by Cameron Jace
“Most definitely.” The Pillar nods. “The March Hare, being chased by Black Chess, especially after they’d implanted a light bulb in his head, couldn’t build more gardens to bring him back to Wonderland. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, being a Lewis Carroll fan—so many Russians are, trust me, because of the time Lewis spent here—he persuaded the March Hare to build Chess City, which was supposed to be the next best thing to the Garden of Cosmic Speculation.”
“A better model, you mean.”
“The March had discovered that the way to Wonderland wasn’t the gardens with ridiculous designs, but the secret was in designing a chess city from Lewis’s lost designs in his diaries.”
“So we’re about to land on the real portal to Wonderland?” I say, my eyes fixed on the empty city.
“Not sure, but the city was banned by the Russian government—influenced by Black Chess, of course. There was no way to enter or visit it.”
“Because they wanted to find a way to Wonderland,” I mumble.
“Most probably,” the Pillar says. “Though I’m not sure. What I know is that this place never worked as a portal to Wonderland, so it’s stayed like this: a most beautiful ghost city.”
I turn and look the Pillar in the eye. He looks back at me, impressed with what I am about to say. “An empty ghost town, which was once a possible portal to Wonderland,” I say. “The perfect place for Fabiola to hide Carroll’s Knight.”
50
Buckingham Palace, London
The Queen’s first way out was to hide under the sheets of her royal bed, but then the stupid dogs barked, exposing her hiding place.
She jumped out of bed, frantically wondering how she could cheat Death. If Alice and the Pillar had really found that last piece, she was going to die in a few hours, just like Fabiola and Margaret. How was it possible to cheat Death when your name appeared on his to-do list?
She kept thinking that Death could be bribable, just like anything else in the world. But what did Death need money for? It wasn’t like he was in dire need of a new scythe from Harrods or ASDA.
Then what? She kept thinking.
What can I offer Death so he’ll leave me alone?
She thought if she could talk to him face to face, she’d persuade him of something—or better, trick him into nearing her guards, and chop off his head.
Chopping off Death’s head. She grinned. That’d look good on my CV.
But she knew she was just fooling herself. Death was coming. Soon she’d be poisoned and die. The real issue with Death was he didn’t knock on doors. There wasn’t enough time to offer him tea and talk him out of it.
The only solution was to fool him and make him think he was killing her when she was someone else. The Queen jumped toward the phone and called the Cheshire.
“I want you to possess me,” she told him.
The Cheshire, or whoever he was possessing at that moment, was munching on popcorn and watching The Exorcist, which he thought was entirely rubbish. If I was that terrible demon in the movie, why would I possess a helpless young girl? I’d possess the president of the United States or something.
“Did you hear me?” the Queen said.
“I heard you, but I’m not sure I heard you right.” He munched on more popcorn and turned off the movie to watch Family Guy instead. The Cheshire dug Family Guy. “Did you just say you want me to possess you?”
“Yes, that’s an order.”
“First of all, I don’t take orders from you,” he said. “You’re too short to give orders.”
“Cheshire! Possess me!” She stomped her feet.
The Cheshire almost choked, laughing. He imagined the girl in The Exorcist being bratty and all, demanding the demon possess her. That would be a great scene in Family Guy, he thought.
“Possess me!”
“You know I can’t,” he said. “You’re a Wonderlander.”
“Yes, you can if I give you permission.”
“So you’re serious about it. May I ask why?”
“Because…” The Queen had to cook up a reason, fast. She began to sob theatrically. “I’m fed up with myself. I’m short, obnoxious, and no one loves me. I can’t think of one child who has me as his idol. I realized I’d prefer being a cat than a queen.”
“What’s wrong with cats?” The Cheshire purred.
“No, I didn’t mean it like that. I meant I prefer to be a beautiful cat than being a nasty Queen who chops off heads.”
The Cheshire gave it some thought. He’d been searching for a person to possess forever and stick with. Being the Queen of Hearts—and Britain’s queen—wasn’t bad, although he wouldn’t want to stick to it forever. But it’d be fun, too. And he was seriously bored.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m on my way.”
“Thank you!” she chirped. “You have a pen and paper so you can write my address down?”
The Cheshire blew out a long sigh. “I know where you live. You’re the Queen of England. Everyone knows where you live.”
“Ah, stupid me.” She blushed.
“I’m beginning to have second thoughts about possessing someone like you. So stupid, I could lose my cat mojo.”
“No, no. I promise I’d buy someone’s brain. How many IQs are good for you?”
The Cheshire simply hung up. It wasn’t worth it, really. He switched the channel and watched Dumb and Dumber.
The Queen, on the other hand, was shocked, listening to the terrible beep of the phone. Had the Cheshire just given up on her? How was she going to cheat Death now?
She suddenly felt a shudder, followed by terrible cramps in her stomach. There was no escaping now.
She fell to her knees. Even her dogs abandoned her. She swirled and screamed and cursed and spat bubbles of stupidity out of her mouth. But nothing helped.
Fading away, she saw strange men wearing black armor and looking like the Chessmaster entering the room. They picked her up and began pulling her as her bones scraped the floor.
“Where are you taking me?” she said.
One of the knights laughed and said, “To the afterlife. Time to pay your debt.”
51
Chess City, Kalmykia, Russia
Walking through the ghost city, it was hard not to feel like a tourist, though admittedly a special one. The enormous chess pieces and constructions are dazzling, sometimes infused with Buddhist architecture; it’s an almost ethereal experience.
“How do you like it in here?” the Pillar asks.
“It’s incredible,” I say. “But I have to admit, the city is also intimidating.”
“Of course, because it’s empty.”
“So we’re going to walk the city? Looking for Carroll’s Knight?”
“I’m not sure. The clue didn’t explain things further.”
“I have an idea,” I tell him. “With all due respect, all those beautiful designs are a camouflage.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the city’s main attraction is this.” I point at the incredibly large chessboard, like the one in Marostica.
“I agree,” the Pillar says. “But I also don’t see how it could lead us to Carroll’s Knight.”
“Why?”
“Look, Alice. True, it’s the largest chessboard I’ve ever seen, but it’s empty, just like the city.”
The Pillar is right. The chessboard is devoid of any chess pieces.
In silence, feeling mesmerized and intimidated at the same time, we reach the chessboard. The sun behind us is shimmering with a patch of orange flaring behind the cloudy skies. Surprisingly, there is no snow in Chess City, making me think the March Hare may have been right about it being a portal to Wonderland.
The chessboard is composed of huge tiles of black and white, like the one in the Vatican. The tiles are incredibly huge, and they could host four to five people, shoulder to shoulder.
“I think you owe me an explanation,” I tell the Pillar, influenced by the images before me.
“What woul
d that be?”
“How come I walked the white tiles on the Vatican’s chessboard?”
“What do you mean? You’re Alice, the only one who can save the world from Wonderland Monsters.”
“That’s the Alice you want me to be.”
“This is the Alice you are. We’re not going through this again.”
“But we have to, because at some point I was the Bad Alice and I’ve worked for Black Chess. It doesn’t make sense that I was able to walk the white chess tiles inside an important place like the Vatican. Did Fabiola manipulate it?”
“Of course she didn’t,” the Pillar says. “Fabiola helped you because she thought you were a nice girl who could save lives while being brainwashed by me. If she’d known it was really you, she’d have killed you.”
“Then why did she show me the vision of the circus?”
“Either to make you realize Black Chess’s madness, or she was testing you so she could, like I said, kill you if you were the Bad Alice.”
“Some things you say about her make me wonder why you love her.”
The Pillar shrugs. “I know. But hey, I’m as bad myself.”
Sometimes I can’t help it when I listen to him. I suppress a laugh and stay focused on what I need to know. “You still haven’t told me how the Bad Alice was able to walk the white tiles in the Vatican.”
“Because of your intentions.”
“Excuse me?”
“We all have good and evil inside us. It comes and goes. Some of us dip our heads too far in the dark, and some only have snippets of bad thoughts clouding our heads from time to time. For instance, it may cross your mind to pull down the window and verbally abuse the reckless driver next to you in a rare episode of road rage. But it just subsides and you don’t give in to it, once you remind yourself that being good is a choice, not a gene.”
“Stop the metaphors. I need firm answers now.”
“Because your intentions were good, Alice—that’s why you walked the white tiles.” The Pillar’s voice is flat.
“If so, then I can walk the white tiles now as well,” I say, taking a deep breath.
“You’re assuming this is one of those holy chessboards?”
“It makes sense, since it’s in a place that is supposedly a portal to Wonderland.”
“A bit far-fetched,” he says. “But if you truly believe so, then you should start with the black tiles. I mean, if you’re right, my bet is you can’t walk them.”
“I can’t,” I say firmly. “I feel it.”
The Pillar’s eyes glimmer, not in the most pleasant way.
“I will walk the white tiles now,” I say, and step onto the board.
The Pillar’s first reaction is taking a couple of steps back. I believe he just read my mind and realized what I was aiming for.
“Now it’s your turn,” I dare him. “I want you to try to walk the white tiles, Pillar.”
“Ah, there is no need to.” He waves his hand, trying to act playful, but the concern in his eyes is exposing enough.
“I need you to,” I insist. “I need to know about your intentions.”
His eyes weaken. The shine in them withers a little. I’ve cornered him in a place he doesn’t wish to be. But I need to know. I need to know, once and for all, what his intentions are.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I will never kill you, not even if you can only walk the black tiles. All I want is to know you’re on my side.”
“I am on your side,” the Pillar says.
“Actually, this is what I feel. I know what you’ve done to me. You believing in me is beyond remarkable. But there is this feeling about you I can’t shake.”
“What feeling?”
“That I don’t know who you really are.”
“I can’t walk the tiles, Alice.” The Pillar’s voice scares me, because he is almost begging me, something I’ve never experienced with him. “I just can’t.”
“Are you saying you can only walk the black tiles?”
“I’m saying I can’t.”
I pull out a gun from my back pocket and point it at him. I confiscated it from the Chessmaster’s men in Marostica and held on to it. I’m not even sure it’s loaded, but I have to do this.
The Pillar says nothing. Somehow he is not surprised.
“I’m much more worried now,” I say. “Why aren’t you surprised I am pointing a gun at you? Is it that you don’t believe I will pull the trigger?”
“Actually, I have no doubt you will, if you need to,” he says. “And at some point you will pull the trigger and kill me. It’s my fate, but I’m not sure why you will do it.”
I grimace, realizing that maybe it’s the Bad Alice in me aiming the gun at him. “I’m sorry.” I lower the gun.
“No,” the Pillar says. “Don’t lower the gun. Don’t repress that dark part inside you, Alice.”
“What? Why would you tell me something like that?”
“Because this is why I helped you become who you are now,” he says. “The world is full of good guys trying to fix it, always faltering when it’s time to pull the trigger, because they have no bad side in them. You’re not like them, Alice. You’re perfect. A good person who was once bad. If you can only find the balance inside, you will save this world.”
Like always, his words seep through, and I devour every syllable and meaning.
He is right. If I end up facing Death itself, I will have to pull the trigger. I can only defeat Death with the darker side of me. I grip my gun tighter and point it at the Pillar again.
“Then walk the tiles, Pillar,” I demand. “Show me what your intentions are.”
The Pillar nods, still reluctant, but he approaches the chessboard. And there he stands before a white tile, about to step onto it, but can he really do it?
52
World Chess Championship, Moscow, Russia
The Chessmaster listened to his informer telling him the latest news.
“The Queen is dying, too,” the man told him.
The Chessmaster nodded, thinking. “And Alice? The Pillar?”
“They’ve found three pieces so far. In a few minutes I will be able to locate their final destination.”
“I want to know as soon as they arrive,” the Chessmaster said. “I hope the place is not far from here.”
“It can’t be,” the man said. “The sequence of how they found the pieces makes perfect sense. The last piece was in Tibet, pretty close to us.”
“Are you suggesting they’re close?”
“They must be.”
“Be sure, and soon,” the Chessmaster said. “I’m counting on the accuracy of your information.”
“But of course,” the man said. “I wouldn’t risk you killing me.” He smiled feebly.
The Chessmaster didn’t quite like being perceived as that scary Death figure. He hadn’t always been that scary. He had a story of his own, a story that justified his actions—at least from his point of view.
But none of this meant it wasn’t fun infusing much more chaos into the world. After all, with the powers he possessed he wasn’t only capable of killing people. He could also make entire cities fall asleep.
He stood up, walked toward two other presidents, and with a couple of moves killed them, then simply announced more cities going to sleep. A slow, boring death, he liked to call it. We all went to sleep—died every night—and woke up, never being appreciative of the gift of life. Funny how this came from Death himself.
The Chessmaster announced the new sleeping cities on the news, warning of London being the next one on the list. Then he sat back, daydreaming about all the hell he would soon bestow on Alice. Oh, how long he’d waited for this to happen.
53
Director’s office, Radcliffe Asylum, Oxford
“The twelve men were called Carter Pillar?” Tom Truckle said.
“See?” Inspector Dormouse said. “I told you I knew something.”
“But what does it mean? Why would people n
amed Carter Pillar change their name in the same year?”
“I have an idea, not much, but I am curious to know your theories.”
“I don’t know,” Tom Truckle said. “Maybe they knew about him being a madman and didn’t want to have anything to do with him.”
“Sounds too far-fetched to me.”
“Then maybe he made them change their names. I wouldn’t dismiss the idea. The Pillar is a lunatic. I imagine his ego drove him to want only one man called by his name.”
“It still makes no sense. He is a madman, and he fooled me by pretending to be some animal activist called the Petmaster, but it’s not that,” Dormouse said. “Want to hear what I know?”
“If you don’t mind.”
“The twelve men were foreigners. They weren’t born in Britain, and none of them came from the same country.”
“It’s getting more interesting now. What else?”
“They come from all over the world, even from countries where you normally wouldn’t find a name like Carter or Pillar.”
“But you said their names were a translation to Carter Pillar in their own language.”
“Indeed, but even some of those translations are never used as names in their countries.”
“I see. So they arrived here a few years ago? Why?”
“For all kinds of reasons. None of them suspicious or unusual.”
“That’s a dead end,” Tom Truckle said. “Did they know each other?”
“Now you’re on the right track. They all met annually. Once every year.”
“You don’t say.”
“A secret meeting, and guess where?”
“That’s hard to guess.”
“In Oxford University.”
“Does that mean they knew the real Pillar?”
“In fact, yes,” Inspector Dormouse said. “I had to dig into the university’s archive to figure out that it was our Carter Pillar who arranged the secret meetings.”