Текст книги "Figment"

Автор книги: Cameron Jace

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Chapter 50

The silence is only present for a few moments. It's like the few seconds the runners of the Olympics stand by before all hell breaks loose. The world around me explodes into people running in every direction. People debate theories, others panic, and the rest watch those who panic, contemplating if they should panic too.

The sun has sunk into darkness. We missed the sunset. No one is guaranteed to catch another one tomorrow.

"By the time the Queen of England sips her five o'clock tea tomorrow, all those people might be gone," the Pillar says, shakes his head, and then walks away.

"Where do you think you're going?" I run after him, avoiding a few pedestrians ready to step over me already. "We have work to do!"

"You have work to do." He doesn't stop, and keeps walking.

The panic around us intensifies. People are arguing if it's possible to poison all food. Others say only snacks will be poisoned. Others suggest only one brand of the snacks will be poisoned, so they could sacrifice a few people testing which brand is poisoned and which isn't. Then they wonder if they should buy food and stock it at home in case the panic gets out of hand tomorrow. A few educated people argue that the Muffin Man is bluffing, that it's impossible to poison the food of the companies he is actually opposing. Another few claim all of this is only propaganda to sell more Queen of Hearts Tarts.

I can't stop listening to all kinds of theories as I snake through the crowd, looking for the Pillar. I hear people standing by the Muffin Man and calling him a hero, saying that food companies are no different to the toxic waste factories produce. Children are denied another delicious Meow Muffin by their parents. Then I finally see the Pillar. I pace faster and hold him by the shoulder. He stops, sighing, but doesn't resist.

"What do you mean by I have work to do?" I ask.

"Do I look like an Alice to you?" he says.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"It's you, Alice, who has to confront the Wonderland Monsters," the Pillar says as someone bothers him, running around. He tries to stabilize himself and avoid the panicked runner. "I've been trying to tell you this for more than a week, and all you do is whine about Jack, who you really are, and if you really killed your friends." He grits his teeth, still bothered by the man running in circles around us. "Don't get me started on you whining about what's real and what's not."

"Are you saying only I can stop this?" I am afraid he will confirm my suspicion. I don't think I can handle this.

"Yes!" He knocks the annoying citizen down with his cane, and then pierces through me with his direct look.

"I—" The truth is that I am speechless, and very much wish this was all in my imagination now. I would love it if this is a nightmare and I could wake up from it. But I don't seem to wake up. The fear and panic of the people around me is too real to be imagined.

"You are the Real Alice," he says. "Alice." He rolls his eyes. "And I am just a caterpillar. A special one, though." He seems vain about it. "But I can only guide you, teach you, and sometimes save you. I just can't confront the Muffin Man."

The panicking people around are still there, but I feel as if they have disappeared. I am all in my head now, trying to find the words to say and live up to their consequences. Lewis' vision seems to prove to be significant at every passing moment. It's mostly about Lewis struggling with the kids' poor health in Victorian times. The Muffin Man's case is all about the same, but in modern times. It can't be mad, because I couldn't have predicted it. Should I tell the Pillar about the vision?

"Professor Pillar," I say.

"Yes?" He cranes his neck forward.

"What is it I have to do to stop the Muffin Man?" I take a deep breath, my heart racing.

"From what I see, there is nothing you can do." He raises his voice against the crowd's shouting. "Not in this life."

For a moment, I am taken aback, upset that he would be playing games again. He knocks someone else with his cane and says, "Remember when we wanted to stop the Cheshire to save Constance? Remember what I told you before we knew his motives?"

"That a man's weakness lies in his past."

"Clever student." He nods.

"How are we going to know about he Muffin Man's past now?" I ask. "He has no name. His has no records. His file in the asylum doesn't say much. He has his face concealed."

"I know his past in this world, but trust me, it's irrelevant."

"Don't confuse me like that," I say politely. "We don't have enough time."

"Time." The Pillar flashes his cane in the air and circles me, knocking off whoever gets in his way. "Time, Alice! You have to go back in time." He acts like a performer on Broadway about to sing a finale song.

"To Wonderland?"

"Not exactly, but kind of." He continues circling, moving like Gene Kelly from Singin' in the Rain while the world is falling apart around us. "To know the Muffin Man's real motives, you will go back and try to stop whatever happened to him and turned a cook into a serial killer."

"Is that even possible?"

He stops in front of me. "Only if you're the Real Alice."

"And if I am not?"

"You will die, somewhere in the past," he says bluntly. "Frankly, who needs a mad girl who isn't Alice?" He is nonchalant about it.

"I am ready to do it," I say.

"It's not going to be easy."

"Don't!"

"I won't." He smiles. "So let me tell you how you could time-travel back to yesterday to save the world today." He signals for me to follow him. "And by the way, Alice, who said the Muffin Man has no name?"

"He has a name?"

"Of course. If he hadn't just popped up on national TV, I would have had time to tell you."

"Why am I going back in time if we know his name?"

"Because his name is Gorgon Ramstein."

Chapter 5 1

Wolsey's kitchen, Christ Church, Oxford University

Gorgon Ramstein, dressed in his cook's outfit, was chopping carrots on a metallic kitchen table in Wolsey's kitchen. He wasn't really cooking, or preparing to. Chopping carrots was his personal meditation to calm himself down and cope with the urge to kill again.

Every now and then he accidentally cut himself. He didn't mind. Blood spattering had stopped being a distraction years ago.

And now?

Now nothing mattered as long as the Queen didn't publicly apologize, as long as his demands had not been met.

Gorgon cut himself again. This time, the anger was too strong. He hurled the heavy kitchen knife at the wall and roared at the empty kitchen.

The knife plowed against one of the two turtle shells hanging on the wall. He looked at them through the haze in one eye. That turtle shell, he thought.

Only a few people knew that this turtle shell was Lewis Carroll's inspiration for the Mock Turtle character. Fewer people knew about the historical significance of the rarely visited kitchen underneath Oxford University.

Wolsey's kitchen. Oxford's legendary kitchen since the sixteenth century, where so many secrets were buried and hidden.

Gorgon was taught the art of cooking in this kitchen. He learned about the passion for cooking. That there was a rhythm, a tempo, and a song and dance to it.

Who were Auguste Escoffier, Alexis Soyer, or Isabella Beeton compared to him? They might have been great names carved in Victorian history books, but Gorgon knew he was something else. He was legendary. An icon to be remembered. He wasn't just a cook. He was a scientist turned cook. His approach was detailed and meticulous like no one else's.

But all that was gone now. And not because of what Margaret Kent did to his lawyer and his family in this world. His anger and hatred, although suppressed for years in the asylum, began when he was in Wonderland.

He pounded a heavy fist on the table, remembering what the Queen of Hearts did to him in Wonderland. The spoons and knives shook all over and bowls slipped to the floor. The pain was so strong that he fell to his knees from his own impact. And then a tear trickled like a drop of olive oil down his face. A tear that came out of his empty socket.

Slowly, Gorgon stood up and went to a side table, where he swallowed a muffin whole without even chewing it. Gorgon loved muffins—and pepper. He loved them because his kids were crazy about them.

Gorgon washed blood off his hand, staring at his reflection in the mirror.

It wasn't like he hadn't seen it before, but his image seemed to shock him this time. He had turned from victim to a ruthless killer, and he didn't know if he should like it.

The Cheshire certainly liked it.

Gorgon stood six feet four. His hands were lanky and very useful in cooking. He wore his double-breasted white jacket, which was actually the asylum's straitjacket. The main idea behind cooks wearing double-breasted jackets had been the possibility to reverse it many times and hide the cooking stains. In the past, when this kitchen was still proudly called Wolsey's kitchen, there was no time to change before presenting the food to the obnoxious and pretentious Victorian rich who had enough money to pay for it. They had to flip the working side of the jacket and present the cleaner side within minutes.

To Gorgon the idea was almost the same when he committed his murders, except he used it to hide the bloodstains of previous victims. It allowed him to kill two victims in the span of minutes before he had to change the jacket. Kill, reverse, and kill again. Or better: kill, reverse, escape while looking clean.

No one ever thought of the cooks to become serial killers.

Still, Gorgon's jacket had many other purposes. The thick cotton cloth of his jacket protected him from the heat of the stove and oven back then in Wonderland. Victorian kitchens weren't as safe as today's kitchens. Cooking was a dangerous profession back then; you were exposed to the insanely large stoves and not really protected from the splattering of boiling liquids. A good jacket had been a must. In present times, it helped him hide from his pursuers in a heated place that people usually avoided.

Under the jacket, he wore specially tailored trousers. They had black and white patterns. In the past, cooks wore patterned trousers to hide minor stains. Gorgon used them to mock the White Queen's belief in what she called the Chessboard of Life, where good people walked on white tiles and bad people walked on black. Gorgon believed he had walked both tiles evenly.

Gorgon stared at the toque blanche he wore on his head on his head, the kind of hat once worn by kings like Philip II. Some liked to simply call it a toque, as it had been the traditional headgear for magistrates—an officer of the state. In modern usage, the term usually referred to a judge.

Looking at it in the mirror, it seemed like an ironic coincidence. In his psychotic endeavor to correct the world, he was in many ways playing judge.

He didn't laugh at the thought. He rarely laughed at his thoughts. Gorgon, unlike other delusional killers, knew what he was. He knew his head wasn't buzzing to the right frequencies. But he just couldn't help it. What the Queen of Hearts did to him had shattered every single molecule of humanity inside him.

"Portmanteau." Gorgon tipped his toque, looking in the mirror. A French word, and one of the rare things that brought a smile to his lips.

Portmanteau was the art of combining two words or their sounds and their meanings into a single new word. Lewis Carroll loved that. That was how he invented the words like "slithy," which meant "lithe and slimy."

Gorgon loved hearing it from Lewis back then. Those were the lovely days. Still, Lewis couldn't save him from the Queen.

Sometimes, it struck him as funny being thought of as just a cook for the Duchess, like it was mentioned in the "Pig and Pepper" chapter in the book. He despised people thinking he was fired for using so much pepper and making the Queen sneeze when she was dining at the Duchess' house.

He reached for a copy of Alice's Adventures Underground, one of the few original copies of the book—he knew the Pillar owned one of them, and that it probably drove him mad that the cook had killed many people, but he didn't care the slightest about the Pillar.

The Muffin Man opened the book to a part in the "Pig and Pepper" chapter where it said: There was certainly too much of it in the air. Even the Duchess sneezed occasionally. The only things in the kitchen that did not sneeze were the cook and a large cat, which was sitting on the hearth and grinning from ear to ear.

"Well, here we are." The Cheshire appeared out of nowhere behind him. Gorgon could see him in the mirror showing his real face. "Me and you, immune to the sneezing pepper." He had a horrifying and ugly grin, which even Gorgon wished to avoid.

"You didn't knock." Gorgon hated surprises.

"I'm a cat, Gorgy." The Cheshire's grin widened. "We sneak, never ask for permission. Ready?"

"The Queen didn't apologize?" He knew she wouldn't, but still wished she would.

"You knew it was never going to happen," the Cheshire said. "That's part of why we're doing this."

"I thought we were doing this to expose her to the world," Gorgon said, still preferring to talk to the mirror.

"Well, that's part of it." The Cheshire sniffed for food in the kitchen. "But we're also showing her we're as strong as she is."

"Why would we need that?"

"The world is complicated, Gorgy." The Cheshire picked a fish's spine and sucked on it. "The Wonderland Wars are coming. The Queen and her followers will have the upper hand. And since the likes of me and you aren't really considered the good guys, we need to find our place in it."

"How so?"

"By proving how badass we are." He licked his paws. "I love that word, 'badass.' People really like it in this world."

"Are you saying part of us doing this is for her to stop underestimating us so she would have us join her league?" Gorgon turned around, anger flushing his face. This wasn't part of his plan. Under no circumstance would he join the Queen's army.

"Of course not," the Cheshire lied, and threw the spine away. He clapped his paws clean and said, "I was joking. We're doing this to expose the Queen, of course."

"I knew I shouldn't have trusted you," Gorgon grunted. "But I have to take my revenge."

"We all have our dark ticks, Gorgy." The Cheshire patted him. "Don't be hard on yourself. You just killed a few kids, that's all. Kids die every day in the world, be it starving, be it underage soldiers, or dying from diseases. No one ever makes a fuss about it."

"I don't feel good about it. I only did it for—"

"I know, I know," the Cheshire said. "To expose the companies working for the Queen and the Duchess. We already said that."

"I still need to know why you are helping me," Gorgon said. "We haven't been really close in Wonderland."

"I'm after the Pillar and Alice. I'm sending them a message they will eventually catch on. A terrifying message. But what does it matter? You're on my team now. Look at you." The Cheshire spun Gorgon around to look back in the mirror. He pointed at his reflection with pride and enthusiasm. "Look at the glory of what you have become. From a nobody cook for the Duchess, hardly remembered by any child who read the books, to a lame scientist in this world, to one of the scariest villains on earth." The Cheshire was proud, and Gorgon felt hypnotized by the words. The Cheshire had a way of making everything sinister and bad sound so good and endearing. For a damaged man like Gorgon, it was just an admired trait. "From nobody to a proud Wonderland Monster," the Cheshire repeated. "Now let's show the world your magnum opus. Let's make some humans suffer!" He rubbed his paws together. "Mass-poisoning London. How beautiful."

Gorgon nodded, angry veins showing in his eyes.

"We need to give it a word, though," the Cheshire said. "Something catchy. You know, how people like marketing and stuff."

"Something catchy?"

"Yeah, the same way they have catchy names for their products: Snicker Snackers and the like. I got it!" He flashed one of his claws. "We'll call it an 'Epidemic of Tarts.'" The Cheshire laughed.

Chapter 5 2

Graduate Common Room, Christ Church, Oxford University

Fourteen minutes past midnight, the Pillar guides me through the empty, dimly lit corridors of Tom VII in Christ Church, Oxford University. He is supposedly going to show me into a room that has the ability to help me travel back to Victorian times. Given all the madness I have seen, I am still skeptical about the concept of going back in time. If it were possible, and relatively easy, why wouldn't all Wonderland Monsters use it?

"Are we there yet?" I whisper.

"Patience, my dear Alice," he says, counting the doors left and right. "It's been a long time since I've been here. They always change things in the university," he uses his pocket watch as some kind of compass. I don't bother to ask. "A few years ago they made a mess out of the university to shoot a Harry Potter movie," his voice shows he really disliked it. "But I'm not feeling like I am Dumbeldore now. Thank you very much."

"Until you find that door, I am still wondering why Professor Gorgon Ramstein, a.k.a. Muffin Man, is doing this," I say, neglecting any silly side jokes of his. "I mean, I know the government dismissed his research, killed his lawyer, and he feels responsible to expose the food corruption of companies. Is that enough reason to massacre all those people?"

"Of course not." The Pillar is still looking for the door leading to the time travel room. "The Muffin Man, like all of us Wonderlanders, took a new identity in this new world. He became a professor. He even got married and had three kids. Margaret Kent ordered his kids killed."

I stop in my place. The Pillar notices and turns to look at me. I can feel silent anger creep up in my veins.

"Shocked?" He raises an eyebrow. "Well, do you want to know how his kids were killed?"

"I think I have an idea." Although I am beginning to get used to shocking deaths, I don't want to say it.

"Margaret seduced his kids to eat a great amount of expired Queen of Hearts Tarts," the Pillar says. "Enough to get them poisoned...slowly. When Gorgon drove his kids to the hospital, the nurses were ordered to conspire with Margaret and look away until the kids died."

"The same way he wants to kill everyone in the country," I lament. "And you still think something more sinister happened to him in Wonderland?"

"I am hoping so," the Pillar says. "Because if the Muffin Man is only fueled by his present-day anger, I don't know of any way we can stop him. To be honest, the man has been squashed like cockroach in this life. And I don't know how to use this time machine to go back a few years. It's a Wonderland time machine. It only goes back to Wonderland. Let's hope we find a trigger point in his past and stop the story from the beginning." The Pillar turns the knob of the door next to him and pushes it open. "Welcome to the time-travel room."

I read the sign on the door as I enter. "The Graduate Common Room?"

"Formally known as Professor Einstein's Room." The Pillar follows me in and closes the door behind us.

The room is modernly decorated with a notable fireplace and a huge desk with old English carvings. There are a few souvenirs here and there, looking as if transported from the Museum of the History of Science. A couple of couches colored red and black are set on one side. There is a table with magazines in front of a large window looking out into the garden. One thing stands out: a blackboard with mathematical writings on it.

"Albert Einstein?" I ask.

"He lectured in Oxford for a while, and was given this room in 1930." The Pillar takes off his suit's jacket, which he rarely does. "I suppose you know Einstein is in many ways the father of the concept of time."

"I'm insane, but I went to school," I say, eyes on the blackboard. "So Einstein really knew how to time-travel?"

"Of course he did. Einstein was as mad as Lewis. While Lewis Carroll stuttered, Einstein was actually autistic, but few people know that. Einstein was a great fella—bad haircut, though." The Pillar pulls the blackboard to the middle of the room. He does it with care and respect. "This same room had been Lewis Carroll's room for five years when he studied here."

"Wow." I like the connection. Didn't know about it. "That's about seventy years before Einstein came."

"Seventy years, and no one discovered Carroll's secrets but a madman—a.k.a. Professor Einstein himself." The Pillar rubs the blackboard clean. The chalk doesn't come off.

"Secrets?"

"Technically, Carroll discovered time travel." The Pillar looks at me. "But since he wasn't sure a Wonderland Monster would end up using it, he kept it a secret."

"And Einstein discovered that secret seventy years later when he entered the room?"

"Along with other things, like the Zebra Puzzle, but that's irrelevant now. Lewis Carroll wasn't just anyone, Alice. He was an artist, photographer, writer, priest, and mathematician. Have you ever met anyone like that?" the Pillar chirps. Suddenly, I remember Lewis telling me about Einstein the last time I climbed up the Tom Tower. I believe the Pillar isn't lying. "Einstein reinterpreted Carroll's work by staying in his room in Oxford many years later. Do you know his messy hair was an aftermath of repeatedly using the time machine in this room? It rather fried."

"Why didn't Einstein tell the world about it, then?"

"Are you kidding me? You know what those lunatic politicians and businessmen out there would do with such a device?" He stops and looks at the blackboard. "Besides, the time-travel machine has never been fully functioning."

"Are you saying it doesn't work?"

"I never tried, myself," the Pillar says. "I only read about it, and Carroll used to hint at it. It works for only fourteen minutes, and I believe it has certain limits."

"Fourteen?" I grimace. "What's with this number popping up everywhere?"

"It only popped up once on your wall in the cell. This is the second time," the Pillar says, and then shoots me a suspicious glance. I know it shows up all he time. "Did it show up somewhere else?"

I shrug. Lewis' vision was on the 14th of January, but he told me not to tell the Pillar about the vision.

"Aha." His tongue plays with the insides of his cheeks. "Little Alice has been having visions." I try to act oblivious of what he says. "Are you sure Lewis didn't give you anything last time when you met him through the Tom Tower?"

I hesitate, thinking he knows about the key to one of Wonderland's doors. I am glad I hid in the wall.

"It's okay." The Pillar doesn't push it. "We'll talk about that later. Now, we need you to go back in time to meet the Muffin Man."

"Which we will do how?" I crane my neck and squint.

The Pillar says nothing, and points at the blackboard with sticky chalk. "This is called Einstein's Blackboard, the one he used for lecturing when he was here. It's one of the world's most valuable artifacts. Historians will claim the original one is in the in Museum of the History of Science, and that this one here is a replica. Actually, it's vice versa but they don't know it. Originally it was Carroll's blackboard, and it is used to time-travel."

"And how is that possible?"

"It's easy," he says. "You write the date, time, and name of person you want to meet, and then use it as a doorway to the past."

The blackboard is actually tall. Hypothetically, it looks like a door a mad girl like me could walk into. But unless the board's surface turns into rippling water or air, I don't see how.

"So I just walk into it?" I give up and assume fantastically.

"Oh." The Pillar's lips twitch. "Of course not. Don't be silly."