A Plague of Hearts

by Patrick Whittaker

  As flames swept up Alice’s legs, the King clapped his hands in manic glee and began to dance a merry jig. Her frock ignited. The Knave laughed hysterically.

  Sinking to his knees, the March Hare was held spellbound by Alice’s destruction. He took in every detail of her perdition - the flailing of her arms, the melting of her face. Black strands of carbonised hair drifted through the smoke; her clothes fell apart.

  The Knave thrashed around in his chains. His every movement was made strobic by the wash of shadow and light. He was a flickering vision, a Jack O’Lantern dancing in and out of existence. ‘Roast beef!’ he cried, playing the fool one last time. ‘I smell roast beef! Pass the mustard!’

  As if this was some pre-arranged signal, the girl stopped screaming, stopped pounding at the smoke-filled air

  Realising his peril, the King ran out of the Court Room, .tearing his crown from his head and throwing it aside. His sobbing echoed down the corridor.

  Like a penitent sinner, the Knave looked up at Alice and smiled serenely. Her right arm fell to the ground and shattered, showering the Knave with hot cinders, dark ashes. Then with a mighty whoosh, Alice toppled, broke apart into a dozen burning pieces.

  Her right thigh landed on the Knave, killing him instantly.

  Chapter 15

  Primal Screams

  The Queen was dead.

  In the Pleasure Garden, the snapdragons burned feebly. The March Hare sat on a toadstool watching wispy, swan-like clouds glide across the moon; some part of him was far away, drifting in a space of its own.

  There was music. He had brought along his portable tape recorder. The Caterpillar bathed in the rolling melodies. The March Hare merely listened.

  ‘Imagine,’ said the Caterpillar, ‘drowning in an arpeggio.’

  The March Hare breathed in a lungful of hashish. They smoked from opposite ends of the same hookah; each had his own tube through which to inhale the heavy blue smoke. A casual observer might have supposed a symbiosis, a self-contained ecology of Caterpillar, Hookah and Hare.

  Nodding thoughtfully, the March Hare smacked his lips. ‘How about sailing on a sea of symphonies?’

  ‘Cool,’ said the Caterpillar. ‘I can see myself as Captain of the good ship Concerto.’

  ‘And I could be the angry wind whipping the sea to a crescendo. Driving all before me, I’d rejoice as notes crash against tall cliffs, broiling and bubbling in an orchestrated frenzy.’

  ‘Far out.’

  A piano spiraled up a staircase of chord progressions, twisted around in tonic contortions.

  Resting for a moment on a sustained harmonic, it suddenly tumbled three octaves to be caught in the sturdy arms of a bassoon.

  The Knave was dead.

  The March Hare could not focus on anything this side of eternity. Cannabis and music were taking him into uncharted territory. He was an astronaut, a dancer in a ballroom haunted by stars.

  ‘Sometimes it’s all just too beautiful,’ said the Caterpillar.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Life. So exquisite and so delicate we seldom have the courage to grasp it. We think it’s going to fall apart in our hands. And then one day, it’s gone.’

  The March Hare began to cry.

  ‘Why are you crying?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Is it because of what happened to the Queen?’

  ‘No. It’s not that.’

  ‘The Knave?’

  ‘Not that either. I think it’s because something’s happened to me and I really don’t know that I can handle it. I’ve suddenly grown up. I never thought I would, but I have. Life’s become so serious. I just don’t know who the hell I am any more.’

  ‘How old are we?’ said the Caterpillar. ‘We must be about thirty years old. Maybe it’s about time we did grow up. I can’t be a caterpillar all my life. Soon I’m going to have to grow wings and fly away.’

  The March Hare giggled.

  The Caterpillar sighed. ‘Man, those wings are going to be so big and beautiful, they’re going to take me all the way to the moon.’

  ‘What will you find there?’

  ‘Everything I ever wanted.’

  ‘Do you suppose the moon’s big enough?’

  ‘I don’t know. Any more than you know why you’re crying.’

  ‘I told you why.’

  ‘Cool,’ said the Caterpillar. ‘Real mellow.’

  He fell asleep.

  The March Hare attempted to get to his feet. The toadstool seemed to twist away from under him; it pitched him backwards and over the edge. He landed on his side, his fall broken by a pile of fresh humus.

  Giggling uncontrollably, he crawled around on his paws and knees until he was brought to an abrupt halt by the end of a gun barrel. It pressed into the flesh between his eyes, forcing him to focus at last on his situation.

  It was just after sunset. The night was muggy and warm and he felt sick. From the toadstool which seemed to rear impossibly high above him, came the strains of a rock’n’roll song. It was The Puppy-Kicker Five with their latest hit, Sex Mad Aardvark.

  Arms encircled his waist, pulled him to his feet. Pink eyes stared into his. A paw slapped his face.

  ‘He’s stoned,’ said whoever was holding him up. ‘The Big Cheese ain’t gonna like this.’

  The pink eyes blinked. For the merest instant of time, they seemed to disappear. ‘Let’s get him to Mrs. Pogue’s quickly. Maybe some coffee will sort him out.’

  They pulled and pushed him through the Pleasure Garden. A Babbage Convertible was parked on the lawn outside. The door opened and he was thrown onto the back seat and found himself propped against something warm and furry.

  Recovered from his giggling fit, the March Hare vaguely recognised his fellow passenger as a gerbil. He was dressed in combat fatigues and carried a shotgun. Two more gerbils climbed into the front.

  ‘He’s off his face,’ said the one in the driving seat. ‘Keeps telling us he’s gonna fly to the moon. Let’s hope we can bring him down without too much of a bump. `

  *

  Mrs. Pogue’s Home for the Bewildered and Slightly Insane had not served its intended purpose for three years or more. A sudden cessation of government funding had strangled the life out of it, leaving Mrs. Pogue no choice but to turn her unhappy residents out into the streets. Shortly afterwards, Mrs. Pogue had been found face down in the Tired River. The coroner had recorded an open verdict; few people doubted that she had committed suicide.

  The Home was actually a disused farm house. Getting there entailed a tortuous journey along twisting lanes that were all dirt and potholes.

  Sitting in the back of the Babbage Convertible, the March Hare reacted to every bump with a deeply-felt groan of discomfort. His head ached intolerably.

  ‘Nearly there now,’ the driver informed him. ‘You feeling any better than before?’

  The March Hare rubbed the back of a paw against his eyes. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I feel just dandy.’

  ‘Well, at least you’re coherent. You must have quite some metabolism to recover so quickly.’

  ‘It’s been engineered that way,’ said the March Hare. ‘Yours must be the same.’

  ‘Courtesy of Peregrine Smith?’

  ‘So it seems.’

  ‘That’s kind of spooky when you think we intend to kill him. I mean, he made us and all that. Would you call that patricide or Deicide? Smith, after all, is our equivalent of God.’

  ‘He’s flesh and blood, and if ever I get the chance, I’m going to blow a hole right through his head.’

  ‘Because of what he did to Gerbil Town?’

  ‘That and a few other things.’

  ‘Sure,’ said the driver. He swung the convertible around a sudden corner and coaxed it along a short but treacherous track which brought them to the front of Mrs. Pogue’s. There was a light showing in the upstairs window. Sharply defined shadows moved across the surface of the net curtain. A tall, stocky figure paced backwards and forwar
ds; it was unmistakably Doctor Ormus.

  ‘Oh no,’ said the March Hare, recalling the meeting Ormus had called for tonight, here at Mrs. Pogue’s. So the Gerbils had joined the Red Orchestra? That was hardly surprising. ‘You may as well go in without me. I’m having nothing to do with any of this.’

  The driver turned round. ‘The three of us are all armed,’ he warned. ‘And if we thought you were going to be any trouble, we wouldn’t hesitate to kill you. Now, get out of the car and start walking to that door. The Big Cheese is rather anxious to have a chat with you.’

  Having no choice, the March Hare did as he was told. The initial effects of the hash had worn off completely, leaving him shaky and depressed. He approached the door, uncomfortably conscious of the three gerbils following very closely behind. If he made a dash for it now, they could over-power him before he’d taken more than a few steps. And they probably wouldn’t even bother. It was simpler for them to shoot him, and he had no doubt that they would. Their fanaticism was palpable in the grim set of their faces. Like Blue Shirts, he thought. Oriented more towards death than life.

  As his eyes became adjusted to the dark, he was able to make out his surroundings in greater detail. A small fleet of army trucks was parked beside a barn. The trucks bore no markings and looked old and run down, Ahead of him, a figure stood motionless beside the door.

  Obviously a guard, he held a machine gun at hip level and traced the March Hare’s progress with it. Like the gerbils, he was garbed in combat fatigues; his face was obscured by a balaclava.

  Felling resentful, the March Hare pushed open the door and steadied himself against the frame. In the darkness, he could just make out a set of stairs leading up to the floor above. He knew immediately that he could not climb them on his own.

  The Driver pushed past him, opened a door on the left. He reached in, found a light switch.

  The doorway opened onto a second flight of steps. These led down.

  ‘You go that way,’ said the Driver. ‘You’ll find the Big Cheese waiting for you down there.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said the March Hare. He swayed slightly, had to constantly shift his feet to maintain his balance.

  ‘I’ll help you then.’ The Driver took the March Hare’s left arm and placed it over his shoulder.

  Together they slowly negotiated the steps, finding it difficult to manouevre in the cramped space. Twice, the March Hare stumbled, but the gerbil was stronger than he looked and they somehow managed to reach the bottom of the stairs without coming to grief. There was a doorway ahead of them.

  ‘Knock and go in,’ the Driver instructed. ‘From here on, you’re on your own.’

  Then with rather too much haste for the March Hare’s liking, the Driver set off back up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time.

  The March Hare did not bother to knock. He went straight in.

  It was a windowless room, as cold and restrictive as the President’s Campaign Room had been. And yet it had character, a simple rustic charm which was imbued by the flint walls and mosaic floor. Two old and broken barrels in the corner hinted that it might once have been a wine cellar.

  A third barrel served as a chair for the Mad Hatter. He was seated at a wooden table on which the inevitable pot of tea steamed away. The Hatter looked ragged and drawn. His shirt was criss-crossed with red stripes.

  The March Hare advanced. He recognised the stripes as blood but could not bring himself to comment on them.

  ‘They found you then?’ said the Mad Hatter. ‘In some vague way, I was kind of hoping they wouldn’t. I don’t think you’ve got much stomach for fighting.’

  ‘So you’re the Big Cheese? That explains a lot of things.’

  ‘Don’t tell me that you never once suspected?’

  ‘What’s this all about, Hatter? I don’t mean why is the Red Orchestra trying to topple the Panda. I mean what’s your angle in this thing?’

  The Mad Hatter arched his eyebrows. ‘That’s a good question, my friend, and I wonder why no-one’s asked it before. But I’m not going to answer you - at least not yet. Instead I’ve got something I want you to see.’

  Moving aside the tea pot, he pointed to a piece of paper which had been lying beneath it. The March Hare picked it up. ‘What is it?’

  ‘A suicide note.’

  ‘Yours?’

  The Hatter laughed a brief, empty laugh. Everything about him seemed brittle, as if he was about to splinter into a thousand little pieces. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s Shadrack’s. Ormus found him this morning in the Chapel. He’d taken an overdose of buzz.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘You don’t seem very shocked.’

  ‘I’m not. I think Shadrack’s better off this way.’

  ‘Poor March Hare,’ said the Mad Hatter. ‘When they found you floating on that raft, there was a note pinned to your lapel which read - Handle with care. This creature is mad. And all through your life, you’ve tried to live up to that. So now you’re finding out that you’re no crazier than anyone else and you’re lost. So absolutely and totally lost.’

  The March Hare had no answer. It was beyond him right now to decide if the Mad Hatter was right or wrong. Maybe the distinction between rationality and lunacy had always been more blurred than he’d supposed. For the moment though, it really did not matter.

  He unfolded the note. What struck him first was the neatness of the handwriting, the careful definition of every letter, every punctuation mark. Whatever Shadrack had to say, he’d wanted to make sure that it would be read and understood.

  The March Hare scanned the note.

  Dearest Lisa,

  forgive me for the way that I’m leaving you now. I wanted to say goodbye but could think of no better way than this. When they sent me to fight their stupid war for them, there were many things I would have said to you if I could have found the words. Now I know what I should have said. It is simply that I love you and will always love you, and that’s the one thing the bastards can never take from either one of us.

  So who shall we blame for what’s happened? Let’s blame no-one. Something tells me that if we can forgive them for what they’ve done to us, then we’ve at least done something to make it all a little better.

  I’m leaving now for what I am sure is a better world. It’s not because I want to, but because I know I must. Already I can feel the new life I’ve been given slipping away from me. What no-one seems to have realised is that orgone energy is but one aspect of the life force. On its own, it cannot sustain me. Peregrine Smith supposedly cured me, but within a day of his treatment, my face fell apart, exposing once again my wounds. The same thing is certain to happen this time.

  How can I come back to you like this? You’re a sweet, compassionate person and you would not turn me away because of my deformities. But inside you would be filled with horror, revulsion and - worst of all - pity.

  For the sake of both of us, we can never be lovers again. At least not in this world. And without you, nothing makes sense anyway.

  Please don’t grieve for me. I go willingly, and thanks to you, I have found more joy in my few short years than most people could know in a thousand lifetimes.

  Once again - I love you.

  Shadrack.

  The March Hare folded the note and handed it back to the Mad Hatter. Neither spoke for a moment. Leaning forward on his elbows, the Hatter tapped idly at the tea pot with his fingernail.

  ‘Was it true?’ said the March Hare. ‘About his face falling apart?’

  The Mad Hatter nodded. ‘According to Ormus, he would quickly have reverted to the way he was when they brought him back from the War Zone.’

  ‘And Ormus knew that?’

  ‘Not to begin with. In fact, he had no conception of the possibility until he read this note. He’s quite upset by it all.’

  ‘How’s Lisa taking it?’

  ‘She doesn’t know yet. So far the only people aware of what’s happened are you, me and Ormus.’

 
‘And how long do you think you can keep from telling her?’ The March Hare slapped an angry paw on the table. ‘Damn it, Hatter! She has a right to know.’

  Undoing the top button of his shirt, the Mad Hatter stood and pushed the note towards the March Hare. ‘So you tell her. Give her this and let her know her boyfriend’s just died all over again.’

  The March Hare backed away. ‘Now wait a minute. That isn’t fair.’

  ‘Fair? No, it’s not fair. It’s not fair that Shadrack suffered like he did, and it’s not fair that Lisa’s going to have her heart broken all over again. But don’t let that stop you. You go right ahead and tell her everything. Like you say, she has a right to know.’

  ‘Maybe later.’

  ‘Sure,’ said the Mad Hatter. ‘There’s always later.’

  *

  ‘You know, I feel quite sorry for them,’ said Lisa. She and Julie were standing by the window making a pretense of examining their make-up in the mirror of Julie’s compact. Actually, they were covertly scrutinising the three gerbils who stood in a restless huddle in the far corner.

  ‘Especially the one on the left. He looks so cute and helpless.’

  ‘With that bloody great rifle in his hands?’ Julie rolled her eyes. They both giggled.

  Behind them, Doctor Ormus leaned against an empty book case and brooded. His face was drawn into an anxious mask that showed both his feelings and his age.

  Earlier, Julie had tried to draw him out on the reason for his tenseness and he’d been abrupt with her. So now she wasn’t talking to him.

  At least she’s hitting it off with Lisa, he told himself. It’ll do them both good to get to know each other. Though I doubt that it can do much for my own personal relationship with the girl.

  Elsewhere in the room, which had once been the main dormitory at Mrs. Pogue’s, the Mock Turtle and the Grey Squirrel were seated at opposite sides of a table, drinking wine and discussing politics. For once, the Grey Squirrel’s anorak seemed almost tasteful, but that might have been because the Mock Turtle was dressed in a piebald suit that was part pink, part yellow. His shirt with its zigzag motif clashed perfectly.