Shivers 7 Read Free

says.
    Bill snorts a laugh. “That’s what you think, genius.”
    Both boys give the stranger the eye. They’re best friends. Jason’s the bigger of the two. He just turned eleven a couple days ago—August 1, 1969 to be exact—but he could pass for thirteen easy. Bill gave Jason a board game called Clue for his birthday. They’ve been playing it for a week, solving murder mysteries while the old black-and-white TV in Jason’s living room drones on in the background and Jason’s kid sister Molly begs them to play Candy Land with her. That’s a laugh. Bill and Jason don’t care anything about Candy Land. They ignore Molly completely. She says, “All you care about is Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick and Professor Plum in the kitchen with a rope. That’s a stupid game. Everybody just kills everybody else!”
    Bill and Jason don’t see it that way. They’re pretty good at Clue. They figure they’re ace detectives—that’s why they’re here at the lake in the first place, to see what’s up with all the ghost stories going around the neighborhood. And now there’s a stranger here, and they want to find out something about him. It’s like another mystery they have to solve, and they’ll solve it together. Like I told you, they’re best friends.
    Keeping his head down so he won’t be noticed, Bill peeks through the cattail curtain. The sun is setting behind the trees, and it’s hard to see the stranger on the other side of the lake when you’re staring into the sun that way.
    So Bill can’t see the mystery man’s features very well, but there’s other stuff he can see that tells him something about the guy. Like the fact that he’s clean-shaven and his clothes look neat and new. The man is wearing the kind of stuff Bill always thinks of as “Dad’s day off” clothes: khaki pants and a plaid short-sleeve shirt and some kind of loafers... probably Hush Puppies, Bill figures, because every dad he knows owns a pair of Hush Puppies—
    “Hey, look what he’s doing!” Jason says.
    With one hand, Bill shades his eyes against the sun for a better look. The man’s holding the canvas bag by the knotted end, pivoting in a circle as he swings the bag, taking little Hush Puppie steps as he turns ’round and ’round and ’round.
    “Jesus Chrysler!” Jason says. “This guy’s a human tilt-a-whirl!”
    For once, Jason’s right. Bill can see that. The man must be getting dizzy. He misses a step, nearly trips. He’s close to the water’s edge now, out of tree-shadow and into setting sunlight, and the stark brightness catches his sunglasses and Bill thinks he can see the man smiling for a second and he thinks: Yeah, he’s gotta be a nut, smiling like that, spinning ’round and ’round and ’round in his Hush Puppies like that.
    The man lets go of the bag. It sails out over the lake... and the man watches it... and Bill watches it... and Jason watches it....
    It’s completely quiet. Just for a second. And then there’s a big splash as the bag hits the water. The mystery man just stands there watching. He’s not smiling now.
    And the bag starts to sink. And the canvas ripples. There’s something inside the bag, thrashing around.
    Something that barks, then squeals.
    “It’s a dog!” Jason says. “That creep put a dog in that bag! He’s gonna drown it!”
    “Shut up!” Bill says. “You keep yelling, he’s gonna hear you for sure!”
    Bill looks across the lake to confirm his suspicions, but the mystery man isn’t there anymore. In the couple of seconds Bill spent staring at the canvas bag floating out there in the lake, the guy has vanished.
    Bill stares across the lake for a couple more seconds, just to be sure the stranger’s really gone. Nothing moves over there on that little scab of a beach. There’s nothing under the trees but shadows.
    “Hey,” Jason says. “How’d he disappear so fast?”
    Bill doesn’t answer.
    He peels off his T-shirt and tosses it on the