by Cameron Jace
28
Outside the Radcliffe Asylum
The Queen of Hearts enjoyed taking pictures outside the asylum. All kinds of press and news channels focused on her. She even pulled out her phone and began taking selfies for Instagram. Some with the police officers, some with a few passersby, and the majority of herself alone, blowing kisses at the camera.
The Interpol officers were irked by her, but could not speak up. They prayed she wouldn’t stay for the remaining eight hours, because she seemed to be enjoying herself. She’d even begun to Snapchat.
“Was it you who discovered the terrorists’ plan, Your Majesty?” a reporter asked.
“Who else?” she said, chin up. “I can smell a terrorist’s fart a mile away.”
“Excuse me?”
“Me and Interpol have a codename for terrorists,” she joked, pulling a couple of the officers into the frame. She forcefully hugged them as if they were a team. “It’s an insider’s joke. We call them farts. Terrorists deserve it.”
“But why not catch them earlier?” another reporter asked. “Why didn’t we hear anything about it before?”
“I endorse discreet execution. I suggested we wait until they were all gathered, planning for a new terrorist attack. And here we are. We’re about to end terrorism in the world. Right boys?” she addressed the poor officers, bending low to fit into the camera’s frame and match her short height.
The Interpol officers nodded, faking smiles.
“But how come they meet in an asylum?” a reporter inquired. “What about the mental patients inside?”
“They’re all mad!” the Queen raised her voice. “Mad is another codename for terrorists. You’re either sane or a terrorist.”
“This doesn’t make sense, Your Majesty.”
“Does it not?” She leaned forward and whispered to the reporter. “Do you want me to call you mad right now?”
The reporter shrugged and backed away.
One last reporter stepped up and asked, “So what’s the plan? Are you really giving the terrorists eight hours? Why not barge in and kill them right away?”
The Queen’s eyes glazed upward. The idea seemed brilliant. “I think you’re right,” she said, then turned to the Interpol officers. “I think we should just break in and shoot them all dead. In fact, this is an order! Just bring me that Alice girl alive. I have a surprise called Jack for her.”
29
The Radcliffe Asylum
“I can’t believe you confessed to it,” I say to the Pillar.
“You said there is a lot that you need to know from me,” the Pillar’s says, as if telling a joke. “Prepare for a few shocking surprises.”
“Then it’s true.” I stand up to him, noticing the change in his demeanor. Something isn’t right. I can’t feel that invisible sense of caring about me anymore. Or is it my mind playing tricks on me? “You’re Him. You’re the one who I joined to find his weakness and kill. You’re the reason why I joined Black Chess. Not the Circus. You manipulated me and hurt me and others somehow, and then came to finish some sick game of yours, pretending to care for me. You’re nothing but a Wonderland Monster like every other one I’ve chased and killed.”
The Pillar says nothing. He gives me that blank stare, like an invisible curtain that prevents me from reaching through. I can’t interpret that look in his eyes.
“Just tell me it’s true.” I am almost pleading for answer.
“If I do, what will you do to me, Alice?” The Pillar’s voice is still flat and emotionless.
It occurs to me that his question is more of a test. He wants to know if I am mad enough at him to fight back, to call him an enemy. But I’m not there yet. He might still hold answers about my family. I want to ask him if he is my father, but my tongue betrays me and glues to the roof of my mouth as I swallow hard.
“See? You’re asking for answers you can’t handle.” The Pillar gently pushes me out of the way. He picks up his cane and rolls it in the air, twice. “Let’s start with the question all of you really need to be asking me.”
“There are no questions,” Truckle says. “I say we kill you.”
“I doubt he’d die easily,” the March says. “What about his fourteen lives?”
So many questions roam in my head. None of them of which I’m sure I can handle the answer to now. The one sentence I can utter is, “Who are you, really?”
The smug smile on the Pillar’s face is ten miles wide. “I’m the one person who knows how to get you out of here.” He points at the ticking deadline on the BBC News channel on TV. A new banner scrolls across the bottom announcing the queen’s order to enter immediately. It seems like the police changed their mind. They’re preparing to break in within a few minutes. Death is literally knocking on the asylum’s door.
30
The March Hare panics, seeing the police are about to break in. He leaves us to look for more writing on the walls. He still believes he’ll find more clues, if not an in-your-face conclusion about Patient 14.
I stand exchanging looks with the Pillar and Truckle, the Mushroomers have left with the March to assist him.
“You don’t really think the police will break in, do you?” Truckle says. “They’re supposed to wait another seven and a half hours.”
“I think they’re just bluffing to scare us,” the Pillar says. “Whoever designed this situation wants it to look legal to the public. They won’t risk breaking the deadline. The media loves poetic justice, and hates when the hero breaks a promise.”
“Still, we need to find a way out of here,” I challenge the Pillar. “Why not tell us, or are you planning on leaving all alone?”
“That’s a good point,” Tom remarks. “The Pillar may have planned to get in to fool us and play innocent, and in the last minute he will escape.”
“So many theories, so little time,” the Pillar says. “The way out is underneath your feet, Alice.”
I look down. There is a carpet I’m standing upon. “How so?” I ask.
“There is a tunnel underneath the carpet. You access it by opening a hole in the floor. It can only be done with a rare kind of magic using my hookah’s smoke.”
“That’s how you did it!” Tom jabs a finger at the Pillar, who avoided it the way you avoid an annoying mosquito.
“Why are there tunnels underneath the floor?” I ask.
“Lewis Carroll was a devoted supporter to mental illnesses, because he was worried he was mentally ill himself. The migraines had increased and he had recurring relapses of blackouts where he didn’t remember what he was doing,” the Pillar says. “He ended up investing in the Radcliffe Asylum to cure himself, and later, to have Tom Truckle create an Inkling army of Mushroomers.”
“It doesn’t explain the tunnels.”
“The tunnels were Carroll’s Plan B to escape if Black Chess ever attacked, just like today.”
“But Tom told me there is no way out, only a contained bunker of some sorts. The walls and all that.”
“That’s part of the truth.” The Pillar shushes Tom before an attempt to object. “Lewis never told Tom about the tunnels.”
“And he told you?” I mock him.
“No, he didn’t. I learned about them later,” the Pillar says. “The reason why he hadn't told Tom is that the tunnels were a mess. Lewis wasn’t a good architect. He screwed up the math. Most tunnels reached dead ends and never led the way outside.”
“Then how did you get outside?”
“I used my own magic spell. It widened the size of the tunnels and lead to a backstreet, right underneath a public toilet,” the Pillar says. “Unless you’ve got something against the smell of human urine and poop, I shall show you.”
His remark almost makes me laugh. Sometimes I feel as if the Pillar has a spell on me. This unexplained feeling of caring for an unethical person like him urges me to ask the question I’ve postponed so long.
“Pillar.” I dance on my tiptoes, feeling tense. “We’re not leaving be
fore you answer an important question.”
“Again?” He sighs impatiently. “We’re about to get killed.”
“I don’t care, besides you said they might be bluffing.”
“Questions will get you nowhere, Alice. It’s all in the Wonder note.”
“I doubt this question is.”
“What do you want to ask me, Alice?” His voice stiffens and he knocks his cane against the floor.
“Are you my father?”
Suddenly, the air in the room isn’t enough for both of us to keep breathing anymore.
31
White Hearts Hospital Asylum
“You think they’re really breaking in?” Fabiola asked Lewis.
“They’re bluffing. Just trying to scare them to get out. This plan requires convincing the public that the Queen of Hearts and her men did the best before they shoot them dead.”
“I see,” Fabiola says.
Lewis stares back at her for a minute too long. The silence almost suffocates her.
“What is it, Lewis?”
“I’m wondering if you were going to leave to go to the asylum and take Alice’s side?”
Fabiola didn’t find the right words to answer. She never had.
“I mean you’re confusing me, Fabiola. Most of the time you want Alice killed…”
“You know how evil she can be.” Fabiola felt the need to explain.
“Then, in Russia, you took a stab in the back for her.”
Fabiola pursed her lips, thinking. “It was different in Russia.”
“How different?”
“The way she fought.”
“Tell me about it.” Lewis looked proud of Alice.
“She was unstoppable, so strong, as if she would not rest before she rid the world of every last Black Chess.”
“I assume she reminded you of yourself, back in Wonderland.”
“She did.” Fabiola nodded. “I had to stand by her side when I saw that.”
“Why not stand by her side now?”
“Because I still fear her, Lewis. Remember her family?”
“What she did would be considered brave by some.”
“Pure lunacy by most,” Fabiola said.
“She needs you, Fabiola.”
“I’m not sure she does.”
“She is young. It’s hard for her to ask for help. You were the same when you were her age, so stubborn.”
“I know.” Fabiola fumbled with the covers on her bed. “But then, it’s also you, Lewis.”
“What about me?”
“You never told me the whole truth.”
“Which part?”
“I have no idea what we’re fighting for. I mean, I know we should stand up to Black Chess, but what is the Wonderland War really about?”
“The most precious thing.” Lewis smiled broadly, so proud of something she didn’t understand.
“You’re being vague again.”
“Not at all. You’ll realize how precious the thing we’re fighting for is once it’s revealed.”
“Why can’t you reveal it now?”
“Many reasons,” he said. “One of them is that I believe we have a traitor among us in the Inklings, but it’s too soon to tell.”
“If there is a possible traitor, then it would be Alice.”
“You don’t really believe that.” Lewis patted her gently. “If it makes you feel better, I can tell about where the Six Keys are.”
Fabiola cupped a shriek. “You know? Are you playing games with us?”
“I don’t know exactly,” Lewis said. “However, I know who knows where they are and what they are for and what the Wonderland War is about.”
“Puzzles and nonsense, Lewis. You have to ease up on those.”
“How so? This is what people like about my books. Puzzles and nonsense.”
Fabiola reached for his hands. She was surprised she could actually touch them, though he was only a spirit of his real self. “Lewis, please,” she said gently. “Tell me anything that makes sense. Just one bit of information that gives me hope. I’m not going to argue about how you don’t know while this other guy knows. But tell me who knows about the Six Keys?”
“You want a name?”
“That’d be a start.”
“We used to call him Patient 14.”
32
The Radcliffe Asylum
“Why would you ask a question like that?” the Pillar says with a straight stare.
“The Chessmaster mentioned he knows my biological family,” I say. “You must know of them.”
The Pillar’s stare doesn’t change, neither does his silence.
“The Chessmaster is lying,” the Pillar says.
“What do you mean he is lying? Why would he?”
“I don’t know, Alice, but I’ve never heard of your biological family. I always assumed you were an orphan Lewis picked up and adopted or something.”
“Now it’s you who is lying,” I burst out. “I find it hard to believe you don’t know about my family!”
“I find it hard to believe you think I’m your father.”
“I think you are her father,” Tom interjects. “That look in your eyes when she asked, there is something about that look.”
“Stay out of it,” The Pillar waves him away with his cane, then approaches me. I find myself taking a step back, but he reaches for my shoulders. “I’m not your father, Luke — I mean Alice.”
“Would you swear on it?”
“As if I’m the kind of man who wouldn’t lie while swearing.” He rolls his eyes. “The Chessmaster probably wanted to mess with your head.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Because you beat him. Because he wants you to spend the rest of your life going crazy.”
“As if I’m not losing my mind already,” I counter back.
“Just drop it. You think this is the perfect time to discuss this?”
“I do think that. If I’m about to die, I need to know about my family. I need to know why they’ve never contacted me, or why they’ve kept me a secret, why they never bothered to help me out of this mess I’m in.”
“I’m sure they have a good reason,” the Pillar tries to calm me down.
“So you know them?”
“I don’t. I’m just assuming. The one you should ask would be Carroll himself. Maybe he knows.”
“What about Him?” Tom sticks his nose between us like a nosey neighbor.
“Who is Him?”
“You must know,” I say. “The story about me joining Him to find out his weakness and kill him. The reason why I joined Black Chess.”
“Who’s been messing with your head?” the Pillar says.
“Other than you?” I say. “Almost everyone!”
I find myself reaching for the rifle the Pillar keeps near the couch and point it at him. “Tell me the truth!”
“Alice?” the Pillar says cautiously. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Yeah?” I ready the trigger and aim. “Aren’t you the one with fourteen lives? Why would you be scared if I shoot?”
“Because this rifle has Bandersnatch teeth for bullets.” He looks really worried.
“So?” Tom Truckle’s nose joins in again. “Are you saying you’re not immune to those bullets?”
The Pillar dismisses him for the third time, keeping eyes on me.
“My God,” I say with a smile on my face. “So it’s true. Your fourteen lives aren’t immune to Bandersnatch bullets.”
The Pillar nods, and in a rare moment, looks defeated.
“Then I’m going to shoot you, if you don’t tell me what you know about Him.”
33
The Radcliffe Asylum
“All right.” The Pillar gives up, hands in the air. “What do you want me to tell you.”
“Who are my real biological parents? You? Fabiola?”
“I. Don’t. Know.” The Pillar grits his teeth.
“Lying again.”
“Do you think I’d risk my life not telling you, if I knew?” the Pillar says. “Those bullets will drop me dead, and I don’t know of any magic or rituals to bring me back to life from them.”
“So what do you know?”
“Ask me and I’ll try my best.”
“Who are you?”
“Carter Chrysalis Cocoon Pillar.”
“Are you Him?”
The Pillar purses his lips. It’s as if he’s struggling with telling me the truth, trying to swallow it deep into the belly of the whale of secrets he is.
“Tell me!” I shout, my rifle’s tip touching his chest.
The Pillar looks sideways.
“I will not hesitate shooting you.”
“I know,” he says softly.
“Then tell me!” I shout, but then follow my furiousness with a weakened. “Please.”
“I am.” The Pillar looks back at me.
Unconsciously, I lower the rifle. I think the shock is too great to bear. I think I still hoped the Pillar wasn’t who I should have known he was from the first day I suspected his intentions.
“You are?” Tom says. He too, seems surprised, though he’d endorsed the idea from the beginning.
“Tell me more,” I say in a fractured voice.
“Ask me and I will answer you.” The Pillar evades my eyes.
“Did I join Black Chess because of you?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Did you teach me how kill and hurt people in Wonderland?”
“Yes.”
“How many did we hurt?”
“Can’t remember.”
“Did I do it to get closer to you, to find your weakness?”
“Yes.”
“Did you expose me?”
“At some point, yes.”
“How did you find out?”
“I found out from day one, and I played you.”
34
