by Cameron Jace
"You will understand what I mean if you figure it out, Nancy Drew." She breathes into her paws. "You and your hookah-smoking Inspector Gadget." This seems to amuse him to death.
"If this is an old grudge between you and the Pillar—"
"It's not that," she cuts in.
"If it's about the grudge you hold against humanity, please remember that this happened so long ago." I don't even know what I am doing, conversing with the enemy.
"Nothing is long ago." She still scans my face, as if she wants to spot evidence of me being the Real Alice. I catch her/him staring at my neck as well. "Don't you watch the news? Humans are walky-talky apes, still stained with barbaric behaviors after so many centuries of evolution. They might dress better, talk mellower, and invent cool gadgets. They will say that they prefer love over war, but it's all nonsense. Humans are still monsters. Always will be." He stops and takes a breath, not finding what he was looking for in me. "But then, all my grudges aren't what the Wonderland War is about."
"What is it about, then?" If the Pillar refuses to tell, do I expect the Cheshire to?
"If you were the Alice, you would've known," he says. "Right now, I need to put you to continued tests, until you prove you're her."
"By killing children?" I can't digest his logic.
"Whatever it takes," he says. "Besides, you can still minimize the killings by solving the riddles." He cocks his head with another grin. "Think of it as a Catch-22. Either you don't solve the riddles, and I keep allowing the murders, or you solve the riddle, I know you're the Alice, and we start the Wonderland Wars." He rubs his claws together.
"What kind of sick lunatic are you?"
"The unkind type," the mortician sneers. "Let's not waste time, Alice." She starts smoothening her fingernails with one of the metallic instruments on the tables. "You were smart enough to get the muffin message and smarter to realize all the victims are fat kids." He cocks his head at me as I glimpse a mallet resting against the wall behind the tables. Why is there a mallet in a morgue? "I see that you and your Pillar haven't benefited wisely from the clues I left you." Although spoken in a woman's voice, it has this sinister undertone to it. Something I can't explain. Something only nightmares can produce. "So here is my final clue." He raises a hand in the air, his thumb and middle finger close enough it looks like he is about to snap them. "Are you ready for my major clue, Alice?"
"I am." I'd say yes to anything until I get close to that mallet. I need to have some weapon prepared.
The Cheshire snaps his fingers, and a few corpses on his left and right come to life. They abruptly sit straight up and grin at me. Four on his left. Four on his right.
I freeze in place.
I barely learned how to deal with lunatics—other than myself, some might argue. But I am not prepared to deal with the living dead. This is beyond absurd. Why are there eight corpses coming to life?
"You didn't know I can possess nine lives at the same time?" She laughs, picking up two fork-like instruments from the table. What is she going to do, cut them open? "I can even possess them when they are dead. How kewl is that?" The Cheshire seems to be catching up on the lingo. "Let's dance, Alice. Let's dance."
I really wish I was mad now. This can't be happening.
19
The two instruments in the Cheshire's hands are used in the most unusual way. I never expected it.
He waves them at the corpses, like a conductor guiding his musicians in an orchestra. On cue, the eight living-dead corpses on the table prepared to chant a melody of sorts.
I grimace, confused, perplexed, and overwhelmed as I watch the first headless corpse pick up its head. It adjusts it slightly off above the neck, and begins singing:
"Do you know the Muffin Man?"
It says it as if it's an obedient girl in school—she is actually one of the five kids. Then she tilts her loose head toward her friend on the table next to her. The other corpse fiddles with his chopped-off head, unable to place it correctly. So he decides to hold it out in both hands and let it do the singing:
"The Muffin Man, the Muffin Man?"
The corpse shakes its head to the left and right when it says "Muffin Man," like a happy kid in a school choir. The head in the hand swivels toward the next corpse, indicating its turn. The third corpse has its head placed upside down on its neck, still good enough for singing with upside-down lips:
"Do you know the Muffin Man?'
It repeats the phrase, arching an eyebrow at the fourth corpse—downward, of course. The fourth corpse doesn't belong to the Watermelon crimes. Some old lady with an intact head, almost seventy, dressed as a cook with a big white hat. Her face is burned—she must have died in an oven, my guess. The lady finishes the rhymes with a raspy but faint voice.
"Who lives on Drury Lane?"
This time, the old lady looks at me with no teeth.
I am not going to remove my head and sing a song!
The Cheshire gazes at me. So do the other four corpses on his right. "One more time." The Cheshire waves his forks. "With feeling!"
In unison they sing it all once more:
"Do you know the Muffin Man?
The Muffin Man, the Muffin Man?
Do you know the Muffin Man?
Who lives on Drury Lane?"
Following the Cheshire's conducting, they end the verse with a double clap from their dead, blood-stricken hands.
And then they repeat it. Louder.
I hold my head with both hands and consider screaming. Rarely does screaming solve any problems, I know.
If there is a clue, again, I don't get it. If the Cheshire's intention is to drive me insane, he has done an exceptional job. If none of this is really happening and I am just imagining it, I'd prefer shock therapy in the Mush Room over singing corpses in a morgue. I feel like Alice in the book, falling down an endless rabbit hole where the falling will never stop.
As they keep singing, the desire to hit the Cheshire grows inside me. I step forward and pick up the mallet, my hands trembling. I want to hit the Cheshire, so the madness stops. It's not like me, but I've lost it. The pressure is too much. And their voices too noisy. It's all become too much.
I raise the mallet in the air and plod closer to him. He doesn't move. His grin widens.
"Are you going to hit a fat, poor mortician woman, Alice?" he asks calmly, backed up with the maddening rhyme. "You don't know if she has children, takes care of a mother or a husband, Alice. You can't do that to her."
"I can!" I flip the mallet back to gain momentum. "The madness has to stop!"
I wave hard and then...
And then...
I stop, midair.
How am I supposed to hurt an innocent woman working in a morgue? She is annoying, smokes too much, and doesn't take care of her health, I know. But I can't kill her. She hasn't done anything bad to anyone. And I am no killer.
Even though I killed my friends on the bus.
Still, I am not a killer. This isn't how I see myself. If I hit this woman, the Cheshire will probably beat me and possess one of the many dead people in here. Not that I know how he does it, but I can't do it. He has me cornered in a way I can't react to properly.
"That's why you aren't the Alice." His eyes scan me thoroughly. "The Real Alice would hit and never blink. Because she knows that evil has to be chopped off by the roots and burned, so it never grows again. That was the whole point of Alice's madness. She was strong. Powerful. Never afraid." He says the words with as much admiration as resentment. "She was M-A-D. That was her trick. But you're not her." His voice saddens. He wants me to be her. God only knows why he needs her that much. Tears begin trickling down my cheeks. I don't know why. Am disappointed I am not her? Am I disappointed I can't kill him and save the world? I don't know.
"The Pillar will tell you it doesn't matter who you are," he elaborates. "That it doesn't matter if you're mad or not. I'd say it matters a lot. How can you take sides when you don't know who you are? You know wh
at the world's most common sin is, Alice?" He reaches for the mallet to snatch it from me. "It's indifference. Indecisiveness. Hesitation when it's time for swift justice."
He is about to pull the mallet away from my trembling hands when something inside me surfaces. Something I haven't met or thought of before. A strong urge to correct things, to stand for something, and to help as many people as I can. A strong urge to see behind the Cheshire's mask.
I can pretend it's not me as I bring down the mallet on the mortician's woman's legs, enough to hurt her but not kill her. I can pretend I am not that kind of girl.
But it's me. Truly me. Maybe not the Alice the Cheshire is looking for. But the Alice I want to be from now on.
20
A tear trickles down my cheek as the mortician woman falls to her knees. I do the unimaginable and catch my tear in the palm of my hand before it hits the ground again. If I want to win this, I can't cry. If I could squeeze that tear back in, I would. This tear is me balancing the insanity I have been thrown into.
I help the woman in her fall, so she doesn't hit her head against something. She stares at me with a horrified expression, unaware of what happened to her. The absence of a grin on her face tells me the Cheshire left her body.
Why not? He wants me to suffer the guilt of hitting an innocent woman.
The mortician keeps sobbing uncontrollably, more in need of an explanation than to mend her wounds.
The corpses have stopped singing and zipped themselves back into their death bags. I can't see the Cheshire anywhere.
"Who are you?" The woman starts to shake me hysterically. Her leg is swollen and bleeding.
"Please calm down," I tell her. "I need you to trust me. There is an evil presence in here."
The woman's eyes are wide open. She scans me from head to toe and then stops at the string wrapped around my toe. Slowly, she raises a reluctant finger, pointing at the empty death bag. "You're dead..." she stutters.
Before I can explain further, she faints.
I help her to the floor and pat her. I can't complain. She did me a huge favor and saved me a lot of time.
Turning around with the mallet in my hands, I look for the Cheshire. I don't know how his soul-possessing works, but he must be in the room because the door is still shut.
What kind of game is he playing with me now?
I walk slowly toward the door, the corpses supposedly resting in peace at my sides. Holding the mallet as if it's a sword does give me confidence somehow. It's amazing what fear does to you when you decide to finally face it. My bare feet and my body are still exposed to the chilling cold of the morgue.
Closer to the door, I hear my footsteps echoing. It's unexplainable, but I keep walking.
If the Cheshire has the ability to be invisible, then I really don't have a way to fight back.
Why am I hearing echoes of my footsteps?
I keep limping to the door with a mallet in my hand. Horror movies aren't even close to the condition I am in.
Closer to the door, I realize that what I am hearing aren't the echoes of my footsteps. They are someone else's. And they are approaching from the other side of the door.
How did the Cheshire leave the room without opening the door? And why is he mirroring my footsteps? He must be trying to scare me, that's all.
I grip the door handle, my mallet ready in my other hand. A deep breath helps me to lower my blood pressure, just enough to think straight. All I have to do is pull the door open and then hit hard. That's it. I hope I am really thinking straight. I have no combat training, after all—or if I did, I don't remember it.
I grip the door tighter and then pull.
I didn't expect that. But like the Cheshire said, the door is locked.
The keychain in the mortician's hand!
I turn around to fetch the keys from the woman's hands, only to see her standing on her feet again. There is a slight problem with her posture now. She has her head chopped off and holds it in one hand. The other hand is holding the keys.
"Looking for these?" She grins.
The Cheshire is back. Who was approaching the door from the other side?
The horrible scene chains me for a moment. But I am about to run full throttle against the Cheshire and hit him. Let's get done with this.
The door behind me suddenly flings open.
I close my eyes, as I suppose another Cheshire-possessed human is behind me. How am I supposed to kill him? Am I supposed to kill the nine of them?
"Alice!" a voice calls from behind me. "Here you are!"
A hefty smile forms on my face. The voice behind the smile is so dear to me. It's Jack Diamonds.
21
The mortician's face knots in anger when she hears Jack Diamonds' voice. Jack prefers not to enter the room. It's hard to understand why. He just opened the door from the other side. The Cheshire can't actually see Jack from this angle. I haven't seen Jack yet either; I've only heard his voice.
Please, God, don't make it just a voice in my head. But come on, the door is open. It can't be a voice in my head.
It drives the woman mad that someone is saving me.
"Come on, Alice," Jack urges me. I can only see his hand, reaching out from behind the door. "It's so cold where you are. I don't think I can get in."
"But I have to kill him first, Jack," I say.
"Kill who? Is there is someone with you in the room?" He wiggles his hand. "They are all dead."
"Who are you talking to, Alice?" the Cheshire blurts in anger. "There is no one there behind the door."
"Don't play games with me, Cheshire." I raise my mallet, ready to strike, as he is approaching again. "Who else do you think opened the door from outside?"
"I don't know." He shakes his shoulders and puts his head on. Sometimes, I really don't understand his intentions. Is he trying to give me a message, so I continue my investigation, or is he trying to hurt me? The more time I spend with him, the more nothing makes sense. "But I know there is no one out there." Now he grins again. "And I know you can't kill me. You might have wounded and injured a poor woman, but you can't kill me."
"Alice!" Jack finally pulls me outside. He does it fast and with a bang. Never have I thought he was that strong. He pulls the door behind me and locks it with a digital code on a pad next to the wall. The code is 1862. The date in my vision when I met Lewis was 1862. What are all these puzzles, and what are they supposed to mean?
"Are you okay?" His hands search my face, looking for a bruise. He makes sure I am all right. Never have I seen someone so concerned about me. "Thank God you're okay, Alice. I was so worried." His cuteness doesn't match his seriousness, but it's understandable. When I lay my eyes on Jack, all I think about is fun.
"I am so glad to see you, Jack." I wrap my hands around him as he touches my face with his gentle hands. His touch is warm. I need it, even inside a morgue. Who the hell are you, Jack? Why do you always come to save me?
With my emotions flaring, I hug him tightly. I embrace his body and feel I'd like to hide inside it. Maybe he could shelter me from the mad world; maybe he could shelter me from my mind.
"Wow," he jokes as he pats me on the back. "It's too soon for that. I like a girl to take it slow, who takes me out for dinner first and tells me funny stories."
I hit him lightly on the chest while I am in his arms. His silly jokes make me think this world isn't worth any anger. I wish I could be like him.
"I was thinking about you, Jack." I stare at the closed door, waiting for the Cheshire to open it from inside at any moment. "You make me feel..."
"Funny?" His hands run through my hair. I can feel his breath on my ears.
I nod.
"You're a funny girl, too," he says. "You just have bad taste in clothes. Always stained with blood."
"Come on, you confessed you liked me in the Vatican. I heard you in the booth," I tease.
"Guilty as charged." He raises a hand to his chest.
"We have to go, Jack." I sta
re at the door. "He has a key."
"Who has a key?"
"The Cheshire."
"Who?"
"You remember the nasty old woman chasing me in Belgium?"
"Wow. She must hate you so much." He rolls his eyes, not even questioning what is happening.
I nod, not having the strength to explain.
Suddenly, sirens blare outside the morgue as we speak. I gaze at Jack for an explanation.
"It's the police," he says. "We need to get you out of here."
22
"I guess someone reported suspicious activity in the morgue," Jack says. "We need to hide from the police. They will not understand."
"What will they not understand, exactly? I have no idea what's really happening."
"Nor do I, Alice," he says. "But it doesn't matter. What matters is we're together. Come on." He pulls my hand and walks me to a side door leading to another doctor's room. I look behind me one last time, wondering why the Cheshire didn't come out. Maybe it's the code Jack entered. Does it prevent the door from getting opened manually with a key?
"Jack, where did you get that code you just entered for the door?" I turn to him.
"There is a senior nurse who I saw use it on all other doors, so I gave it a try," he replies. "Let's rid you of this thing in your hand." He tries to pull the mallet away as he closes the door behind us. It's a doctor's private room. "You look like a maniac."
It shocks me that my grip is still tight on the mallet. I can't give it away. My hands are stiffened with fear.
"It's all right, Alice." He gazes straight into my eyes. "It's me, Jack. I won't hurt you." He loosens my hand, finger by finger.
The sirens are getting closer outside.
"Wear this." He hands me a nurse's uniform from the wardrobe. A pair of nerdy glasses and shoes he'd brought from a storage room nearby complete the ensemble. "You will pretend you're the nurse, and I will hide in one of these." He points at one of the death bags on the tables. There are three of them. "You play the nurse, and I play dead." He smiles. "Don't forget the nametag." He hands it over. "All you have to do is pull me out and tell the police there were intruders in the morgue. It's common. Thieves love to steal corpses and sell them."
