?”

  “No, nothing like that. I just wish it had been, instead of…” She choked up. “I’ll never forget that terrible day. I’d got the evening meal ready but there was no sign of Carl so… so I came out here. That was when I found him… dead in that damned car!”

  “I’m really very sorry,” Kevin offered, then looked back at the car.

  “The autopsy claimed that he had died of a heart attack. Maybe, but… but you should have
seen the expression on his face as he lay sprawled in the driving seat.” She composed herself enough to look him in the face and whisper, “It was terror, Mister Coltman, sheer terror; there was no mistaking it. Whatever he had seen out here had given him such a shock that it stopped his heart.”

  Kevin just stared at the car. Maybe it was the widow’s unease, or just his nerves getting the better of him, but he could not help but feel just a little unsettled.

  When Carl first acquired the Jaguar, he had told Kevin that he had obtained it from the widow of its prior owner, a Phil Moreton, who died after hitting a barrier whilst on a testing circuit. All told, the crash was nothing too serious. The car could be restored to working condition with a fair degree of time and effort, though Carl had never gotten around to making repairs. But what most shook Kevin was the coincidence he could not deny. It wasn’t injuries from the crash that took Moreton’s life, but a heart attack, just like the one that took Carl.

  Two deaths in the same car! Kevin sensed a tingling in his spine. Did he really want that Jag with its sinister history?

  “I was praying that you would take it, Mister Coltman,” Marie said. “I know Carl would have wanted you to have it. All I want is to get it away from here as soon as possible.”

  “I really don’t know what to offer you. It’s got quite a lot of damage, and renovating it will be expensive. Maybe you should shop around, contact some other dealers.”

  “No!” Her reply embodied a sense of inner panic. “Take it away, please. Give me a couple of grand if that makes you feel easier.”

  Two thousand pounds—it was virtually a gift!—though a gnawing sense of guilt clouded Kevin’s exuberance. He was taking advantage of a widow at her neediest. He pushed these thoughts away. “All right, I’ll go with that if you’re quite sure you’re happy with it.”

  “I’m well satisfied. How soon can you remove it from here?”

  “I’ll come round with the low-loader this afternoon.”

  “That’s fine.”

  He turned to face the car once more and fought back the compulsion to drool. This had been the bargain of his career, and yet… he could not explain this lingering revulsion at his acquisition.

  It was illogical to feel the way he did, he told himself. It was just a car, damaged and in need of extensive renovation. He looked forward to the small fortune he would make when he sold it.

  * * *

  Marie had given Kevin a worn file of records on the Jag which went back to the time when William Lyons had completed his masterpiece and had sold it to a man named Maurice Latcham, a multi-millionaire. The name jogged Kevin’s memory. Further research on the Internet revealed that Latcham was believed to have been involved with the occult. Following the suicide of a young girl, his house had been raided by the police, who had turned up a black altar on his premises.

  Latcham never recovered from the negative press. He sold his business at a loss and later committed suicide. His collection of vintage cars was then auctioned off to pay creditors, and it was here that the Jaguar was purchased by Phil Moreton, who would later meet his end in it.

  This revelation did little to settle Kevin’s nerves, for already he was regretting his purchase. He made its restoration his top priority—the sooner he could be rid of it, the better.

  He began work on it the next day. The first order of business was a thorough examination to ascertain which new parts were needed. Replacement wings and bonnet for a start—he made a note of them—then turned to the interior. He opened the door and with no slight trepidation slid into the worn leather seat. Two of its previous owners had been found dead there, and prior to that a disciple of Satan had sat in that spot. Now he had to occupy the very same place, for there was no other way to examine the various instruments.

  He inserted the key into the ignition, turned it. Immediately the engine burst into life, a powerful humming sound that was barely audible. The fuel gauge registered half full. He pressed the accelerator and the rev counter registered. He let the engine run for a couple of minutes before switching it off. Almost like new, there was nothing wrong there, but he would check it thoroughly later.

  The steering showed signs of wear but it appeared to function perfectly when he turned it. That could easily be brought up to scratch with some polishing.

  And that was when he noticed something on the column, a dull stain that stood out, felt slightly rough to the touch, like some kind of finish that had not been smoothed over. He produced a small torch, shone the beam on the mark, prodded it with his finger. Tiny brown flakes settled into the palm of his hand.

  Dried blood—it was unmistakable.

  He let out a gasp of revulsion and leapt out of the seat, stood there trembling. Was this Phil Moreton’s blood from that crash? Or Latcham’s, from years ago? It didn’t matter—either way, this was a crusted reminder of the Jag’s unsavoury history.

  He paced away from the car and put a hand against the wall for support as he steadied his nerves, telling himself: “It’s just a car, it’s just a car.” Then he bit his lip and shook his head. Of course it was just a car—he was foolish for thinking otherwise.

  He lifted the bonnet, forced himself to concentrate on an examination of the engine. Everything here looked as new, as it had come direct from the Jaguar works around seventy years ago. That struck him as odd—something had to have gotten damaged in Moreton’s wreck. Maybe he or Carl gotten around to restoring the engine before their passing? But then, why would they not restore the rest of the car? Surely they had the means—more so than Kevin by far.

  Kevin wrote out a list of all the replacement parts needed, then went to phone the order to his suppliers. The Jag held more mysteries than it put on. The more he examined it, the more questions it raised.

  Unsettling questions.

  He consoled himself by thinking about the price the restored Jag might fetch.

  * * *

  Restoration was a bigger and longer task than Kevin had anticipated. It was almost as though the car was reluctant to bury its terrible past and was resisting his efforts. But after several weeks of work, the car was finished, re-sprayed a gleaming scarlet, and with everything working as smoothly as the day it had left the Jaguar works.

  He stood back and admired it with a strange mixture of satisfaction and awe. He’d done an excellent job, which he congratulated himself for, but any pride he felt was overshadowed by a mounting desire to see it gone from here as soon as possible.

  He placed a couple of phone calls to his regular customers; surely one of them would be excited at the prospect of acquiring such a rare gem. Kevin resolved to accept the first offer over the two thousand which he had paid for the car, plus the cost of the replacement parts. His labour was incidental. It’d be a bonus if he recovered the cost of his many hours of work. What mattered most was simply to get rid of it.

  God, he had hated every minute he’d spent working on that car, feeling as though someone were constantly watching him. Much as he tried to convince himself that it was all in his mind, his efforts were all in vain. Perhaps now he understood why Carl’s widow had so urgently wanted that car gone—Kevin would have no peace of mind knowing that car still sat in his garage.

  * * *

  Oswell Richardson, one of Kevin’s long-standing buyers, responded to Kevin’s phone call within the hour. Short and overweight, he was a multi-millionaire owner of a chain of restaurants, and one of Kevin’s best customers.

  At first, Oswell looked impressed at Kevin’s offering. The Jag was by rights a beauty. This eagerness dulled by degrees as Oswell surveyed the car, his initial excitement gradually replaced by unease. He opened the door to inspect the interior and shut it again, too quickly for Kevin’s liking. It was faint, but Kevin saw Oswell shudder the tiniest bit after closing the door.

  “Just make me a reasonable offer and it’s yours,” said Kevin, well aware of the sinking feeling in his gut.

  “It’s ver
y nice,” Oswell muttered through thick lips. “But I think I’ll have to pass. Nevertheless, keep me informed of any future acquisitions.”

  The following day, Arthur Kapper, another collector of vintage cars, arrived. Wealthy but by no means in Richardson’s league, he shelled out reasonable sums if a car sufficiently appealed to him. His visit went along much the same lines as the previous viewer’s.

  “Thanks, but no,” he turned him down. “Very nice, but… well, not for me.”

  That evening, at the dinner table, Kevin was not himself. He was despondent, muted. “Would you believe my two best clients won’t even make an offer?” he told his wife. “Jane, in all my years, I’ve never seen anything like this. They were both uneasy, couldn’t get away fast enough.”

  “Like how I feel about it,” Jane replied. “I won’t go in the garage again until it’s gone.”

  He knew the feeling only too well, but resisted telling her.

  “So what’s your next move, Kev?”

  “Damn it, I’m going to take it for a drive tomorrow afternoon,” he grunted. “I’ll damned well give it a good run, show it who’s boss, get rid of that sense of unease. That done, there’s a vintage car auction down in London next week. I’ll enter it there. God, somebody there will surely buy it, maybe make a good bid. Then that will be the end of it, and we might stand to make some good money.”

  “Well, just you be careful when you drive it,” she said, visibly uneasy at the thought.

  Did she know? Kevin asked inwardly. Did she know about Carl’s heart attack, or Moreton’s crash? Or Latcham’s communion with the Dark Powers? No, she couldn’t have known. Kevin never shared these details with her. Then why did she seem so worried for him?