Insanity (14 page)

The Pillar grimaces. I assume he never had a problem forcing people to talk. “Who’d that person be? And it’s a 'she?’"

“It’s the White Queen.”

Chapter 41

"Who is the White Queen?" I ask the Pillar, but he ignores me. I can sense he’s uncomfortable talking about her. There is an undecipherable look in his eyes. All I can interpret is that he highly respects her.

"The White Queen. The chess Queen. The one in Through the Looking Glass," the Duchess replies on his behalf. She seems angry with me.

“Why would the White Queen know about the Cheshire’s origins?” the Pillar asks.

“At some point in Wonderland, he confessed certain things to her. You know how charming she can be when you're down and out.” The Duchess definitely hates the White Queen, too.

I watch the Pillar think about the White Queen a breath too long. It's as if he is staring into a memory. A memory so relaxing, he loosens his grip on the hose. Who is the White Queen? I'm so eager to know.

The digital pad on the wall starts to buzz, and the timer counts down.

"We have no time,” the Pillar says. “The guards are on their way and I'm not into spilling sane people's blood today," he approaches the Duchess. "I'll let you go. But if I learn that you lied to me, I'm going to make you as ugly as you were in Wonderland."

"I am telling the truth. Believe me," she pleads. I can't help but wonder what the Duchess has done to become pretty if she has been ugly in Wonderland.

"One more thing before I go," the Pillar says. "I have a brother. No need for names. Just look him up. He's been to Afghanistan. He lost his arm. Came back and lost his wife, his kids, his dog, his house, and his job. Thanks to the likes of you, he is a drug addict now."

"I’m truly sorry,” the Duchess lays a hand on her heart.

“I told you not to use the word, ‘truly,’” he grabs her by her neck. “I want you to help him."

"Alright, alright. That's doable," she says. "We'll get him a job, extra money, insurance, and a big screen TV. We can get him a young Russian wife if you like. Anything.”

I wonder how many lives the Duchess has messed with. Who does she think she is?

"I'm thinking something more elegant. He’s my only brother and I love him." The Pillar rubs his chin. The word 'love' coming out of his mouth makes me cringe. "I want him to be a Tennis player. In fact, the greatest tennis player in the world. Make him win Wimbledon next year."

"I’m not God. I can't do that," she protests. "He's lost his arm for God's sake."

"It's about time a one-armed man wins something," the Pillar says. "You're the government. You promise people you can do anything."

Chapter 42

We escape the Duchess’s room through a secret emergency door that leads to underground tunnels. It seems the Parliament has prepared for an apocalypse beforehand. The Duchess let the Pillar punch her in the face so she could pretend we’d attacked her before she could even see what we looked like.

The Pillar's limousine, driven by that short dude who looks like a rat picks us up around the corner. The Pillar shoves me inside and asks me not to ask any questions until we leave London. I’m tired and lay my head to rest for a while.

About two hours later, we reach Oxford. The chauffeur informs the Pillar that we're being followed.

“Who is following us?” I turn to look behind us.

“The Reds," the chauffeur says.

"Who are the Reds?" I demand an answer.

“No time for questions,” the Pillar says. “Stop the car!” Again, he doesn’t call his chauffeur by name.

The limousine stops, and the Pillar drags me out while we’re still dressed as mad and homeless people.

“Hurry, Alice. We really have no time for the Reds right now.” The Pillar walks me to the nearest bus station, and we hop on the first public transportation we come to.

"I want to know who the Reds are,” I tell him once we’re on, squeezed between the crowd.

“Please, stop asking.” The Pillar hangs onto the pole as the bus jostles away.

"Tell me or I will tell everyone that you’re a serial killer who just escaped from an asylum,” I fire back, not giving two cents about the people around us. “This is crazy. I can't believe that I am still here with you."

"It's love, darling," a seated woman tells me as she examines her hair in a hand mirror.

"I think it's my mojo," the Pillar flirts with her.

"Shut up!" I block my ears from all this nonsense.

"Is this old creep hitting on you?" a boy missing a front tooth asks me. Of course, in my outfit of insanity, I must be his Princess Charming.

"Yes, I am
bugging
her," the Pillar answers him flatly. "I know teeth don’t seem to be precious to you, but if you don't want to lose another one, I'd advise you to jump out of the window and die."

The boy vanishes in the blink of an eye. I don’t think he realizes he was talking to Pillar the killer.

"Die, remember?" the Pillar reminds him, then faces me. "Now, can we be reasonable for a moment?"

"Reasonable?" I feel like pulling my hair out. "You call this reasonable? Ever since I met you, everything is insane!"

"I told you it's love, darling," the seated woman puts on her lipstick without looking at us.

"We met in an asylum," the Pillar winks at the woman and points at me. "Isn't it romantic?" The woman feels uncomfortable when she hears this and sits a couple of seats away. "If I remember well, all you cared about this morning was saving the little girl," the Pillar continues.

"It's still all I care about," I agree.

"So forget about the Reds and let's keep on moving," the Pillar says. "We know the White Queen can lead us to the Cheshire now. We should be going. On the way, we could look up the names of the girls the Cheshire asked for and hopefully find a connection."

"You're right," I hang onto the pole and breathe slower. I can deal with the nonsense later, after I save Constance for the second time. "So where is the White Queen? What is she in this world, a ghost in a white dress?"

"Believe me; you will never guess who she is."

“Another Wonderland Monster, I assume.”

"Not at all," the Pillar smiles, as if remembering a loved one. "She is quite a nice woman. Let's not waste time, we need to get to the asylum and change before we visit her." He turns around to talk to the driver. It's not the chauffeur this time. Just a normal guy. "Bus driver, could you please let us off at the Radcliffe Lunatic Asylum?"

"It's not on my route," the driver blurts.

"I'm sure you will make an exception for two fugitive insane patients like us," the smug look on the Pillar's face is priceless. People start to part away from us now, begging the driver to send us home to the asylum.

"Thank you very much," the Pillar says and turns to me. "This way, we'll be on time to catch the plane."

"We're flying? To where?"

"The Vatican, of course."

Chapter 43

Emirate Airlines - Somewhere in the Italian Skies

It’s only hours before we’re on a plane to the Vatican. I don't even know what's going on. Everything is happening so fast. I feel like Alice whisked to a surreal, but real-life Wonderland.

All I am hoping is that I can save Constance in the end. At least this would be the only sane thing that happened in the last couple of days. Whenever I remember her hugging me and making me promise her I would never give up on her, I remind myself that this is why I am following the Pillar. I wonder if she’s still alive.

The Pillar is looking forward to the sunset, and hoping we’ll catch it while on the plane. We have a few hours before I have to be reassigned back into the asylum, as per our unbelievable deal with Dr. Truckle.

“I can’t believe you blackmailed Dr. Truckle to buy us the airplane tickets,” I comment, looking over the Pillar’s shoulder to see the world from above. He’d insisted on sitting next to the window. Sometimes, he sounds like a four year old.

“I can’t believe he didn’t get us First Class tickets,” the Pillar pouts. “Besides, I have never been comfortable with Emirates Airlines. I don’t like their slogan:
When was the last time you did something for the first time.
”

“Why? I think it’s a brilliant slogan.”

“’When was the last time you did something mad.’ That’s a slogan, Alice.”

I ignore his comment and start surfing the internet on my phone, looking up the girls’ names.

"Someone's learning fast. Yesterday you weren't comfortable with typing on the phone," the Pillar notices, turns his head, and puts on his glasses. "What are you surfing? Celebrity gossip, Barbie games, and music videos?"

I discard his silliness. "Actually, I am studying the names of the girls the Cheshire killed," I say, scrolling on.

“Why the ones he killed, and not the names on the list?”

“The ones on the list are just young girls Lewis Carroll photographed,” I say. "They are black and white photos, and sometimes sepia. Some of them are actually a bit creepy. I don’t know what to do with those photos of girls who died a long time ago. So I had to start somewhere. The names of the Cheshire's victims seem convenient to me."

"And what did you find, Inspector Alice Wonder?" he lowers his glasses and peeks into my phone. It's one of the rare moments he looks like a real college professor.

"I researched the names of the six girls he killed," I explain. "Two of them were from the same town, and the other two from another. Only the last two were from two different towns."

The Pillar looks puzzled.

"The four towns the girls originally came from are nearby Warrington, Cheshire, where Lewis Carroll was born," I elaborate.

The Pillar raises an eyebrow. "Interesting. Anything common among the girls?"

"Not in a physical way. Not even their ages or their hobbies. Some of them were blonde, some brunettes. Some seven and some fourteen."

"But?" he cups a hand behind his ears.

"The towns they came from have something in common." I am proud of my research.

"The Towns? Curiouser and curiouser." The Pillar gives me his full attention.

"Each town the girls came from was at some point considered the origin of where Lewis Carroll was inspired to write about the Cheshire Cat."

"You didn't get that from Wikipedia, did you?" the Pillar closes his eyes and sighs.

"What's wrong with that?"

"Wikipedia to me is what Wonderland is to the so-called sane people." He opens his eyes and rubs them. "It's doesn't exist. Most of its info is Jub Jub." I am taking it that Jub Jub is the total opposite of Frabjous. "Anyways, go on. What do you think this means?"

"At first, I had no idea. I just thought their proximity to each other was a bit strange, but then I figured it out," I say. "Each of these towns has stone carvings of a grinning cat in one of its Churches."

"Grinning Cats? Churches? Never thought those two would mix," the Pillar is even more interested. "What are the names of the towns and the churches?"

"Saint Wilfrid Church in Grappenhall, a village adjacent to Lewis Carroll's birthplace in Daresbury in Warrington, Cheshire," I scroll down on my phone. "Saint Nicolas Church in Carnleigh. It's a town close to Guildford where one of Carroll’s sisters lived. It also where he died. A nameless church in the village of Crof-On-Tees. And finally, St. Christopher's in Pott Shrigly."

"Each one of those churches has a statue of a grinning cat in it?”

“Each one,” I nod. “And each one claims it was the inspiration for Lewis to write about the Cheshire Cat.”

“That’s one hell of a connection, although I can’t see what it leads to,” he says. “But the corpses of the Cheshire’s victims were found in Cambridge, London, and Oxford."

"It's where the girls’ families moved later. But the five girls were
born
in the smaller towns with the churches. Can’t you see that all of these towns were visited by Lewis Carroll, or at least he had access to them?”

"Let me think this over," the Pillar says. "The Cheshire kills girls who were born in villages around where Lewis Carroll lived. Not just that, but places where sandstones or statues where a grinning cat exist. What could that mean?"

"Like I said, I can't interpret the meaning, but this is no coincidence."

"And where is Constance from?"

My eyes widen. Why haven't I thought of that?

"Wait. You probably won't find that info on the net," he checks his phone, surfing some secret forum or something. "Just a minute," he keeps searching. "Here it is. Constance Richard," the Pillar stops in the middle of the sentence. "In London."

"So no connection to the other girls?" I feel disappointed. Another lost lead.

"Not necessarily. Who said there isn't a statue of a grinning cat in London? I just don't know of it. Your theory is still possible," the Pillar says.

The light above our seats flashes, urging us to fasten our seat belts. We've arrived.

“Now that we're about to land,” the Pillar says. “There is something I have to do.” He stands up and faces everyone in the plane. “Ladies and gentlemen, honored visitors of the Vatican City, may I have your attention?”

“Please sit down, sir,” the flight attendant demands, but he ignores her.

“I’m the Archbishop of the Frabjous Christians of Monte Carlo,” he says. I am sure there is no such thing. “And I’d like you to recite this little prayer with me before we land.”

“Sir!” the flight attendant repeats with no prevail. “Please sit down! We’re about to land.”

“Do you think we can land without the will of God, young lady?” he says to her, and wins the passengers’ attention immediately. “Do you think your seatbelts will save me from the wrath of God, if He so desires to crash this plane to pieces?"

The flight attendant shrugs, and the crowd begs the Pillar to recite his landing prayer. “Okay, just make it quick,” she lowers her head and walks away.

“After me, please,” he raises his hand to the plane’s roof and begins, “Now I sit me down to land,” and the passengers repeat after him, all in one voice. “I pray the lord with open hands,” this has become the Vatican Airlines. “That if I die before we land,” I can’t believe how poor his rhyming is. Why are these people even following him? “Please don’t take me to Wonderland!”