CHAPTER 18
Nellie stood once more upon the broken and worn bricks of Dorothy’s world. Oz, she had called it, when Nellie was last here with her. The sky, again, was ominously overcast, with intermittent flashes of blue light splintering the black clouds. The sound of rolling thunder echoed in the distance. She now found herself on a different section of the dingy yellow road. Ahead, the path lead up to a pair of enormous, dark-green gates embedded in crumbling, emerald -green walls. The broken gates hung wide open.
She followed the path into the decimated city. Burnt and twisted bodies littered the landscape. Buildings that had once surrounded a palace were reduced to rubble or simply swallowed whole by earth.
There was no sign of Dorothy anywhere.
Nellie stepped cautiously through the debris, side-stepping rubble which, like the bricks in the road, was etched with contorted faces of Oz’s inhabitants writhing in agony and despair. It was apparent that this Emerald City had once been majestic and beauteous, yet it somehow had been reduced to blackened ruins. Only the palace remained, flanked by two large monuments and guarded by gargantuan, locked gates. Statues, stones, mannequins, and bodies all had been burnt by an apocalyptic fire. A thick coat of soot covered the ground, and dark rainwater dripped down shattered walls.
Nellie looked for any sign of life that could point her to Dorothy. Not too far away, a solitary small structure remained intact. Dilapidated though it looked, it was a house in which she might find someone who could provide an explanation and perhaps a clue to Dorothy’s whereabouts.
Nellie ran to the lone house in the midst of the soot- and rubble-strewn city. It was a modest, built-to-be-cozy domicile with a welcoming porch and bright-green shutters on all of the windows. But, like everything else in Oz, it had decayed. An old-fashioned sign swung back and forth in the breeze, its rusty hinges squeaking in protest. The stenciled lettering read:
Nellie gently pushed open the green front door. It obligingly swung open on its last remaining hinge, and, with a groan, splintered away from the frame and clattered to the ground in a cloud of dust.
Contrary to the house’s cheerful exterior, the interior was dark. The chandelier in the entryway was constructed with black crystals, and the curtains and fabrics were abysmal tones of black, crimson, and midnight green.
The walls were lined with faded photographs of smiling families. One in particular caught her attention. A young, beautiful girl with long hair, bright eyes, and a dimpled grin sat beneath a flowering tree, a happy tabby cat on her lap. The photograph had been taken from too great a distance for it to show the girl’s face in detail, but her size and form looked vaguely familiar.
“Could it be?” Nellie breathed, touching the picture.
As she marveled at each of the many photographs, the breeze through the ramshackle house carried with it a horrible stench. Nellie plugged her nose and stepped into the living area. She was met with a sight that made her gag.
The carcasses of humans, scavenged from the road outside, were artistically arranged with barbed-wire, twine, and tape. Some of their body parts had been tightly ensconced in sheer cloth, but not enough to completely cover their grief-stricken faces. Flies swarmed and buzzed around the tableau of decaying bodies. The stink in the room caused Nellie to pinch her nose and scan the house, desperate to find the nearest exit.
“Shhh!” someone whispered, so noisily it might as well have been spoken aloud. “She’s here! Get the tea!”
Nellie burst through the back door and took a deep breath. Behind the house, a prodigious patch of green grass underneath a sprawling willow tree provided the only bit of color in the blackened landscape that stretched out in all directions. On this rare stretch of grass sat a ridiculously long table, around which many mismatched but elegantly carved, tall-backed, formal chairs had been neatly arranged. In front of each, a place had been set on the pristine, white tablecloth. The plates, tea cups, and tiered serving plates were mismatched as well, but all were made of exquisite bone china. The table held a cacophony of half-eaten treats as well as tea pots of every shape and color. The carved chairs and tables were, at first glance, beautiful.
Upon closer scrutiny, Nellie noticed that the curvature of the legs of the table, and of the chair backs and arms, suggested the shapes of body parts: a feminine leg here and a muscular male arm there.
Most odd were the objects under the willow tree. Large, almost opaque, crystalline pods jutted from the ground, each one surrounded by smaller crystals that appeared to have grown out of the green grass. Nellie stepped closer and reached out to touch one.
To her surprise, something inside it moved. She pressed her face to the smooth surface and cupped her hands around her eyes to see inside. Folded up tightly inside she found a great, white rabbit whose body appendages had all been removed and sewn back on in the wrong places. Its torso moved as it breathed. Its head protruded from a shoulder socket, its pink nose twitched, and its blue eyes stared right back at Nellie. She gasped, and stepped back.
A purple crystalline pod near the rabbit’s was broken open and surrounded by small shards. It leaked a viscous, dark-red fluid.
Another, greenish, pod, with red and white, polka-dot mushrooms surrounding its base, contained a colossal caterpillar with sharp, protruding fangs. Its green, yellow -spotted body undulated as it watched her through its milky-white eyes and used several of its many legs to push against its glass-like cocoon. Nellie stepped carefully past another shattered, brownish crystalline pod and advanced toward the table.
“Some of us have escaped, you see,” a whisper floated musically toward Nellie. She glanced all about but couldn’t find the source of the new voice. It was followed by a giggle, but the sound came from the other direction now. Nellie approached the table and touched the back of one of the empty chairs.
A tiny, muffled voice seemed to come from somewhere on the table top.
Twinkle, twinkle, great big cat!
Alice wonders where you're at.
Nellie tracked the sound to a bright-blue teapot covered in a black and white tea cozy. She lifted the lid, and the echoing little voice continued:
When you’re gone you make me cry,
Oh please come back or I might die.
Twinkle, twinkle--
“There’s no room! No room!” another voice cried, from somewhere close by. Nellie dropped the lid to the teapot and spun around.
“No room …” echoed tall, bony, brown hare, as it hopped drunkenly toward the opposite side of the table. It wore clothes that, although originally finely tailored, were tattered and stained. The gruesomely gaunt hare dropped into a chair, kicked its long, thin back feet up on the table, and held aloft a wine glass brimming with a red liquid.
“I said NO ROOM!” The owner of the mysterious voice appeared suddenly, in Nellie’s face, to roar the last two words, causing her to shriek and nearly fall backwards. He smiled, gently took her unsteady hand, and spun her around. “Well, look what the tabby cat dragged in!” he grinned, as pleasant as could be.
His dark clothing was dapper, yet over it he wore an apron fashioned from a type of leather that she couldn’t identify. His top hat was constructed with upright metal bars, and inside the bars, his brain and other organic matter was trapped. The brim of the hat was so vast that it cast a shadow over his face, and Nellie could see only his red eyes and gleaming, wicked grin.
He sprung up. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am…” he gave a lengthy, sweeping bow," — your host!” He doffed his hat, leaving Nellie to gaze directly into the empty cavity where the top of his head should have resided.
Dr. Braun removed the sheet that had fed out of his machine and read the latest data feedback. He pulled his handkerchief out to dab at his increasingly sweaty brow.
“The Mad Hatter,” he grimaced.
“It’s happening again, isn’t it?” Nurse Ball shot him an accusatory glare.
Conveniently ignoring her comment, he continued. “Alice may actual
ly have found a way to infiltrate Dorothy’s world through Nellie.”
The color drained from Nurse Ball’s face. “Does this mean she’s still … alive down there somehow?”
Dr. Braun harrumphed. “Impossible! After all these years?”
His retort seemed, on its surface, to be a firm denial, yet his furrowed eyebrows and questioning tone left Nurse Ball feeling sick to her stomach.
Nellie was having difficulty deciding whether these two gruesome but quirky characters were a threat. Keeping a healthy distance, she queried the peculiar man. “Dorothy mentioned a scarecrow. Is that you?”
He peered at Nellie from beneath the brim of his massive hat, and then broke into peals of screeching laughter. “Scarecrow? Buttons and billy goats — do I look like a scarecrow to you?”
Nellie took a deep breath and moved on. “Where’s Dorothy?”
The macabre man jumped back and pointed his stylish walking stick at her. “Dorothy? Dorothy? Dorothy is lost. Oz belongs to us now!”
The giant hare at the table rolled its buggy eyes and thrust its sloshing goblet in the air. “To us! To us!”
“Who are you?”
The man spun around, his coattails following in a perfect arc, and presented his giant grin. “We come from a delightful place called Wonderland. We quite like it here though. Maybe we’re going to stay.”
“You can’t stay here! This place doesn’t belong to you.”
In a flash, the man dashed toward Nellie and came to halt mere inches from her face. “And what are you going to do about it?” His red eyes glowed under the black hat like two burning coals in the dark, as his face drew closer and closer to hers.
Nellie shrank back, wide-eyed and frozen, lips trembling. The tip of his long, crooked nose touched hers. It felt cold and moist.
He suddenly threw back his head in another raucous fit of laughter. And, just as suddenly, he stopped and looked squarely at her. “Perhaps there is something you can do.”
Nellie stared at him, unsure of whether to run or to stay and listen to the potentially fatal proposition.
The strange gent sauntered around the lawn, swinging his walking stick.
“You see, Nellie. We’re here because we have nowhere to go. We’ve been exiled from our world. But you” — he pointed the walking stick at Nellie’s stomach — “you can do something about it.”
Nellie gritted her teeth. Yes, this man was dangerous and terrifying. But contrariwise, he was also aggravating, and he was wasting the time she could be using to find Dorothy.
"If you know where Dorothy is, tell me!” He continued on his roundabout stroll, toying with his walking stick. “If you want to be rid of us, you’re going to have to free us.” He turned back to her, and his eyes flashed.
“Break the mirror, Nellie.”
“Break it and we can be free!” The brown hare leaned forward on the table and wiped its glistening lips on its sleeve.
"The mirror in the hallway?"
“Alice trapped us there.”
Nellie blinked, thinking back to all that she had seen in the ornate looking glass. We Are Here.
“Alice? You know her too?”
Again, he burst into unhinged laughter. “Know her? She made us. We are part of her!”
Nellie shook her head. “I don’t understand. None of this makes sense at all. Why me?”
The hare stood and pointed a brown paw at her. “Because you’re the only one Alice can talk to.”
“Alice!” squeaked the blue teapot.
“But why me? What’s so special about me?”
“You?” the man took one lengthy stride toward her and twiddled the end of his walking stick at her. “There’s nothing special about you. But … someone else knows why. It’s your secret.”
He shoved her roughly toward the white crystalline pod and then began tapping on it. She looked from him to the pod with her eyebrows furrowed.
“Go on! She knows.” The pod clinked with each tap of the walking stick.
Nellie leaned in and looked through the glass cocoon. Inside, the mutilated white rabbit looked back at her with its blues eyes, and blinked.
“The seed has been sown, but the rose has not yet begun to bloom,” he whispered in her ear.
As his puzzling words took shape, she pulled away, aghast, and looked into his frightening, red eyes. “Are you trying to say that I’m pregnant? With Rose?”
“Tick, tock — now you’re on time and using your noggin!” he patted the top of her head.
Her hands slid over her stomach as she tried to process the news.
“Tick, tock! Tick, tock!” the hare echoed, and took a swig from his goblet.
“But that can’t be …” she mumbled. “I haven’t been with a man in over a year!”
“Messiahs like Alice need no men to be born. How else could you talk to the dead? Unless you are near death yourself?"
Nellie looked up suddenly. “So Alice is dead?”
He smiled. “Alice is Alice.”
“And Dorothy?”
“Like two peas in a pod, those two are!” He began to walk and swing his walking stick again. “Same powers. Different worlds. Only” — he spun back to face her — “Dorothy’s much more dangerous.”
It was Nellie’s turn to laugh this time. “Dorothy is a sweet girl!”
The man’s screeching laughter silenced Nellie’s. “Hardly. Alice created Wonderland out of curiosity and adventure. Dorothy created Oz from disaster and death.”
“Oh Alice, my Alice!” piped the creature in the blue teapot.
“Her hands are covered in blood. Beware, Nellie, or you may meet the same fate as the witches.”
“No,” she shook her head. “You’re wrong about her.”
“Oh, am I? How well do you know your little fri —”
Suddenly, the man with his brains in a hat-cage and glowing red eyes began to back away from Nellie. He stared, wide-eyed, over Nellie’s shoulder. The brown hare leapt up and tossed his goblet aside to snatch up a sharp, silver knife.
Nellie turned and exhaled with relief at the sight.
“Dorothy!”
Dorothy stood in front of the porch, but unlike Nellie, who smiled warmly, Dorothy looked strangely distant and cold. Out of the darkness behind her, three looming figures advanced and stood surrounding Dorothy. The monsters had returned, and Dorothy was surrounded by the tin man, the scarecrow, and the lion. The lion threw back its head to unleash a mighty roar, which was joined by the scarecrow’s screech and the sound of the tin man’s mechanical parts whirring into high gear. All three were chained together.
The man in the caged hat, and the cadaverous brown hare, crouched and hissed at Dorothy.
Dorothy lowered her face and glared at Alice’s subjects. In a steely tone of voice, she commanded, “Leave this place, demons!”
The man sneered. “You’re still young in your powers. But if you’re asking for a fight, I’d be happy to oblige!”
Large razor knives and wicked-looking scissors sprang from the palms of his hands. He gripped them firmly and grinned, advancing deliberately toward Dorothy and her minions.
The lion shook its mane and snarled, exposing extensive rows of shining sharp teeth. The tin man lowered his torso and braced for attack. The towering scarecrow seemed to grow even taller, extending his long arms in a spider-like fashion and emitting a blood-curdling screech.
Dorothy spoke, her eyes still locked with the man, “I will not fight except to defend my people.”
“Maybe I can change your mind,” he leered, light glinting from the deadly blades at his fingertips.
Dorothy turned to Nellie, “Nellie, run! I’ll hold them off!”
Nellie wasted no time. She whirled around and ran back into the house.
“That’s it Nellie! Run away. Don’t worry about Rose. We’ll look after her for you!” the strange man with the caged brains called after her.
Nellie paused for a moment in the doorway. “Just go!” D
orothy cried. Without wasting another moment, Nellie turned and ran back through the house, past the putrid piles of bodies, past the photographs, and toward the front door. With each flying step, she witnessed the walls, the ceiling, and the floor begin to contort as if someone were sticking a giant, invisible finger into the scenery and swirling it around like watercolors. A flash of bluish-white light filled the house, blinding Nellie, and she stumbled into the wall. The house, and the whole of Oz, rang out with the screams and shrieks of the demons, so shrill and powerful that Nellie felt as though her brain were being pierced by shards of crystal. She cried out, falling to her knees and plugging her ears tightly, vaguely aware that her eardrums might burst from the power of the unearthly keening.
On the table in the electrolysis room, white light flashed in Nellie’s head, rocking her torso and limbs. Had the leather restraints not been so tight, the bucking of her body, caused by the massive jolts of electricity from the Dynamo machine, would have propelled her completely off of the table.
Dr. Braun watched the sparks fly from the electrodes on Nellie’s head as it slammed into the table again and again. He did not flinch, even with the full understanding that each jolt must feel like ten thousand razor blades slicing into her flesh all at once.
“Alright,” Dr. Braun nodded. “That should be enough. Power it down.”
An orderly yanked the massive levers and switches on the Dynamo downward, causing the machine’s high-pitched whirring to slow and then grind to a halt.
Nellie struggled to open her eyes. Lights all around her blinked like strobes — a result of her synapses firing and causing points of flashing blue light to pop in and out of her visual field. Yet, through it all, she could see the shape of little Rose floating above her. Her brown curls, her angelic face … but something was very wrong. She vibrated at an impossible speed, so fast that her head became a mere blur to Nellie.
Bedlam Stories Page 12