The Color of Fear (8 page)

Indignation gave her the strength to keep stepping forward into the looming darkness.

Caitlin finally located the gravesite up ahead. The plot lay adjacent to a medieval brick chapel and directly beside a thick pine tree.

Still no sign of Jack.

At the foot of the grave was a small plaque identifying the renowned individual resting there: LEWIS CARROLL GRAVE.

Caitlin approached the cross-shaped headstone timidly. She flipped her phone around so that her screen was now aimed away from her. It projected a soft glimmer. She cast the glow onto the base of the headstone. Warily, she kneeled in front of it and read:

Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson,

(Lewis Carroll.)

Fell Asleep Jan. 14. 1898.

Aged 65 years.

This is so creepy! But it is also sort of cool. I’m standing at the actual burial site o
f
the literary genius who penned
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
.

Caitlin’s arms shivered.

She checked the time. 7:40 p.m.

Caitlin sent a text to Jack:
I’m at the grave. Where r u?

No response.

Everything had become eerily silent. No footsteps. No wind. No hissing branches. Not a single sound. Caitlin clenched her fist around her phone.

Better call Jack.

As she lifted her finger to dial, she froze.

A long, irregular shadow began creeping over her … slowly …

She heard breathing. More footsteps. Then they stopped. Someone was now standing directly behind her casting that shadow.

For some reason the garbanzo beans in her pocket came to mind. And the fingerprints on her window.

Her windpipe constricted.

She shot up and turned around, fully prepared to scream like a banshee and run like a deer if it wasn’t Jack standing there.

Her eyes widened in total disbelief.

Then her jaw dropped.

She couldn’t scream.

And her knees were locked.

It wasn’t Jack.

Jack sprinted into the
Kingshire All Hallows Eve Masquerade Ball and began to look around, desperately searching for Caitlin.

He was donning his Arthurian knight attire—fitted gray boots, narrow pants, silver-trimmed tunic, sword, and a chain-mail cowl. And though he looked quite majestic, adventurous, and definitely medieval, his face was a mask of concern.

He had been stunned when he buzzed at Caitlin’s apartment and her father said she had already left for the ball.

He wondered if she was bailing on him, or if she mistakenly thought they were supposed to meet at Kingshire?

Jack scanned the crowd. All the faces were covered in masks or heavy makeup; it was nearly impossible to identify who she—or anyone, for that matter—was. And he had no idea what costume Caitlin was supposed to be wearing.

A hand tapped him on the shoulder.

“Greetings, chivalrous knight.”

Jack turned. A very sexy female vampire stood there, blood dripping from her fangs. She was holding Jack’s mobile in her hand. Piper.

“You left this at Penhaligon’s,” she said, batting her fake eyelashes. The tone of her voice radiated heat. “Now I’d like to collect my reward.”

Jack took the phone, nodding his thanks. “Have you seen Caitlin?”

Piper’s eyes widened innocently. “I thought she was coming with you?”

Jack didn’t have time for Piper’s BS. He left her standing there as he waded into the sea of masked partygoers. He checked his mobile to see if Caitlin had called.

Nothing.

Then a new text message arrived.

From Caitlin:
I’m here at grave. Where r u?

Jack’s heart skipped a beat.

He glanced back at Piper. Her pale vampire face went a shade whiter as their eyes met. She promptly turned away and melted into the mob of masqueraders.

Jack tore out of Kingshire, hell-bent and determined. He dashed toward Waterloo Station.

He couldn’t believe what a cruel prank that was to play on Caitlin.

When Caitlin gets to that tombstone
…
all by herself
…
Bloody hell, she’ll positively freak out.

His legs pumped harder. He called Caitlin on his mobile as he raced through Central London. Voice mail.

Jack quickened his pace.

He was utterly grateful when he reached Waterloo station and saw that he was just in time to board a train bound for Guildford.

He only hoped it wasn’t too late.

The long, dark shadow
that had crept over Caitlin was a whole lot larger than the small, bright, yellow-and-red figure who had cast it.

“Perhaps there’s some adventure in you after all,” giggled the shadow.

Natalie!

She was still in her red chili pepper costume and yellow raincoat. Her wet red hair flowed like a frizzy lion’s mane.

“What are you doing here?” Caitlin screamed. “Dad would freak if he knew you came all this way by yourself.”

“You forgot to bring your birthday present,” she said.

Her tablet!

“Don’t worry; I have it,” Natalie said as she yanked it out from inside her coat. It was wrapped in pale-blue, plastic takeout bags. Caitlin was glad to have it, but she was upset that Natalie had tagged along and traveled to Guildford all alone at night. Nonetheless …

“I owe you,” Caitlin said.

“Don’t we know it.” Natalie held up her camera. “Here’s your first photo op. Standing at the grave of Lewis Carroll.”

Caitlin shook her head and scowled.

Click
.

“Isn’t Jack supposed to be here?” Natalie asked.

He certainly was. Caitlin checked the time again on her phone, and as if on cue, it rang. Slick from the rain, it slipped out of her hand. It dropped right in front of the headstone! Right on top of Dodgson’s grave.

“Whoops. Sorry, Charles,” Caitlin said as she kneeled to pick it up.

As her hand reached for the phone, the grass shifted.

That’s weird.

Then it rolled like a wave. Instinct always seeks the logical, and Caitlin’s first thought was that a sinkhole must be forming from the pounding rain.

A second wave rumbled the ground. Caitlin willed herself to believe it would be the last one, the same way she always willed herself to wake up from the throes of a nightmare when it was about to overwhelm her.

Not this time.

A small mound of grass thumped, as if being punched up from beneath the surface.

An earthquake then? Unlikely.

The rest of the cemetery grounds had remained motionless.

Natalie took cover behind the wide trunk of the pine tree next to the grave. She crouched down, out of sight, camera poised. She was ready to photograph whatever happened next.

Caitlin’s mind floundered for a rational explanation.

Rain must’ve flooded the grave.

Mud beneath the ground is being pushed to the surface.

How absurd to even think for a moment that a body might be clamoring to get out.

Caitlin again reached for her phone.

A pile of soil suddenly spit up like a geyser.

A shimmer of ice-blue light spiked through Charles Dodgson’s grave.

Then a white, bony hand broke through.

Caitlin’s terrified scream rang out into the night.

The pale, cold hand seized her wrist.

Caitlin’s body iced over with spindly needles. Her eyes grew wider than two full moons. She jerked her hand wildly and screamed again. “Let go of me!”

Powered by adrenaline, Caitlin yanked herself free. In the moment that followed, there was an uncanny quiet.

A voice broke the silence.

“Caitlin, are you there?”

Jack!

His voice was coming from her phone. Hearing it stopped Caitlin from losing it, momentarily.

A second pale, dead hand rose from the dirt. Two arms groped upward toward the sky, emerging from beneath the glowing muck and soil. Long, slender limbs, with scars and stitches cut into the forearms, began pulling at the ground—clawing, raking away globs of mud. Both palms then pressed against the soil for leverage.

Caitlin went numb. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was climbing out of his grave.
This might actually be more terrifying than dancing in front of people!

Natalie stood behind the tree trunk, her camera flashing away.

A jagged arc of lightning cut through black clouds. The corpse’s spindly fingers dug deep into the dirt, working to extract their body from the bowels of the earth. Natalie’s camera flashed bright. Through the sharp camera light and cold, blue glow seeping from the grave, Caitlin observed something that struck her as even more bizarre.

The fingernails on those rotting hands were elegant and manicured and actually quite pretty.

Huh?

These were not the hands of a dead man who’d been buried for nearly two hundred years.

They were the attractive hands of a girl!

And she was now climbing out of the grave!

In the charming and
historic town of Guildford, on the night of October 31st, the evening of Halloween, a dead
girl
was apparently climbing out of a
man’s
grave in the old Mount Cemetery. She finally uprooted herself completely from the dirt, leaving a large gaping hole in the ground.

From behind the pine tree, Natalie snapped away.

“Caitlin! Are you there?” Jack was still on the phone, calling to her from a mound of mud. Unfortunately, a certain obstacle separated Caitlin from her phone.

A beautiful dead girl who now seemed very much alive.

Caitlin let go of the breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. Blood found its way back into her knuckles. Her tensed shoulders slackened.

It finally dawned on her, though she had already intuited what was going on in the back of her mind the whole time.

Caitlin was the victim of a Halloween prank brilliantly orchestrated by Jack. He probably had majorly buff rugby legend Barton Sullivan dig that massively deep hole.

Ha, ha, ha.

The dead girl pulled her long, slender legs up from the ground and dusted off the dirt. Caitlin noticed that her blonde hair, though, stretched back into the grave. As the girl pulled it up, it kept on coming. And coming. And coming. Caitlin stared at the full length of her exquisite, long, braided locks. They seemed to flow on forever into the depth of the grave. Her hair wasn’t decayed like the rest of her body. It was silky and golden. Shimmering. A tumble of hair that Caitlin would die for—no pun intended.