Roadside Horrors

By Cora Buhlert

Roads are interstitial spaces, their only purpose to take you from one place to another.

 

In most cases, roads only connect two places in the real world. But occasionally, a road crosses the borderline into the unknown. That's when things can come through, terrible things that lurk by the side of the road for the unwary traveller.

 

A car full of drunk teenagers on their way home from a festival encounter something terrible in the woods of Northwest Germany…

 

Nina delivers newspapers in the wee hours of the night and pays no attention to the pets that go missing in the neighbourhood… or the strange sounds echoing from the sewer grilles…

 

On a lonely country road in northern Spain, a truck driver encounters the ghosts of a terrible past…

 

So buckle up and get ready to meet the horrors that lurk by the side of the road. But be careful, because every encounter with them might be your last…

 

This is a collection of three tales of roadside horror of 9500 words altogether by Hugo winner Cora Buhlert.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pegasus Pulp Publishing
• Release date: Oct 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215908952

Cora Buhlert

Cora Buhlert was born and bred in North Germany, where she still lives today – after time spent in London, Singapore, Rotterdam and Mississippi. Cora holds an MA degree in English from the University of Bremen and is currently working towards her PhD. Cora has been writing, since she was a teenager, and has published stories, articles and poetry in various international magazines. When she is not writing, she works as a translator and teacher.

Book preview

Introduction

3 skulls

Roads are interstitial spaces, their only purpose to take you from one place to another.

In most cases, roads only connect two places in the real world. But occasionally, a road crosses the borderline into the unknown.

That’s when things can come through, terrible things that lurk by the side of the road for the unwary traveller.

So buckle up and get ready to meet those horrors that lurk by the side of the road.

But be careful, because every encounter with them might be your last…

3 skulls

The Horror in the Westermark Woods

3 skulls

Thanks for the drink, man. I really appreciate it. Prost!

Oh yes, the story. You want the story about the things in the Westermark woods? Well, buckle up then, cause this one’s going to be a doozy.

It was more than thirty years ago now. I had just turned eighteen and I had a driver’s licence and a car, a red Volkswagen Golf. And in rural Northwest Germany, a car and a driver’s licence meant freedom. It also made me really popular, the most popular guy in the village. People who hadn’t even looked twice at me before suddenly wanted to be my friends, just because I had a car.

It happened at the height of summer on the night of the Schützenfest, the local target shooting competition. Though a Schützenfest is much more than just a shooting competition. Sure, there is shooting, but there is also a parade and the crowning of the winners of the shooting competition as king and queen of the marksmen. And last but not least, there is a fairground with sausage stands and beer stalls, a party tent and even a carousel or two.

If you grew up on rural Northwest Germany, the Schützenfest was the biggest event of the year. Everybody went there, whether you were into target shooting or not. Even if, like me, you considered yourself a pacifist and couldn’t hit the side of a barn anyway.

So of course, I went to the Schützenfest that year. I hung out with my friends, having a good time, and we all danced the night away in the party tent, grooving to Madonna and Kylie Minogue, George Michael and the Pet Shop Boys.

It was already half past two, when we finally staggered home. Well, the others staggered. Not me. For I had a car and a driver’s license, so I was the designated driver and also the only one who was sober.

Two weeks before, a girl from a neighbouring village had gone missing. And the last anyone had seen of her was that she’d ridden her bike along the very same road we needed to take to get home.

Most likely, she’d just run away and would eventually turn up again. At least, that’s what the police said. Nonetheless, everybody was nervous and no one wanted to go home alone that night.

For we knew that the girl wasn’t the first to go missing in the area. There had been several cases, going back decades. A farmer milking his cows before dawn, a country doctor on the way to a late night emergency, a young couple making out in a cornfield, a few scattered soldiers, stragglers separated from their regiment, during the war. They all vanished, never to be seen again.

The people rarely talked about the ones who’d vanished, but they remembered. They remembered