by Lumen Reese
Clark and I both stood. “I'm fine, let's go.”
“Fantastic. I need to make a few calls, to make arrangements for my son, but I can do it on the way. We'll go and see my friend Robert the Caterpillar first.”
When we had gotten into another cab and Hatley had told the man an address to start us off, she began making calls that I tried not to listen in on, making small-talk with Clark in the backseat.
The Caterpillar's building was only a few blocks away. Hatley hung up her phone for good as we pulled up.
“Listen,” she said, “You've got to go through a maze to get to Robert. Nothing in there can hurt you, just grit your teeth and keep moving forward it'll take no time at all.”
“They can't just turn it off for us?”
“It would take more time to disable it all than we have to waste.”
His building was shorter than Hatley's had been, and was grey brick painted with graffiti on the lower floor. It looked like a garage at the entrance, which rolled up as we approached, but inside it was pitch black. I said nothing and inched in a few steps behind Hatley, only hearing her, not seeing her, when the door rolled back down behind us.
“Nothing will hurt you,” she said again.
The lights went up in a flash that blinded me for a second, and then the walls around us which I could see to be mirrors from wall to wall and floor to ceiling made me jump at the sight of my own reflection to the side. A sound scared me back a step as another pane of mirrored glass whirred and dropped between Hatley and I. I had thrown myself at it but hit solid wall and bounced off. Clark shouted for me and I spun in time to see his ankles disappear beneath another section.
For a moment everything was still, my heart was the only sound, pounding in my ears the way it was. I was alone in a small, mirrored room and the irrational thought that crept up was, of course, that I would never get out.
One of the sides of the room slid away. At first the corridor it opened to was dark. Lights flickered on -I wasn't sure where they came from, because the walls and ceilings were uninterrupted mirror- and I started to walk forward. I would walk through a maze, get to the end and meet the man they called Caterpillar. If I didn't participate with any of it, it couldn't scare me.
The corridor began to get larger, until it seemed the ceiling was a full two stories above. Then out in front, a large black abyss was stretching on for far further than anyone could jump. A dead end? There wasn't anything to go back to; I was sure of it. There weren't any other paths or doors. There were more whirs of air and friction making the ground shake as things changed behind me. I turned, expecting something terrible, and terrible was exactly what was coming.
The path had closed up behind me. I was closed in again, with the abyss out front and a wall creeping closer behind, ready to push me over the edge of the endless pit. I froze. It was coming slowly, making a scraping sound as the mirror dragged along the walls and floor. I moved to it, scrabbling for a hidden switch to stop it or a secret passageway or even something to grab onto to climb across the gap.
There was nothing. The wall reached me, pushing me along at a steady pace closer and closer to a long fall and death. I pushed back, digging my feet in, but the wall was solid, immovable and hungry, like an awful tongue pushing me toward the gaping mouth at the end. Nothing was supposed to hurt me, but of course the place wanted me dead. It would look like a malfunction. I pinched my eyes shut.
The wall stopped. I almost didn't dare to look. My body trembled. I was perched on the very edge and nearly collapsed as as I swooned with relief. Black dots swarmed in my vision. The room was too hot.
Then the wall gave another little push, sending me falling forward. Finally the scream I hadn't been able to get a grip on worked its way out. The floor hit me a second later, hard and unforgiving. Pain flared up all over, but the fear was gone and the impact reminded me I was alive. The pain was like heaven. From where I was laying, I rolled over and stared up. Above, the ceiling was gutted, with a high, dark chamber that was reflected down on the mirror floor. It was only an illusion.
Tears welled up but I blinked them away and raised myself onto shaky legs. I had said I wouldn't let the fear surface, but of course it was not the same as the abstract fear I had been forcing down every step of the way through the Four Quarters. It was visceral. But like Corso had said, I couldn't let it stop me. I eased a few steps forward, testing the ground before stepping. But suddenly the entire platform gave a jerk and went shooting upward, causing my stomach to drop and stiff legs to collapse so I was sprawled out again. More bruises.
The platform carried me up like an elevator through the tunnel in the ceiling, moving at a disorienting speed. Everything went pitch black. Blackness was below and all around.
Things got light again and a few seconds later I was risen up, seemingly out of the ground. Thankfully, the movement stopped. I was on her knees on a single square of mirror among lush fields of waist-high, golden tufts. The sun was shining in a blue sky above, with fluffy white clouds that were rolling by at unnatural speeds. I could feel a breeze, and smell the earth. But I was still inside the building. It was the fake sunlight I had gotten so used to in the past weeks; indistinguishable from real sky. I could even feel heat on my skin. Only a few yards from the platform, a treetop was visible. An innocuous seeming oak, but I knew it couldn't be so simple.
With hesitant steps, I approached. It was surrounded by a circle of hard dirt. In front, an old man was sitting in a rocking chair, strumming a sleek electric guitar which was plugged into an amp on the ground beside him.
“Would you like one? They make a tasty snack on the go. Very nutritious.”
At first I thought he was talking about the guitar, and it was just wonderful nonsense. But I looked closer at the tree to see if it bore any kind of fruit. There were red lumps in it that I first thought were apples. I squinted, seeing a few drops of red drip from the leaves and plop down on the ground. Nausea swirled all around my head. The tree seemed to be growing round, red, human hearts. One drop fell on the guitar-playing man. He went on strumming as if nothing had happened.
Thinking it was rude not to answer, I grumbled, “No thank you,” and jogged forward through the weeds. Three tunnels of mirrors were coming out of the ground, and I stepped into the one on the right.
“Stella!”
The call made me spin. “Clark!”
His voice had come from back behind the tree. I caught a tiny glimpse of him before the tunnel closed off with another wall of glass descending between us. I threw myself against it and slammed a fist into it, kicking it and shrieking. “Enough!”
But it didn't move, nobody came to get me out of the maze and nothing changed around me. I had no choice but to clench my fists and head on, which I did at a full sprint, determined to run straight through whatever was left.
I came to a place where the mirrored hall split and went right without thinking. There were a few more turns. I ended up sealed off in a room with mirrors on all sides. The room turned -I could feel the floor moving- and one wall lifted. There weren't any more mirrors. The room I stepped into was what seemed like a room in an asylum. The walls were cushioned white. It was entirely bare except for a desk at the back by the only window and a stocked bar on the left wall, a few spare chairs on the right.
At the desk sat a heavy-set black man. He smiled, showing pristine white teeth, and one gold. “First one through. It's over, I promise. Why don't you come sit down? You must be Stella.”
I sat in the chair opposite him. “You're Robert the Caterpillar.”
“Was that Hatley I saw coming in with you?”
“Yes.”
We shook hands over the desk. He stared at me a minute. “You've been through alot , lately. Had a lot of tough decisions to make. Haven't known who to trust. But I'm sure you'll find the answer. And when you do, don't let anybody tell you otherwise. Trust yourself. He asked me to give you this.” Robert handed me a piece of paper, folded up.
&
nbsp; I stared at it a moment. “Who did?”
“The man you're hunting. He told me about your predicament, and I sympathize.”
“He was here? White guy, thirties, brown hair, blue sweater?”
“That's him. Just an hour or so ago. Bright and early. He made it through that maze in record time. He moved like a man with someone hot on his tail. I made a bundle.” When I raised a brow, he elaborated. “We make bets on how long it'll take people. The guys I work with favor the long shots, but I'm a smart-money kind of guy, so when he came in... well, obviously he's smart-money.”
“Mm-hm...”
Then Robert added, “I lost it all on you, though. No offense.”
I nodded. I was a long shot and I knew it. I had always been a long shot. But I had come pretty far, for how unlikely I was.
“Aren't you going to open it?”
I remembered the paper. One word.
Hearts.
“Did he say anything about Hearts?” I asked.
“No, he only asked me about my business, which is only what the company dictates. Seemed like he had that figured out already, and thought you'd be here before long.”
The wall opened behind us and I glanced over my shoulder as Hatley stalked out, whipping a chair over from the row on the side wall and plopping down in it. Still catching her breath, she said, “Alright Robert? We've got some questions.”
“No we don't,” I said, showing her the paper. “He was already here, if he left, that's good enough for me. Who do you know in Hearts?”
“Just like that?”
“Yeah.”
She frowned at me but said, “The man who does most of the shipping in Hearts is named Vincent Zucholi, he does work in contraband, too, but nothing hard that I know of. Jericho has me keeping an eye on the s ituation. I can set up a meeting, or we can go around him and find out what and when he's moving.”
“How?”
She reached out and adjusted a strand of my hair, and I went stiff but didn't pull back. “Darling, I'm the biggest mover and shaker in Wonderland.” Then her phone was out, and she was placing a call. “Hello, Vernita? Who do you have around Vincent Zucholi? Great, can you make a few calls? I need to know what and where and when he's moving. Yes, I'll call him next. Thank you.”
She hung up and began searching through her phone again.
I looked back at the place where the wall opened into the maze. It was still. “Can you open that back up?”
“Your friend will be fine,” Robert said. “He has to make it through on his own.”
“Can you just open it?”
“It only opens out, not to go back in.”
Hatley lifted her phone to her ear again. “Hello, Corbin? Hatley here. We're in a pretty dire situation here, I need to know what you know about shipping in Hearts.”
She motioned for a pen and Robert pushed a pad and pen across the desk at her. She scribbled something, said only, “Thank you,” and hung up. “Okay, this is interesting. Apparently there's a turf war going on in Hearts right now. A guy whose street name is Lance Flynn has been supplying drugs to a few clubs, nobody knows where he's getting what he's getting, and he seems to have come out of nowhere about a month ago.”
“Sounds promising. How fast can we get to Hearts?”
“About an hour by the train.”
The wall opened with a whir behind us. Clark tumbled out, falling straight to the ground where he was wheezing for breath and whimpering on the exhales. I rushed over.
Robert lobbed a box of tissues at me. I offered them to Clark, though he was waving me away, shielding his face with his other arm, making wet sniffing noises.
Fighting my first instinct to pretend not to notice and give him space, I put a hand on his back and was instantly rewarded with what I thought was an appreciative sigh.
I felt suddenly bad for bringing him along, no matter how desperate and alone I had been.
“Clark, I'm sorry. You should go back to the precinct. I'm gonna be fine, I shouldn't have made you come.”
“No,” he murmured, pressing his face into the white floor. “They don't have anywhere to put me and you need me.”
“Thank you...”
“We should go,” Hatley called.
“We don't have to go back in there, do we?” I asked.
“No. Just this once, I'll let you leave by the fire escape,” Robert said, gesturing to the single window behind him.
Clark breathed, “Thank God.”
And at least the fire escapes in Wonderland were just the same as the ones in Brooklyn.
Chapter Twenty
We boarded a sleek, silver bullet train high above the city, and for once I didn't have an entire car to myself. We managed a table in the back, though, with Clark taking up one side and Hatley sliding in with me and immediately draping an arm over the back. I was aware of her presence though she wasn't actually touching me.
“Someone will come through with Vincent's whereabouts, I'm sure, it's just a matter of waiting. Tonight we should check out the clubs Lance Flynn has been supplying, but we've got hours to kill before then. What are you thinking?”
I drummed my fingers on the smooth wood of the table. “Check someplace secluded, where people could be kept.”
Clark had maps of the four cities in his little backpack. He spread out the one for Hearts and Hatley glanced over it.
“Off the top of my head, I'd say we check out the clock tower. It gets buyers going through once every couple days, but it's made to look abandoned and there's an underground apartment where an old caretaker lives. He's gotten complaints filed before.”
“That sounds good.”
I stared out the window, wondering where Corso was.
After another hour we docked high above an equally bustling city. The buildings were sleek silver, but much of the advertising casting neon glows over them were red, not blue.
We got a cab outside the station and started south, rolling through town for a few minutes until the skyscrapers ended abruptly, then there were suburbs for another few miles and then they, too, gave way to lush forest, leafy trees that created a canopy so thick it blanketed the slender road winding through them. The trunks were as wide as the taxi, in some places.
“Do you think it's worth it?” I asked Hatley when we had been driving for a bit. “Losing some freedoms for the greater good?”
“My son gets to grow up with sunshine and trees. He gets to go to school, he gets proper medical care, and he won't ever be sent down the river. So yes it's worth it to give up booze and fags.” I blinked at her and she realized why after a moment, and with a bright smile declared, “Cigarettes, darling! We call them fags where I'm from. -No, the other fags aren't illegal in here, we have them in spades, if you'll forgive the pun.”
I was struck by her beauty again as she looked over her shoulder at me, and it took me a full second to recover. “Oh. What's your son's name?”
“His name is Elliot. He's eight.”
“What happens when he grows up?” I asked.
It was a rude questio n , but she didn't seem to hold it against me. “I don't expect the Four Quarters to be open for another ten years, but if it is, then we'll decide when the time comes. Maybe the outside world will be a little better by then. Or maybe staying will be what's best for both of us.”
Rain started beating down on the windows. The taxi went around a curve and pulled up to the clock tower, its headlights falling on the elegant stone steps leading to a red door. They all stepped out and stretched in the clearing.
“Anybody got a flash light?”
I fished a small one out of my satchel. We approached the tower with care. It was made of gray stone, with a clock face sitting, grand and still, at the top. Its turrets raised up beyond the tree tops. Inside it was mostly dry but with a few leaks, the stone of the floor was covered with dust. A flutter of movement made me glance up. The ceiling was four stories above, with twisted gears and other machinery that once moved
the clock occupying the whole tower's worth of space. A bird flew up through the rafters and out of a hole.
Hatley crossed the room and stopped alongside a wooden door, slowly pushing it open. Stairs of stone led down. She started to move, but I tapped her shoulder, handed her the flashlight and took out my gun.
Pointing it at the ground, she started down the steps. A glow came from the room at the bottom.
“Is someone down there?”
“Yeah. Someone up there, or are those mushrooms kicking in?”
Hatley pushed her way to the front, rolling her eyes. “Wayne. Aren't you on the job?”
“Hey, we're in Wonderland. Alice ate mushrooms.”
The others crowded into the little basement. A few candles were lit on a plain table and a little bed was in the corner. Steady drops of water were leaking down from a crack in the stone ceiling above.
“What's with the gun?”
I blinked. It seemed impossible for a minute that I was in fact holding a gun. I tucked it away. “We came to make sure you weren't harboring criminals.”
They looked around and it was clear nobody else was in the room. Wayne stood and shuffled over to the leak, letting the water dribble down on his old skin. “Baptized. All my sins washed away.” He hummed as he shuffled over to sit at the table. “Air's got a good frequency today. I'm buzzing. Humming.” He hummed some more. “If you've got questions to ask, you'd better hurry. I'm about to get very strange.”
“Too late,” Clark said.
*
After a ride back out of the forest on the same winding road we had entered on, we grabbed a bite to eat at a food truck in Hearts. Then, walking on crowded streets to scope out the first of the clubs we would invade that night, Hatley got a call.
She said only a succinct, “Yes. Yes. Please do. Goodbye.” She hung up. “Vincent Zucholi is out of town, I've got someone tracking him down.”
“Fantastic.”
