“Pit-Stop” by Ben Larken ISBN: 9781905091126 (Paperback) 9781905091188 (Digital ebook)

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LAST CHANCE AT REDEMPTION FOR THE NEXT MILLION YEARS…

Welcome to the Pit-Stop Grill, a roadside attraction along Arizona’s Route 66 where travellers kick up their feet while sipping a nice cup of joe. It’s a cool oasis in an unforgiving desert landscape. It’s also the last stop on the road to Hell.

 

When ten people find themselves inside the eerie diner, unable to get out or remember how they arrived, all they know is what their waitress, Holly, tells them: a bus is coming. It will take them the rest of the way to a destination of unspeakable horrors.

 

Led by highway patrolman, Officer Scott Alders, the group of strangers unite with a common goal—-escape. Each of them holds dark secrets, but personal demons are no match for the wraithlike bus driver who arrives bearing the nametag RAMSEY.

 

Driving an oily black bus with ghostly headlights and exhaust that smells of brimstone, Ramsey wastes no time picking them off one by one. As their number dwindles and the terror mounts, Scott Alders realizes it will take more than a police-issued sidearm to stop the evil that tracks them. But is there enough power in their battered spirits to combat a crimson-eyed driver with a schedule to keep?

 

One thing is clear: you’ll think twice before you make your next Pit-Stop.

The bus driver continued toward the Pit-Stop, strolling leisurely, taking wide strides on spindly legs as if he had all the time in the world. He wore a plain black uniform with a matching bus driver’s cap. His lanky frame passed the gas pumps.

Scott huddled next to Dustin. “We could take him. If we all charged him at once, we could take him.”

Dustin’s eyes were glued to the approaching driver. As Scott finished talking he saw the white-faced man crack a smile, as if he had heard Scott’s question. Because he did. Dustin thought. Dear Lord, he hears everything we say. Maybe even everything we think.

“I think that would be a bad idea,” Dustin finally said.

“I’m open to any good ideas,” Scott replied, a trace of anger in his voice.

“I’m working on it.”

“Work faster.”

Footsteps echoed through the door. Click, click, click. A silhouette paused in the threshold then the driver stepped silently inside.

“He has a nametag,” Laura whispered.

Dustin saw it—a small white circle on his right breast pocket with one word sewn in red. His heart sank another notch. “So that’s Ramsey.”

The bus driver paused once more to look with crimson eyes at the crowd at the far end of the diner, eight people pressed together. Then he walked to the counter and took a seat on the first bar stool.

“Holly,” he said in a voice soft as velvet. He could have been in bed whispering to a lover. “Where are you, Holly?”

She stepped from the back room, shivering all over. “I’m here.” She tried to make eye contact with him but couldn’t find the courage to do it.

Ramsey placed delicate white hands on the counter. “You know what sounds good, Holly? Iced tea. I swear it’s been an eternity since I’ve had a nice glass of iced tea. Would you bring me some? A hemina’s worth should suffice.”

A hemina’s worth? Dustin had never heard the word and would guess no one else in their group had either. He had a distinct feeling they were looking at a being who had traversed all cultures and nations, all eras of history too. He frowned. How old was this guy?

Holly nodded curtly. “Right away.”

She disappeared into the back room and Dustin heard pots clanking as Holly rushed to fill the order. Meanwhile, the bus driver remained motionless on the stool, his eyes pointed at the cook’s window. A hint of a smile curled his pasty lips. Holly reappeared with a pitcher of honey-colored liquid and a clean glass. She placed the glass in front of him. It rattled against the counter as her hands shook and she poured the tea, using all her focus to keep from sloshing even a drop.

“Thank you, Holly,” he said, bringing the cup to his lips. His glittering red eyes never left the waitress as he took several long gulps, his throat clicking with each swallow. He set the empty glass on the counter and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

“Holly,” he said with a voice infuriatingly calm. “Please show your customers what happens when they refuse to get on the bus.”

Even through the nerves stretching Holly’s face, her expression dropped. She didn’t move at first. Then, with noticeable strain, her hand lifted to her blouse. She unbuttoned the top button, then the next one. She stopped.

“Ramsey, please,” she whispered. “Please don’t make me.”

He replied like a parent softly disciplining a child. “Holly, show the people what happens when you don’t get on the bus.”

She closed her eyes as a line of mascara ran down her cheek. She unclasped the next button and pulled open her blouse.

“Oh, crap,” Bill said. He was the only one who spoke. Cassie let out a small whimper. Everyone else could barely breathe as they stared at the cavity where Holly’s chest should have been. The skin was gone. Instead there were mold-covered ribs and even darker things lurking beneath. Decrepit organs like fist-sized raisins writhed and pumped under the bones. Holly closed her blouse as quickly as she opened it.

“Thank you, Holly,” Ramsey said. “You may go now.”

The waitress lowered her head and stepped into the backroom with her hand over her mouth trying to stifle the sobs. Ramsey the bus driver revolved slowly on the bar stool, turning toward them.

“Now,” he said with a sigh. “Get on the bus or suffer the same wrath.”

“No,” Scott answered, his voice cracking. “Don’t listen to him. He can’t get us all. We have to stick together.”

Ramsey puckered his lips. “Such a valiant path. And yet, it’s never succeeded.”

Scott didn’t move, though Dustin could see a slight tremble in his legs. Then he realized he was trembling, too. They all were, as if an electric current passed through the group.

“You’re going down!” Bill cried, throwing his baseball cap aside. He ran at the driver, yelling a wordless battle cry, his fists raised and ready as he stampeded toward the albino perched on the bar stool. Ramsey never got up. He lifted one ghostly finger and touched Bill’s fist as it dived toward him.

Bill fell over howling in pain.

He landed on his side then rolled onto his back, shrieking like a banshee. A large circle of red appeared on the drunk driver’s chest. The stain deepened, making trenches of crimson in his shirt as a “Y” shape bled into the center of the circle, resembling a peace sign or a—

“A steering wheel?” Dustin said.

“Very good, Mr. Calloway,” Ramsey said, nodding respectfully. “Bill’s car didn’t have an airbag, and I’m afraid he was too drunk to remember his seatbelt. He died instantly, impaled on his own steering wheel. Such a shame, as you can see.”

Bill screamed. Janine buried her face in Dustin’s shirt. He couldn’t blame her. Bill Myers’ chest was collapsing in front of them. Bones crinkled and snapped like popcorn popping. And yet Bill kept screaming. His lungs should have been punctured. His esophagus had to be tattered ribbons.

Scott was thinking the same thing. “How is he still yelling? Why isn’t he dead yet?”

“He can’t die,” Dustin said. “He’s already dead.”

Ramsey leaned over Bill without getting off his barstool. “Would you like to get on the bus now?”

“Yes!” Bill cried and the moment he said it the blood disappeared from his shirt and his chest re-inflated. His screaming snapped off like a switch. He looked down at his body through tear-filled eyes.

“I would hurry if I were you,” Ramsey said.

Bill didn’t need further convincing. He leapt to his feet and ran outside, racing for the bus. It welcomed him into its black stomach with cryptic silence.

The bus driver rose from the barstool and stretched. His spine cracked and sounded like twigs snapping. He yawned, revealing shimmering, blood-caked teeth, and turned to the others.

 

“Who’s next?”

5 stars A gem in purgatory, by Geoff Nelder

 

Pit-stop is an extraordinary horror / noir thriller. It presents Ben Larken's imaginative concept of a place we all dwell on but hope never to reside inside: the state of limbo. What really happens when we die? The devout among us may say they have no doubts and maybe some of the ten victims of fatal accidents on Route 66 didn't either. Some would assume our atoms are given up to be recycled, and our intelligence, memories, spirit, soul, essence? They are not electrons even if we make use of them while incorporate. The fate of us all is fascinating, and Larken works us like an expert door-to-door salesman in making us want to follow his characters, yet run away from others.

Waking up in the Pit-Stop Grill knowing quickly that you and the other customers have recently died on the same highway, mostly in gruesome conditions, sends a chill into your stomach. How come you still have thoughts, can feel, and hear, talk to the others? Who is the waitress, Holly, laughing at their predicament, serving terminal threats with the undrinkable coffee?

With consummate literary skill, Larken crafts each of the characters so that you believe in and care for what happens to them even those who committed evil while alive. He uses the readers' own fear of death and purgatory, along with their imagined freak-outs to tease and make us want to turn the pages. One of the two main characters is police officer Scott Alder, who tortures his memory to figure what he'd done so bad in his life to warrant such angst. Dustin is the youth who inadvertently killed him. He realizes that and so we have the intriguing situation of a young man who although he committed plenty of minor felonies when alive, feels guilty while in limbo. Marvelous. Those two occupy most of the points of view, and that's fine. They are different in their alive experiences but have a common post-accident goal to cheat the devil. Did I say devil? A twisted inhuman being, Ramsey, comes to the diner to collect them on his bus to hell, Incredibly, and yet believable enough to pull you, dear reader, along, the tormented souls discover they can resist the soul-gatherer. They know they can't succeed ultimately and yet it seems as if they might. Maybe they do. Good novels have a hook in the first few pages but this premise of cheating the devil's coachman (bus driver) is a fishing line with hooks all along to the last chapter.

There have been many stories using our intrigue over the state of limbo. In Dante's Divine Comedy, it isn't a pit-stop grill but a castle, but there the similarity ends. There is a kind of divine comedy in Larken's novel in that in spite of the nail-bitingly awfulness, some of the characters are able to bolster each other's morale and often that is with just the right balance of ironic humour. Another literary comparison is in an episode of the Twilight Zone where a clown, soldier, dancer, Scotsman, and hobo realize the large box they are in is limbo. Pit-Stop continues with more depth and satisfying horror than that TV episode.

A neat trick rarely found in debut novelists is to allow readers to learn about the characters through the eyes of the others. By showing us their physical descriptions and foibles this way Larken avoids the info dump pen portraits writers usually load onto their readers. Thanks for that and for using original metaphors and similes. I particularly liked Holly with the teeth the colour of old paper, and cloud shadows that slid across the desert floor like sharks beneath the surface. That particular image resurfaces, so to speak, later with the soul-collecting bus; a cunning reflecting literary ploy. Well done.

I can strongly recommend this book. It will shake your faith if you have one, make you wish you had faith otherwise. As an atheist and thus knowing there's no hell or heaven, I now believe in limbo.

 

 

5 stars Great Stop, by Caprii Love

 

Let me begin my review by letting everyone know that I don't usually read horror books, I usually read romance novels, in fact it has been over a year since I have read anything accept a romance novel, until now. My mom brought this book home, and I decided read it. I had exhausted my supply of books so I picked it up the other day and I had a lot of trouble putting it down. This book is amazing, its thrilling and brilliant. It is a wonderful story line, full of characters you will love and hate all at once. I'm not usually easily scared but while I was reading this book I was easily spooked, which made it all the more fun to read. I highly recommend this book to readers of all different book genres, because it carries a little bit of everything within it, joy, compassion, sadness, love, fear, strength and the list could go on and on. Take my advice and don't just pass over this amazing read.

 

 

4 stars Fun First Novel, by K. D. Payne

 

What do you do when you wake up in a diner in the middle of nowhere with no recollection of how you arrived? Your vehicle isn't outside and you feel a strange complacency and willingness to just sit there and zone out... when you suddenly notice that everyone else in the diner is doing exactly the same thing. Your waitress is beyond creepy and suddenly as you all wake up you realize that you may just be in a pit stop on your way to hell.

 

This book is an interesting look at the afterlife, and it certainly isn't a pretty place. A group of individuals finds themselves in a hideous way station on their way to the land of fire and brimstone. An evil looking tour bus with an even more demonic bus driver arrives to take them on to whatever horrid future awaits them, but this group has woken from their trance, and they are prepared to fight back. Can you fight the grim reaper? Can a handful of backsliding sinners fight off the devil? And what would happen if they DO get on the bus? Is it too late for redemption?

 

This group of survivors is appalling, as they are all sinners, some of them are the most horrifying kind, but as a reader you don't want them to end up burning in eternal torment. The author does an excellent job of putting the reader in the position of rooting for undesirable people because deep down we all want to believe that redemption is possible, even at this point. We want these people to come to term with what they have done and find a way to make up for it. Somehow the author manages this without ever truly touching on the issue of religion. Though the story is based off of the Catholic theory of Limbo and Purgatory, there is no mention of religion other than one brief mentioning of praying.

 

The characters are fairly easy to get to know as they have a form of telepathy which allows us to watch their memories through another character's eyes. I did have some problems with the whole concept of the book in that since there were no "why's" or religious background to draw from, there were two characters that I could not for the life of me figure out why they were there. I know that as an author he needed to have someone in the tale to be our shining knight, but why would they be on a one way track to hell? That question was never answered for me and left me a bit perplexed. Other than that this was a very enjoyable book