Wonderland

by Marie O'Regan

  Another blink, and Bodie was at her parents’ bedside. Maman lay on her back, her brown skin ashen, as her chest buckled with the weight of her croaky breaths. Papa was still and cold beside her.

  “Promise me you’ll go,” Maman had rasped, her teeth rotted and her breath foul in Bodie’s face, but her touch gentle as she wiped tears from her little cheeks. “Go. Find yourself a new life.”

  “No!” Bodie threw herself against her mother’s fragile chest, her tiny body wracked with sobs. “I won’t leave you.”

  “We will see each other again. But not before you’ve lived a good life, so you can come and tell me all about it.”

  And then, her maman was dead, her jelly eyes staring at the ceiling.

  Dead. Like Bodie would soon be.

  Bodie closed her eyes and left them that way. She focused on her memories of before, how things used to be. How smiling faces and warm arms used to wait for her. If she was to die, she wanted her maman’s laughing eyes to be the last thing she saw before she left this world.

  Crack! The monster shrieked.

  Bodie’s eyes flew open.

  Clutching at its face, where one yellow eye dangled by nerves and muscle from its socket, the Nightmare faced off with a figure in the dark.

  “Get away from her.”

  Bodie recognized Anastasia’s voice. The woman stepped forward, her arms twirling around her body with a balanced but deadly grace. Pinpricks of light flickered through the air.

  Anastasia flung her arm out and the pinpricks solidified then darted across the alley, almost faster than Bodie could follow.

  Crack!

  The monster barely avoided losing its other eye. While Bodie’s vision was hazed by pain and the shadows of the night, she knew Anastasia’s whip when she saw it. The woman was a monster herself with that thing.

  The Nightmare howled and ducked to the side before darting forward, pausing, and jerking back again. It did this a few times, trying to get inside the continual flow of the whip, which circled Anastasia like a razor-lined cocoon.

  But that’s all it was, a defense. Why wasn’t Anastasia attacking? No, she couldn’t kill it, but she could at least put it down for a time. It would rise to terrorize the streets of London, but then they would be ready.

  Anastasia’s eyes flickered to Bodie, then to something to her left, and back to the monster. She did this three times. A signal, Bodie realized. But what for?

  She struggled to push herself into a sitting position. Her body burned and her arms gave twice before she managed it. That’s when she saw it.

  Resting against the alley floor, her Figment Blade seemed to glow faintly in the dark. The monster must have managed to pull it out while Bodie was dazed.

  She struggled onto her knees, then rose unsteadily to her feet. Her legs threatened to give, but held where she tilted heavily against a wall.

  Anastasia managed to hold the beast’s attention, throwing the whip out to keep it occupied, screaming at it to come at her.

  Bodie could feel the life slowly seeping out of her, wet and sticky against her clothes and skin. Her wounds stretched as she moved. One step. Then two. Then three. She somehow reached her sword. Grasping the hilt in shaky fingers, she lifted it. The blade scraped against the ground.

  The monster turned and shrieked.

  Anastasia flung out her arm. The beast went rigid then started clawing at its throat. The razor whip gleamed where it drew taut around its neck.

  “Hurry!” Anastasia cried, digging her boots in.

  The Nightmare hissed and gurgled, bending backwards unnaturally with the snap of bone.

  Bodie tightened her grip on her sword. She put one leg in front of her, and then the other. Her knees buckled but miraculously held. She pushed into a run. Every inch of every fiber of every muscle screamed.

  This was it. This was all she had left. And she would give it.

  She drew the Figment Blade up and thrust it forward.

  The monster held out a hand to shield itself, but the sword tore through its remaining fingers and bit into flesh with a slurch. There was a low crack as it pierced the beast’s core, the heart of its power, and a muffled rumble like thunder beneath its skin. The Nightmare roared, the sound muffled, distant in Bodie’s ears as she dropped to her knees. It toppled over, its body writhing.

  So did she, her body falling still.

  The creature bucked and flopped in its final moments of life.

  Bodie rolled onto her back with the very last of her strength.

  “Bodie!” Anastasia dropped to the ground beside her. She smelled like peppermint and roses after rain. “Bodie, can you hear me? Boshe moi, hold on, you understand, hold on!”

  But there was nothing to hold onto. Everything was gone. The Nightmare fell still as darkness pressed in against Bodie’s mind, and everything went black and cold.

  * * *

  “Still lazing about?” Anastasia’s voice preluded a rustle of cloth and a rush of light as she no doubt flung the curtains open.

  Bodie winced and, minding her still-healing injuries, rolled onto her stomach and buried her face in the silk covering of a down pillow. She groaned in place of an actual retort.

  “It’s nearly three o’clock. How long do you intend to stay in bed?”

  “Forever,” Bodie grumbled, before turning her head to peek in the direction of the large bay window.

  Anastasia stood at the center of it, her arms folded, her green eyes narrowed. The backdrop of London sky, gray with dust and smoke, set her hair alight, like a halo of fire. White fabric clung to her body, falling in the folds of one of her day dresses. She was an angel of wrath and finery. “We have work to do.”

  “You just want your bed back.” Bodie wriggled in the satin sheets.

  After hauling Bodie from the alley two nights past, Anastasia somehow managed to sneak her into the suite, where she cleaned and bandaged her up then waited nearly a day for her to regain consciousness.

  When Bodie finally came around, it was breakfast, lunch, and dinner in bed, and all the sweet wine and cakes she could eat. Anastasia tended to pamper her after a bad mission, and that one had been the worst by far.

  “I want us to avoid another night like that.” Anastasia sighed, her lips pursed. “You need to purge it. Before tonight.”

  Bodie nodded and winced as a twinge of pain rippled through her when she sat herself up. Multiple stab wounds tended to put one down for the count.

  “Also.” Anastasia pulled something from the blood-red handbag dangling from her arm. “We made the paper.” She fluttered it teasingly then tossed it at the bed. It landed face-up enough that Bodie could read the headline.

  MURDER IN WHITECHAPEL, RIPPER STRIKES AGAIN!

  Residents report the sounds, screams and inhuman howls in the dead of the night.

  Bodie pushed the paper aside. “What now?”

  “Now? We purge the site, then wait and see if that’s the end of it.” Anastasia turned to face the window.

  Bodie stared at her back before her eyes returned to the paper. “Have you ever seen anything like that before?”

  The line in Anastasia’s shoulders stiffened. “No. I believed Nightmares had potentially influenced the killer, but never did I imagine…” She fell silent for a few moments more before whirling and heading for the door. “Get up, get dressed, but take your time. Be careful.”

  “And where are you off to?” Bodie asked as she slid toward the edge of the bed.

  “I need to speak with someone.”

  Though Anastasia acted as if she was in a rush, she gave Bodie enough time to get up, have a bit of breakfast, take a nice, warm soak and then get dressed before they checked out.

  The crime scene was relatively empty, and Anastasia managed to distract the officers on duty long enough for Bodie to slip by and drive one of her daggers into the ground, purging the Nightmare’s essence from the stone and preventing its resurrection.

  After a nice lunch—apparently Anasta
sia wasn’t finished pampering—the two boarded a train bound for Liverpool. Once they were settled in the car, Anastasia sat back against the bench and closed her eyes.

  Bodie smoothed her hands against her skirts, picking at an imaginary bit of lint, waiting for Anastasia to look at her. When she didn’t for several minutes, Bodie cleared her throat.

  “So. Where are we going?”

  “Liverpool,” Anastasia murmured, eyes still closed.

  “I know, but what’s in Liverpool? Not another job, I hope.” She was still barely in one piece after the last one.

  “No, not a job. A boat.”

  Puffing a sigh of vexation through her nose, Bodie pursed her lips. “Is… is it a special boat?”

  “Quite special.” Anastasia finally opened her eyes, her gaze settling on Bodie. “It’s the boat that’s going to take us to America. Georgia, to be precise.”

  The White Queen’s Dictum

  JAMES LOVEGROVE

  “Mind if I sit here?”

  I indicated with a nod that I didn’t. He set down his coffee and Danish pastry on the table, then pulled back the plastic chair and fell exhaustedly into it.

  “Busy, isn’t it?” He nodded around him.

  Busy the motorway service station café certainly was. It was just gone eleven on a Saturday morning and the place was packed. Families, for the most part, because it was the first day of school half-term and by some unspoken law everyone had decided this was a good time to grab the kids, load up the car and travel. The noise was hellish. Very young children yelled, and their parents yelled at them to stop yelling, and these competing yells bounced off the walls and resounded up to the ceiling tiles, which reflected them back at twice the volume. Older children slumped in their seats, staring at their phones, earholes stoppered with earbuds—as efficient a method of shutting out the racket as any. At a table close to mine, a group of Eastern European hauliers huddled together, heads down, as though under siege, their natural environment having been encroached upon by a horde of interlopers. They reeked of the pungent cigarettes they had been smoking outside a few minutes earlier.

  “I wouldn’t have stopped here if I’d known,” the man continued. “Only, you don’t get much of an option on the motorway, do you? You want a break and a bite to eat, it’s one of these places or nothing.”

  “It wasn’t my choice either,” I said with a shrug. “You end up where you end up. I don’t mind too much, though. At least it’s lively.”

  “Lively,” he echoed. “Hah. I suppose you could call it that.” He took a sip of his coffee and grimaced. “That,” he said, “is challenging.” He dumped a sachet of sugar into the beverage, tried it again, dumped in another sachet of sugar, and at last seemed to find it drinkable.

  He looked over at the three-quarters-empty coffee cup in front of me. “Appears yours has gone cold. It’s got that sort of congealed look on the surface. Don’t blame you for not finishing it.”

  “Very observant,” I said, glancing down then up again. I half-smiled. “Yes. I should have left ages ago. I’ve been meaning to but I just can’t bring myself to do it. I’m happy sitting here.”

  “Me, I’m back on the road as soon as I’m done,” the man said. “Refuel myself, refuel the car, then get cracking. Places to be.”

  “Work?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “What do you do?”

  He looked sheepish. “I’m a… well, I reckon you could call me a journalist.”

  “Newspapers?”

  “Oh no. Haven’t you heard? Print’s dead. No, I’m a television presenter. Actually,” he added with some haste, “not television television.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I have an online channel.”

  “Oh. YouTube?”

  “That kind of thing. Subscriber-only. I stream videos on my site. These short films I put together.”

  “Will I have heard of it?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Do you watch stuff online much?”

  “Not much.”

  “Well, it’s not that popular anyway. Not yet. I get a few hundred views per video. My record’s just over a thousand. Here.”

  He produced a phone, thumbed open the browser and showed me his site.

  I read the title aloud. “The White Queen’s Dictum.”

  “Yeah. I’m still not sure about the name. Been thinking about changing it. Bit poncey, and the word ‘dictum’ might be off-putting. There might be people who don’t know what it means.”

  “A saying. A pronouncement. An axiom. A maxim.”

  “Yes. Had a feeling you would know. You sound educated.”

  “And the White Queen—I imagine that’s a reference to Lewis Carroll. Alice in Wonderland?”

  “Through the Looking-Glass, as a matter of fact.”

  “And what is her dictum? I feel I should know but I can’t remember.”

  “It’s that thing about believing six impossible things before breakfast. Alice and the White Queen are having that weird, circular conversation of theirs, and Alice tells her, ‘One can’t believe impossible things,’ and the White Queen replies that when she was Alice’s age she did it for half an hour a day and could even believe six impossible things before breakfast. It’s kind of become my motto.”

  “Believing in impossible things?”

  “Believing that they’re real, against all evidence to the contrary.” He tore off a corner of his Danish pastry and munched on it. Judging by his expression, it didn’t taste much better than the coffee.

  “What sort of things?”

  “The paranormal. That’s my field as a journalist. That’s what my videos are about. I investigate paranormal phenomena. Sounds pretentious when you say it like that, but it’s better than ‘I hunt ghosts’ or ‘I hang out in haunted houses’.”

  “I see,” I said. “So hauntings are your speciality.”

  “Yup.” He gave a little, self-deprecating shake of the head. He struck me as a man who felt he ought to be doing something more constructive with his life, but who was incapable of reversing out of the one-way avenue down which circumstance and inclination had led him. He was stuck where he was and couldn’t do much now to change the situation. I could easily sympathise.

  He said, “And I know what your next question’s going to be.”

  “You do?”

  “Same question everyone asks when they find out what I do. ‘Have you ever seen one?’”

  “A ghost.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, far be it from me to buck the trend. Have you?”

  He drummed a brief tattoo on the tabletop with his fingertips. “I’d like to say yes, but…”

  “But no.”

  “No. There’s been nothing that’s convinced me of the existence of ghosts. No irrefutable proof of life after death. I keep an open mind still. Hence ‘six impossible things’ as my motto. Every time I look into a haunting, I allow myself to hope that this time, this one will be the one. This time I’ll film something, see something, experience something that’ll put the matter beyond all doubt. It’s the only way to approach the subject.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. If I went in with a closed mind, it’d be counterproductive. Whereas constantly hoping it’s going to happen—that makes it far more likely that one day it will happen.”

  “A logical attitude,” I said, “but it carries a risk. You might become suggestible, gullible even. You could want so hard to believe in ghosts that you see ghosts where there are no ghosts.”

  “If that were the case,” he replied, “surely I would have seen one by now.”

  “Fair point.”

  “I mean, I’ve been at this for seven years, ever since an uncle of mine died.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Were you fond of him? Is he why you’re so keen to learn whether the dead carry on living in some other form?”

  “No. No, nothing like that. I hardly knew the bloke. But he was unma
rried, no kids, and he left me a bit of money—quite a lot, actually, enough that I could give up my job—and I’ve been living off that inheritance while I pursue my… I won’t call it my dream. My passion project, maybe. At any rate, so far it’s got me nowhere. I’ve been up and down the country, and also abroad, visiting famous haunting hotspots. I’ve had people contact me via my site and ask me to come and check out a room where they saw a ghost or else had some other sort of spooky encounter. I’ve spent nights in old rectories and converted monasteries and castles-turned-hotels with multiple digital cameras running, one of them using thermal imaging. I’ve recorded hundreds of hours of footage. Net result? Sod all.”

  He spoke without rancour. It was as if he regarded all this effort as just necessary preliminary work, part of the painstaking process towards getting what he wanted, like the prospector tirelessly sifting through riverbed silt for that first glimpse of gold, or the angler casting his line again and again into the water in hopes of a bite.

  “You think that if you keep at it long enough, you’re bound to hit pay dirt eventually,” I said.

  “Absolutely.”

  “I salute your persistence.” I illustrated the remark with a touch of forefinger to brow.

  “Anyway, hark at me, rabbiting on. You don’t want to hear about all this.”

  “Why not? I’m in no rush.”

  “But what about you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I’ve told you about my line of work. What do you do?”

  “Not much. This and that.”

  “You on your way somewhere?”

  “No,” I said. “This is my destination.”

  “This?” He waved a hand around. “A motorway service station?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not exactly a tourist attraction, is it? Do you work here?”

  “No. I’m here because… how to put it? It’s my wife and daughters, you see.”

  “They like it?”

  “No. My wife and daughters died here.”

  His face fell. “Oh God. Oh, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have pried.”

  “It’s fine, it’s fine,” I said. “No need to apologise. They were killed. Car crash. Just over there.”