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

on.
    If vandals could have stepped inside, the pigs would likely have been torn to pieces, like the wolf.
    “Chinny chin chin,” Skates said. He pushed his finger against the tip of his nose, turning it into a snout.
    “Let’s try another house.” They followed the curve of the cracked blacktop path. Signposts had long-since disappeared, but a few joined shadows in the clearing identified the route: these were silhouettes of the remaining gingerbread children, baked to death in the witch’s oven. The doomed children always seemed blissfully happy, hands linked and dancing in a circle. Mom and Dad bought cookies from the snack booth, and Craig and his sister sat at a bench beside the victim circle, biting off cookie arms and legs, and not at all feeling like cannibals.
    “Long past its expiration date,” Skates said. The house itself had grown horribly unappetizing. Giant gumdrop trim looked moldy, and gingerbread shingles were stale and drizzled with grime. The ice cream chimney was cracked down the side of the cone; a vanilla dip at the top was brown and lumpy, like a huge scoop of vomited oatmeal.
    Inside was a single room, a large metal cauldron at the center and overflowing with garbage.
    “Look at her feet!” Skates pointed and laughed at the brick oven. The witch’s legs were painted dangling at the back of the open oven, presumably because Hansel and Gretel had just pushed her inside. “And check out the cage.” A sign beside a grid of iron bars said, Next Victims. Skates laughed some more.
    And that was what was wrong with Storybook Forest. It made you laugh. Happy little stories for happy little kids. There was no lock on the cage. You could climb inside, wrap your tiny hands around the metal bars, and know all along you’d never get cooked by the witch.
    Craig hated the treachery of it all. The smiling storybook world where nothing bad ever happened. “They sanitized all the stories. I wanted stuff to be scary, like the thrill-rides at King’s Dominion, and it always disappointed me.”
    Skates pulled at one of the metal bars. It didn’t budge from its concrete moorings.
    “You know,” Craig said, “the real versions of the nursery stories are pretty gruesome. The wolf eats Little Red Riding Hood’s grandma—the woodsman has to carve her out of his stomach. And Cinderella wasn’t like the Disney cartoon. The stepsisters cut off parts of their feet so the glass slipper would fit.”
    “That’s kinda cool.”
    “I dragged us here tonight—pushed for it, even, when Eddie tried to talk us out of it—because I thought for once the forest actually might be scary. We’d break in late at night, and the place would be falling apart and maybe dangerous. Haunted. But it’s not. It’s just sad.”
    “I bet Eddie’s pretty scared right now. He probably crapped himself when that cup fell on him.”
    Craig wouldn’t laugh with him. “You didn’t do that on purpose, did you?”
    “No. Did you? ”
    “I mean, you said you didn’t realize how heavy it was.”
    “I said no.” Skates attempted a serious expression, but it still came across like a smirk. He got in trouble for that a lot at school.
    “All right,” Craig said. “Let’s keep looking around.”

    * * *

    Outside, Craig cupped his hands over his mouth and yelled into the air. “We’re still here. We’ll get you out soon.”
    No answer. Might have been too far away, and the sound didn’t carry well. Just as likely, Eddie was giving them the silent treatment.
    Skates did a two-fingered whistle, then made a few hoot-owl noises.
    “Cut it out,” Craig said. “He’s probably sulking.”
    Still no signposts, but he registered where they were headed. In the midst of the overgrown forest a giant shoe loomed, a front door carved out of its heel. He remembered the windows in the sides and up the tall back of the shoe—like a tower, the old woman leaning out the top window to wave at her many children, some of them scrambling over