From a Buick 8 is a novel by horror writer Stephen King. Published on September 24, 2002, this is the second novel by Stephen King to feature a supernatural car (the first one being Christine, which like this novel is set in Pennsylvania); King's short story Trucks also involved paranormal events involving vehicles. According to the book sleeve: "From a Buick 8 is a novel about our fascination with deadly things, about our insistence on answers when there are none, about terror and courage in the face of the unknowable." The title comes from Bob Dylan's song "From a Buick 6", and is also clearly an homage to H.P. Lovecraft's short story "From Beyond", with which the novel shares thematic and plot elements. Award winning independent publisher Cemetery Dance Publications published a signed Limited Edition of the book which sold for $500 or more on eBay.
The state police of Troop D in rural Pennsylvania have kept a secret in Shed B out back of the barracks ever since 1979, when Troopers Ennis Rafferty and Curtis Wilcox answered a call from a gas station just down the road and came back with an abandoned Buick Roadmaster. Curt Wilcox knew old cars, and he knew immediately that this one was...wrong, just wrong. A few hours later, when Rafferty vanished, Wilcox and his fellow troopers knew the car was worse than dangerous.
Curt's avid curiosity took the lead, and they investigated as best they could, as much as they dared. Over the years, the troop absorbed the mystery as part of the background to their work, the Buick 8 sitting out there like a still-life painting that breathes — inhaling a little bit of this world, exhaling a little bit of what world it came from.
In the fall of 2001, a few months after Curt Wilcox is killed in a gruesome auto accident, his eightee-year-old boy, Ned, starts coming by the barracks. Sandy Dearborn, Sergeant Commanding, knows it's the boy's way of holding onto his father, and Ned is allowed to become part of the Troop D family. One day he looks in the window of Shed B and discovers family secret. Like his father, Ned wants answers...
From a Buick 8 is a book about our fascination with deadly things, about our insistence on answers when there are none, about terror and courage in the face of the unknowable.