On Slide Inn Road

It was supposed to be a family road trip to visit an aging relative. Then the car got stuck in a muddy rut and, well—these things never turn out well, do they? Stephen King, the legendary architect of your worst nightmares, delivers another shocking story you won’t soon forget.

Granpop’s dinosaur of a Buick station wagon creeps along the dirt road at twenty miles an hour. Frank Brown is driving with his eyes slitted and his mouth compressed to a fine white line. Corinne, his missus, is riding shotgun with her iPad open in her lap, and when Frank asks her if she’s sure this is right, she tells him everything is fine, steady as she goes, they’ll rejoin the main road in another six miles, eight at most, and from there it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump to the turnpike. She doesn’t want to say that the blinking blue dot marking their location disappeared five minutes ago and the map is frozen in place. They’ve been married fourteen years and Corinne knows the mouth her husband is currently wearing. It means he’s close to blowing his stack.