The Year's Best Horror Stories 7 Read Free

detour by the Candy Department.
    "May I help you, sir?"
    Her hands, full and self-indulgent, smoothed the generous waist of her taut white uniform.
    "A pound-and-a-half of the butter toffee nuts, all right, sweets?"
    The salesgirl blushed as she tunneled the fragrant candy into a paper sack. He saw her name badge: Margie. There was nothing about her that was sharp or demanding. She would be easy to please-no song and dance for her. Ha tipped her seventy-five cents, stroking the quarters into the deep, receptive folds of her soft palm.
    He tilted the bag to his mouth and received a jawful of the tasty sugared nuts.
    At the glass door he glanced down to see why the bag did not fit all the way into his wide trouser pocket. Then he remembered.
    He withdrew one of the parts he had removed backstage and turned it over, fingering it pleasurably as he waddled into the lot. It was a simple item, an aluminum ring snapped over a piece of injection-molded plastic. It glinted in the afternoon sunlight as he examined it. A tiny safety guard, it fit on the vegetable shredder just above the rim that supported the surgical steel blades. A small thing, really. But it was all that would prevent a thin, angular woman's fingers from plunging down along with cucumber or potato or soft, red tomato. Without it, they would be stripped into even, fresh segments, clean and swift, right to the bone. He slipped it back into his pocket, where it dropped into the reservoir of other such parts, some the little safety wheels from the vegetable garnisher, some the protective bars from the Mighty Mite rotary tool. But mostly they were pieces from the VariVeger, that delightful invention, the product of three years of kitchen testing, the razor sharp, never-fail slicer and stripper, known the world over for its swift, unhesitating one-hand operation.
    He kept the bag in his hand, feeding from it as he walked on across the parking lot and down the block, losing himself at once in the milling, mindless congestion of Easter and impatient Mother's Day shoppers.

2: Stephen King - The Night Of The Tiger
    I first saw Mr. Legere when the circus swung through Steubenville, but I'd only been with the show for two weeks; he might have been making his irregular visits indefinitely. No one much wanted to talk about Mr. Legere, not even that last night when it seemed that the world was coming to an end-the night that Mr. Indrasil disappeared.
    But if I'm going to tell it to you from the beginning, I should start by saying that I'm Eddie Johnston, and I was born and raised in Sauk City. Went to school there, had my first girl there, and worked in Mr. Lillie's five-and-dime there for a while after I graduated from high school. That was a few years back… more than I like to count, sometimes. Not that Sauk City's such a bad place; hot, lazy summer nights sitting on the front porch is all right for some folks, but it just seemed to itch me, like sitting in the same chair too long. So I quit the five-and-dime and joined Farnum & Williams' Ail-American 3-Ring Circus and Side Show. I did it in a moment of giddiness when the calliope music kind of fogged my judgment, I guess.
    So I became a roustabout, helping put up tents and take them down, spreading sawdust, cleaning cages, and sometimes selling cotton candy when the regular salesman had to go away and bark for Chips Baily, who had malaria and sometimes had to go someplace far away and holler. Mostly things that kids do for free passes-things I used to do when I was a kid. But times change. They don't seem to come around like they used to.
    We swung through Illinois and Indiana that hot summer, and the crowds were good and everyone was happy. Everyone except Mr. Indrasil. Mr. Indrasil was never happy. He was the lion tamer, and he looked like old pictures I've seen of Rudolph Valentino. He was tall, with handsome, arrogant features and a shock of wild black hair. And strange, mad eyes-the maddest eyes I've ever seen. He was