Read Online The Color of Fear by Billy Phillips, Jenny Nissenson - Free Book Online Page A

flashes. Caitlin tried to signal her sister to stop before this creature caught sight of her.
    The dead girl’s gaze was unwavering.
    The corners of Caitlin’s mouth began to tremble. “What do you want?”
    “I’m hungry,” she said.
    Caitlin struggled frantically.
    “But I’m not here to eat,” the dead one said. “Not if you can help me.”
    Caitlin calmed down slightly. The dead girl was forthright and spoke with a British accent.
    “I could help you a lot better if you’d kindly put me down,” Caitlin said.
    The ghoul lowered Caitlin gently to the ground. Caitlin lunged for her cell.
    She pressed the phone to her ear. “Jack?”
    Silence.
    Caitlin hit the Call Back button, but before it could connect, and before Caitlin could even see it coming, the dead girl’s lightning-quick finger tapped the End Call button.
    “No calls,” said the zombie. “I came here to find someone.”
    “Who?”
    “Someone named Caitlin Rose Fletcher.”
    Caitlin’s heart stopped cold.
    “Hey, that’s you!” Natalie shouted from behind the tree trunk.
    Way to go, Natalie.
    Caitlin’s mouth fell open, partly because a real-live dead person was looking for her and partly because her kid sister had just thrown her under the bus!
    Natalie snapped pic after pic as the dead girl’s eyes scanned Caitlin from head to toe.
    Caitlin dried off her phone and stuck it in her jacket.
    She turned to the ghoul. “How do you know my name? And why are you looking for me?”
    “I need you to slide down into that hole.” The zombie pointed to her own long rope of hair, which still stretched down into the depths of the gleaming grave.
    Natalie broke out in laughter. “Hey, zombie chick, my sister would rather face an army of walking dead than plunge herself into that glowing pit!”
    “Zombie Chick’s” head swiveled, zeroing in on Natalie. Anger flared from her pretty, dead eyes. Natalie cowered behind the pine.
    “Back off,” Caitlin said. “That’s my kid sister.”
    The zombie girl’s expression softened.
    Natalie fearlessly emerged from behind the safety of the tree.
    “That grave doesn’t even belong to you!” she shouted.
    In her stylish yellow boots, Natalie stomped over the muddy mound and right up to the zombie. “You’re not Charles … Lewis … Carroll … Dodgson … or whatever his name is. So what are you doing messing with his grave?”
    Caitlin’s kid sister was half the size of the zombie, but that didn’t stop her from getting up in her face.
    “Where I come from,” Natalie continued, “we call that invasion of privacy. And trespassing.”
    Natalie had finally moved close enough for Caitlin to yank her out of reach of the zombie.
    “Charles has been resting in peace for more than a century,” the dead girl said. “I’m borrowing his grave as a sort of off-ramp.”
    “Off-ramp?” Caitlin exclaimed. “Off-ramp from what?”
    “The wormholes.”
    Caitlin’s brow scrunched. “Excuse me?”
    Natalie’s eyes flickered like fireflies in the dark. “ Wormholes are shortcuts,” she said to her sister. “They bridge distant regions of the universe by traversing the space-time continuum.”
    Sometimes Girl Wonder does come in handy.
    The long-haired dead girl smiled and explained, “Certain graves in your world are the gateways into the wormholes. They connect distant dimensions and faraway worlds.”
    “Which graves are you talking about? Caitlin asked.
    Long-haired dead girl smiled. “The ones belonging to the storytellers.”
    Caitlin glanced over at the plaque posted at the foot of the grave. A gleam lit her eye.
    “You mean like Lewis Carroll?”
    “I do. And JM Barrie. And Hans Christian Andersen. And the Brothers Grimm. Do you understand?”
    She did. Caitlin saw it clear in her mind’s eye. And it made her skin tingle from awe. The graves of all the great story-tellers were not just ordinary graves. They were portals into the mythic kingdoms and wondrous worlds found in the beloved