Free Festival of Fear by Graham Masterton Page B

prayed that she had left the house and run next door, or even further.
    â€˜So where is this feast that you have promised me?’ asked Baba Jaga. ‘I see no food anywhere, only you!’
    â€˜Please, be patient,’ said Grace. She led Baba Jaga through to the utility room beside the kitchen, where she kept her washing machine and her tumble dryer, and also her freezer chest.
    She switched on the fluorescent light, and then she went over to the freezer chest, unlocked it and lifted the lid. Inside it was heaped with frozen turkeys, frozen chickens, pies and fish and packets of vegetables. Icy vapor poured out of it and sank to the floor.
    â€˜This is all for you,’ she told Baba Jaga. ‘You can eat all of it.’
    Baba Jaga stared at the frozen food wide eyed.
    â€˜This is for me?’
    â€˜Everything. Fish, chickens, pastries. Ducks. Blueberries, too.’
    With no more hesitation, Baba Jaga tore her claw away from Grace’s sleeve, reached into the freezer, and dragged out a whole frozen pike, which Jack had brought home last year from a fishing trip on Marsh Creek Lake. With a sharp crunch, she bit into it, and tore away half of its body.
    Grace said shakily, ‘Good? What did I promise you?’
    Baba Jaga turned toward her, her mouth filled with chewed-up lumps of frozen fish. She said nothing, but when Grace tried to take a step away from her, she took hold of her sleeve, and pulled her back.
    â€˜After cold food, warm food,’ she warned her.
    Grace raised both of her hands to indicate that she wasn’t thinking of going anyplace. Baba Jaga released her again, and started to pull out rib-eye steaks and hamburgers. Grace couldn’t believe that she was able to eat them when they were frozen solid, but her teeth bit into them voraciously, and she chewed and swallowed everything – frozen meat and frozen fat and frozen bones, and even the frozen plastic bags they were wrapped in.
    At the bottom of the freezer there were four frozen ducks. Baba Jaga reached down and tried to wrench them free, but they were all frozen solidly together, and wedged beneath boxes of frozen pastry.
    She tugged and tugged at the ducks, gasping in frustration. She leaned further and further over the side of the freezer chest.
    Grace thought, if this doesn’t work, I’m going to be killed, and eaten, and that will be a nightmare . She thought of the horror of Daisy returning home, to find her body ripped apart like Gabriela’s had been, in the woods.
    But suddenly, Baba Jaga climbed right into the freezer chest, and knelt on top of the pastry and the bags of frozen peas. She grasped the ducks with both hands and pulled at them, cursing and spitting.
    She raised her head and said to Grace, ‘Find me a knife. And do not think of trying to kill me with it. I cannot be killed by stabbing – or hanging for that matter, or poisoning, or drowning.’
    Grace said, ‘OK, I understand.’ She turned away, but immediately she turned around again, and took hold of the lid of the freezer chest, and slammed it down, and locked it.
    Baba Jaga screeched in fury. She began to beat on the lid with her fists, until dents appeared all over it. Then she kicked at the ends and the sides, and threw herself left and right, again and again, so that Grace was terrified that the whole freezer chest would fall over, and Baba Jaga would be able to crawl out.
    â€˜I curse you!’ screamed Baba Jaga. ‘I curse you a thousand, thousand times over! I curse you so that worms will crawl out of your eyes instead of tears! I curse you so that you will be blind and deaf and your skin will burn like fire! I curse you !’
    But Grace dragged over one of the kitchen chairs and sat on top of the freezer chest and stayed there, even while Baba Jaga was thumping and banging and rocking it so wildly that it moved halfway across the utility room.
    â€˜Gabriela,’ she prayed. ‘Wherever you