Also, listen to the Boss, he’s on the stereo in an unexpected place.

132. Road of Bones – Christopher Golden

Forest spirits and brutal freezing cold are the threats to survival in Road of Bones, Golden’s horror novel set on the Kolyma Highway, which is truly a road of bones that exists built on permafrost and the people tasked with building it during the Stalinist era. In the story, an American and a Englishman are trying to make a TV show about the road of bones and living in the coldest place in the world, which in this story is Akhust. They meet their guide at an isolated gas station and then end up at a bar eating reindeer burgers before getting to Akhust and finding the entire town empty…with doors open and some footprints in the snow – barefoot prints, that is. On the way they’ve also saved a woman named Nari from her car’s breakdown which could have been the cause of her death had they not picked her up.

The mystery of what happened at Akhust is followed by some wolves that don’t seem like wolves and a figure straight out of shamanism in that area of the world, the parnee. Very scary nature is involved in the town’s abandonment and while they’re searching it and before several people at attacked by the not-wolf wolves, they find a little girl. Now, just a reminder, not every little girl is a nice one who is catatonic because she’s scared. Some little girls are more Bad Seed than Little Orphan Annie, but if you’re a bad spirit looking for a place to hide, a child is a good choice because someone will inevitably want to save and protect a child. In this case, they all should have fought that impulse as much as possible and they wouldn’t have gotten in their own car wreck. Sometimes the scary looking ones are in the right.

Ozma will never be thwarted by a little girl. She knows how to thwart evil spirits, hide while looking sweet, and is as formidable as an ancient goddess of nature.