Jon Miller is broke, evicted, and desperate. When he stumbles across a job listing for a night security guard at By-Pass Motors-a lonely, half-abandoned car dealership on the edge of town-he grabs the chance. The rules are simple: patrol the lot every hour, don't leave the property, and never call for help.
It sounds easy. Until the first night.
The cars aren't silent. Their windows watch. Their headlights flicker like eyelids. Their engines whisper with a sound Jon feels in his bones. Something hums beneath the concrete, vibrating through the lot like a heartbeat. And the longer he stays, the more he realizes he isn't the first guard to work these nights. The others didn't last.
A mechanic's lost journal confirms his fears: the cars move when no one's looking, communicating with each other, shifting in the dark. And deeper still, in the shadows of the service bay, Jon discovers classified files from Project Chimera-a Cold War experiment that fused organic matter with steel, creating vehicles that could heal, evolve, and think. The prototypes were never destroyed. They were abandoned. And now, after decades of silence, they are awake.
Every patrol drags Jon further into a nightmare of whispering sedans, screaming semi-trucks, and a hive mind of steel and glass that doesn't just want his sanity-it wants him. Escape may no longer be possible. The lot has already chosen its prey.
By-Pass Motors is a relentless supernatural horror novel that blends the creeping paranoia of Bentley Little, the supernatural menace of John Saul, and the relentless dread of Stephen King's Christine. With themes of isolation, survival, and the terror of machines that refuse to die, this is a story for readers who crave both psychological suspense and bone-deep chills.
Step into the lot where silence hums with hidden life.
Where headlights don't just reflect-
They stare.
