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- Herausgeber: Al-Mashreq eBookstore
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Serie: Wonder Stories
- Sprache: Englisch
In Ghouls Ride the Highways, Arthur Leo Zagat delivers a pulse-pounding horror adventure set in a world where terror roams the open roads. After dark, the highways become the hunting grounds for nightmarish ghouls who prey on unsuspecting travelers. When a small town is plagued by these gruesome creatures, a determined group of locals takes it upon themselves to fight back. As they battle the relentless horrors, they uncover a dark conspiracy tied to the origins of these ghoulish beings. With time running out and the danger closing in, the group must face their deepest fears and unravel the mystery before it's too late. This gripping tale is perfect for those who crave horror with a twist of adventure and mystery.
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Seitenzahl: 46
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Table of Contents
Ghouls Ride the Highways
I. — SPECTRE AT THE WHEEL!
II. — THE GROVE OF ASHTAROTH
III. — NONA BEGS FOR DEATH
IV. — NONA RIDES THE JUGGERNAUT
Landmarks
Table of Contents
Cover
Ghouls Ride the Highways
I. — SPECTRE AT THE WHEEL!
IT was after the stop at River Eddy that Nona Blake realized she was the only woman in the bus. Exhaustion had conquered her, and she had been asleep, curled up under her coat, in the rearmost seat. The bustle at the last settlement before the road started its long, steep climb up Buzzard Mountain had only dazedly roused her, and then the burring rumble of the huge conveyance, getting under way again, had merged with troubled dreams—with oblivion...
A sudden fierce terror blasted her awake, jerked her upright with a force that was not volition, tore her throat with a scream that she just barely choked off before it found utterance.
Her hand flew to her bosom, panic rocking her lest something had happened to the precious ampule that was the reason for her frenzied rush to the city. Thank God! It was still there between her breasts, where she had thrust it for safety. It was there, a thin-walled vial of fragile glass that meant life for Dan—Would she be in time? Was he still raving, bloated and mindless in the grip of a strange and terrible fever, in their honeymoon camp on Glimmer Lake? Or...?
Her fingers curling on the leather of the seat-top in front of her, Nona stared into the long, vague reach of the bus' interior, somehow eerie under the dim luminance of the single flickering bulb in its ceiling. What was wrong? What uncanny change had occurred that set her heart thumping against its caging ribs?
For a moment there was only the swish of the leaves against the window at her side, the rattle of twigs as the darksome forest crowded close to the narrow trail—only the pound of rushing wheels beneath and an overpowering dread, a feeling of impending doom. Then Nona was aware that all she could see of the other passengers in the line ahead was a row of rounded, black hat-crowns, one to each double seat. Uncannily, they were all alike—all exactly alike and all swaying identically with the motion of the bus. Right, left—right, left, they rocked in perfect unison, as though an invisible stiff rod ran through to fix them in an immutable rhythm. Even the driver, raised slightly above the general level, was in the grip of that queer penduluming...
The driver! As Nona's wide-eyed, burning gaze came to him her scalp tightened, was a taut cap squeezing her skull. For his jaunty uniform cap was replaced by a round-crowned hat like those others—a black hat whose broad, turned-down brim wholly hid his head. Good Lord! His shoulders were enveloped by a funereal, voluminous cloak whose wide sleeves, flapping from his crooked arms, were like great, Stygian wings. He was crouched over the wheel, immovable except for that outer sway, grotesquely perched there like a huge bat—and his hands on the wheel rim were clawed, grey talons..!
THE bus lurched, flung Nona against the window. For an instant she peered out into impenetrable darkness, into a tar-barrel murk that lay solid against the glass and rapped for admittance with the trees' tiny fingers. Then she twisted, pulling herself back...
The seats across the aisle were tenanted by a row of black-hatted, black-cloaked figures as exactly alike as images seen in the infinite vista of facing mirrors. Each was a hunched, inky blot in his cubicle, each rocked—right, left; right, left—in precise accord with the others, and each was without sign of life save for that swaying. But the girl could see the jet-shrouded form of the one directly opposite, and the one next in front of him. She could see their faces...
These too, reproduced one another in every minutest detail—duplicated one another, and duplicated horror. They were still, terribly still, without the slightest flicker of expression, and without color. A uniform grey invested the thin straight lips, the sunken cheeks, the pinched nostrils, the pointed chins lying livid against the inky folds of the swathing, shapeless cloaks. Bloodless, hueless, utterly immobile, the dull, light-swallowing gloss coating those weird countenances was the complexion of death, the patina of corruption that films the skin of corpses...
But these grim companions of her midnight journey were not corpses. Rigid as they were, so that their incredible bodies rocked as a whole—right, left; right, left—they were yet somehow palpitant with an unmistakable aura of evil sentience, of gruesome beingness that was life of a kind, though not life as we know it. Their very lack of movement was a somber menace flowing from them, filling the hurtling, dim bus, and billowing about Nona as an almost tangible miasma of throbbing, icy fear.
She pulled in a gasping, hot breath. That menace pierced her soul, quivered in every cell of her slight body, numbed every nerve and muscle, with a queasy, nightmare paralysis. She could not move, she could not cry out. She could only gaze with a tortured, affrighted stare at the sable specters.
