The Color of Fear (4 page)

She chewed her bottom lip as she read.

The exterior windows of their apartment complex were cleaned back in mid-July—weeks before the Fletchers had moved into the building.

Caitlin stared off into space.

Who, then, had climbed the exterior of the building and left those creepy fingerprints on her tenth-story bedroom window?

Along with a batch of strange-looking chickpeas.

Dancing might actually be the lesser of her worries right now.

Caitlin walked through her
apartment door and headed upstairs to her bedroom. Natalie was lying on her bed, immersed in her tablet, head propped up by two pillows.

Caitlin pulled off her vintage Cinderella T-shirt. She tossed it over to her kid sister. “This is yours now.”

It landed on Natalie’s face. Natalie held it up to see what it was, then cast a wary eye at Caitlin but said nothing.

Caitlin took another top from her closet and slipped it on.

Then she froze.

Caitlin visualized it with irrefutable clarity. A totally wicked concept for a costume.

“Nat, hand me the scissors.” Natalie opened the desk drawer while Caitlin lifted out the wedding dress. Her mom’s wedding dress. It had been in Caitlin’s closet ever since she could remember. Even before her mom disappeared.

Or left.

Natalie found the scissors. She held them in her hands and stared at them for a moment. Her brow wrinkled as she glanced up at Caitlin.

“What do you plan on doing with these?” Natalie asked.

“It’s for my costume.”

“So you
are
going to the masquerade ball?”

“Yeah, totally.”

Caitlin’s current plan was to “sprain” her ankle when she got there so she wouldn’t have to dance.

Natalie shook her head from side to side, jeering at her sister the whole time.

“And you’re going to this masquerade ball dressed as your own mom on her wedding day?”

Caitlin rolled her eyes. “Are you psycho?”

Natalie sneered back. “I was afraid
you
were.”

Caitlin held the wedding dress against her body. “I’m going as a zombie bride. You can help me do the makeup.”

Natalie winced. “Wait, that’s even worse.” She squinted one eye at Caitlin. “What are the scissors for?”

“To cut the dress. Make it look worn-out and decrepit.”

“But your own mom gave you that dress. And also this T-shirt that you just bequeathed to me!”

“First of all, stop saying ‘your own mom.’
Makes
you
sound like you’re unspawned. And Mom’s not here. So hand over the scissors.”

Natalie tucked them under a pillow. “But then you’ll have nothing left of hers.”

“I still have all of her old records.”

A vague smile played on Caitlin’s lips.
The vinyl records.
Caitlin’s grandfather, Robert Blackshaw, and her great-uncle Derek were tie-dyed hippie brothers playing in a British rock band back in the olden days. Liverpool. Circa 1968. Like many in their generation, they experimented with—
ahem
—plant-based substances. Unfortunately, groovy Gramps indulged in one too many experiments and never made it to the seventies.

He had left his only daughter, Evelyn, his personal music collection. She had raved about the oldies that had “birthed rock ’n’ roll.” Caitlin faintly remembered the back-and-forth squabbles her parents had had over which country—England or America—had produced the best rock music during that epic age.

Her dad, born in Brooklyn, naturally argued on behalf of America. Her London-born mom made the case for England, talking about some sort of British Invasion.

When Caitlin packed for the move to London, she had rummaged through the stacks of LPs. She liked all the weird band names: The Doors, The Beach Boys, The Kinks, T. Rex, The Who, and The Zombies.

A soft twinge touched Caitlin’s heart. “You can put the scissors away,” she said. “I’ll just wear some freaky makeup and pin up the dress.”

Natalie sighed. “Why’d you really give me your top?”

As usual, Caitlin felt weird telling her baby sister about her personal life. It was times like these when she most missed her mom.

“I’ve outgrown it.”

“Really.”

She’s not buying it.

“Yeap.”

“This morning it was a teen fashion statement. Now it’s a junior-apparel hand-me-down?”

Caitlin’s nose twitched. “Uh-huh.”

Natalie folded her arms. “You got slammed today by some hostile, stuck-up fashionista. And you were too chicken to speak up.”

Caitlin looked away. It wasn’t that she was afraid of those girls—physically. She wasn’t. She would’ve shoved them aside with a sharp elbow to help Alicia Saunders. Caitlin wasn’t afraid to body check older girls at school when playing floor hockey in the gym, either. In fact, she was an exceptional body-checker. One time she flattened Edith Schreckenhauser—who was twice her size and probably triple her weight—with a crushing hip check.

Caitlin Rose Fletcher wasn’t afraid of a nosebleed. But she was deathly afraid of blushing from embarrassment. Natalie ambled over to the middle of the rug and smiled at her sister. “You need to let loose, Caity-pie. Shake up your life. Dance deliriously at the ball and stop stressing all the time.”

Natalie shook out her arms and legs and swayed her butt, obviously trying to get Caitlin to lighten up.

“I can’t,” Caitlin said. “I’ll look stupid.”

“True. But so what? At some point you must overcome the phobias you’re trying to hide from the world.”

“Leave me alone, mutant brain.”

“Have it your way,” Natalie said. She closed her tablet and skedaddled out of the room.

Caitlin buried her head in her pillow. A million and one thoughts flooded her mind. Jack. Piper and her coven. Jack. Her favorite top that she’d just given away. Jack. The ball! Her mom …

Caitlin clenched her fist in anger. And then she must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she heard in her head and felt on her leg was a buzz and the vibration of a cell phone.

She rolled over on her back and pulled her phone from her front pocket.

A video call. From Jack!

She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and primped her hair. Then she clicked Accept Call.

“What’s up, Jack?” she said.

“Hey. I was just texting with Piper.”

Caitlin suddenly had an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“I need to change our plans.”

Her heart skipped a beat.

“Totally understand, Jack.” Her voice traitorously cracked, and she cleared her throat. “No worries—I’ll make other plans.”

“Hold on, lassie,” he replied. “Piper texted me about another sighting. Some kid posted it online.”

The sun shined inside her again. “Really? Where?”

“Copenhagen. Denmark. The Assistens Cemetery.” Jack stroked his chin. “I wonder if anything interesting would turn up on Google?”

The writer inside of Caitlin sprung awake. She grabbed Natalie’s tablet from her bed. “How do you spell it?”

“What?”

“The name of the cemetery.”

Jack smiled. He spelled it out carefully, and Caitlin promptly Googled it. Then she clicked Wikipedia. Then she scrolled the page, perusing it, and then … “You know who’s buried there?”

“Who?”

“The Little Mermaid.”

“Huh?”

“I mean the author of
The Little Mermaid
, Hans Christian Andersen.” She bit her lip gently. “Hmmm. You know what, Jack?”

“I’m way ahead of you,” he said with a wily grin. “I’m checking to see if anyone famous is buried in the cemetery in Florence, Italy.” Jack’s eyes scanned his computer screen. “Bloody hell, Carlo Collodi is buried there, the man who wrote
The Adventures of Pinocchio
.”

Caitlin picked up on the pattern at once. “Check for famous authors buried at the other cemeteries,” she instructed Jack.

He was now drumming the keyboard furiously. It only took a moment. “L. Frank Baum. The Wizard of Oz himself! He’s in Forest Lawn. Glendale, California.”

I knew it!

After one more set of keystrokes, Jack shouted, “Brothers Grimm! They’re buried in Berlin.”

Caitlin was already writing her article for unexplainablenews.com in her head.

“I have a hunch who might be in Scotland,” Jack said. His fingers danced upon the keyboard. “Tickety-boo. J. M. Barrie rests in the Kirriemuir Cemetery.”

His face suddenly broadened into a mischievous smile.

“Caitliiinn,” he said in a drawn-out, teasing tone.

“Jaaack!” she answered playfully.

“So far, there haven’t been any sightings in merrie, olde England.”

That comment stopped Caitlin cold. “Oh.”

All of a sudden she didn’t feel so playful.

Jack kept typing, reading, typing …

“Guildford,” he said. “Small town just southwest of here.”

Thin beads of sweat formed on Caitlin’s brow. “What about it?”

“Charles Lutwidge Dodgson is buried there.”

“Who’s he?”

“He wrote
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
.”

Caitlin nervously ambled over to the white mahogany bookshelf in her room. She rummaged through the books on the third shelf.
Peter and Wendy. A Wrinkle in Time
.
The Little Mermaid.
Black Beauty.
There it was—
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
. Her mom used to read it to her all the time. Caitlin missed that. She pulled the book from the shelf.

“Lewis Carroll wrote that.”

Jack’s adorable dimples deepened as he leaned toward the screen. “Same bloke. Lewis Carroll is the pen name of Charles Dodgson.”

But why
Guildford of all places!?

Caitlin desperately hoped there was more than one cemetery there.

A
thunderclap interrupted her thoughts. Lightning flashes outside her bedroom window followed. A nasty storm was rolling in.

“In which graveyard in Guildford is Dodgson buried?” Caitlin asked.

“Mount Cemetery.”

The lump in her throat became more pronounced.

“Um … my mom’s …
dad
is buried there.”

“You’ve been there then? Perfect. You can navigate.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s why I called. I thought it might be fun to visit a graveyard after the ball. You know, see if we can spot any ghoulish occurrences. Mount Cemetery is perfect. And it’s Halloween. The way these sightings are unfolding, this seems the most logical time and place for the next one to happen. And then you’ll have a bloody marvelous story for unexplainablenews.com.”

She suddenly realized Jack was staring at her with a concerned look. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

She couldn’t tell him. She wanted to, but no words could get past her lips.

Caitlin had
never
been to Mount Cemetery. She’d never even been to Guildford.

When Caitlin was thirteen, she had been too panic-stricken to go to the graveyard where her grandfather was buried after the Fletchers had to unexpectedly travel to London. How could she tell Jack she had been afraid because … she didn’t have her good luck charm with her?

The magic wand.

What a freaking joke. It seemed so ridiculous and juvenile at this moment. The memory alone embarrassed her.

She had bought it from a magic shop to help her wrestle with her fears. The shop owner said that waving the wand would make her fears vanish. Yeah. Sure. Waving a wand. She was nine.
Nine.
A frightened little girl, positively gullible and utterly naive.

It happened to be a charming piece of costume jewelry—a tiny, silver wand with a round, opaque tip. Caitlin had carried it everywhere. When she turned ten, she had suddenly lost it. Her anxiety worsened ever since. Her mom’s disappearance, around the same time, certainly didn’t help matters. When the Fletchers abruptly flew to London last year, and with the wand long gone, there was no way on earth Caitlin was going to that graveyard!

Another strobe of lightning lit up the white, sheer curtains adorning the window. Another roll of thunder followed. Storm clouds were gathering outside.

“Caitlin, you okay?” Jack asked.

Change the freaking subject, Caitlin.

She blurted out, “It’s my birthday today.”

Definitely an inappropriate response.

Thankfully, Jack smiled.

“A belated happy birthday wish.”

“Thanks.”

“Look, if you’d rather not tempt the dead and woo ghouls on your birthday, we can forget about the graveyard. We’ll stick to the school dance.”

More than anything, Caitlin wanted to be with Jack. And the more time she could hang with him, the better. For some reason, being near him gave her a sense of calm. She dreaded that particular cemetery, but at least she wouldn’t have to travel there alone. Also, if she didn’t go to the graveyard, Piper, Paige, and Layla surely would try to claw their way into the adventure. Besides, the whole graveyard-sighting phenomenon
would
be a solid story for unexplainablenews.com.

“No, no. The cemetery after the ball is, like, totally cool.”

Jack checked his watch.