The night road is one of the cleanest horror engines I know. It gives a character direction, distance, and the illusion of control, then surrounds that little line of headlights with more dark than any person can reason with.
The Crown of Glass keeps returning to that feeling: the radio thinning out, the fields flattening into signal, the roadside objects becoming too ceremonial to stay ordinary. Americana is not decoration in that book. It is the ritual equipment.
I like horror that lets familiar places remain familiar until they suddenly cannot. A motel sign, a telephone pole, a county road, a wheat field at 2:00 AM. The object does not need to transform. The gaze does.