The Complete Alice Wonder Series - Insanity - Books 1 - 9

by Cameron Jace

  The Queen stopped and ate a few of her favorite peanuts.

  “Of course, humans’ greatest weakness had always been their fear. In particular, the fear of others. They feared anything that was different from them so much that they had the audacity to kill it, exterminate it right away, and call it their enemy. To them, Wonderlanders were the maddest of the mad. At this time in history, insanity had not been medically explained yet, nor was it socially acceptable. Humans were as ignorant as those who, of this world, call autistic children retarded. Humans were the worst creatures the universe created.”

  Tom’s perception of the Queen had been that of a total lunatic who longed for nothing but the obedience of others—like the flamingo in the asylum. Not that his perception of her had changed drastically now, but she wasn’t as shallow as he’d thought. She actually had a story to tell. One that was going to blow his mind. He listened tentatively.

  “So humans didn’t just call us mad then,” the Queen said. “They thought of us as a plague. And our plague, or disease, was an invisible one that affected our brains and had no well-known cure. Thus, the Invisible Plague.”

  Tom let out a sigh. Now his suspicion about the names of the people on the list was confirmed. Each and every one of them had been mad once. True, most of them were of notable prestige in their countries—senators, mayors, and even people who worked in the White House and the British Parliament.

  How the government hired people who were once mad always boggled his mind.

  Tom was sitting among more than two hundred mad lunatics from all over the world. Rich. Famous. Powerful lunatics.

  “Now, you understand why I have summoned you to this meeting,” the Queen said. “We’re all the same, whether we were Wonderlanders once or just labeled mad in this world.” Her gaze intensified. “And you know what humans do to those of the Invisible Plague. You know what happens to you when you’re called mad in this world.”

  Tom scratched his head. What was she talking about?

  “I’m not talking about asylums and straitjackets,” the Queen said. “I’m talking about the atrocities humans committed against those who needed help instead of being called ‘mentally retarded.’ I am talking about what humans have done to the likes of us in the past. I’m talking about the...”

  She raised her hands in the air, and with them, the crowd stood up. The mad crowd from all over the world, saying the same words in unison as if it were a ritual: “You’re talking about what happened to us in the circus.”

  56

  THE CIRCUS

  TIME REMAINING: 7 HOURS, 00 MINUTES

  Before I can comprehend what Waltraud and Ogier are doing here, several people are pushed into the cage.

  The crowd is screaming. I grit my teeth against their squeals. All of them stand up and clap, blocking my view.

  I am going crazy. Who is in the cage below?

  I try to look, but the crowd won’t let me. Furiously, I jump outside the tier to the small aisles. I still can’t see those in the cage, so I descend the rows barefoot, the image clearer with each step down.

  This can’t be true.

  This can’t be true.

  This can’t be true.

  I see Lewis Carroll holding the bars of the cage from inside, pleading for mercy.

  What is going on? I run faster.

  Then I see Duchess Margaret Kent behind him. Everyone is booing and throwing cotton candy at her.

  I run closer.

  I see the Queen of Hearts, her hands cuffed as she screams at the crowd. Then I see the Muffin Man. The March Hare.

  Oh my God. What’s going on?

  “Please don’t,” Lewis says to the crowd. “You don’t understand. They’re just different. They won’t hurt you.”

  I am a few steps away from the cage when I see Fabiola in the back, crying herself to death. Then there is Jack.

  Jack!

  I grip the cage. “What’s going on, Jack?”

  “You shouldn’t be here, Alice,” Jack shouts at me, cotton candy sticking to his face. “Run!”

  “I won’t run, Jack.” The scene is overwhelming. I’m going to cry. I realize that almost everyone from Wonderland is inside the cage. “Tell me how I can help.”

  “Run, Alice!” Lewis yells. “Run!”

  I turn and look at the supposedly sane people of the world, shouting and discriminating against those behind the cage. Men, women, and their children. Where in the world does such madness come from? Why do they hate them so much?

  As answers form slowly in my cloudy head, the ringmaster spells it out for me.

  “Look at those freaks!” he announces. “Aren’t they funny? Aren’t they amusing? Aren’t they disgusting?”

  Freaks? Is that what humans thought of the Wonderlanders when they crossed over to their world? Because they looked and acted differently?

  “Those mad, mad, mad creatures!” the ringmaster says. “Hit them with your cotton candy. Laugh at that grinning cat. Amuse yourself with this short freak who thinks she’s a queen. Entertain yourself with the silly jokes of the man with the hat who throws tea parties and always thinks it’s six o’clock.” He points at someone with a long hat. I can’t see his face in the shadows, but I’m assuming he is the Mad Hatter.

  Suddenly, the crowd is given teacups, and they start throwing them at the Mad Hatter.

  They laugh at them.

  My head veers between those thought of as mad, freaks in the cage, and those supposedly sane people throwing cups at them.

  “Stop it!” I scream at the crowd. “Who the heck do you think you are? They aren’t freaks. You are!”

  Then I realize my mistake.

  Everything stops as they stare at me.

  57

  MEETING HALL, BUCKINGHAM PALACE, LONDON

  “It started as a joke,” the Queen said. “At first, no one understood a person suffering from a mental disorder. Usually, they thought those people were possessed by demons, causing them to have those hallucinations. Then they thought of them as witches. In both cases, those people were killed, if not burned at the stake.”

  Tom was sweating by now. Surely he sat among the maddest of the mad in the world, but the Queen was also reciting the true dark history of humans, which had been repeatedly documented—only historians always preferred to stay away from it.

  People with mental illnesses were used as tourist attractions, as a means for entertainment, over the years.

  In his office, Tom had a drawing of people watching mad people for entertainment.

  “Then when physicians began suggesting this was an illness, calling it the Invisible Plague, humans came up with this humiliating idea of gathering the mad in prison, as if they had committed a crime,” the Queen explained. “And in a world where money dominates everything, there was nothing wrong with making a shilling or a buck on the side. The mad people were put into cages as tourist attractions. People from all over the world would entertain themselves by watching them for a fee. It was like going to a comedy movie.”

  Tom reached for his pills and swallowed. A handful. Everything the Queen had talked about, he knew for a fact.

  “So we, mad people, Wonderlanders, instead of being cured, were a source of a few laughs and snickers,” the Queen said. “We became the freaks in the circus.” She signaled for her mad crowd to sit again. “And now it’s time to have our revenge.” She clicked her remote, and the screen flickered again.

  It was time to see what she had in mind.

  58

  THE CIRCUS

  TIME REMAINING: 6 HOURS, 47 MINUTES

  I stand, staring at the crowd in the circus with my heart pounding in my feet. What are they going to do to me?

  When I think of it, the only real human in the cage is Lewis Carroll. Still, they didn’t spare him. Of course, because he was defending the Wonderlanders—so Lewis didn’t always think of them as monsters?

  I assume they will do the same to me now.

  Caught betwee
n running, and saving those in the cage, I realize this is some sort of memory. It’s doubtful I can change much about it. Whoever led me here wanted me to see this.

  Why? I have no idea.

  Maybe he wants me to sympathize with Black Chess and their crimes in the real world.

  I am confused. Who’s mad, and who isn’t?

  Those who turned evil after what happened to them in the cage, or those people throwing cotton candy at those poor souls?

  “Run!” Fabiola shouts.

  Her voice reminds me of the room she wanted me to see back in the maze.

  I turn around and run, tears filling my eyes. On my way out, teacups smash all around me.

  The way back into the maze seems easier. I think I know my way, and I wonder if any of those in the circus will follow me here.

  As I run, I try to connect the dots.

  So when I saw Lewis Carroll lock the Wonderland Monsters behind the doors of Wonderland, was he protecting the world from them, or protecting them from the world?

  Fabiola said the circus happened in the last days before he locked them in, so it’s safe to think he was protecting them. Or maybe he was protecting some and locking up others.

  I like this assumption better because, apparently, not all of those in the cage turned out to be part of Black Chess. Fabiola isn’t, for instance. The event at the circus had a different effect on each of them.

  Also, I am not sure why I haven’t seen the Pillar, but I could have missed him in all this mess.

  Panting, I reach the door.

  I turn the knob and step into a room where people are gathered around a meal in Lewis Carroll’s studio.

  The image brings instant tears to my eyes, and I fight the weakness in my body that’s bringing me down to my knees.

  59

  MEETING HALL, BUCKINGHAM PALACE, LONDON

  Dr. Tom Truckle watched the Queen’s video with intent. It was hard to predict where this was going, but the crowd around him was shocked.

  It seemed strange for a man like him to sympathize with the mad, but he did—at least momentarily.

  He kept watching the video, eagerly wanting to know what the Queen had in mind. What kind of revenge was she talking about? How did the mad have their revenge?

  The video he was watching detailed what had happened to the Queen and Wonderlanders in the circus. The torture, the humiliation, and the human race’s fear of what was different or new to them.

  Even Tom, a man who rarely sympathized with the insane, hated his own kind for the few moments he watched what had happened to the Wonderlanders.

  60

  BEHIND THE DOOR, THE MAZE, ON THE BORDERS OF WONDERLAND

  TIME REMAINING: 6 HOURS, 11 MINUTES

  The people gathered inside Lewis Carroll’s studio are my friends. Those who, according to Fabiola, walked the white tiles on the Chessboard of Life.

  “Alice!” Lewis cheers with a glass of wine in his hand. He is sitting at the head of a table filled with all kinds of colorful food. The place looks cozy, like how you would expect your family’s house to look.

  To his right sits Fabiola, nodding and smiling at me. “We missed you, Alice. I thought we’d wait for you to say prayers before we began eating.”

  I step closer and wipe the tears from my eyes. Is this room some sort of dream?

  A dream within a dream? A madness within hallucinations?

  “You have to taste those vegetables,” says the March Hare, looking as sane and relaxed as he ever has. “I grew them myself in my garden.”

  I am starting to assume this isn’t a dream. I think the door transported me to another time, maybe before the circus, when life seemed peaceful in Wonderland.

  Those at the table may be all the friends I had at this time.

  “Missed you, Alice!” A younger girl, next to Fabiola, waves at me. She has a cute smile, but I don’t recall meeting her before.

  I wave back and approach the table.

  “The best chicken soup in Wonderland,” a voice says behind me. It’s Jack. He brings a bowl of soup filled with playing cards to the table and sits next to the March Hare. “Come sit, girl.”

  I sit opposite Lewis Carroll, wondering when this happened. But in any case, I’m glad, because this means I am her. I am the Real Alice, right?

  We start all holding hands, and Fabiola asks me to say a prayer again.

  “I don’t know any,” I say.

  “Just say what’s on your mind,” Lewis says. “We’re family now. We’ll accept what you feel inside your heart.”

  Overwhelmed by the possibility of having had such a family at some time, overwhelmed by this peace and love, I stare at Fabiola’s angelic, motherly smile, Lewis’ fatherly care, the little girl’s innocence, and Jack’s loving eyes. The March Hare could simply fit as a good uncle who takes care of us as much as his garden.

  My phone rings suddenly. I pick it up while everyone glares at me. Not even Carroll imagined such a device in his time—I guess I will have to explain it to them later.

  But there may be no later.

  The message is from the Hatter, not the one I saw in the circus but the one from real life:

  Thank you for telling me the circus’s whereabouts; no one would have found it but you.

  And, oh, all of this you see happened once in the past, Alice. Enjoy the very short moment, as it will turn upside down right now. Enjoy a glimpse of Wonderland as it was so long ago.

  You led me to the circus, and I have to thank you for that. This is why I showed you this intimate moment of your past through this portal.

  I raise my head to the questioning friends at the table, but I have to type back now and explain later:

  You got what you wanted. The location of the circus, although I don’t know why it’s so important. I need the location of the rabbit. You promised.

  The response arrives sooner than I expected:

  Go to the Six O’clock Circus in real life. You will find a device buried underneath the sand in the ring. The device can track the rabbit’s every move. Good luck. Now, I leave with the last tragedy in the scene.

  P.S. You will never find the rabbit if you’re not wearing the dress. And, ah, again, the fan and gloves you found are the wrong ones. But don’t worry, you should find them, and understand their importance, once you find the rabbit.

  Find the rabbit, save the world, and find out who you really are.

  I tuck my phone back in my pocket and smile at my family. “I’ll explain what this is later.”

  “Is that from the future?” The March Hare raises a thick eyebrow.

  “Kinda.”

  “Kinda?” Jack asks. “What does kinda mean?”

  “Ah.” I sigh. “That’s a long story. Should I say the prayers now?”

  “Please do.” Lewis and Fabiola exchange smiles and stare at me. I don’t know what it means, but suddenly I realize they might’ve been a couple at one time.

  I grip Jack’s hand harder on my left, and this cute younger girl on my right, and begin...

  But like the Hatter said, it won’t last long.

  The door bursts open. Victorian police dash in and arrest Fabiola, Jack, March Hare, and the girl on account of being infected with the Invisible Plague.

  Lewis stands and defends them. The police knock him down and take him along. “You’re infected, just like all of them,” the constable roars and hits him on the back. “You all shall die before you infect the rest of the world.”

  I realize that this memory is the last of the happy ones for the six of us.

  As for me, I feel like I am fading away, melting between the sheets of insanity, returning with my body and soul to the place where I originally started. The place people like to call the real world. Sometimes, they call it the sane world.

  61

  THE GARDEN OF COSMIC SPECULATION, SCOTLAND

  TIME REMAINING: 5 HOURS, 04 MINUTES

  I wake up in the rabbit hole again. Dirt surrounds me everywhere.


  Whatever this trip was, I have no idea. But I know I learned a lot.

  A lot!

  A tiny slant of light peers through from above. Someone is unlocking the hole.

  “Alice.” The Pillar peeks inside. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  “We finally found you. We seemed to miss the hole before. It’s strange. I don’t know how it happened,” the Pillar says. “Hang tight. We’re sending someone to pick you up now.”

  “Pillar,” I say, “until they pull me out, you should prepare the plane. I have to go back to the Six O’clock Circus.”

  “Why? What’s there?”

  “Trust me, I know much more than you do right now.”

  62

  SIX O'CLOCK CIRCUS, MUDFOG TOWN, ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF LONDON

  TIME REMAINING: 3 HOURS, 07 MINUTES

  I am back in the Six O’clock Circus, where it all started. The Pillar is watching me while I crawl on my hands and knees and dig into the sand where the Piccadilly writing had been embedded before.

  I dig everywhere for that device the Hatter told me about. I have to find it. Time is running out.

  “Will you ever talk to me?” the Pillar says. “I’ve been begging you all the way here on the plane. What’s going on, Alice?”

  “I have to find a device that will locate the rabbit so I can stop the bomb.” I am still digging like a mad rabbit. “It’s buried in the sand.”