The Road Virus Heads North
Richard Kinnell, a successful horror writer, drives back home to Derry, Maine, from a literary conference in Boston.Along the way, Kinnell comes across a yard sale where he notices a bizarre, disturbing painting of a sinister-looking man with filed teeth driving a Pontiac Firebird across Boston's Tobin Bridge.Entitled The Road Virus Heads North, this painting was created by a tortured genius who burned all his other pieces of artwork before committing suicide; the artist left a cryptic note explaining that he couldn't stand what was happening to him any longer, thus justifying his actions.Kinnell, an avid collector of such oddities, purchases the painting without hesitation from the woman running the sale.It was also adapted by artist Glenn Chadbourne for the book The Secretary of Dreams, a collection of comics based on King's short fiction published by Cemetery Dance in December 2006.