by Cameron Jace
“You’re funny.” The boy takes a step back. His mouth is twitching now. “A little bit weird, though.”
“Haven’t I told you from the start?” I smirk, feeling like I am possessed by the Pillar. “Now, would you like to kiss me?”
The boy frowns. Totally put off by me.
“Nice.” I am happy. “Is there anything else I need to know before I enter to meet Professor March?”
"Not at all. In fact, I’m totally convinced you’re his niece now."
31
TIME REMAINING: 18 HOURS, 44 MINUTES
Professor Jittery sits at the steel table in the room. It’s bolted to the floor. The first thing I see when I step inside is that his hands are handcuffed to a chain connected to the table.
I step in slowly and look at him. He looks like a human version of a March Hare, if you unleash your imagination. Long grey hair dangling on both sides instead of rabbit ears. A grey beard, untrimmed, like he is about to write the next Lord of the Rings. His face is scruffy, and his cheeks are a little bubbly.
I don’t know if I am unconsciously comparing his image to the book, or if I’m actually starting to remember things. What really clinches it for me are his big eyes. Bulgy. Curious. Big. They’re almost popping out with all the madness in the world.
He is wearing a white straitjacket, but with hands that are untied.
“Do I know you?” he says, hands palm down on the table.
“My name is Alice.”
His eyes look like they’re about to get watery. A certain sparkle invades them. “I once knew a girl named Alice.”
“But it’s not me?” I hesitate, still standing, questioning if I am ever going to know if I am the Real Alice.
Professor Jittery watches me for a moment as if he can’t tell. “Well, I was cursed not to recognize her face ever again, but no.” He shakes his head. “You’re not her. My Alice would have taken me in her arms and kissed my ears.” He lowers his head, looking at his chains. He seems sad. “I think she is dead, but I am not sure.”
I find it strange he is opening up to me so fast. Maybe it’s because he’s been locked away here for so long. There is no point in holding anything back. “Sorry to hear that.” Sorry to hear I am dead. Or sorry to hear she is dead, and that I am not Alice. Or sorry for anything that doesn’t make sense anymore. “Someone sent me to meet you,” I begin.
“Who?”
“A man who claims to be the Hatter.”
His left eye twitches. “I don't who that is.”
“Whether you do or don’t, I really need your help.” I want to ask him why he is locked away, but I am not sure how much time I am allowed with him. My priority is to find the rabbit.
“I can’t help anyone.” He shrugs. “Because I can’t help myself.”
“That’s not what the Hatter—I mean whoever led me here—thinks.”
His eyes widen. But he says nothing.
"He stuffed a bomb inside a rabbit and let it loose in the city.” I talk slowly so he understands every word. “To find it, he has been sending me clues with a deadline. His last clue was to come and see you.”
“Why me?”
“He said you know where to find a place called the Snail Mound. I should find the rabbit there.”
“Do you realize how confused you are?” he says. “One time, you say the rabbit is all over the city, and the other time you say it’s in this Snail Mound.”
“I know it doesn’t make sense, but I can’t risk not following the clues and waking up tomorrow with children exploded because of that bomb.”
“Children?”
“He sent me a video of children playing with the rabbit.”
“This man really messes with your mind,” he remarks. Coming from a man locked in an underground asylum, I feel like I have to admit my insanity immediately.
“Look, I’m trying to save the kids, so either you know where the Snail Mound is, or you don’t.” I sigh. “I guess the Pillar was right. There is something wrong about this whole thing.”
“Ah, Professor Carter Pillar,” he says. “That’s what it is all about. Please don’t trust that man, young girl. He must be using you for something.”
“So, you know him?”
“Of course I do. He knows me, too. That was a long time ago,” he says. “He killed a lot of people.”
“Tell me more about him.” I approach the table. Sit down across from him. “Why did he kill those people? Why are they saying the Alice Underground book drove him insane? Whose side is he on?”
“Let’s put it this way, the Pillar is on no one’s side but his own.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you should turn around and leave this place. Make sure you never talk to him again. And forget about anything he’s told you,” Professor Jittery says firmly. “The Wonderland Wars, if you’ve heard of them, aren’t a game. You’d be lost and lose your mind over them.”
“I am already—” I want to tell him that I am insane but realize we’re off topic here. I need to focus on priorities again. “Okay. I will leave. Just tell me how to get to Wonderland. Isn’t the Snail Mound a door to Wonderland?"
Professor Jittery laughs broadly. “I wish it was that easy.”
“So you do know where Snail Mound is. What do you mean you wish it was easy?”
“No one knows where it is now,” he says. “I, of all people, can assure you that. Because I have been searching for it for so long. But for starters, you need to find Six Impossible—”
“Keys,” I interrupt. “I know that. Then why did this man who calls himself the Hatter tell me he hid the rabbit in Snail Mound in Wonderland?”
“That’s impossible.”
“He was specific about it,” I say. “Come on, why don’t you tell me how I can get to Snail Mound?”
Suddenly, Professor Jittery’s eyes dart toward the wall behind me. They’re bulging with curiosity again. Wait. That’s not curiosity. That is utter nervousness. Fear. He starts to stare up at the ceiling. Fidgeting in his place. “I can’t tell you,” he whispers. “They’re listening.”
“Who is?”
“Lower your voice,” he insists, his eyes still fixed up. “Come closer.”
I lean across the table.
“Whatever you say, and sometimes whatever you think, they know about it.” He shudders.
“No one can hear us,” I say. “I asked them to stop the surveillance cameras. I assure you, no one is listening.”
He chews on his lip and winces. The chains rattling. “You’re not listening to me.” He sighs. “Come closer.”
“I can’t come closer,” I say. I am on the edge of the table. Reluctantly, I stretch my palms across. I want to gain his trust.
“They don’t need cameras to see what’s in your head,” he whispers. My hands grip the remote tighter. I might need to press the button anytime soon. “They don’t need a recorder. They’re already inside your head. In mine, too.”
“You mean they planted something in your head?” I play along. Conspiracy girl sitting across from a lunatic scientist from Wonderland.
He nods, pupils wider.
“Really?” I am part curious, part acting curious.
“They always do, but most people don’t know it,” he continues. “Everyone is under surveillance all the time. They know what they’re doing. It’s how they control the world.”
“Who are they?”
“You know who they are.” He grunts, frustrated by my utter ignorance.
“Of course.” I keep playing along. “I just forgot their name.”
“They call themselves Black Chess,” Professor Jittery announces. His eyes shoot to the ceiling; he’s worried they heard him. I realize he is not staring at the ceiling—he is trying to look inside his own head. “They’re the ones who walk on the black tiles of the Chessboard of Life.”
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this. The Pillar told this to me, and so did Fabiola, but I have no
idea what that means.
“So Black Chess...” I begin.
“Lower your voice,” he says.
“So, Black Chess planted something in your head to read your mind?”
He nods. Getting more fidgety and worried. Now sweating a little. “They want to steal my designs. They want to know what I discovered about this world we live in when I studied science. They want to know if I can expose them. Most of all, they want to know the secrets of my gardens.”
I remind myself that the Pillar told me Professor Jittery designed a few of the most famous gardens in the world. Why do I have a feeling I should know more about this? The haze in my head begins to slowly form again.
But before I plunge into another limbo of dizziness, I wake up to Professor Jittery pounding on the table.
“My gardens. They want to know the secrets to my gardens,” he slurs all of a sudden, drooling a little. He wipes his mouth. The chains give him enough slack to reach for his face. “They want to know about...”
Suddenly he stiffens, as if someone has shocked him with an electric prod. His eyes are fixed like arrows at the top of his head.
“They want to know about what?” I demand, infected by his nervousness.
“Can’t say,” he barely says through his teeth. “It’s on. They can see me now. They can hear everything I am saying. It’s on!”
“What’s on?” I press hard on the sides of the remote, arching my head forward.
“The thing in my head,” he says. “It’s on. They can see everything now.”
“What’s that thing in your head? Can you see it? What is it?” I am tense, as much as he is. I think the man’s going into a seizure. “What’s in your head?”
“A light bulb,” he finally says. “They have turned it on. They can see everything.”
32
TIME REMAINING: 18 HOURS, 11 MINUTES
There is hardly anything I can say now, not after Professor Jittery announces he has a light bulb in his head. I mean, I hoped he was at least a little bit sane until that last sentence. But a light bulb? How am I supposed to believe that?
I lean back, waiting for his episode to subside, but it doesn’t. His jittery moves intensify. He is a tall and strong man. I am worried he can unchain himself, although he doesn’t look like he’d hurt me. He is just another Wonderland loon, a product of Alice in Wonderland, the weirdest book in history. But aren’t we all weird-speaking nutcrackers on the edge of our minds?
“I need to cover my head with something. I need to dim the light bulb.” He pulls his head into his outfit, looking like he’s wearing a cloak now.
“Did you turn the light bulb off?” I ask, not knowing how to help a man who thinks he’s being spied on through a light bulb shimmering in his head.
“I just dimmed it, which is fine.” He wipes drool from his mouth. “I buried my secrets in a special part of my brain. When I hide my head under my clothes, they usually can’t find their way around for a while. Then they usually give up and leave me alone when they’re frustrated.”
“You have a special place in your brain where you hide things from others?” I am making conversation until he cools down.
“Come here,” he whispers. “You know there is a left side of the brain and right side, right?”
I nod. Did I learn this in school? If so, what school did I attend?
“The right hemisphere controls the muscles on the left side of the body.” He’s playing professor, and I am his student now. “And vice versa.”
I nod again, a little impatient.
“The left hemisphere is dominant in language, speaking, memory, and in charge of carrying out logic and equations.” I continue listening to him lecturing. Maybe this is getting somewhere. “The right hemisphere is in charge of everything that has to do with arts. It performs some math, but very little. It loves visual imagery.”
“So?”
“The light bulb looks into those two parts of the brain,” he explains. “Do you know in which part I buried my secrets?
“In the right?”
“No.” He smiles broadly. “In the middle.” Now he chuckles like a Mad Hare.
I don’t comment. I push the conversation further. “So we can talk now? They aren’t spying on your brain now, right?”
He nods.
“I need to know how to get to Wonderland.”
Professor Jittery stiffens again. He shakes his head violently and says, “I wish I knew that one. But you can’t get to Wonderland without the Six Impossible—”
“I know. We just talked about that. Then how do I get to Snail Mound?"
“I will tell you, but I have to warn you,” he says, sounding much quieter and saner than before. “To get there, you will have to visit one of my gardens. But bad things happen there.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “All I am looking for is to find the rabbit and find a way to defuse the bomb.”
“You’re not listening to me.” He pounds his hands on the table again. I am really fed up with this roller coaster of emotions. “The garden might lead to a dangerous place. A place that ordinary people shouldn’t know about.”
“Does that place have a name?”
He stiffens more and neglects my question. “Have you ever heard about the Invisible Plague?”
“No.”
“This place in the garden leads you to the Invisible Plague.” He leans forward.
“So that’s it? Some kind of plague will consume me if I try to catch the rabbit?”
He says nothing, apparently thinking I am a lost cause.
“Now, can you please, please tell me where this door and garden are?”
“Scotland."
“How is the rabbit supposed to be in Scotland?"
“You asked about Snail Mound, and I am telling you where it is.”
“Where in Scotland?” I ask, since I have no other option.
“In a place called the Garden of Cosmic Speculation, one of my designs,” he says. “I used to live in a house there and wanted to use it as a portal to Wonderland.”
“Did it ever work?”
“It did.” He shrugs. “But...”
“What?”
“It’s some kind of weird version of Wonderland.”
“What do you mean by weird?”
“I can’t really explain it.” He seems to be hiding something. “I mean it somehow only showed certain dark memories of Wonderland. It’s really hard to explain. It messed with my head.”
“Will I find the Snail Mound through these portals?”
“I assume so.”
It’s not the greatest answer, but I’m taking what I can get. “Is that why you fear the place?” I ask. “Because of some bad memories of Wonderland?”
“Yes. And I wonder why you’re being sent there,” he says. “I designed endless gardens all around the world, in hopes to cross over to Wonderland. Only this one worked. But it doesn’t really work—I know I’m contradicting myself, but I can’t explain it any other way. Let’s say it’s a portal of one of many versions of a possible Wonderland, like a parallel reality. And it messed with my head.”
I refrain from saying anything for a moment. Somewhere in the deep end of my mind, I remember having read about parallel worlds, and how scientists assumed there were a million other versions of our realities, where we are slightly different people than who we are now.
I think this is the kind of Wonderland the March Hare found. Which I don’t really mind, as long as it will lead me to the rabbit—I have faced madder things than a parallel world.
But why did this version of Wonderland scare him so much? And why am I supposed to go there to find the rabbit?
"Tell me, professor,” I say. “Why was it so important for you to go back? Why can’t you just accept your role in this world as a brilliant landscaper?”
“You don’t understand.” His bulgy eyes are getting moist. “I miss Wonderland. I am like a child who became a scientist, only to learn that all he rea
lly wanted was to never grow up in the first place. I wanted to stay in Wonderland. I wanted to find Alice again.”
I don’t know why, but it hurts thinking I am not Alice.
“Whoever led you to me, and will lead you to the garden, may not be interested in bombing anyone with this rabbit.” He isn’t the first to tell me this. It’s the Pillar’s theory. “I don’t know what his motives may be, but it seems a sinister one to me, because this place you’re going to will show you bad things.”
“I understand.” I stand up. “Thank you.” I say the words but can’t leave. I feel sympathy for him. Why is he locked in here? Is it this Black Chess organization? Are they trying to find the secrets in his head? If so, who needs those secrets?
Reluctantly, I pace around the table and approach him personally, worried he might freak. But he doesn’t. I wrap my arms around him and can feel the warmth and happiness in his body. “Thank you again.” When I raise my head, I see tears in his eyes. Professor Jittery, with all his madness and light bulbs, is the second Wonderlander I’ve met and actually liked—after Fabiola. He isn’t a Wonderland Monster, like the Cheshire. He isn’t mysterious with an agenda, like the Pillar.
Professor Jittery is practically a grown-up kiddo hiding behind the fur of a March Hare. All he wants is to go back to Wonderland and leave this mad world behind.
I wave to him one last time and turn to walk out. I press the red button to call the guard.
“One last thing,” Professor Jittery says. I turn around. “The place in the garden you should be warned of.”
“What about it?”
“I can only tell you one thing about it.”
“Please tell me, Professor Jittery.”
“Every time I entered it, it led me to an even scarier place where bad things happened in the past. Stay away from that location, whatever the temptations are.”
“Does this place inside the place have a name?”
“They used to call it the circus.”