by Cameron Jace
“You’re giving me orders now?” I ask.
A note: Yes. The world is counting on you to save them from the Chessmaster.
7
The Dude tells me all about the Chessmaster, the best chess player in history, who’s just gone mad and killed the Pope’s representative while entrapping the world’s leaders in an auditorium in Russia.
Then he makes me watch the news covering the catastrophe.
“But they don’t mention why he is doing this,” I say.
No one knows yet. He didn’t say.
“Does the Chessmaster have a name?”
No one’s sure. He has been concealing his identity for years, even when winning chess championships each year. Some say his real name is Vozchik Stolb.
“Sounds like a Russian name.”
Who cares? You just need to stop him.
“So he is not a Wonderland Monster,” I say. “You understand I only catch Wonderland Monsters, right?”
That’s exactly why I am here, giving you orders, and not the Pillar.
“You know about the Pillar? Who are you?”
I’m the Dude. I told you that. I am here to teach you that you don’t only save lives by beating Wonderland Monsters. You’re obliged to save anyone harming humans in this world.
“And why would I do that?”
Because you have a responsibility to repent for the things you’ve done in the past.
“Seriously.” I glare at his hollow face under the hood. “Who are you?”
I’ll answer you when you know who you are.
“I know who I am, smartarse.”
Really? Bad Alice? Good Alice? Insane? Sane? Alice? Mary Ann? Orphan? Family? You don’t have the slightest idea.
I shrug. It’s hard to argue with the only person bothering to save my life, other than the Pillar.
We may not have time, since the Chessmaster is playing the game with the world’s leaders right now, and they are very bad at chess. Soon, another world leader will die—it’s already a mess at the Vatican. People are angry and worried for the Pope’s life.
“I thought it was the Pope’s representative who died.”
The Pope was forced to play the game after his representative died. He is present in Russia, endorsing the charity event. He happens to have no idea how to play chess. Now the Chessmaster is forcing him to play. Either win or die.
“This is getting serious.” I rub my chin. “Do you happen to know where the Pillar is?”
I thought you’d never ask. Then he writes down an address. I will drive you there, but then you’ll not see me again. My role ends here.
I don’t know why I feel a bit lost, realizing I want to see this mysterious Red again. But it seems weird to vocalize my interest in him. I am not even sure I can fully trust him, so I take the note and we descend the stairs of the abandoned building we’re in. Out on the streets, I immediately recognize the city of London.
The Red shows me to a Corvette in a vacant back street and opens the door for me.
“Must be rich,” I mumble, sitting.
I borrowed it from a rich guy.
“You mean you stole it from a rich guy.” I pull on the seatbelt.
He doesn’t write a note and starts the engine.
“I’m really worried about the Pope,” I comment, thinking about who this Chessmaster may be, and if he will end up being a Wonderland Monster. “You said the Chessmaster forced him to play and he has no clue how to play chess. What’s the Pope doing now?”
He writes a note with one hand while driving with the other. The Pope made his first move. It’s a very common move in the Vatican when facing a crisis.
“Which is?”
A note with a smiley face: Praying.
8
Buckingham Palace, Queen’s garden.
The Queen watched her doctors trying to put Humpty Dumpty’s head back on. They struggled with it. The boy’s head was much heavier and bigger than most children his age. It was also a horrendous operation knitting it back onto his neck.
“So he’s going to live?” the Queen asked, chin up, hands behind her back, wearing rabbit flip-flops for a change.
“It’s too soon to tell,” the doctor said. “We’re knitting the head back on. The rest needs divine intervention.”
“What’s divine intervention?”
“It’s when you need God to intervene and save someone.”
“Never heard of that,” the Queen said, rubbing her chin.
“It’s like when God lets people live while he decides others will die.”
“Ah.” She clicked thumb and forefinger. “You mean like when I chop off heads or don’t chop off heads. I decide who lives and who dies.”
The doctor shrugged, not sure if he should object or explain things further. He certainly could get his head chopped off if he spoke.
“Anyhoo,” she said, smiling.
“Anyhoo?” the doctor asked.
“It’s a hip word I heard the kids say,” she said. “I like it. Nonsensical, and I like how you have to ball up your lips in the end like you’re going to kiss someone. Any-hoooo.”
“Whatever you say, my Queen.”
“So like I said: Anyhoo, I think my Humpty will live. It happened to him before in Wonderland. He’d fallen off a wall and splashed open like an Easter egg. Lewis wrote a rhyme about it.”
“And he still lived?”
“Yes. Became a little dumber, though. He is like an egg. You can certainly glue its shell back together, but you can’t squeeze all the yolk back in.”
“I don’t think we can afford him becoming any dumber,” the doctor said, staring at Humpty balled up on the table.
“What’s wrong with dumb?” she demanded. “I love dumb people. Now get your dumb arse out of my chamber before I chop it off.” She stopped in her tracks, a forefinger pressed to her lips. “Did I just say I love your arse in the last sentence?”
The doctor suppressed a laugh and hurried toward the door.
“Wait,” she said. “Margaret will want to see me because of this Chessmaster situation. I don’t want her to see her kid like this or she will give me a hard time, so tell her I am busy.”
“Busy?” the doctor said. “Doing what?”
“I am the Queen, dammit! I can be busy playing with my big toe if I want to. Get out!”
Then she patted the poor kid while staring at the massacre in the garden. It was mesmerizing staring at the dead guards who’d just killed each other over a woof, woof.
But she had no time for lamenting. She picked up the phone and dialed a fourteen-digit number.
“Mr. Jay,” she said. “I assume you heard about the Chessmaster.”
“I did, and I don’t like it.” The answer came in low tones from the phone.
“Let me guess. You don’t like it because we don’t know who he really is?”
“That’s exactly it. I’ve never heard of a Chessmaster in Wonderland. True, Lewis had been obsessed with chess after visiting Russia, where he invented the famous zashchishchaiushchikhsya None Fu move, but he never revealed the Chessmaster’s identity.”
“Not even in Alice Through the Looking Glass?”
“I’m not sure.”
“So, all we know is that the Chessmaster knows what the Six Keys are for?”
“That’s all Lewis mentioned in his diaries, but I’m starting to doubt that. I’m not sure.”
“If I may ask, sir,” the Queen said, “aren’t you supposed to know what the keys are for?”
“Of course I do—so do you and most of those interested in the Wonderland Wars.”
“So why is the Chessmaster important? We can nuke him like we did Hiroshima when you advised the Americans to do so, and get rid of him. I know we’d lose the world leaders, but I’ve already planted their substitutes of my madmen all over the world. We could rule the world by tomorrow afternoon.”
“It’s not about knowing what the keys’ ultimate purpose is—we both know what
that is. The problem is what do they open to get to our ultimate purpose.”
“Ah.” The Queen scratched her head. “So even knowing their location now isn’t enough, because we don’t know where to stick them.”
“Stick them, yes.” Mr. Jay sounded irritated with her. “Call me when you know something. I have other concerns at the moment.”
“Really?”
“Someone kidnapped Alice on her way to my castle, and I need to know who he is, then get her back.”
9
Lifespan Hospice, London
After the Dude drives me to the Pillar’s location, he guns the Corvette into the streets and disappears, leaving me with my mouth agape, staring at the hospice where I am supposed to find the Pillar.
I enter, not sure what the Pillar is doing here, so I ask the receptionist about him.
“Oh, Mr. Pillar,” she cheers “Such a charming man. He is in Ward Six.”
“Charming indeed,” I mumble, a little envious of everyone finding him so, not pointing out that he is utterly bonkers—and a serial killer.
Inside, I try to smile at everyone I pass by in the rooms. I mean what consolation can you give to a dying person, though I totally respect the work done here.
Then there I find him, in Ward Six. He is standing on top of a patient’s bed, dancing with his cane up in the air and the hookah in his other hand. I can’t hear what he’s saying since I am behind glass. But I can surely see what the other patients are doing.
They are simply dancing as well, half of them smoking hookahs—and coughing ferociously afterward.
I rap on the glass but no one’s paying attention. The Pillar’s dance moves are imitated by each person in the room, all of them standing on their beds.
Pushing the glass door open, the first sound that attacks my ears is a well-known song, booming out of an eighties cassette player that most youngsters of my generation only see in old movies. The player is crackling with a badly equalized version of “Don’t Fear the Reaper.”
I call out for the Pillar, but still, no one pays attention. Everyone is dancing and smoking as if they’re reckless teenagers with no respect for what time does to us in this world. None of them look like they’re dying soon, actually.
“Listen. Listen!” The Pillar waves at them. “We’ve danced enough.”
“No!” They pout.
“Seriously.” He coughs with beady eyes. “I need to tell you something.”
“That you’re handsome?” An old woman, who ripped her IV from her arm, giggles.
“Thank you, darling, but I already know that,” he says. “What I want to tell you is a phrase, which I want you to repeat whenever you feel your time has come and that you’re about to die.”
The room falls silent. Even the song ends on its own.
“Don’t worry,” the Pillar tells them. “When death comes creeping up to your bed, under the sheets, telling you it’s time, all you have to say is the following…”
The patients’ eyes are all on him.
“You say, ‘I will die when I say so,’” the Pillar says, and I feel embarrassed. The man must have smoked too much and now is only talking nonsense.
But the patients surprise me by loving it. They all start saying, “I’ll die when I say so!”
Rolling my eyes, I pull at the Pillar’s trousers while he is standing on the bed. He kicks me off, grunting. “What do you want? Get out of here.”
“Seriously?” I say. “This Chessmaster is threatening to kill the leaders of the world and you’re playing games with these poor people?”
“He isn’t fooling us.” The old woman glares at me. “Carter is one of us. He knows how we feel.”
I shrug, speechless, unable to comment. What does she mean? Is the Pillar dying?
“Wait outside, Alice,” the Pillar says. “You have no idea what’s going on.”
10
Outside the Lifespan Hospice, London
“What was that all about?” I ask the Pillar, once he walks outside on the pavement.
“What?” He shakes his shoulders, pacing ahead.
“You’re deluding people by promising them they can stand in the face of death. I find it unethical.”
“Unethical?” He rolls his eyes. “I’m sure death is pretty unethical, too.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Fight unethical with unethical,” he tells me. “Or better, fight death with nonsense. Laugh at it. I’m pretty sure Einstein said that.”
“I’m sure he didn’t. And what did the woman mean by saying you’re one of them?”
“Forget about it, Alice.”
“I want to know.” I grab his arm, stopping him. “Are you dying?”
The Pillar shoots me a flat stare. It’s the one he uses to conceal a big secret. I know him well enough to tell by now.
“Pillar,” I say gently. “If you’re dying, you have to tell me. Is it that skin issue you have?”
“Someone is going to kill me.” He knocks his cane once on the ground, his face strangely unreadable.
“Are you psychic now, knowing someone is going to kill you?”
“I’ve seen it in the future.” His chin is up, and he’s avoiding my eyes.
The realization strikes me hard. “Is that why you were the same age when we time-traveled in the future? Because you weren’t supposed to be there?” I cup my hands on my mouth. God, the Pillar will be dead fourteen years from now.
“I saw my grave, Alice.”
“And it said you were killed, not a normal death?”
The Pillar nods, though I still feel he isn’t telling me the whole truth.
“So you feel like you basically belong in the hospice, waiting for your death? That’s not like you.”
His flat expression lasts a whole minute, torturing me with his silence, as I fail to read his mind. It ends with him walking away toward the street.
“Where are you going?”
The Pillar doesn’t answer but stops at a café a little later. I stop next to him, watching the café’s TV broadcasting the latest news about the incident in Russia. The host comments on the Pope’s bad moves in the game and that he may be the next to die. The screen shows the world leaders sweating at their chessboards, most of them having played two moves out of the seven. Most of them have also sipped that poison that might eventually kill them.
“How can he possibly play with a hundred and thirty people at once?” I ask.
“It should be easy for a man who played chess with God and won.” The Pillar drags on his pipe.
“You don’t really believe that.”
“It’s a great marketing scheme, instilling fear in everyone. It works. I don’t have to believe it.” The Pillar nears the TV. “Nice handlebar mustache, and look at that armor he is wearing.”
“He is a madman who needs a psychiatrist,” I comment.
“Or a fashion designer,” the Pillar says. “I find it humiliating that the world is threatened by a man so out of fashion that he’s still wearing armor.”
“Do you know him? Is he a Wonderlander?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve certainly never met him before.”
“He looks very much like Wonderlanders,” I say. “Eccentric, mad, and evil.”
“You’ve just described every politician on TV.”
“This chess game strikes me as a Wonderland theme.” I stare the Pillar in the eyes. “Like the chessboard of life in the Vatican.”
“Are you implying something?”
“I think you know who he is and aren’t telling me.”
“Usually I am, but not this time.”
I try to believe him but can’t. “So why is the Chessmaster doing this?”
It’s exactly this instant when the Chessmaster approaches the camera and begins to talk.
“I will be brief,” he says. “Before I reveal my intentions and demands, I need to make sure only those who are qualified to meet my needs apply.”
We a
ll watch him pull each side of his handlebar mustache after every couple of words.
“Listen carefully,” the Chessmaster continues. “Because you have no idea who I am. I mean, I am so scary that I sometimes prefer not to remind myself who I am.”
“You think he could be the mad barber on Cherry Lane Road, who’s responsible for half of the male Brits being bald?” the Pillar asks, but everyone in the café shushes him.
“In order to let your world leaders live, I need you to bring me something,” the Chessmaster says in his Russian accent. It makes him sound both funny and intimidating, which puzzles me. “I want you to find something called ‘Carroll’s Knight.’”
Everyone in the café starts to murmur and speculate. I look at the Pillar for answers.
“Carroll’s Knight.” He drags from his pipe. “Sound’s interesting.”
“Don’t bother trying to figure out what it is,” the Chessmaster says. “Only those who already know will understand.”
“I guess my work is done.” The Pillar is on his way out of the café. “Because I don’t know what Carroll’s Knight is.”
“Wait,” I say. “The Chessmaster must be a Wonderland Monster. Carroll’s Knight sounds Wonderland related.”
“To get what I want, I will ask you to solve the following puzzle,” the Chessmaster says. The Pillar stops at the door. I guess he can’t resist puzzles. “If you are the few who are capable of getting what I want, you should be able to answer the following question. It’s a puzzle, the answer to which leads to a place.”
Everyone is listening.
“The puzzle is: Where is Miss Croatia 1454?”
11
The streets of London
The Cheshire now possessed a politician’s body. A middle-aged minister in an ironed suit and tie. After ordering people left and right, he sat back in his comfortable chair and glanced at the rainy London through his office window.