The Color of Fear

by Billy Phillips

  “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.

  Caitlin now led the way. A pack of Blood-Eyed wolves patrolled the perimeter of the palace grounds. They paid no attention to Caitlin’s group. Her chest inched outward. Her footsteps became deliberate and determined.

  An army of guards and bouncers lined a long, gated walkway that led to the main ballroom’s entrance.

  Caitlin sauntered right past the first guards outside the gate, right past the guards on the inside of the gate, right through a hallway door, and right up to the end of a huge line of partygoers who were waiting behind a bright-red velvet rope in the foyer.

  Music pounded through the ballroom door up ahead. Strobe lights reflected off the windows.

  Cinderella snorted. “A line? Royalty doesn’t wait in lines.” She glanced around, annoyed. “Can’t we find the VIP entrance or something?”

  “Now’s not the time to play the royal card, Cindy,” Rapunzel said, rolling her eyes. “We need to blend in and not draw attention.”

  The girls took their places at the end of the line—and behind a snarling, frothing, wet, and pungent herd of Blood-Eyed zombie sheep. Flayed skin adorned bare patches where zipper stitches and open sores had replaced their wool. The smallest lamb, at the end of the line, turned toward Caitlin and lifted its upper lip, revealing a sharp set of pale-green fangs. The zombie-sheep breath hit her in the face like an encore performance of carnival chili after an upside-down roller coaster ride.

  Caitlin felt her stomach begin to churn. The stench was unbearable.

  “Fluffy!” shouted a girl’s voice. “You stop that right now!”

  The voice belonged to a young female ghoul who stood alongside the sheep. She wore a big, floppy hat adorned with dingy pink ribbons that matched her shredded, blousy dress. Her face bore an alarming number of zipper stitches, and even though her lips displayed no traces of residual lipstick, red beads of goo clung to the corners of her mouth.

  Caitlin’s temple began to pulse.

  Could it be Little Bo Peep? Has she been chowing on the ribs of her own sheep?

  Bo Peep pounded a long, curved staff against the floor, and the zombie sheep quickly stood at attention.

  As Caitlin and company shuffled up the line to the entranceway, the volume of the music spiked. Caitlin craned her neck to get a peek inside the party.

  A throng of undead witches, pirates, princes, and a whole cast of ghoulish characters moved together in a steamy, sweaty mass. They shuffled their decaying feet in unison to a pounding rock-and-roll drumbeat.

  Cinderella leaned her cheek into Caitlin’s. She whispered, “Awesome taste in music.”

  Caitlin nodded. Say what you would about these flesh-eating ghouls—they knew how to throw a party.

  And dance.

  Rapunzel led the girls into the hot, loud, sweaty ballroom. It was bigger than a soccer stadium and packed with bodies. Caitlin clung to the perimeter while summoning the nerve to wade deeper into the seething mass of dancing dead.

  A savory twinge stirred in her nostrils. The air was sweetly pungent with the scent of barbecued meats, fire-roasted vegetables, and boiled stews.

  Cinderella chuckled as she elbowed Caitlin’s ribs. “At least there’s something to eat here—besides you.”

  Herds of ghouls trudged around Caitlin from all sides, their mortified arms brushing cold against her skin. A foul odor of rotting flesh seeped through floral perfumes and musk colognes. The undead were crammed in so tight that their zombie hair
caressed Caitlin’s cheeks and lips as the ghouls squeezed by.

  Caitlin stood on her toes. She peered over the crowd of heads, trying to locate Natalie.

  Impossible. Not from this vantage point.

  She was going to have to venture deep into the crowd.

  She stood back up on her toes, pinpointing all the exits. If her panic erupted—or if she was discovered to be a human—she wanted to know the best direction to bolt. She sighed as she realized it didn’t really matter where the exits were. The humongous ballroom was a sea of swarming ghouls that she would have to swim through, so there really was no easy way out of there.

  She lifted her eyes to the arched ceiling. A whole colony of bats was perched upside down on the rafters above the dance floor—the same species that bit Natalie.

  Their blood-red eyes scanned the area continuously, like infrared detectors.

  “What are they doing?” Caitlin asked Rapunzel.

  “Keeping watch. Their built-in sonar monitors the movements of the crowd, watching out for any sort of irregular behavior. That’s why it’s imperative we blend in.”

  Caitlin jiggled her shoulders up and down, then slowly rotated her head from side to side to loosen her neck muscles.

  A ghoul passed by suddenly, alarmingly close to Caitlin. He swiveled his head and made eye contact with her. She saw her first Blood-Eyed eyeball up close. Its coveting gaze turned her cold. It flitted more like a tongue, she thought, than an organ of sight. As if the pupil had taste buds. Each eye movement was like a lick of Caitlin’s flesh. The ghoul glanced off in another direction and Caitlin shivered in relief. Her disguise was still working!

  The majority of the undead paid her no attention, making her feel emboldened. She held her chest out confidently as they straggled onward through the crowd. The girls plodded toward a section of the ballroom where there was a bit less congestion.

  Long buffet tables lined the room’s perimeter, stretching wall to wall. Glass bowls overflowed with selections of raw and roasted meats from various animals.“Impressive entrees,” Cindy said as her eyes hungrily scanned the serving trays. “Raw livers, gizzards, sausages, roasted pig knuckles, and sweetbreads. Nice selection.”

  Caitlin peeked into a serving tray. She saw something she was sure looked like blood pudding.

  How weird. It feels like it has been weeks since I last saw Dad.

  Platters of eyeball sushi served with a crimson dipping sauce were artfully arranged between bowls. She had never seen such a repulsively decadent display.

  Centerpieces of floating crystal bowls filled with greens magically hovered in midair over the tables. Bunches of parsley, green onions, cabbages, lettuces, and greens of all sorts—and plenty of spicy hot peppers—grew out of them. Cindy stole a bite of a cucumber that dangled from its vine in one.

  “How curious,” Snow said, after Cindy had swallowed. “They grow with no sun.”

  She was right. The room’s only light came from torches fitted in iron brackets on the thick gray stone walls. Their orange flames flicked like serpents’ tongues and cast a fiery glow of shifting light and shadows along the walls.

  Cindy spotted the hot peppers. She plucked a clump and shoved them into her mouth, then followed them with a couple of fresh livers and a few lumps of goose fat from the buffet.

  Snow White gasped. “How very unprincesslike of you.”

  Cinderella, still bent over the buffet table, shoveled thick sausages and eyeball sushi onto a plate. She looked up at Snow.

  “Wha?” she mumbled, her mouth chock-full of goose fat. “I’m using a plate … ”

  Caitlin shook her head as she absorbed the sights. “I’ve never seen so many dead people in one place. How are we going to find Natalie?”

  Many of the partygoers were familiar to Caitlin as characters from books she’d read as a kid. Milling about were zombified coachmen, genies, fairies, and munchkins.

  Tweedledee and Tweedledum were terrorizing the dance floor with some super-loose hip-hop moves. An undead and pale Peter Pan was chatting up a Blood-Eyed, rotting Red Riding Hood.

  If he weren’t Blood-Eyed, Pan probably would be kind of cute …

  But seeing both of them ghouled to the max creeped out Caitlin and made her sad. At least the royal-blooded zombies had retained a generous measure of beauty, grace, and glamour—Cindy’s obscene appetite excepted.

  Toward the front of the dance floor, three zombie bears and seven zombie dwarfs moshed with the Tin Woodman, the Cowardly Lion, and the Scarecrow.

  Caitlin took notice of one particular girl—a gorgeous ghoul with dazzling auburn hair that flared in the torchlight—shimmying across a small platform near the dance floor. She wore a tattered, cherry-red dress with a golden-yellow sash. Her complexion was the usual zombie silver with black-rimmed eyes. She also had zipper-like stitches on her arms and legs, Caitlin noticed.

  “Who’s that?” she asked.

  Sleeping Beauty let out a sad sigh. “That’s Belle. Or should I say, that was Belle.”

  “From Beauty and the Beast?”

  “Uh-huh. One of my dearest friends. But she doesn’t remember me anymore.”

  “Doesn’t she have royal blood?” Caitlin asked. “How did she turn?”

  “Bitten,” Cindy sighed, “She couldn’t stand being apart from her prince. She invited the bite.”

  Zombie waiters stepped deftly through the crowd of revelers. Dressed in tattered tuxedos, white cloths over their arms, they carried silver trays of bronze goblets.

  Cinderella looked up from her plate. “Who’s a girl gotta slay to get a drink around here?”

  A waiter approached Cindy and offered his tray.

  Cindy’s eyes lit up. “Tom? Is that you?”

  The waiter’s reply was a blank stare.

  “Tom, the piper’s son? It’s me, Cindy—Cinderella. Remember?”

  Waiter Tom shook his head as if he’d never seen the girl before.

  “Your loss, fella,” Cindy said as she plucked a goblet off the tray before he moved on.

  The liquid in the cup was deep red, thick as syrup, and full to the brim. An eager Cinderella chugged it down in three straight swigs. Caitlin had to choke back a gag.

  Cindy smacked her lips. “Ahh. Much better.” She looked around at her friends, who were staring at her in disbelief. “What—a girl can’t get thirsty?”

  A catchy new song filled the ballroom. Caitlin turned to see where the music was coming from. A live band was performing on a spotlit stage adjacent to where they were standing. Feeling reassured by her disguise, Caitlin ambled closer.

  Natalie loves to dance. Maybe she’s nearby.

  A three-man rock band of ghoul pirates jammed hard. The lead guitarist had a full black beard and wore a brass-button coat.

  Blackbeard?

  The bass guitar player was tall and dark-haired. A long steel sword was sheathed on his belt. His thick, long hair shimmered in the mirrored light reflected by a disco ball above the stage. He had a five-o’clock shadow and wore tight black leather pants, a puffy-sleeve shirt, and a leather vest. He was altogether … swashbuckling. Caitlin’s eyes widened when she saw that he was plucking his guitar strings with a gleaming silver hook.

  The Captain himself!

  The drummer’s head was wrapped in a burgundy bandana with a black skull emblazoned on the front. His wooden peg leg pounded the bass drum pedal and his long, silver drumsticks rhythmically beat the tom-toms and snare drums.

  Their music seriously rocks.

  And though this ghoul band was a ghastly bunch, Caitlin thought they were also kind of cool, especially—

  SPLASH!

  Rapunzel had sloshed a clear liquid from a goblet onto Caitlin’s arm. The fluid washed away a layer of clay, exposing a patch of pink skin.

  And just like that, the music stopped.

  The dancing halted.

  Fifteen hundred dancing-dead cannibals cocked their heads. Their hyper-acute senses had sprung to alert as they cau
ght the sudden succulent scent.

  My God! They smell my flesh!

  The ghouls in the ballroom twitched their noses as their bodies writhed in hunger.

  The Blood-Eyed bats on the rafters screeched high-pitched sound waves. They also detected the unfamiliar but irresistible aroma of human meat and hot blood.

  Caitlin’s veins iced over. She furiously smudged a gob of clay over her bare skin.

  After what felt like an eternity, the aroma dissipated. The pirates started playing music and the savage partygoers began dancing again. The bat colony went quiet as they continued their upside-down watch from the rafters.

  Caitlin pretended to gaze across the room with a vacant stare as she pulled Rapunzel aside.

  “Why did you try to kill me?”

  A zombie bumped into Caitlin. The ghoul tilted his head and sniffed her like a dog. Caitlin growled and slogged off in another direction, Rapunzel in tow.

  Rapunzel whispered, “Sorry. But you were getting too cocky. Some bats were glaring in your direction. If they sense you, you’re dead meat. Literally. Your fear protects you—at least for the time being.”

  Rapunzel had just saved her life. Caitlin wanted to stop and hug her, but that would of course be too dangerous.

  They had to locate Natalie and the queen quickly.

  A commotion erupted on the dance floor between two Blood-Eyeds. Tin Woodman had picked a fight with the Scarecrow. He had him down on the floor, and was pulling straw from Scarecrow’s torso with his rusty tin teeth.

  The fight quickly escalated and grew more violent. An arrow of swirling, purple light suddenly pulsed from the direction of the stage. It struck Tin Woodman in the chest. He convulsed as the bolt of electricity shot through his metal frame. A faint electrical smell accompanied a white trickle of smoke that rose from the Woodman’s head. When his convulsions stopped, the Tin Woodman was still. After a moment, he rose to his feet and held out his arm to assist Scarecrow, who was still on the floor, half-stuffed. They both turned toward the stage.