Read Online Shivers 7 by Stephen King, Clive Barker, Bill Pronzini, Graham Masterton, Rio Youers, Ed Gorman, Rick Hautala, Norman Partridge, Norman Prentiss - Free Book Online

bright blue laces, and she’d waved at him and Hallie, too.
    She still waved, but she was headless. The filthy shoe looked like something a homeless giant had worn through, then discarded.
    The door was open, but when Skates ducked inside he couldn’t get far. Craig pushed in after him. A spiral staircase had fallen over, along with all the upstairs exhibits. A few small body parts were visible: several of the old woman’s children had been crushed in the collapsing rubble.
    Skates pulled at a plank that looked intact. It broke at his touch. The wood was rotten.
    Craig recalled Hallie’s sing-song recitation of the rhyme— so many children she didn’t know what to do. How many children were there, really?
    “This is a terrible rhyme,” he told Skates.
    “Dude, it’s a lame-ass park all around.”
    “That not what I mean. The rhyme—I think it’s about being poor. This woman’s got all these kids, and she’s freaking old, and doesn’t have a husband or a job. They’re living in a shoe, for Christ’s sake. Real life, they’d be starving to death.”
    Skates kicked at another board. A tiny fiberglass hand holding a lollipop rolled off the pile. “What a shithole.”
    “Hallie actually cried when they closed this place down. But I guess she cried about a lot of things.”
    “Can’t compete with that, can you?”
    “Nope. Hallie always got her way.”
    “I’m sorry man.”
    “That’s okay.” Craig closed his eyes for a second, blacking out the flashlight beam and the trash and the pile of collapsed rubble. Everything but the memories. “I wish I’d never come here.”
    “We’ll be out soon enough,” Skates said. He set the flashlight on the floor, planted one foot at the bottom of the heap, and grunted and pulled at a curled metal bar. It was part of the broken banister, about five feet long once he’d extracted it. “This’ll work like a big crowbar, don’t you think?”

    * * *

    Outside, Skates whistled and did the hoot-owl a few more times. As they retraced their steps back to the teacup ride, he dragged the metal bar on the path behind him, a dragon’s claw scraping at the blacktop. Craig held the flashlight, which began to dim; he flicked the power off now and then, to conserve the battery. Slivers of moonlight through the trees made it easy enough to see, as long as they stayed on the path.
    “How about this,” Skates said. “We get back there, pry the cup off him, and it’s like one of those ghost stories where at the end the guy’s hair has turned white from fear. Imagine Eddie with white hair. And he’s lost his voice from being so scared, that’s why he doesn’t answer. He’ll never talk again.”
    “We should be so lucky.”
    “Could be, you know, some serial killer followed us into the park. Waited for us to split up, like dumb kids do in horror movies. He’d go after the weaker kid first, the one who’s alone and can’t get away.”
    “And we’d be next.”
    “Sure. We’re probably walking into a trap.” Skates practically had to shout to be heard over the scrape of the metal bar. Now he lifted the bar and switched to a whisper: “We get there, and it’s totally silent. The cup’s been lifted and you point the light inside and nobody’s there. But there’s all these splashes of fresh blood.”
    “You’re enjoying this a little too much.”
    “Or try this: We get there, and that dumb cup’s still upside down, and Eddie’s still sulking and saying nothing, and we creep closer and we hear… chewing. Teeth tearing at flesh, chomping on bone.”
    “Okay, you’re really starting to spook me a bit.” He wasn’t really, but Craig figured that was the only way to get him to stop.
    “One more. We get there, and Eddie does talk, says something like, ‘Give me a hand.’ The voice is a little hoarse, though, and I think maybe he’s been crying like a baby, so I reach in through the opening. A hand closes over mine, and… it’s not Eddie. It’s not even