by Cameron Jace
“Why? You’ve lost only two fingers?” Tom felt the need to interfere.
“And I will lose a third once I mention that devil again,” Chopin said.
“Here is another hundred,” Tom offered a hundred of his own, not sure why he’d felt so curious all of a sudden. Maybe he’d like to see Chopin lose another finger.
“Talk!” Dormouse seemed aggressive.
“Say what?” Chopin said. “I will not talk.”
“But you took the money,” Tom argued.
“I didn’t say I would not fulfill my promise, but I will not talk.”
“You’re wasting our time,” Dormouse said.
“No I’m not.” Chopin pulled out a flash drive from his pocket. “This will tell you what you need to know.”
“What is this?” Tom squinted at the drive suspiciously. “A bomb?”
“Why would I explode myself with you losers?” Chopin said. “This is a secret recording of some of the sessions. You go over it and hear everything.”
“Why haven’t you told us about this before?” Tom snapped again.
“And lose three hundred pounds?” Chopin said.
“But you also lost a finger.” Tom was getting mad.
“The devil took one finger, yes, but I fooled the devil and kept the other when you gave me the last hundred and I didn’t talk,” Chopin looked sideways, as if the devil were hiding in a teapot nearby, listening to his genius conspiracy.
“Give it to me,” Tom snatched the hard drive, but then something incredibly unexpected happened.
Dormouse found himself standing in a room where both Chopin and Tom fell asleep while standing on their feet. It didn’t take him long to realize it was the Chessmaster’s doing. The madman had earlier announced that he’d make Oxford and London sleep next.
“Hmm…” Inspector Dormouse picked up the flash drive, wondering why he was the only one left awake. “This is weird.”
He took the flash drive outside, preparing to listen to it in Tom’s car — it could also be used as an mp3 player — and looked at the University of Oxford having completely gone asleep.
“I think it’s not weird,” he reasoned. “I think it’s frabjous. The one man who slept the most is the only one awake right now. Could it be that my sleeping kept me immune from the Chessmaster’s curse?”
Chapter 69
The Last Chess Game, Chess City, Kalmykia
“The White Knight?” I say, unable to fathom this.
In the books, the White Knight was the gentlest and most beloved creature in Wonderland. In spite of his short appearance, he saved Alice from his opponent, the Red Knight. I remember reading about him repeatedly falling off his horse and landing on his head. He also had those silly inventions: pudding with ingredients like blotting paper, an upside-down container, and anklets to guard his horse against shark bites.
How could this good man have become who he is now?
“I see you remember me now,” the Chessmaster says.
“I remember what I read in the book about you,” I say. “That’s all.”
“It will come to you,” he says. “All the things you’ve done to me.”
“Why not remind me?”
“I’m afraid if I do, you’ll die from shock before I can beat you in the game.”
“If so, you should have just told me long ago and refrained from finding Carroll’s Knight,” I say. “Stop playing games. Tell me what I did. I’m very curious how I ever managed to hurt Death.”
“That’s the thing, Alice,” he says. “I never was Death before what you did to me.”
This is a complicated thing. Did I create Death in the past?
“I didn’t even ask to become Death.”
“Now I’m starting to doubt your story. It’d make more sense if you longed to become Death to have your revenge. I’d believe that.”
“Not if there had been a ritual involved.” His words echo in the back of my head, and suddenly I feel dizzy again, as if I’m about to remember.
“Ritual?”
“The unholy ritual that made you kill my daughter.”
My hand reaches for the edge of the table and grabs onto it. More dizziness. Faint memories, blurred by older sins. “I killed your daughter?”
“Two actually.” The Chessmaster genuinely exposes his pain, and it cuts through and splinters my whole being into ripped pieces of my own shroud.
I have nothing to say, all but to wish this hadn’t happened.
“And my wife,” the Chessmaster recounts. “My grandmother and my farm dog.”
“I did that?”
“It’s not easy realizing you were the villain, is it, Alice?” The Chessmaster’s anger is now surfacing. All the fluff is starting to wear off and the demon of vengeance is rising. “Villains are so misunderstood. People see them killing and raging, but they never ask themselves why they’ve become what they’ve become.”
“I’m not a villain.”
“All villains say that, even in Hollywood 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 ask 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.”
Chapter 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 then 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 onl
y 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 the 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 at 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?”
Chapter 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 sat 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 low life 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’ 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 was 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 said. “Together you two were the most brutal monsters in Wonderland.”
I shrug, speechless, wishing I can 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 verses bad way, but bad versus bad. They competed on who was the most evil, who killed and hurt more people. No one could ever stop them,” the Chessmaster said. “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 can top the Cheshire.”
“You can’t be serious.” Strings of the rest of the story knit before my eyes. A jigsaw of a 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 had 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? This 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?”
“They used another Wonderlastic ritual where he managed to keep the soul and The Pillar’s powers for himself,” the Chessmaster says. “So The Pillar, in his utmost vengeance, decided to kill them all, and the hell with immortality.”
“And lose the fourteen powerful lives that easy?”
“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 was only 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 to 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 has 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 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.”
Chapter 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 plugge
d the player in and listened through the speakers.
The recorded sessions were really long, mostly boring, but Dormouse caught a few slip-ups here and there. The story was peeling itself easily.
Back in Wonderland, The Pillar conspired with Alice to create fourteen lives with an unholy ritual. The Pillar and the Cheshire turned out to be lifelong nemesis, who, in spite the significance of the Wonderland Wars, were pure and 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 four short-lives lifespans. The Pillar wanted much more.
The recording also showed 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.