by Cameron Jace
“How much clearance do you need?” Tom asks.
“Just tell the Reds to clear this side of the alley, around the corner, Lewis says. “I will need a fifty-meter diameter to perform my magic.”
“Will do,” Tom orders the Reds. They obey, pulling me away as well. “But make sure it works. I didn’t mean to shoot her. I was just bluffing. It was a mistake.”
Lewis nods as the Reds move. It’s refreshing to see the world outside the alley still exists. Earlier, the situation was suffocating.
Everyone is moving cautiously. Tom’s eyes are glazed on Constance and Lewis. He even stays with them in the alley, counting on the Reds taking care of everything else. As long as he still can shoot the March, we’re all out of options.
I am retreating. Jack and Fabiola come along.
“I guess I should leave the alley as well,” Tom says to Lewis.
“Actually, no,” Lewis says. “Part of the magic that you, the killer, be near.”
“Really? Isn’t this place going to turn into a glowing wave or something?” Toms squints suspiciously. “Are you sure this magic will not affect me negatively?”
“Not at all,” Lewis says. “Look.” He points at Constance lying still on the floor.
This is the first time I see her dead as Lewis was shadowing her with his body earlier. Something strikes me as wrong right away.
“Look at what?” Tom says.
“Just look,” Lewis says. “Look at Constance.”
“What do you mean?” Tom bends over.
Curiosity killed the cat, I tell myself. In this case: the turtle. I suddenly realize what’s going on.
Tom’s face gets punched so hard, he aches in pain and then loses his gun as he flips back. It’s hard to see who did from this angle, but I know.
It’s Constance.
Devious plan, Lewis. What I have just noticed was the fact that there was no blood around Constance at all.
Devious plan, Constance.
Tom missed when he shot her accidentally. She acted as if he killed her. Lewis played the part with Fabiola. Now Tom is on the floor, helpless without a gun, and even better, we’re out of the alley with enough space to fight the Reds.
I reach for my Vorpal sword by stretching out a hand. It flies back to me. Jack and Fabiola begin fighting as well.
From the corner of my eye, Lewis and Constance jump in the air like basketball players, and high-five.
It’s a madly beautiful life.
48
The Bird Bar, London
“A number on a yellow note,” the bar woman considered. “Neat.”
“It’s called a Wonder note,” the Pillar explains. “A person is supposed to write the things that he was post proud of throughout their life. The thing that drives him and gives a reason to live.”
“And your thing is a number?” she said. “Are you mad, weird man?”
“I had given the note to a girl,” the Pillar said absently. “She didn’t want to read it. I guess she wasn’t ready.”
“Ready for what? It’s a bloody number.”
“It could be God’s number,” the Pillar winked.
“I’d certainly want it if it’s his,” she chuckled. “Tell you what, I still have one last bottle,” she pulled out an old scotch from under the bar. She put it with a thud, like a Scottish football fan, and poured them both drinks.
“A bottle for a rainy day,” the Pillar cheered.”So I guess you will take the money and call the number.”
“I am not sure the cheque is real yet, fella, but you’re the most interning drunk mate walking into my bar in a while.”
The Pillar raised his glass. “To madness and beyond.”
“Such a weird toast,” she said.
“Not weird at all. Look around you. It’s an insane world.”
They clinked glasses and gulped.
The Pillar burped. The woman burped. Friends at first sight… well, burp.
“So whose going to pick up if I call this number?” She said.
“Doesn’t matter,” the Pillar said.
“This is getting strange,” she poured another drink. Him as well. “What matters then?”
The Pillar’s face dimmed. He put the glass aside and leaned forward. “You say this,” and then he whispered the words in her ears.
Just when he finished telling her, someone stormed into the bar.
The Pillar looked and saw the two robber kids from before. They were pointing guns at him. Real guns.
“Oh,” the Pillar said. “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. How can I help you?”
“You are worth a lot of money, sir,” the younger brother said. “Come with us.”
The Pillar knew what’s going to happen. He gazed back at the woman with a nod and tapped the note. He mouthed: don’t worry about me. Just call the number and enjoy the money.
“Of course I am worth a lot of money,” he told the kids. “I’m Carter Pillar.”
“You killed the Queen of England, and we’re here to turn you in and get rich.”
“Who told you that?” the Pillar asked, but then he didn’t need to.
Looking over the boys’ shoulders, he saw them. The Reds.
“Mr. Jay wants to see you.” One of the Reds said.
“I think want is too polite of a word. You mean he demands.”
“Don’t stall, Pillar,” the Red said.
“Of course,” he gulped that last drink and stood up, adjusted his dusty suit and took a deep breath. “It’s showtime,” he told himself.
It was time. He was ready. The beginning of the end.
49
Ice-Cream Truck
The fight is beautiful. I know it’s a strange thing to say, but we are all fighting hand in hand. I may have the top powers but the rest are as badass and as any Inkling would be proud.
Jack who has been silent most of the time, is skilled in a way I didn’t see before. He seems lost in the haze of not knowing if he is dead or alive but when it comes to killing Reds — or saving me — he is on top of his game.
Fabiola has so much effective rage. Let’s just not talk about her now. Lewis and Constance are happy children playing a game of virtual reality. They have enjoyed the theatrical play on Tom so much.
When we finish every last one of the Reds, Constance ties Tom to the truck.
“I don’t know what to do with him,” she tells Lewis.
“Leave him be,” Lewis says. “We have to get back on our purpose.”
“The Kew Garden,” Jack says. “Let me go find another vehicle.”
“Make it a Lamborghini, please?” Constance shouts after him.
“That won’t fit,” Jack winks as he leaves.
“Is everyone okay?” I ask.
“I am,” Constance says telepathically.
“Why haven’t you just told me,” I ask back with my mind. “You could have sent me a message of the plan you cooked with Lewis to get Tom.”
“I was sending it to you, but it seemed blocked,” she sends back. “I told you I can’t get my message through when I am tensed or worried sometimes.”
“So this must have been the pain in my ears.” I send back.
“Could be. We both don’t know how this mind-talk happens. I don’t want to bother Lewis by asking now.”
I nod and go back to check on the March. “It’s strange he didn’t wake up in all of this mess,” I tell Lewis, standing next to him.
“Well, I did!” the March stands up all of a sudden and rubs his clothes clean.
We let out many laughs.
“Were you awake all of the time?” I ask him.
“I awoke to the gun shot,” he says. “I was going to burst into tears when I saw Constance on the floor, but then I saw there was no blood, so I got it.”
Constance and the March high-five. I roll my eyes, and Lewis laughs.
“What are you laughing about?” I ask him.
“You’re too tense. Loosen up, Alice,” Lewis says. “I
write children’s books, not horrors.”
“You call this life we’re in children’s books? This is a mad nightmare.”
“True, life is tough,” he says. “But look at Constance. Someone just shot at her, and she is all fun and giggles.”
“So I am the one who spoils the party now?”
“Far from it,” Fabiola remarks. “We need you. You just need to take it easy.”
I don’t think Fabiola is taking anything easy herself, but I don’t comment.
“So now you’re awake,” I turn to the March. “Do you remember anything else? Is the Kew Garden the right answer.”
“I’m not sure about the Kew Garden, though we still have to go there, as it’s our only chance for now,” the March says. “But I remembered something as important.”
“Please tell us, March,” I say.
“The Six Keys aren’t keys.”
“Interesting,” Lewis says. I can’t imagine how strange it is not to remember what he’d told the March two centuries ago. “Did I tell you that?”
“Yes,” the March says. “The memory is still blurry, though.”
“So if they’re not keys, what are they?” I say. Were we chasing an illusion all this time?
“They don’t open a safe, or a door, but something else.”
“Can you elaborate?” I am as patient as I can be.
“They open…” the March divides his gaze among us. “Are you ready?”
“Don’t do this,” Constance says. “Just spit it out.”
“They open the mind.”
50
Heathrow Airport, London
Landing, the Cheshire looked as drunk as a priest shouldn’t be. Though he had flown first class, drank the best whiskey, and even had the Swedish stewardess give him his number, he didn’t feel good.
He got into the limousine and gave the driver Mr. Jay’s address. He was anxious to know if Mr. Jay would fulfill his promise. Was he going to provide the Cheshire with what he wanted, as he said earlier?
Most people would think the Cheshire was a man with no worries. Just an angry cat with lust for revenge. It was true in a sense, but the Cheshire had a few old secrets from Wonderland. One of them was a secret he had trained himself to forget.
He lay his head back and remembered the Pillar back in Wonderland…
The forest had been the Cheshire’s best place to hide. That was long before he’d visited the real world. As a cat, no one paid attention to him. No one even cared to feed him. Stray in the streets of Wonderland, the only one who’d given him a chance was the ugliest woman in Wonderland. The Duchess.
That’s why he’d later become her assassin in real life. It was rather a payback for helping him out in Wonderland.
Lonely and lost, she’d accommodated him and made him a friend. In truth, all he cared about was the food. A hefty supply of food every day, without having to fight for it or kill. And the food wasn’t rats.
Tolerating the ugly face of the Duchess was one thing. But God, she had a foul smell. She snored so loud and crunchy he’d mistaken the snorts for farts sometimes. But she also cried. Alone in the dark.
All until she became pregnant and had a child. That was when she kicked him out.
True, he would have choked that chubby child of hers, but how was she to know? She’d just found compensation for love other than a stray cat.
Alone again in the wilderness, the Cheshire had the worst day of his life. He had no evil intentions or a scary grin at the time, so he was as weak as the day he was born.
All until he found the Pillar’s forest, or Garden as he liked to call it.
Pillar was a fascinating man. He’d seen something in the Cheshire. A talent the cat hadn’t discovered in itself. And now the Cheshire had a new owner.
The Pillar permitted the Cheshire to play all over the garden. He could eat as much as he wanted — it was how he’d met Alice later for the first time in his life.
But the Pillar demanded one thing. That the Cheshire eats a certain mushroom all the time.
It was a delicious mushroom. He is it with a bowl of fresh milk every day. Yummy.
But it also made him dizzy. Made him sees strange things Hallucinations. The most prominent was how he saw the world upside down, a realization that let him hang upside down on trees to see it in its normal form.
He liked it. Being absent-minded was great fun. Mad was fun. In fact, never had the Cheshire felt so free. Madness was a blessing. You did what you wanted. You didn’t care. And no one could blame you. The perfect crime.
Not when you ended up addicted to the mushroom, though.
Slowly the Pillar didn’t serve the mushroom on a daily basis. And the Cheshire began to feel pain. Withdrawals. Itches. Urges. Madness, but not the good kind.
“Why can’t you give me the mushrooms I want?” the cat asked the Pillar.
“You had enough.”
“But I need them. I can’t imagine my life without them?”
“Then you have to work for it.”
“Anything you want me to do.”
The Pillar smirked with beady eyes. “Anything?”
“Whatever you wish.”
And that’s how the Pillar enslaved him, like so many other’s he’d manipulated before.
The Cheshire did evil things to get his mushroom. For years and years, so much that everyone in the wilderness feared him. They thought it was cool to be feared like that. But the Cheshire knew the pain behind it. The pain of needing the Pillar’s mushrooms.
A few months into his evil addiction he’d began noticing this strange curve in his mouth. Whenever he tried to smile at someone, another girly cat he liked, for instance, they’d tremble with fear. He didn’t understand. All he’d meant was to show good intentions.
That was when his grin surfaced.
The terribly dark and morbid grin that should have been a sweet and innocent smile of a cat. The Cheshire realized the grin had been a permanent effect of the mushrooms the Pillar had given him. It was like a scar on the lips or a tattoo you had when you were drunk and could never remove again.
The grin made the Cheshire. He didn’t make the grin.
51
Ice-Cream Truck
We’re still waiting for Jack to return with a vehicle, so we continue our journey. My blurry visions still attack me a little, though I can hear Constance telepathically now. Of course, we’re all hooked on the March Hare.
“Keys that open the mind,” Constance considers. “This is just another puzzle. I am fed up with puzzles.”
“But you say they aren’t keys?” I ask the March.
“No, they are,” he nods eagerly.
“Now you’re confusing me,” I tell him.
“They are keys, Alice, but they aren’t keys.”
“Thanks,” I say. “That quite explains it.”
Lewis nears the March. There is a look of guilt on his face. He should have remembered. This is mainly his fault. To be honest, the whole forget/remember thing makes me think I am mad sometimes. Like seriously, bonkers, turtle down the hole mad. No hope for a cure.
“You mean they are actual keys that open the mind?” Lewis says. “I mean they are not a metaphor for keys.”
“What I remember is that they are keys that open the mind, you told me that Lewis,” the March says in his ultimate nonchalant innocence. It occurs to me that he does not understand the seriousness and gravity of the situation. “Keys!” He fists hands and raises it up as if he is holding a screw and working it.
“I can’t think of something like that,” Fabiola remarks. “So now we don’t even know what we will do those mysterious keys when we find them?”
“I am sure the keys themselves will show us a clue,” I say. “If the keys themselves are a puzzle then seeing them will clear things up.”
“They could be keys to the chest where there is a special book inside,” Constance says. “Books open the mind.”
Fabiola agrees. “Some books ha
ve locks. It’s an ancient tradition. The locks were a number of keys given to separate people so the secret is safe and the book can’t be read unless the six — or whatever number — of people are present.”
I look at Lewis. “Sounds like something you would love to design, Lewis.”
“It does,” he says. “Except that, I don’t recall doing this.”
“Can it have something to do with the photos?” I offer. “Keys you used to lock the Camera?”
Lewis scratches his head. He is considering it. “This rather has plausibility to it.”
“What do you mean?” Fabiola is eager.
“Considering what the most precious thing is, the camera sounds related,” he says.
“Are you, Masters of the Universe, ever going to tell us what the precious thing is?” I say.
“The most precious thing, if I may correct you.” Constance sends me a telepathic message. I look back at her. She is making a funny face.
“Not now,” Lewis tells me. “Trust me with that.”
I nod, unconvinced. “So why does the camera seem plausible?”
“I had keys that locked the cameras I took the pictures with,” he says. “In my time, this had been the first camera invented in Britain. We used to rest the heavy boxed instrument on a tripod which used keys to lock the camera in.”
This sounds interesting. Could it be?
“Six keys?” I ask.
“A tripod needed three keys,” he says. “Wait.”
“What?” I say.
“I did have one model that needed six keys.”
“That’s a long leap of faith,” Fabiola says. “Are you sure, Lewis?”
“About a camera with six keys, yes. The Question is how am I supposed to find it now?” he says.
“It ’s probably been at Oxford University,” I say. “In the Tom Tower, in your studio?”
Lewis runs his hand through his hair. “That’s a stretch, and we’re not sure.”
“I don’t see it like that,” Fabiola says. “Six Keys. A Camera. Belonging to you. Makes total sense. What do you think, March?”
