by Tillie Cole
“Lung cancer,” he informed me, clearly noting my interest.
I glared at the fucker, not giving two shits.
“Turns out all those cigars I smoked were bad for me.” He chuckled, then coughed.
I sneered.
Dolly remained silent.
Still.
Earnshaw shifted in his seat, a move that made him hiss in pain. His cheeks reddened with the effort. When he reached the position he wanted, he met my eyes. “They think I only have a couple of months left.”
My heart beat faster at that news. Not because I was happy, but because I wanted us—Dolly and me—to be the ones who killed him. Not cancer. Our bullets and blades. Our payment for what he had done.
“Seems your arrival here was fortuitous,” he said. “Much longer and I would not have been alive.” He smiled, and that was the smile I remembered. The smile that signaled he got off on the pain of children. The one he gave me as he plied me with whiskey. The one he gave me as the Cheshire Cat led me to my bedroom, changing the course of my life forever. The one he gave me when I returned and he passed me off to whichever fucker wanted my ass next.
“I wouldn’t have been here to chat. To tell you why I did what I did.”
Dolly remained silent. She was barely moving. My jaw clenched. “Why?” I asked, hating myself for even giving him the floor.
His stare singed mine. “Because I loved it,” he gloated. I felt the temperature of my blood spike to an all-time high. “Because I really do like to fuck children. Because I like to play with people’s lives. Because life is boring without pleasure . . . and children give me so much pleasure. It’s that simple.”
I breathed. I breathed. I breathed as I restrained myself from fucking killing him right then.
“I have money,” he went on. “I have all I could ever want. Money can buy you anything.” He smiled the thinnest of smiles. “Even you, Heathan James.”
“What?” I said, teeth clenched.
“Your papa,” he said with a tired flick of his hand. “All it took was a few thousand to ensure that if anything happened to him, I would acquire you. I would become your legal guardian.” I felt the color drain from my face. “Only took a few thousand for a desperate man to ensure Mr. James had an unfortunate accident, ending his life, right when his son was ripe for the picking. Age, you see. It counts a lot to men like me, and my colleagues.” He flicked his hand again. “You hold zero appeal to me right now.”
I felt sick as his words sank in. Then his gaze fell on Dolly. She was a statue on my lap. “And Ellis, my sweet, sweet girl.” He beamed a smile at her. I wanted to reach across the table and rip off his predatory head. “My girl, who believed she was Alice. Who paraded around in a pretty blue dress.” He nudged his head at her outfit. “Seems not much has changed.”
I felt Dolly’s legs twitch.
“It was a shame your mother found out about my . . . preferences.” My breathing paused. Every part of Dolly tensed. “I couldn’t let her know that I knew, of course. But like you, she loved her tea. Earl Grey, if I remember correctly.” He looked past us. I turned and saw a picture of Dolly’s mama hanging on the wall by the door. Earnshaw shook his head. “A tiny drop of arsenic in her many cups of tea ensured she would never steal my little girl away from me, like I knew she planned. I had plans for Ellis. I knew what my friends liked, and she was definitely it. They played good games of poker for the privilege of breaking her in.”
He sighed. “The only spanner in the works was you, young Heathan. Your obsession with my daughter.” He shook his head. “If only you hadn’t killed one of my best friends, you would have remained by her side.” He shrugged. “Perhaps she wouldn’t have gone mad. Ellis, my fun little girl, became a deaf-mute.” He flicked his head toward her, sitting statuesque on my lap. “Seems not much has changed there either.” Dolly remained still. I panicked. Had she become repressed again?
Earnshaw took a long wheezy inhale. “I would love to hear how you escaped from the Water Tower, Heathan.” He whistled low. “You and those men you escaped with have pissed off a lot of people. Important people who relied on that place to bury their indiscretions.”
My lip hooked at the corner in disgust. I fucking hated this prick. He laughed when he saw my expression. “Heathan James,” he murmured and laughed again. “You think we are so dissimilar?” He leaned forward, putting his hands on the table. “I like to fuck kids. You like to kill. I get hard from their screams. You get hard from your victims’ spilled blood. Our tastes may differ, but we are cut from the same cloth.”
“I’m nothing like you,” I hissed, holding Dolly even tighter.
He smiled victoriously. “You are.” He sat back. “You like the power killing gives you.” He licked his dry lips. “You use your anger to fuel it. I guess you have me to thank for that. All those years of being fucked must have royally pissed you off.”
I swung my cane up, ready to fire, but Earnshaw took hold of his gun and aimed it at me. He opened his mouth, about to say something else, something to make me lose my shit, when a bullet struck him right between the eyes.
Earnshaw’s face froze in shock. His arm fell to the table, taking the gun with it. I flicked my eyes up at Dolly, arms out, her gun still in position from the kill shot.
“Time for tea,” she declared coldly, then slowly lowered her gun. She shrugged. “I got very sick of him talking, Rabbit. He had such bad manners, don’t you think?” She creased her brow and pouted her lips. “You know how I feel about bad manners.”
Dolly jumped from my lap and dusted her hands down her skirt. I watched her, spotting Earnshaw’s blood beginning to pool on the table from the corner of my eye.
I flicked the final card beside his head.
The King of Hearts was no more.
Dolly walked to the wall of pictures next to the door. Her breath hitched as the picture of her mother stared back at her, all long blond hair and blue eyes. She looked just like Dolly.
Dolly’s shaking hands traced over her face. My gut twisted when I saw her swipe a tear from her eye. Then she moved to the picture of Ellis. She must have been only about eight. I remembered her like this. The little girl who sat beside me on the grass, when no one else talked to me. The girl who told me we were friends, when I never had any before.
Dolly laid her hand against Ellis’s smiling face for so long that I rose from my chair. Before I got near, Dolly said, “Ellis has gone.” I froze, mid-step. “Ellis is free . . .” Dolly sighed and turned to me, her hand slipping from Ellis’s face. “She has gone to the part of Wonderland where the skies are bright blue. The grass is green, and there are lots and lots of tea parties.”
Dolly’s eyes fell. When they looked up at me through false lashes, I knew why. She was gauging my reaction. Seeing how I would react to knowing that my little Ellis, the person who lived behind a door in Dolly’s mind, had gone for good.
She wanted to know if Dolly was good enough for me.
I moved toward her and cupped her face. “I’m glad she has gone. I want her to be happy. No more darkness and no more sadness.” I kissed Dolly’s mouth, and she sighed against my lips. “Rabbit has his Dolly; it’s all that matters now.”
The responding smile was blinding.
Dolly looked around the room. “What now, Rabbit?”
“The mission is complete.” I reached into Dolly’s pocket and pulled out her lipstick. “The last one,” I prompted, and Dolly nodded.
She looked about the room. Her eyes fixed on the wall behind where Earnshaw lay dead. Dolly walked behind him and began her scrawl. “SICK FUX,” for the final time, in her favorite pink lipstick . . .
Right below a picture of Ellis sitting in Earnshaw’s lap.
Dolly dropped the half-used tube to the ground. She opened her mouth to say something else, but the howl of police sirens sounded outside.
“Come. We must go,” I said, the pulse in my neck leaping into a sprint.
Dolly giggled in excitement a
nd ran to me. I dragged her from the room to one of the windows. Police cars raced down the road.
“What pretty blue lights!” Dolly said in awe.
Pulling her by the hand, I raced down the stairs. I tried door after door until I found one that led down to a cellar. I knew from the PI’s maps that there was an underground tunnel to the barn. No doubt the way he brought in the batches of kids he’d raped before he got sick.
We raced down to the cellar, closing the door behind us only moments before I heard the police enter the house. Muted voices came from the floors above us. I pulled Dolly through the large cellar until I found a door. I opened it to see a short tunnel. I was about to run through when I realized that it led to the storm cellar.
“Wrong one,” I said and began looking for other doors. My heart pounded faster when I couldn’t find one. Then I saw a large shelving unit. A cobweb clung to the top of it . . . a cobweb that was blowing like there was wind behind it.
The doorway was behind the shelves.
I pulled Dolly toward it and released her hand to start pushing the shelves out of the way. Dolly hummed behind me, dancing on the spot.
A gasp came from the bottom of the stairs.
I whipped around to see a man wearing a cowboy hat. Heart beating wildly, I pushed Dolly behind me and pulled out my cane. But the Ranger wasn’t looking at me. His eyes were fixed on Dolly.
Dolly peeked around my waist and looked at him.
He stepped closer, ignoring me, until I blocked his path. Narrowed eyes glared at me . . . and that’s when I saw it. Those eyes. I knew those eyes. Eyes that looked at me with hatred.
“Eddie fucking Smith,” I said and watched his face tense. I looked down at his uniform and smirked. He’d got his wish after all.
Texas Ranger.
“Rabbit?” Dolly whispered from behind me. “Who is this?” She walked around me. Eddie Smith swallowed as he beheld Dolly in her full Alice in Wonderland regalia. As her blue eyes, eyes that he had once loved for many years, locked on him. By his reaction, I was sure that love had yet to fade.
Eddie didn’t speak, just stared. When Dolly looked at me, waiting for me to answer her question, I said the only thing that came to mind. “The Mad Hatter,” I announced, looking at the Stetson on his head. “Dolly, this is the Mad Hatter.” Dolly gasped in excitement, her hands covering her mouth.
Then, meeting Smith’s eyes, I asked, “Question is, what is the Mad Hatter about to do?”
Chapter 17
Eddie
I couldn’t believe it was her. Ellis. In the flesh. Talking. Smiling . . . happy.
“Question is, what is the Mad Hatter about to do?”
I heard our men upstairs, searching the rooms. I knew that somewhere, Earnshaw would be lying in a pool of his own blood. He was the last target they had, the orchestrator of their abuse. The conductor of every sick and twisted movement that had occurred on the Earnshaw estate.
Only very recently had I learned about it all.
I looked at Ellis and wanted to cry for the things that I heard had been done to her. I flicked my eyes at Heathan. Even though I hated him with every ounce of my being for stealing my girl, I would never have wished on him the things that had been done to him by those evil men.
I thought back to the interview with Simon Wells. The one who made the complaint about Earnshaw and his colleagues years ago. The complaint that was ignored.
I thought back to what he told me, about the terrible things Earnshaw and his colleagues had done to him. About how he had seen Heathan, and later Ellis, being led into rooms where the same fate undoubtedly awaited them. I had run straight to the bathroom and vomited.
“You’re the Mad Hatter?” Ellis’s voice cut through my memory of Simon’s testimony. But what he had told me remained. As I looked at her heavily made-up face, a strange clock drawn around her left eye, all I could think of was how she was taken over and over by those men . . . arranged by her own father.
The dead man upstairs, who I believed had deserved to die.
Hell, they all deserved to die.
“Yes,” I replied. Ellis spoke with a regal English accent. She wore the clothes of a sexualized Alice in Wonderland and, to cap it all, she sported a crown upon her head. “I’m the Mad Hatter,” I confirmed and saw Heathan breathe more easily. When I glanced at him, he was watching Ellis with the same fucked-up, possessive gaze he had when they were kids.
I realized that in his own fucked-up way . . . he loved her.
He’d come back for her.
Jesus . . . I think he’d saved her.
Wreaked revenge on those who had wronged them, no doubt . . . for her.
Ellis ran to me, and I lost my breath at how beautiful she was. I saw the blade in her waist belt. Saw the gun in her hand. Her old doll’s head was on her waist too. “Do you hold tea parties?” she asked with excitement.
Indulging the innocence that was Ellis, I nodded. I played her game . . . one last time. “Yes.” My rough voice betrayed the tightness of my throat. “I hold tea parties.”
Ellis squealed and I winced, praying her voice hadn’t been heard by the men upstairs. “We shall have to attend one day, shan’t we, Rabbit?”
“Sure, darlin’,” Heathan drawled. His eyes cut to the ceiling when the sound of footsteps came closer to the cellar stairs.
“You are very much invited,” I said, and she clapped her hands. I glanced at Heathan and saw him watching me. He was trying to read what I would do.
I saw his cane. I knew from the maid that it held both a blade and a gun. And I expected that he would kill me now. Knowing he was listening, and knowing he would read the subtext, I said to Dolly, “You have to run now, for you’re going to be late. You must follow the White Rabbit down a new hole. But one day . . .” I smiled, seeing her blue eyes wide and so, so beautiful, “But one day, we will have that party. And I’ll bring the Earl Grey tea.”
“Earl Grey!” She turned to Heathan. “Rabbit? Doesn’t that sound absolutely charming?”
“Sure does, little Dolly.” He nudged his head for her to come to him. Dolly did, like Ellis had always done with Heathan. Heathan pulled her to his side, then turned toward a shelving unit behind them. One that now revealed the entrance to a tunnel.
“I’ll shut it behind you,” I called, and Heathan’s suspicious gaze narrowed on me. I removed my hat. “For her,” I said. Understanding spread on his face. “For what they did . . . to both of you.”
Heathan paused, eyes still narrowed, then nodded. Taking Dolly’s hand, he pulled her through the gap. I rushed to the selves and watched them fade out of sight, Heathan running, Dolly skipping, holding his hand tightly. “Chapel,” I heard him say into a cell. “I need that border crossing now!”
Hearing the door to the cellar open, I pushed the shelves back in place and ran to the opposite door, to what I knew to be a storm shelter. My uncle came down the steps. “Earnshaw’s dead. Shot. And recently. He’s still warm. They have to be close.”
I pointed to the storm shelter’s door. “I heard voices down here. I think it’s them.”
The men behind my uncle piled into the tunnel, leading them in the opposite direction from Heathan and Ellis. My uncle eyed me strangely, so I ran down the tunnel.
As I ran, I fixed my hat back on my head and thought, The Mad Hatter. After all this time . . .
. . . finally.
Epilogue
Dolly
Mexico
I walked over the sand to where I knew Rabbit waited for me. The large umbrella hid his face. But I spotted his tattooed forearms, shirt sleeves rolled to the elbow.
Hand on hip, I walked around the umbrella until I knew he could see me. I looked out over the sea. Rabbit and I lived in a house on a beach. We had our own private beach. We could see the public beach beside us. After all, people-watching in Wonderland was one of my favorite things in life. With every day here in this new part of Wonderland, I got curiouser and curiouser.
&
nbsp; I heard Rabbit growl deeply in his throat.
And I smiled.
I arched my back, pretending to see something in the distance. Rabbit growled again and said, “Turn around.”
Shivers broke out down my spine at his command. Fluffing my hair with my hands, I fixed my crown and spun . . . slowly . . . oh so slowly. My boombox sang a song about a fruity drink called Piña Colada. I swayed my hips to its beat.
When I looked up, Rabbit had lain back on his sun lounger. I giggled on seeing him. He dressed as he always did, only his pants were rolled up to his knees, showing off his tattooed legs. His black shirt sleeves were rolled up too. His shirt was unbuttoned to his navel, and his cravat hung loose around his neck.
And he wore a monocle on his left eye. I had bought it for him as a gift. My Rabbit couldn’t be a true White Rabbit without a monocle.
The vial of my blood hung at his throat. My thighs clenched just looking at it . . . at thinking back to that night. And the many nights that have been just like it. I loved touching my Rabbit.
Not a night went by that we didn’t touch and play.
“Here,” Rabbit ordered, pointing to the small gap on his sun lounger. I kept my hand on my hip as I flounced to him. I stood beside the sun lounger and demanded, “Well?”
I waited for him to comment on my new pale-blue-and-white bikini. Rabbit’s eyes flared as they tracked up and down my body. I glanced down at his crotch and smiled.
He very much liked what he saw.
Suddenly, Rabbit grabbed my wrist and pulled me down to his chest. I yelped as I fell. But I laughed when my chest hit his. When my lips hovered above his.
“Do you like it?” I asked. “The bikini?”
Rabbit’s hand moved to the back of my neck, and he slammed his lips on me. He ate at my mouth, biting at my lip. Fighting back, I bit into the flesh of his lip so hard that I tasted blood. Rabbit groaned loudly as he stole more hard kisses.