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

weight, that I wasn’t having periods, that I felt strange… I put it down to the menopause. I didn’t go to a doctor; why should I? No one else noticed anything odd. Something about the way the baby was lying meant I never looked pregnant.”
    “When did you realize?”
    “After I gave birth.”
    This was so unexpected, I could do nothing but gape.
    “I know, it sounds mad,” she said calmly, taking a tiny bite of her salad. “But I never guessed. I had been feeling constipated for several days, and then one evening, just as I got home, I started getting pains, low in my belly. I thought it must have been something I ate. The pain came and went through the night, but it wasn’t until the baby actually came out of me that I realized. And by the time I understood I was pregnant—well, I wasn’t anymore.”
    She fell silent, looking weary, and for the first time I saw her as an old woman.
    “So what did you do then?”
    “Well, I picked him up, I cuddled him… I thought how strange he looked. It still seemed unreal to me, what had happened. I got a knife to cut the cord—I didn’t sterilize it; how could I, on my own, holding a baby, still attached to me…it was a clean knife, from the kitchen, and I just had to hope it was clean enough. I guess it was. I couldn’t think what to do with the cord, or the other stuff—placenta—it seemed wrong to just stuff it all in the bin, but that’s what I did. I cleaned up as best I could, although there was a spot on the carpet I never could get out—I finally had to get new carpet laid—and then I ran a bath…”
    Impatient with all this detail, the pointless obsession with carpeting, I interrupted: “But what about the baby?”
    “Oh, I took him into the bath with me, of course. I got him all nice and clean, and then I used a hand towel, the softest one I had, to dry him. I wished I had some clothes for him, but of course I didn’t, why would I, when I’d never expected…? I thought I could make a nappy out of a square of cloth, but the tea towels were too rough, and I only had a few silk scarves, and they weren’t the right shape. I thought about cutting up a pashmina, which was certainly soft enough, but one was black and the other pink…” She met my gaze and made an ironic mouth. “Of course, it was absurd, but people do often focus on irrelevant details when they’ve had a shock. I thought about going out to buy something, but I was so tired, and it was so late at night… In the end, I just cleared out a drawer, and lined it with both pashminas, and laid him down in that, just pulling the edge of the pink one up to his chin. He looked so sweet lying there, so peaceful, I could almost believe he was asleep.”
    I felt a sickening pang as I understood. “He wasn’t? He died? Or…he was born dead?”
    “He never made a sound, never opened his eyes. Never took a breath.”
    I wondered, with an odd, internal lurch, half excitement, half fear, if I was hearing the confession of an old crime.
    “What did you do?”
    She gave the tiniest shrug, as if to say I should have known. “I went to bed. I slept, so deeply that in the morning it all seemed like a dream. I was still tired when the alarm went, too tired to think, really. I got dressed and went to work as usual.”
    “But the baby?”
    She shot me a look that said I wasn’t paying attention. “ I told you, I put him in a drawer.”
    I’d been imagining that drawer pulled out. I shut my mouth and nodded.
    The waiter arrived to ask if everything was all right. Florida indicated that he should take away her largely untouched salad, and, having lost my appetite, I did the same.
    “Would you like something else?”
    “Just coffee, thank you.”
    When we were alone again, she continued her story. “Two days later, I flew to New York. We were in the middle of negotiations, hoping to establish the brand in America, and so, for the next few months, I was hardly at home at all, rarely for more than a