by Cameron Jace
“I’m not a villain.”
“All villains say that, even in movies.” He smirks, pulling one side of his mustache.
“I’m really sorry if I’ve done any of that, but you must understand that I’ve—”
“Changed?” He tilts his head and places a hand behind his ear. “You realize this is every villain’s poor excuse when they’re about to hang him?”
“You have to believe me,” I plead, ready to get on my knees and beg for forgiveness, even ready to pay for my wrongdoing. I just need him to understand that I’m not the same person anymore, that I don’t even know who that person is. “There are no words that could ease your pain. It’s so horrible what I’ve done. Believe me. Please, believe me when I tell you I don’t remember any of it. I don’t even have an idea why I did it.”
“Oh, please.” The Chessmaster jolts the table as he stands, scattering all the pieces, all but his white knight. It stands firmly in place, unaffected by whatever wants to move it. “You know why you did it. Because of the ritual.”
“The ritual again? What ritual?”
“You want me to spell it out?” He bends forward, face flushing red, and teeth protruding like he is going to eat me alive.
“Please. I don’t remember anything about a ritual. What kind of ritual makes me kill a whole family?”
“A sacrificial ritual.” He grits his teeth. “One that demands fourteen people dead.”
“Fourteen?”
“Fourteen people sacrificed, and fourteen others making a deal.”
“What deal?” I’m on my knees now, closer to the edge of the table, his voice pinching my ears, his spittle on my cheeks.
“The deal you did to save the devil.”
“Devil? What nonsense are you talking about?”
The Chessmaster’s anger subsides to the weakness in his knees. He falls down right next to me, about to cry his heart out. “The deal you did to save the Pillar.”
70
London
“Honk that bong!”
Having just arrived, Carter Pillar stood over a police car in the middle of the streets of London, celebrating in the most provocative ways. Everyone in London had fallen asleep because of the Chessmaster’s curse, and only a few, probably immune to the curse, stood next to him.
When he’d first arrived, everyone was shocked with the sudden creepy silence in the city. Those who were still awake were in shock and grief, wondering who to ask for help.
But the Pillar, being the Pillar, had another point of view on the incident.
“Look at it this way,” he told the people still awake. “The city is all ours. We can do whatever we want. You will never have a chance to do this in this miserable and densely populated London again.”
“What would you have us do?” an old lady asked.
“Honk that bong!” he’d said, honking the horn of every car he came about.
“Honking is illegal!” the woman protested.
“And that’s exactly the point.” The Pillar winked.
It was only a few minutes before the others bought into his idea. Suddenly, Londoners went bonkers and began doing whatever was illegal.
Now the Pillar stood upon his limousine, watching them play golf and shooting balls against Parliament’s windows, honking cars, and singing loudly in the streets.
“Go to the CCTV surveillance cameras!” the Pillar demanded. “Get it all recorded. This is an event like no other!”
Xian, on the other hand, not having arrived in America yet, didn’t know where he was. He thought this was it, the place of freedom where he would be free to do whatever he wanted. So he took off his clothes and danced in the streets. At one point, he turned to the Pillar and said, “I love America!”
The Pillar didn’t bother correcting him. He turned around and began walking to the most desired and important destination in London, at least according to him.
“Where are you going, Cao Pao Wong?” Xian inquired.
The Pillar took a moment to answer. He seemed thoughtful, thinking about too many things at once, and then said, “Time to finish something I started, Xian. It’s all about choices, remember?”
71
The last chess game, Chess City, Kalmykia
“I killed your family to save the Pillar?” I wipe the tears from my eyes.
“Fourteen people all in all.” The Chessmaster sits back on his chair, collecting the chess pieces and putting them back in place. “You and the horrible Pillar.”
“Why? Tell me. I need to know.”
“Like you don’t.”
“Please. Please. Please. I need to know.”
“You and the Pillar were the worst. You worked for Black Chess, aiding them in that eternal war between good and evil, trying to find the Six Keys.”
“Okay?”
“The Pillar was never a Black Chess employee, not directly. He was nothing but a lowlife drug dealer living in Wonderland’s forest, smoking his hookah and making more money.”
“Really?”
“You, being the horrible Alice, needed his help in executing Black Chess’s plan in finding the keys, which Lewis had hidden long ago.”
“Why did he hide them? Why were they so important?”
“Don’t play me and pretend you don’t know!” The Chessmaster is losing it. “I’m never going to tell you what the keys are for.”
“Never mind the keys. Tell me about the Pillar.”
“The Pillar agreed to help you,” the Chessmaster says. “Together you two were the most brutal monsters in Wonderland.”
I shrug, speechless, wishing I could disappear and not hear the rest.
“However, the Pillar had a problem,” the Chessmaster says. “The Cheshire Cat.”
“What about him?”
“They’d always been rivals and hated each other in Wonderland. Not in a good versus bad way, but bad versus bad. They competed for who was the most evil, who killed and hurt more people. No one could ever stop them,” the Chessmaster says. “But the Cheshire always topped the Pillar with his ability to possess souls. His nine lives.”
“And?”
“The Pillar agreed to help you with finding the keys for Black Chess, under one condition. That you help him with a ritual that would grant him not nine lives, but fourteen, so he could top the Cheshire.”
“You can’t be serious.” Strings of the rest of the story knit before my eyes. A jigsaw puzzle completing itself, too soon for me to take it all in.
“The ritual had you kill fourteen innocent people and use their blood or souls or whatever, with another fourteen people.”
“Why?”
“It created a bond of fourteen souls and granted the Pillar fourteen lives.” The Chessmaster has completed the reorganizing of the chessboard. “Fourteen Wonderlanders who have the blood of another fourteen innocent Wonderlanders inside them. Fourteen Wonderlanders who carried part of the Pillar’s soul. So if he dies, he can use one of the others.”
“That’s the creepiest story I’ve ever heard.”
“Not creepier than the Cheshire’s grin,” the Chessmaster remarks. “The fourteen had to carry the Pillar’s chosen name. Carter Pillar. They were granted immortality and lived long enough to follow him into modern-day Oxford.”
“They lived that long?”
“Carrying his fourteen lives so he can beat the Cheshire Cat.”
“I don’t believe this. The Pillar can be borderline bad, but not this evil.”
“Why do you think he made you find the Cheshire Cat on your first mission?” the Chessmaster argues. “He wanted you to rid him of his nine lives, but you failed and the Cheshire got his mask back. This was the only reason to do so.”
“You’re lying.”
“Really? How about the Executioner?”
“What about him?”
“You think you and the Pillar went to Mushroomland to save the world from him? This was the Pillar’s plan all along.”
“How so? Thi
s doesn’t make the faintest of sense.”
“The Executioner was one of the fourteen. And one of two people who carried the Pillar’s soul and betrayed him.”
“Betrayed him how?”
“He used another Wonderlastic ritual through which he managed to keep the soul and the Pillar’s powers for himself,” the Chessmaster says. “So the Pillar, in his vengeance, decided to kill them all, and the hell with immortality.”
“And lose the fourteen powerful lives that easily?”
“You’re acting like you don’t know him. He is the devil in disguise. He has no friends. He hurt Fabiola. He played you and played the world. The fourteen’s betrayal could only be met with death in the Pillar’s book.”
I try to connect the dots, and it strikes me that the Pillar only killed twelve people before being admitted to the asylum. Those, plus the Executioner, are thirteen. If the Chessmaster is right, then someone is missing. “Those are thirteen. One’s missing.”
“The one that got away.” The Chessmaster laughs in a loud roar, the desire to burn the world showing in his eyes. “The one reason the Pillar is still there with you. The reason why he hasn’t killed you yet. Because he was hoping you can lead him to the one who got away.”
I sit opposite the Chessmaster, contemplating what to believe. Half of his story makes sense. The rest, no so much. I’ve been working on warming up to the Pillar for all these weeks, tolerating one thing after another. What really won me over was his belief in me, and helping me become a better person. How could this be an act? How?
“Let’s say I believe you,” I tell the Chessmaster. “How did you become Death?”
“Part of the ritual,” he claims. “There was no Death before in Wonderland. Lewis, being the happy puppy and child inside a man that he was, wanted Wonderland to be deathless. But the ritual demanded the sacrifice to give something back to the forces of evil. And that was Death.” He stares me in the eyes. “And, as the Pillar had killed my family, I accepted the position to create balance in the universe.”
“And you killed Lewis.”
“I did. But Lewis, in spite of being dead in his grave, always finds a way to stay alive in people’s visions and dreams. I guess it’s a power he has been granted by higher forces for writing a book like Alice in Wonderland that had so much effect through the years. Children must have handed him that kind of power. Don’t ever underestimate children.”
“But you just said the Pillar killed them, not me,” I point out.
The Chessmaster shrugs. “I’m sure it was both of you, not just him.”
“But you could be mistaken.”
“Even if I am, only killing you will make me sleep better. These chess pieces will determine which one of us will live, Alice. Now get ready to play—and die.”
72
Tom Truckle’s car, Oxford University
Inspector Dormouse was back in Tom’s car. He’d picked the keys from the sleeping man’s pocket and walked the Tom Quad all alone, the only man awake in this neighborhood. He plugged the flash drive into the car’s stereo and listened.
The recorded sessions were really long, mostly boring, but Dormouse caught a few slip-ups here and there. The story was peeling itself apart.
Back in Wonderland, the Pillar had conspired with Alice to create fourteen lives with an unholy ritual. The Pillar and the Cheshire turned out to be lifelong nemeses, who, in spite of the significance of the Wonderland Wars, were purely shameless monsters who cared for no one but themselves.
There may have been a long-lasting war between good and evil, personified in the Inklings and Black Chess, but there was another great war between the Pillar and the Cheshire. A war of souls. Who possessed more lives? The Cheshire, being a cat, had been granted nine lives through an ancient mask, which Lewis once tried to scatter all over the world. The Pillar’s technique was that of being a caterpillar, morphing into a cocoon then a chrysalis and then a butterfly, which gave him a lifespan of four short lives. The Pillar wanted much more.
The recording also told of the Pillar’s plan to kill the fourteen after two of them betrayed him by taking their powers into their own hands, and the other twelve thinking it over.
Dormouse couldn’t fathom the carnage of evil in this world, let alone Wonderland. Wasn’t it supposed to be the children’s friendly place with all the cute rabbits and enchanting roses? What made it that way? Was this Carroll’s plan, or did something evil slip from this beautiful creation?
How in heaven’s name did our beloved and enchanting childhood turn into this bloodbath of adulthood?
Dormouse didn’t know what to do. It was all clear now. But somehow he had a soft spot for Alice. First, she reminded him of his daughter. In fact, she reminded him of all the struggling teenage daughters in his neighborhood. Those girls fighting for their own identities in a world that imposed nonsensical rules and obligations to grow up.
What if every teenage girl from around the block had the power to save the world? Which teacher or parent in this scary world outside would ever notice?
Inspector Dormouse didn’t feel like sleeping now. It was the Pillar he had to get, at all costs. This evil embodiment of darkness. He had to be put back in the asylum—or prison.
But where would the inspector start?
A question with a simple answer that he suddenly heard on the recording. One of the fourteen people was explaining why the Pillar couldn’t track number fourteen.
It turned out that the mysterious Mr. Fourteen, with a plan to beat the devil, longed for the help of another devil. The Cheshire.
Inspector Dormouse chuckled listening to this. Everything was really messed up in this story.
Mr. Fourteen asked the Cheshire to help him. Why? Because it turned out that the Pillar, having decided on killing them, had to kill each and every one of them. Kill only thirteen and the ritual was reversed, meaning the Pillar’s life’s expectancy was lessened and shortened. That was why the Pillar was having a skin problem, a rare disease that he kept secret.
Of course, the Cheshire liked the idea, and granted Mr. Fourteen the power of splitting his soul in two—it was the best the Cheshire could do, but it was more than enough.
Doing so, apparently so many years ago, helped Mr. Fourteen have two bodies, one that traveled abroad and left the continent completely, and the other that still lived in London, under a disguise and different name.
The Cheshire’s plan was to delude the Pillar into killing the one in London, making him think he was safe, and then he’d die suddenly without even knowing it.
“This isn’t Wonderland,” Dormouse told himself. “This is London’s Chainsaw Massacre tripled by Hannibal Lecter’s madness. In short, this is a British horror story.”
In the end, Inspector Dormouse needed a lead. Something in the recording that would give a clue to where to find Mr. Fourteen, because, thinking logically, this was why the Pillar had come back to London all of a sudden, instead of helping Alice.
The Pillar was about to kill Mr. Fourteen, and Inspector Dormouse was ready to stop that from happening.
73
The last chess game, Chess City, Kalmykia
Whatever I do or say to apologize, there is no escaping from the Chessmaster’s game. And how in the world can I win or save the world from him? Why is it even my burden to do so when I’ve been the worst person in the world in the past?
“Ready, darling?” The Chessmaster’s dark tone returns tenfold. “Don’t ever think that the pain I’ve been through made me weaker. Don’t ever think I have a soft spot and will back off any moment. Being Death for all those years made me heartless, and there is only one joy left in my life: to see you suffer.”
“Why not ask to play against the Pillar?” I ask.
“I took care of the Pillar long ago,” he says. “I even ignored it when he escaped Chess City and left you behind. He is dying, only he doesn’t know it. I made sure he’d take the bait.”
“I thought it was me wh
o was going to kill him,” I say. “He read it in the future.”
“But of course it was you who killed him—will kill him. You just don’t know it. He doesn’t know it.”
“How will I kill him if I die today?”
“People plant the seed of death in others long before anyone knows it, darling,” the Chessmaster says. “You think you have to pull the trigger to do so. Start playing, because you’re wasting my time.”
I stare with a blank mind at the table, then at the chess pieces, then at the cups of poison. There is no way I can survive this.
A man with a tray arrives with a complimentary drink all of a sudden. I glance at the Chessmaster to see if he is going to object, but he doesn’t.
“A complimentary drink…” The Chessmaster brushes the left side of his mustache. “Of death.” He laughs. “I’m always a good host. Never kill without a good last meal or drink. I’ll even pay for your coffin.”
None of the Chessmaster’s show unsettles me. In fact, I’m most curious about the man offering me the drink on the tray. Because it’s a Red. My guardian angel. The Dude.
“Didn’t know Reds work for you,” I tell the Chessmaster.
“They’re vulgar killing machines who would do anything for money,” the Chessmaster says. “I’m happy they conceal their faces under their hoods, because I’m sure they’re pretty ugly.”
But I don’t think my Red is ugly, because I can feel it—he is my guardian angel.
I reach for the glass, trying to meet his unseen eyes. He doesn’t say anything, but nods toward the glass. I squint, not sure what he is implying. He must be here to help me somehow.
Then, when he nods again, I see it. He is nodding at the bottom of the glass. There is a napkin, a round one, sticking out at the bottom. It’s a message. Another note. Now I certainly know it’s him.
Remember: “He Who Laughs Last” & “That you will die when you say so.”