by Cameron Jace
“So?” I try to pull the wheel back, now that I am farther and farther away from Carolus and the March. I shouldn’t have taken that left.
I guess Fabiola is too late. I am too late. The March is too late. We’re all too late.
A marvelous golden light fills the sky as I lose my grip on the wheel. The bus swerves over a growing mushroom that plows us upward and to the left in midair. The bus circles a couple of times and we all lose control, heads banging against the windshields, blood splattering on the windows.
Then it falls on its back on the ground.
I hold my dizzy head and urge myself to stand up with all the blood dripping from me. My bones ache and my heart is still racing. “It’s okay,” I shout. “We’ll get out now and save the March.”
But no one responds. No one talks back to me.
I turn and look. Everyone is dead.
It seems like I wasn’t meant to drive busses, ever. I killed my classmates in the past, and every one of the Inklings in the present.
80
Yellow School Bus / Carolus
Thinking is a drag. It stops you from taking action. From being in the moment.
I scoop a rifle from the bus’s floor. Constance’s legs show from under a seat, but I don’t look. I turn back, pretending I am the Pillar. Pretending I am blunt and calculated and willing to sacrifice everything to get shit done.
I disembark the bus with a limping leg, checking out the rifle for ammo. Every damn word the Pillar has ever taught me, I remember. It’s like he has been preparing me for this moment.
The ammo is good. My legs aren’t.
In the distance, I see a big smile on Carolus' face. He now knows the secret, having opened the March’s mind.
He grins back at me, and takes a turn to run off to Mr. Jay.
You can’t kill Carolus because you’d be killing Lewis Carroll, which means there will be no hope to save the children.
But I can’t let the secret pass to Mr. Jay.
I raise the rifle, check the ammo again, ready it, raise it to my eyes, close one of my eyes, aim at Carolus, take a deep breath, finger on the trigger, eyes following him closer. He is on top of a few small mushroom, ready to jump to the other side.
I aim and say, “Sorry, Lewis,” and I shoot.
Carolus falls to his knees but rests on one hand.
I shoot again.
He flips on his back and falls.
I limp closer to him, panting.
Standing over him, I see he is still breathing.
“You will never see Lewis again,” he warns me.
“If it means I will never see you again,” I say. “Then Lewis will understand.”
I fire and empty all bullets left in his head.
Exhausted, I throw the rifle away and limp back to the March. He is still on his knees with the glowing Six Keys on his head. His face is glowing too. I sink to my knees in front of him. He smiles with his eyes.
“Beautiful,” he says.
“What is beautiful, March?”
“You are, Alice,” he says. “You made so many children happy.”
“Are the children safe?” I ask.
“Not quite,” he answers. “But you can save them.”
“How?”
“I will tell you. They’re ready.”
“Ready?” I grimace. “How?”
“Someone is gathering them to read books all over the world,” he says absently. “I can see it in my mind.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t worry about that now,” he says. “You have one last battle left.”
“Me?”
“With Mr. Jay, Alice.”
“I thought so,” I nod. “I guess keeping the secret away from him isn’t enough. He will still come for you.”
“Yes, he will. And you will fight him. The ultimate fight, Alice. You will need your Vorpal sword.”
“I nod again, then say, “March, what do you remember? What is it that we had to lose so. Many lives for?” I point at the cap. “What do you remember?”
The March smiles, “You want to know?”
“I’d like to know the secret, if you don’t mind.”
The March grabs my left ear and whispers. The world around us is collapsing into an apocalyptic mushroom madness while he says, “I remember tomorrow.”
Epilogue
Phone Booth, London
Mother Bird’s journey was long. Determined to make that phone call, she walked the deadly streets of London, looking for one last intact phone booth. It wasn’t an easy job, but she found one last one.
Panting, she squeezed her chubby figure inside and rested on the phone set. She picked it up and flattened that paper again. She dialed.
A beep.
Two beeps
Three —
“Hello?” a young woman’s voice was panting on the other side.
“I’m Mother Bird,” she said. “I am supposed to call this—”
“I know who you are,” the young woman said. “Are you giving us the green light?”
Mother Bird looked at the paper. The instructions were to say yes to this question. Which she did.
“Awesome!” the young woman said.
To Mother Bird’s surprise, she heard the woman talk to children. “It’s time. We can start reading now. Get ready kids.”
“May I ask what this is about?” Mother Bird said.
“Not yet,” said the young woman. “What are your instructions?”
“What do you mean?” said Mother Bird.
“Were you instructed to give me a green light, and also the others?”
Mother Bird read the paper again, “It says I should give the green light to the number I call.”
“Yes? How about New York?”
“New York too,” Mother Bird read from her paper.
“Tokyo?”
“Yes.”
“Amsterdam?”
“Yes.”
“Cape Town?
“Yes.”
“Buenos Aires?”
“Let me see,” Mother Bird checked the list, “Yes, that too.”
“Moscow?”
“Yes.”
“That’s great news, Mother Bird. Thank you,” the young woman talked to the children again. “Tell them in Moscow; they can start reading. And it in Tokyo!”
Mother Bird shrugged. She was missing out on the unexplained excitement. “May I ask what you are reading, young lady?”
“Lewis Carroll books, of course,” the woman said. “It’s the end. It’s also the beginning.”
“I am confused,” Mother Bird said. “What’s this all about?”
“Wait a minute,” the young woman’s voice dimmed into suspicious tones. “You are the Mother Bird we are expecting, right?”
“I guess so?” she said. “I was given a million pound to make this phone call when the mushroom event happens.”
“I appreciate that,” the young woman said. “But you need to proof you’re not an imposter so I can let the reading begin.”
“How do I do that?”
“Simple,” the young woman said. “Tell me the name of the man who told you to call us? Not the banker, the other man.”
“Ah,” Mother Bird remembered the Pillar. “You mean the man who drank tea but said he’d prefer drinking hookah?”
“That’s him,” the young woman said. “Tell me the name he whispered in your ears. His real name.”
Mother Bird told her.
The young woman said, “Brilliant! Thank you very much. I have to tell the children it’s him.”
Mother Bird heard the young woman tell the name to the children who hurrayed and celebrated right away. The young woman said, “Children, it’s the Hatter! He made Mother Bird call us. It’s all true. The Mad Hatter is alive.”
Afterword
There is not much left for me to say. The series is coming to an end. An awesome journey. I loved every minute of it. I could have extended t
he series to make it 20 books long but the storyline had to be true to itself — though there are possibilities of spin offs, especially after you read the ending of the next book, Looking Glass.
I hope you liked Mushrooms. It’s my favorite of the series. I know Alice wasn’t the main focus in this book. It’s is more about fleshing out other characters, and about tons of reveals. Looking Glass has a happy ending — of sorts, but it’s not dark at all. It mainly reveals the Pillar/Hatter situation, Mr. Jay’s final battle with Alice, and of course Alice’s resolution in life and love and madness (and the bus incident.)
Last but not least, the fate of the children, and what the book-reading is about.
I have to admit that the ending had been in my mind from around half of the series (not only the book reading but the surprise finale in Looking Glass.) It’s a perfect resolution for the series. I didn’t want this to end in ‘madness.’ The madness in the series is a means to an end to explore our daily lives and what we care about the most. The fact that the most precious thing is the children is something that came to me while visiting friend who taught in school. I found them reading Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and realized how much the book impacted their lives — our lives. Since then, I had only one question on my mind: what would our lives have been like as children — and adults — if we haven’t been exposed to this book ( and a few other epic stories of our childhood) ?
Thanks for hanging on that long,
Cam, the Storyteller
Other Books by Cameron Jace
The Grimm Diaries Prequels Series
The Grimm Diaries Prequels 1-6
The Grimm Diaries Prequels 7-10
The Grimm Diaries Prequels 11-14
The Grimm Diaries Prequels 15-18
The Grimm Diaries Prequels 19-24
The Grimm Diaries Main Series
Snow White Sorrow (book 1)
Cinderella Dressed in Ashes (book 2)
Blood, Milk & Chocolate Part 1 (book3)
Blood, Milk & Chocolate Part 1 (book4)
I Am Alive Series
I Am Alive (book 1)
I Am Alive 2: Increscent
Pentimento Series
Pentimento (book 1)
Books in the Insanity Series
Insanity
Figment
Circus
Hookah
Wonder
Family
Mushrooms
About the Author
The part that matters:
Cameron Jace is a storykiller. He kills older stories and resurrects them into larger-than-life tales weaved within facts and fiction. With a knack for collecting out-of-print books, he is fascinated with folklore and those who wrote it. He wonders if it’s possible to track back to the first story ever told.
The part that is nothing but propaganda:
Cameron is the bestselling author of the Grimm Diaries series and the Insanity series. Three of his books made Amazon’s Top 100 Customer Favorites books for 2013. He is a graduate of the College of Architecture, but prefers building a fortress of imagination over a house. Cameron lives in California with his girlfriend. He loves to hear from you:
Via email: [email protected]
Twitter: @cameronjace
Facebook: facebook.com/camjace
Instagram: instagram.com/storykiller
Goodreads: goodreads.com/CameronJace