The Color of Fear (24 page)

“Don’t suppose we can turn on the tears and cry till our eyes turn bloodshot?” Cindy said.

“Watery tears won’t cut it,” Rapunzel said.

Snow’s eyebrows rose. “Water! I have an idea.”

She borrowed the map from Rapunzel and surveyed it.

“There are all types of aquatic plants, shrubs, and vines growing in the wetlands around the moat,” Snow said. “They hardly need any sunlight. I know of one vine bursting with brilliant-red berry clusters. We can stain our eyes with red berry juice!”

Caitlin broke out in a cold sweat. “Never!” she shrieked, shielding both eyes with her hands. “That won’t ever happen. Don’t even think about it.”

Rapunzel gave Caitlin a stern look. “Your hair also has to go.”

Caitlin uncovered her eyes and stared at Rapunzel in dismay. “Huh?”

Snow caressed a handful of Caitlin’s cinnamon locks. “Human hair reeks of life force. There’s little chance that the clay will fully shroud it.”

Cindy seized the clump of Caitlin’s hair from out of Snow’s hand. She sniffed it heartily. “Yeah—with this mop, the Blood-Eyed will hunt you down and spread you on a scone for high tea.”

Rapunzel stepped face-to-face with Caitlin. “Look, to get to the queen, you’ve got to get past the Blood-Eyed. There’s no choice. But don’t worry, we can leave a
little
hair on your pretty head. It will just have to be drenched in clay.”

Caitlin woefully bowed her head. Her shoulders slumped. Her lips quivered, and tears streamed down both cheeks.

Caitlin then slowly raised her arms. The princesses nodded in unison.

They all held hands.

And held their breaths.

And then … as the fiery, red-orange sun began to set behind the pink horizon, the girls leaped off the inner edge of the wall, plummeting toward the earth!

Caitlin and the zombie
princesses plunged into the moat, landing with a splash. They swam to the bank. Thick deposits of white clay were caked against it. They slogged ankle-deep in the squish.

Beauty scooped up two heaping handfuls of silver-white clay and slathered Caitlin’s arms and legs with it in a circular motion.

Caitlin wrinkled her nose. “It tickles.”

“Smear it on thick,” Rapunzel said. “Blood-Eyed ghouls possess a hyper-acute sense of smell.”

Rapunzel pulled out a sharp knife and starting cutting off clumps of Caitlin’s long, cinnamon-colored hair. Then Beauty shampooed the top of Caitlin’s head with it too. The clay had a musty smell. Caitlin fought back a rush of tears as she rubbed clay on her shoulders, chest, and tummy. To make the ache in her heart bearable, she kept thinking about Girl Wonder. Her kid sister. Her
baby
sister. And the pink in her eyes.

“You’ll look adorable in a bob,” Rapunzel said in a comforting manner.

Caitlin couldn’t answer. She simply gazed at her long locks floating away atop the moat water.

She was soon coated in thick, whitish, pasty clay, from head to toe.

Snow White stared impressively at Caitlin. “You look pale as a ghost.”

Rapunzel then touched her forehead.

“We need to let it dry and harden.”

“Why?” Caitlin asked.

“You’ll see. Meanwhile, let’s start on your clothes.”

Rapunzel artfully sliced Caitlin’s top and bottoms.

“Now that’s a stunning zombie ensemble if I ever saw one—fashionably tattered and stylishly frayed,” said Rapunzel with an assuring wink.

“Just another day at the clay-bank spa,” Beauty said. “Too bad there’s no masseuse around.”

Caitlin almost,
almost,
let a hint of a smile slip out.

Snow White returned from the bog, pockets filled with glittering clusters of plump red berries. She placed her hand gently on Caitlin’s shoulder.

“Look, I don’t want to lie to you, Caitlin, honey,” Snow said. “This is probably going to sting your eyes. I mean,
really
, really sting. But hopefully only for a few seconds. Then the pain should disappear. After that, your pupils and the whites of your eyes will be dyed a very berry red.”

Caitlin sat herself on a small boulder at the edge of the bank. She had no idea how she was going to allow burning, acidic juice to be poured into her eyes when she never even let the salami-breath eye doctor get a contact lens within an inch of her eyeball.

Natalie.

“Fine,” Caitlin said. “Let’s just get this over with.” A flutter gnawed in her chest.

Snow sighed. “I don’t have the heart to do it.” She stretched out an open hand toward Rapunzel. Nestled in her palm was a batch of red berries.

Rapunzel plucked a single berry with her thumb and index finger. She held it chest high. “Head back, glasses off,” she instructed Caitlin.

“No!” Caitlin’s tone was more than bold.

Everyone froze.

Caitlin let out a big, long breath of resolve. Her shoulders broadened. “I need to do it myself.”

Rapunzel smiled proudly. She handed the red berry to Caitlin.

“Bless her little heart,” Snow said, pressing her hand on her own chest.

Caitlin took in a reasonable gulp of oxygen and then blew it out gently.

She removed her glasses. Tilted back her head. She held the red berry centimeters from her left eyeball.

She squeezed.

Squirt!

The berry burst. Pulpy, acidic juice dripped into her eye.

Snow White was altogether wrong about the stinging. It didn’t really, really sting. It really, really, really,
really
stung!
Caitlin’s burning eye slammed shut reflexively. The pain was fierce. Blood rushed to her head and gushed to the back of her throbbing eyeball. She flapped her hands furiously, as if that action might cool and ease the stinging—which it surely did not.

After twenty heartbeats and ten tormenting seconds, though, her eye was …

Hmm, perfectly fine!

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Rapunzel said.

Caitlin blinked a few times. She looked up. “Your berry-juiced eye is blazing bright red,” Rapunzel said. “And the other is still sparkling blue.”

Caitlin summoned up her courage, along with another big breath of air, and juiced her other eye. The stabbing sting wrapped around her eyeball, and sent shudders throughout her body. This time she flapped both her hands frantically, trying to ease the throbbing. After ten more stinging seconds, she became a perfect match to a Blood-Eyed zombie.

Except for one thing.

Snow poked her finger into some dirt. Using the rich, dark soil as eye shadow, she blackened Caitlin’s eye sockets and lids. Next, she added dark shadow to her cheekbones to mimic sunken cheeks on her pale, white skin.

Rapunzel touched Caitlin’s forehead. “The clay feels hard and dry now. Okay kiddo, tense your body, squeeze your facial muscles tight, and hold.”

Caitlin flexed her arms, tightened her tummy, and tensed up her legs. Then she scrunched up her face, squeezing tight until her lips, nose, eyes, and cheeks creased up like crumpled paper.

Rapunzel leaned in close to Caitlin’s face, studying it intently.

“Hold it a little longer … hold … hold … now release!”

Crack!

A sharp crackling sound erupted as the hardened clay fractured along fault lines that branched out across her face, neck, chest, arms, and legs. Caitlin exhaled, relaxing her muscles.

“Voil�!” Rapunzel said. “A short-haired, silver-toned, Blood-Eyed zombie is born!”

Caitlin strolled to the edge of the moat and leaned over the water. She looked at herself in the clear reflection on the surface. No question. Standing there, bathed in the hues of a pale, twilight sky, Caitlin Rose looked absolutely ghoulishly cool and freaking fearsome!

“Our turn!” Cindy said with the excitement of a kid ready to jump into a pool.

Rapunzel shook her head. “There’s no time for another full spa treatment. We better just dunk and roll around in the muck. We can squirt red berry juice in our eyes along the way.”

It took only a few dunks in the mire of the bank to completely cloak the zombie princesses in thick sheets of clay.

“C’mon,” Caitlin called with new resolve, her eyes glittering red. “Let’s go get my sister!”

Caitlin prepared herself to make a running start out of the moat.

SLURP!

At first, Caitlin thought the weakness in her legs was due to the fact she’d been moving all day long. Then she heard the wet noise and felt suction. Her feet got sucked into the mud. Then her ankles. Then her calves.

This was no ordinary moat.

“What’s happening?” Caitlin asked.

“Very curious,” Snow said. “It’s almost as if the mud is alive.”

“It’s trying to swallow me up,” Caitlin said. “Like quicksand!”

One giant bubble rose up from the mud. Then another.

Cindy made a run for it. “Time to ditch this ditch!”

Snow shook her head. “No, Cindy. Don’t! If you try to flee, the clay will—”

Sure enough, globs of clay seized Cinderella around the ankles, leaving her stuck in one spot as surely as if she were standing in a vat of superglue.

“This clay’s a little overly possessive, dontcha think?” Cinderella quipped.

Caitlin felt a dreadful twinge in her chest. This was exactly like a nightmare she often had. She would be trying to run from some hairy, winged creature, but her legs moved in slow motion, as if through peanut butter. The feeling was maddening.

Rapunzel checked the map. “The moat is called the
Enchanted
Clay Bank. Now we know why.”

“It’s fascinating,” Snow said. “You can walk on it easily, but if you try to run away, it stops you.”

“It was probably meant to stop thieves or anyone trying to flee the castle,” Beauty said.

An interesting thought popped into Caitlin’s mind. She asked herself what Natalie would do.

Girl Wonder would approach it scientifically!

Since Natalie wasn’t there, Caitlin was going to try a two-part experiment of her own.

Part One: Caitlin imagined herself escaping from this bank in a mad panic. Then she tried to lift her leg. Wet clay thickened around her, sucking her ankles deeper into the muck.

Part Two: Caitlin thought about staying put. She imagined the moat as a white, sandy beach under a warm, tropical sun where she wanted to lie for days on end. She tried lifting her leg again. The clay loosened around her legs, liquefying like water. Her foot rose easily.

End of experiment.

Caitlin grinned.

She reached for Cinderella’s hand and cried out, “Pay attention, everyone! I know how to get us out of here!”

Night had fallen. The
air was comfortably cool, and light humidity produced a balmy evening. The stars in the purply-dark sky winked a hazy red as Caitlin and the princess ghouls marched confidently toward the palace gates.

Though she was determined and brimming with resolve, Caitlin’s nerves were nevertheless on edge as they approached the gates. She knew the score. If that ghoul of a front-gate guard caught the slightest whiff of her hair or blood, he’d chew her up. She’d become a Blood-Eyed ghoul, cursed to walk as the living dead forever.

She’d never see her dad again. Or Jack. And Natalie would be condemned to zombieland for all eternity.

She shoved aside her morbid thoughts and focused.

The girls approached the guard.

The uniformed ghoul wore a long, slim-fitting, black overcoat and a tattered black top hat. A bloodstained white shirt and a thin black tie were visible under his coat.

He examined the girls one at a time, top to bottom.

His eyes met Caitlin’s. Her stomach knotted. A coat of clay was all that stood between her and zombie hell. She prayed it was thick enough. The guard looked at her hair … checked out her clothes … then saluted and let them all pass.

How freaking easy was that!

A playful grin cracked the corner of Caitlin’s mouth. Old Mrs. Sliwinski, the Kingshire social studies teacher, turned out to be a far better guard than this ghoul.

Caitlin stood up straight. Raised her chin. A gleam even twinkled in her red-berry-dyed eyes. The cold clay on her skin gave her more than anonymity. It gave her comfort.