by Cameron Jace
The children shook their heads.
“I’m going to put it in my hat”—he did—“and wear my hat again.” He did that, too.
“But the bomb will explode on your head!” a child offered, his friends laughing.
“Not if I use my magic and turn it into something else.” The Hatter smiled.
The children got the message and yelled, “A rabbit.”
The Hatter nodded, took off his hat, and pulled out a white rabbit.
The children in the circus clapped, most of them standing up and chuckling. The parents clapped along, still skeptical and worried.
“So, the bomb will not explode?” a child asked.
“Hmm...” The Hatter sighed but said nothing. He let the white, cute rabbit hop toward the crowd. “There are small slices of carrot underneath each of your chairs.” He pointed. “It would be nice if you fed it, right?”
The children began competing on attracting the rabbit closer, having picked up the small pieces of carrot. The rabbit was really cute. A bit fat, though. It had bulging and pleading eyes that would have softened the greatest Wonderland Monster’s heart.
Suddenly, amidst the circus’s cheering crowd, the rabbit hiccupped.
“Easy on the rabbit,” a parent advised. “You’re feeding it too much.”
But the children realized that this wasn’t the case.
Each time the rabbit hiccupped, its ears glowed red. As protective as the parents were, they weren’t the first to realize what was going on. It was the children who noticed that each time the rabbit hiccupped, it also ticked.
Slowly, and disappointedly, they raised their heads, looking at the Hatter, who sat sipping tea in the middle of the ring. “I guess the magic trick didn’t work.” He shrugged. “Try this.” He sipped again. “Tick?” He placed a hand behind his ear.
“Tock?” the children said reluctantly, unsure of what kind of game this had turned into.
“Boom!” the Hatter cheered, plowed the teacup against one of the poles that held the circus erect, and waved both hands sideways.
That was when everyone began running like crazy.
All but the Hatter. He stood up and clapped frantically at his own prank. He watched the crowd scream their way out of the circus while a white rabbit with a ticking bomb inside followed, heading to spread terror all over London.
The Hatter pulled out his phone and dialed a number. He dialed 666, then flipped the phone upside down, so it dialed 999 by itself. Some magic phone.
“Hello,” he said, adjusting his hat. “There is a rabbit loose on the streets of London.”
“A rabbit?” the emergency operator at the end of the line said. She almost hung up.
“A rabbit with a bomb in it,” the Hatter said. “Don’t feed it carrots, or it will hiccup. And, oh, I almost forgot. Only one girl can stop the bomb. Her name is Mary Ann.”
1
PSYCHIATRY, RADCLIFFE LUNATIC ASYLUM, OXFORD
SUNDAY, 6:00 A.M.
The mysterious psychiatrist, hiding behind a curtain of darkness, still tries to persuade me of confessing my madness. I lie helpless on the couch, not caring to stand up. How can I when I am crippled all over again?
This situation has begun occurring too often now. About once every three days. I wake up, and I am in this darkened room, crippled and listening to the boring lessons from that nutcase in his rocking chair beside me. Sometimes I doubt he is a real psychiatrist—if any of this is even real. Why won’t he show his face?
But I have to play along. At least until this episode of hallucination—or whatever is really going on—passes.
It usually takes about ten minutes or so. Then I am back in my cell. Sleep for a while, then wake up as if nothing ever happened. I am starting to get used to it, only today’s episode started a bit too early. Who examines their patients at six in the morning?
“I see you have a lot of bruises,” the psychiatrist says. “Get into a fight recently?”
“I’ve been practicing.”
“Practicing how to stomp against the walls of your cell?”
“No.” I sigh. “It’s called None Fu.”
“Excuse me?”
“None Fu. An abbreviation for Nothing Fu. Like Kung Fu, you know?”
“Kung means ‘achievement’ or ‘work,’” he notes. “Are you saying you’re practicing an art that is about ‘nothing’?”
“You wouldn’t understand.” I sigh again, wishing the Pillar would send for me. I am hungry for another mad adventure, longing to save somebody’s life. It’s the only way I can stay relatively sane.
“Try me.”
“It’s an art that assumes that all kinds of real training are just bonkers,” I say. “Karate, wrestling, and martial arts don’t really need laws. Laws only imprison a person’s mind and deprive him of the gift of being free. What you need is ‘True Will.’” I read about it in Jack’s book.
“Just that?”
“Just that.” I nod, aware of the absurdity of my words. “All you need is to ‘believe’ something is possible to get it done, although believing itself isn’t an easy matter.”
“So you say you can fight, defend yourself, by mere belief, without having to take a scientific approach or having trained properly?” His voice is flat. I can’t tell if he is mocking me or considering it.
“Yes.”
“Apparently you didn’t learn much.” Now he sounds like he’s mocking me. “I mean, all those bruises on your body. Did you really hit the walls with your bare hands and feet, like Waltraud informed me?”
“Yes,” I say. “It’s part of the training. I should be repeating it until mastery.” My whole body aches. I have been practicing all week in my cell. Jumping, running against the wall, and walking on my hands. I was following all the nonsensical instructions from the book.
“Mastery?” He smokes that pipe again. I can smell the weirdly familiar tobacco.
“Don’t make fun of me,” I say. “You’re my doctor. You’re supposed to help me.”
“I am helping you,” he insists, “by pushing your imagination so hard that your mind can’t accept the madness you’re imagining anymore. When we reach that tipping point, you’ll find yourself remembering, and accepting, your reality.”
“Which is?” I shrug.
“That you’re a troubled girl who killed her friends by driving a school bus into a horrible accident, and that now you’re crippled, locked in an asylum because your mind refuses to admit the truth.” He blurts the sentence in one breath. “It’s a very simple truth, actually. Once you’re able to confront it, you’ll recover.”
I have nothing to say. It scares me to even think about it. Is that all there is to my life? Am I just a mad Alice, thrown down into an imaginary rabbit hole, and now all I need is to confess it was all a dream, just like in Lewis Carroll’s book?
“Alice?” He sounds as if trying to gently wake me up from a nightmare.
“Yes, I’m listening,” I reply. “You said you’re pushing my imagination to the limits until I won’t be able to imagine anymore. Right? And that only then will I be forced to retreat back to reality. Is that how you treat all your patients? Because I don’t think I’ve ever heard about this.”
“It’s a scientific process.” His rocking chair creaks against the floor. “We call it the Rabbit Hole.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“No. It’s a scientific technique,” he says. “The Rabbit Hole is a metaphor for the road you have to fall onto to push your imagination to the max, which will eventually result in igniting a certain suppressed memory or emotion. A memory so real and strong, the patient can’t deny it. Thus the patient comes back to the real world and is cured of their madness. Of course, it was coined after Lewis Carroll’s book.”
I wonder why Lewis Carroll’s name comes up in this conversation. Why would a physician coin a scientific method after a man who wrote a children’s book? “Trust me, doctor,” I say, “I would love it if
your method works.” I don’t know if I am lying. In all honesty, I am beginning to like my own world. The Pillar, the Cheshire, Tom Truckle, the Queen, Fabiola, and Jack. All the madness and nonsense and uncertainty seem to have had a magical impact on me.
“I certainly hope so,” he says. “How about I call Waltraud to roll you back to your cell? We’ve had enough for today.”
“One more thing, doctor,” I say. “There is something I’d like to ask you before I go.”
“Please do.”
“How come physicians are referencing Lewis Carroll in terms like the Rabbit Hole? I mean, isn’t Lewis Carroll just a Victorian writer who wrote a children’s book?”
“Interesting question. Well, Lewis Carroll had an uncanny interest in mental illness.”
“He did?”
“Of course. It’s documented,” he says. “Also, Lewis himself suffered from terrible migraines, which presumably caused his stuttering. Sometimes the migraines left him unconscious for hours, probably dreaming his stories.”
“What?” I knew Lewis stuttered. I saw it myself. But I didn’t realize he had such horrible migraines.
“He took so many drugs for the migraines, but they wouldn’t go away,” the doctor elaborates. “He tried to cure himself with the most horrible torture instruments.”
“What are you saying, exactly?” I am angered.
“Maybe Lewis Carroll was just as insane,” he says, “as you are.”
2
THE SIX O’CLOCK CIRCUS, MUDFOG TOWN, LONDON
SUNDAY, 8:05 A.M.
An hour later, the Pillar’s chauffeur drops me off at the so-called crime scene.
It’s seven-thirty in the morning on a foggy Sunday. After my psychiatry session, I fainted at the sight of my crippled self in the mirror. When I awoke, I wasn’t crippled anymore. Waltraud informed me I would be transported to “outside counseling” again. This time, my ruthless warden had looked highly suspicious of the matter, but she couldn’t intervene.
The chauffeur picked me up from the asylum’s entrance. All through the drive, in the ambulance he still drove from my last adventure, from Oxford to the outskirts of London, he said nothing useful, just that the Pillar had called for me.
A new Wonderland Monster seemed to have arrived.
The rest of the ride, I watched the chauffeur drive recklessly and comb his thin whiskers while listening to both his ambulance’s siren and the “White Rabbit” song by Jefferson Airplane from the radio. Eventually, I looked away and continued bandaging the wounds on my arms. When will I ever learn this None Fu thing?
Now, I am standing in front of an old circus with a single red, white, and black tent. The circus, if you could call it that, is surrounded by gravel and sand on all sides. No houses or buildings are in sight. The police are everywhere, looking into some crime. I really don’t know what I am doing here.
“Take this.” The chauffeur pulls out a fake card and hands it over.
“Amy Watson?” I read, furrowing my brow. “Director’s assistant at the White Rabbit Animal Rights Movement in London?”
“Pin it to your jacket,” the chauffeur demands without explaining. “You’ll need it to get past the police.”
“What should I actually look for once I get past them?”
“Your boss, Professor Cornelius Petmaster, of course.” The chauffeur rubs his whiskers. “The one and only.” He winks.
Standing in my place, I watch him drive away recklessly, like a spoiled rich kid with his daddy’s new ambulance.
Now I have the police’s full attention.
“Alice—I mean, Amy Watson.” I point at my card and approach them confidently, waving my magic umbrella in the other hand. “White Rabbit Animal Rights Movement.” I have no idea what I am saying.
“You’re looking for Professor Petmaster, I presume.” A young, chubby officer sighs, hands on her belt.
I nod.
“Why are those guys even on the crime scene?” She points at me and scowls at another officer. “This is a crime scene. What is an animal rights organization doing here?”
“Crime scene?” a tall, overly thin officer says. His flirting eyes are all over me already. He is cute, but lanky, like a flipping broom. Strangely, I fidget. Am I favoring a stranger’s random interest in me in the absence of Jack? “You can’t call it a crime scene without a body. Besides, a rabbit is on the loose. I know most people care for the bomb. Still, some care for the rabbit. Come in, Ms. Amy.” He flashes his teeth at me. That fake grin I notice most boys use to impress girls. I don’t have time for this. I shouldn’t have any interest in boys. I don’t know what the heck is going on.
Averting my eyes, I spot the Pillar a few strides away from the circus’ tent. He is pretending he is a music maestro to a few kids who seem to have been in the circus when whatever crime took place. He is singing, “London Bridge is falling down. Falling down.” The children reply, enthusiastically, “Down down down!”
“A very handsome young fellow.” A ninety-year-old grandmother winks at me, hands clapped together, pointing at the Pillar.
“I’m sure he is,” I mumble. Young fellow? I fight the urge to roll my eyes. Everyone seems to like the Pillar wherever I go. If they only knew what a fruitcake he is.
I approach him and the children.
“Watson!” The Pillar welcomes me with his usual theatrical gestures as if it’s the happiest day of his life.
“Professor Petmaster.” I nod, hands behind my back, playing my part. Calling me “Watson” reminds me of Sherlock Holmes. I don’t know if it’s intentional on the Pillar’s behalf, although we do have some similarities in the way we solve cases, and the Pillar does smoke a lot, like Sherlock. “What do we have here?” I ask, hoping I’ll finally understand the situation.
“A white rabbit on the loose.” He excuses himself from the kids and their parents. “You know how much my heart aches for a stray animal,” he says, his voice loud enough, so everyone hears. “Poor white rabbit, thrown out in the cruel world of humanity.” He pulls me toward the circus, as I spread my fake smiles at the police, parents, and the kids.
“Sorry you caught me singing that awful song,” he whispers as we walk in.
“Sorry? Why?”
“Who in the world sings ‘London Bridge is falling down’ for young kids?” he says. “Such a depressing song.”
I try to overlook the interesting fact as we finally enter the circus.
The circus inside is a dirt hole. Cheap as it gets. I glimpse a sign announcing that entrance is for free. I am not surprised. The circus is a bit too dim inside. The ring in the middle is filled with white sand, but empty otherwise. Actually, the whole place is abandoned. A huge flyer dangling from above says, “The Maddest Show on Earth.” This does seem like a Wonderland Monster’s crime scene so far.
“So, what happened in here?” I ask the Pillar, now that we’re alone and we can drop the act.
“A man calling himself the Hatter has been performing here for the last month, for free,” the Pillar says, walking slowly with his cane and inspecting the place. Dressed the way he is, I realize the Pillar would easily fit in here, mistaken for one of the circus’ performers. An insane ringmaster, maybe. “Last night, the so-called Hatter performed a magic trick where he managed to magically make a white rabbit swallow a time bomb.”
“Oh ,” I remember last week’s killer stuffing heads in watermelons. I wonder what’s with all that stuffing. “And?”
“He showed it to the children. The children panicked and ran away, and so did the white rabbit, now loose on the streets of London, hopping happily, waiting to explode.” The Pillar seems interested in the sand on the floor inside the ring.
“What’s with all the cruelty Wonderland Monsters have toward animals?”
“Almost everyone in Carroll’s book is an animal, Alice,” the Pillar remarks. “I’m one if you haven’t noticed.”
Of course, he’s not an animal. Or is he?
“So
that’s why there is no corpse. We’re supposed to chase a loose rabbit with a bomb this time?” I change the subject. What, and who, the Pillar is isn’t something I want to delve into now. I am just happy to be out here, using my legs and away from the asylum.
“Could be.”
“Some kind of wicked Wonderland Monster terrorist attack?”
“I assume so.” The Pillar is still fascinated by the ring.
“Why do you seem to have doubts about all of this?” I say. “A bomb inside a rabbit is meant to brutally explode somewhere in London. I can’t see it any other way.”
“If I’m a terrorist with a bomb, I’d let it just explode wherever I want it to explode.” The Pillar squints, still staring at the ring in the middle. “Why let a rabbit loose? Whoever this Wonderland Monster is, he has a mysterious plan I can’t put my finger on.”
3
SUNDAY, 8:24 A.M.
When I think about it, the Pillar’s assumption makes sense. A rabbit with a bomb, let alone how unethical it is, might be meant to stir panic all over the city for some reason or another. I try to figure out what’s going on, but I know very little about the situation. “Are you saying this is meant for me and you again, a message from a Wonderland Monster?”
“It’s hard to tell. The Wonderland Monsters work in nonsensical ways.” The Pillar stops before the ring, not willing to step inside for some reason. What’s so important about the sand inside?
“At least we know he is the Mad Hatter this time.”
“That’s who he claims to be.” The Pillar kneels down, thoroughly inspecting the empty ring. “Still, something isn’t quite right here.”
“The sand?”
The Pillar nods and stands up again. “But I’m not sure yet.” He looks at me as if he is seeing me for the first time. “What’s up with all your bruises? Had a fight with Waltraud?"
“Nah, it’s None Fu.” I swallow the word. “I was training.”