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

cape topped with a white oval of a face cut by a thin red slash of mouth, said, “Come in.”

    * * *

    Back in Ranier Park, at the mouth of the cave, four fat bags of trick-or-treat loot sat amidst three trick-or-treaters.
    No one said anything until Gil, fumbling with the handles of his own bag, looked up from the fourth bag and said, “I don’t want any of it.”
    “Me either,” echoed Carsey. “Maybe we can give it to charity or something.”
    “Maybe there’s a hospital that could use it,” Marcey offered. “For the kids who couldn’t go trick-or-treating this year.”
    “Maybe we could put it in a box and send it to India, to poor kids there.”
    Gil shook his head. “I don’t think they have Halloween in India.”
    “Maybe we could—” Marcey began, but her sister cut her off.
    “He should have known better.”
    The three of them nodded.
    Gil added, “He should have especially known, being Riley Gate’s kin and all.”
    Again all three of them nodded their heads.
    Marcey said, “Too bad he was the new kid in school. I kind of liked him. Too bad it couldn’t have been Larry Jarvis. I can’t stand him.”
    “Me neither,” Gil said. “But Larry Jarvis knows.”
    “Of course he does,” Carsey said. “We all know. The only ones who don’t know are the new ones.”
    Again there was a silence, this one longer.
    “I wish it hadn’t been our turn,” Gil whispered, looking at the floor.
    Marcey said, “Everybody gets a turn. That’s just the way it is. When you’re nine, or ten, or eleven, it gets to be your turn. You don’t have a choice.”
    Carsey began to sniffle. “I liked him.”
    “Me too.”
    “And me too.”
    “Too bad.”
    The three of them nodded.
    Gil sounded like he was talking to himself, justifying. “And that’s just the way we keep things…simple.”
    “Simple,” Marcey parroted.
    Carsey nodded, drying her sniffles.
    “And you don’t mess with Samhain,” Gil added.
    “No you don’t.”
    “ Everybody knows that.”
    “It’s all he asks for. One a year. To keep things…simple.”
    They all nodded.
    The longest silence of the evening. Marcey sat staring at the extra bursting bag of candy.
    “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt if we just took a little.”
    She reached out, scooped some Double Bubble from the very apex of the bulging bag.
    Carsey nodded, plucking a Mars bar whose end peeked above the upper level.
    “It would be a shame to let it go to waste.”
    “A sin, even,” Gil said, shoving his palm into the brimming horde and removing a handful, which he stuffed in a jacket pocket.
    “After all, we don’t have a big box. And I don’t even know where India is.”
    Soon the bag was empty.

Born Dead

    Lisa Tuttle

    Florida McAfee was about the last person I would have imagined getting pregnant by accident, or, to be honest, in any other way, for although she was beautiful—even when she was over sixty her tall, willowy figure, large lustrous eyes and high cheekbones attracted admiring looks—there was something noli me tangere about her, and while she had dated an impressive variety of men over the years, she hadn’t married or lived with any of them.
    I assumed she preferred to live alone, that it had been a positive choice, rather than it being something that had just happened while she’d been so busy with her career. If she’d wanted a family, I reasoned, surely she could have managed that emotional juggling act with the same skill she’d brought to establishing an internationally famous clothing brand.
    She was my heroine. Her example declared it was possible for a woman to become rich and powerful entirely by her own efforts, and without compromising her beliefs. I needed to believe she was single and childless by choice, not because her kind of success was incompatible with family life. Not every woman wanted children—I still wasn’t sure myself—and if marriage was really so wonderful, why did so many of them end in divorce?
    I’d been