Текст книги "Figment"

Автор книги: Cameron Jace

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Chapter 3

Walled garden, Radcliffe Lunatic Asylum, Oxford

The garden where I am taking my break is guarded with barbed wire and concrete walls, high on all sides. Very reminiscent of maximum-security prisons where they want you electrocuted if you try to escape. The walls are ten feet high; they almost block the skewed sunrays trying to shine through. I need to move to a certain spot and tiptoe to allow the sun on my skin. When I do, my pale skin feels nourished, loved, and spoiled. No wonder my Lily lives next to a crack in a wall. Now she silently dances to the beautiful daylight, as though she worships the sun.

Don't ask me why I bring her along, even when she is sometimes mean to me. I can't explain why I am so attached to her. Like Jack, I consider her family for some reason.

I close my eyes, spread my arms sideways, and inhale all the air I can. The more oxygen into my lungs, the saner I feel.

The earth underneath me is sand, gravel, and boulders. I kick my shoes away and walk barefoot. I wonder if I keep my eyes closed long enough, would my life change for the better when I flick them open again? Will the madness subside? I wish it were that easy.

Maybe that's why people only dream with eyes closed. To open one's eyes is such a dream killer.

I walk barefoot, and in the darkness of my shut eyelids, a vision shapes before me. A colorful vision that looks as if a rainbow has crashed onto it and spilled its paint everywhere, turning the place into a palette of different hues and shades. I see huge mushrooms, funny-looking trees, giant fruits, as well as oversized rabbits and cats. A dormouse. Flying pigeons. A hookah's spiraling smoke. Nonsensical music is playing somewhere nearby. The vision is so beautiful I don't want to open my eyes again.

My feet keep walking. It feels like I have stepped into the transparent bubble of my own vision, leaving the real world behind.

A thin orange hue occasionally seeps through my vision. I am thinking it's the sun over the barbed-wired walls, seeping through my eyelids and into my daydreaming vision.

My feet still keep walking. I can't stop them. Nothing can stop me from walking farther into my vision. I breathe in again. Air is such a precious thing. So underestimated. I feel the oxygen fill my brain. It's relaxing. It's soothing. This vision I am staring at with closed eyes must be real. The air is real, and the trees are real. There is no way I am hallucinating now.

Finally, I realize what I am staring at. It's the place I have been looking for. The place, maybe, everyone is looking for. I am staring with closed eyes at a memory of Wonderland.

My heartbeat shoots to the roof. I start to hurry barefoot in this amazing place, not even caring how I look like in the real world of the walled garden of the Radcliffe Asylum. Maybe I am standing there. Maybe I'm also running. Who cares?

My eyes inhale everything I see. Wonderland is huge. I mean huge. It baffles me that most of its vastness is blocked by the enormous fruits and trees. I run farther. I have no idea of my destination.

Could this be? Is Wonderland real? I can even smell it!

The farther I run, the more my vision dims. I don't know why, but I keep running. It looks like it's raining in the distance. It looks like the sun is fading in the distance. But the distance is where my footsteps take me. An inner feeling draws me toward it, away from Wonderland.

Why would my vision take me beyond Wonderland? I don't want to leave, but something urges me to go.

The last things I see in Wonderland are huge clocks hung from thin threads in the sky as if they were laundry. The watches are as flexible as cloth. They haven't dried yet. Someone has just washed them, so no time can be told from looking at them. Someone has washed time away.

But then Wonderland disappears behind me.

Now, I am entering a normal life again, bound by time, chained by reason, and surmounted by human stupidity. It's not the present time, tough. A newspaper swirls in the air and sticks on my face. I pull it off. Through the noise of the crowd around me and the heavy rain, it's hard to unfold the yellowish paper. But I manage.

It's a periodical newspaper. It's called Mischmasch, owned and edited by Lewis Carroll. This is the fourteenth edition.

With a beating heart, I raise my head and discover that I am standing in the Tom Quadrangle in Oxford University, a century or two ago. Somehow I arrived here through Wonderland. I lower my head and check the date on the Mischmasch. The date is January the 14th, 1862.

Chapter 4

Tom Quadrangle in Christ Church, Oxford University, January 14th, 1862

It's still raining heavily. A darker shade hovers over the Victorian atmosphere. The clouds are grey and cruel in the absence of the sun, blocked by the dirty smog and smoke all over this world. A world that reeks of pollution and stink. Poverty and homelessness overrule this not-so-picturesque vision of English Victorian times before me.

I snake through the crowd, all the way outside the university. I am outside at St Aldates. Deeper into Oxford, I see hordes of homeless people shading themselves with newspapers from the heavy rain. Coughs and vomits are heard and seen everywhere, as if there's been a disease. Young children with tattered clothes and bandaged hands, smitten with dirt, walk all around me. All they ask for is money. A penny. A shilling. Even a bronze half-shilling with the drawing of Queen Victoria upon it.

If they're not asking for money, they are begging for food, a loaf of bread, a single egg, or a potato, with open mouths. Some even beg for whiff of salt or a sip of clean water.

An old man with a stick shoos a few kids away. "Go back to London, you filthy rotten beggars!" he grunts before he trips to the floor himself. He is as weak as everyone else, upset that they're begging for his share of meals.

People don't seem to notice me.

Most people are conspicuously shorter than usual. Maybe they're not really shorter—their backs are bent over from poverty, a lack of nutrition and shelter.

I keep stepping over the muddy earth, realizing that what was Wonderland a few breaths ago has turned into a nightmare of older times.

Victorian times.

It looks like I am in a factually real point in history. Did I travel back in time?

I realize I can just open my eyes and escape this vision. But I don't. I want to I understand why am I having it.

Is this why January the 14th is so important? My hands crawl to the key at the end of the necklace Lewis gave me last time. One of the six keys to open Wonderland doors, he said.

I stop in my place and gaze ahead, only to see Lewis Carroll walking in a haze. He is wearing a priest's outfit, and a pile of papers is tucked under his armpit. A tattered umbrella is held loosely in his other hand before some kids steal it and run away, hitting the old man with it.

Lewis doesn't care. He tucks his hands into his pockets and pulls out a fistful of breadcrumbs. He offers them to the homeless children. The children circle him like ants around a huge insect they'd just trapped. The kids snatch the bread and then knock Lewis to the floor, the papers of his manuscript scattering in the air. They begin hitting him, asking him for money, but he is not fighting back, astonished by their aggressive acts. They steal his watch and his wallet, and rid him of his hat.

I run toward him. They have left him half naked. He seems to be the only one who sees me.

"Lewis," I yelp. "What's going on?"

"I couldn't save them, Alice," he cries in the rain. "I was too late. Couldn't save them."

"Save who? I don't understand," I say as a few kids suddenly are aware of my existence.

"I—I tried," he hiccups. "Th-those p-poor children." Lewis stutters.

I also realize my time in this vision is short. I'm exposed entirely to the children, and they are approaching. They'll rip me of my asylum's nightgown for sure and see if I have any bread or money.

"Run, Alice," Lewis demands, but holds to my hand for one last time. "Never tell anyone that I couldn't save them!"

I don't understand, but I have slid my hand away and am already running from the sinister Victorian kids.

Suddenly, my head hits something and my lips swell as if I have been punched in the face by a train.

My eyes flip open as my vision phases out, back into the uninteresting real world. As I regain my balance and momentum, I realize I've hit the garden's wall.

"This can't be," I whisper to myself. "I had to run from the kids, but I had to save Lewis. What was that about? Who are they, the people he could not help?"

I close my eyes deliberately again, wishing to re-enter the vision. It's not there anymore. I don't know how this works.

I stand, helpless and imprisoned in the choking arms of these walls of the asylum. Either I am mad beyond all madness, or I can travel through time. Either I was right about forgetting about that happened to me last week, or it's a terrible mistake.

What did Lewis mean? I couldn't save them, Alice.

Chapter 5

Director's office, Radcliffe Lunatic Asylum, Oxford

Instead of spending his money on his failing marriage, Dr. Tom Truckle, director of the Radcliffe Lunatic Asylum, spent it on surveillance cameras.

He even helped install them himself in the VIP Ward when the Pillar was away. Although Dr. Truckle's life was sliding down on an oily spiral of circumstances, his obsession with the Pillar pushed him to do maddening things. He needed more cameras—from every angle possible—to learn about the Pillar's secret.

How does Pillar the Killer escape his cell and return as if he's world's best magician?

Two days ago, Professor Carter Pillar escaped his cell again, leaving a trail of swirling hookah smoke behind. It hung in the air, shaping the word Frabjous.

Dr. Truckle had previously doubled the security guards on the VIP Ward. He also sent for England's finest magicians to ask them how such an escape was possible. They had no clue. Architects, too, had been consulted. Radcliffe Asylum was a two-centuries-old building, first built in Victorian times. Maybe the asylum hid secret tunnels underneath it. Secret tunnels only someone as devious and intellectually crazy as Professor Pillar knew about.

But no. Truckle's mind had been reaching too far—possibly an aftereffect of the many medication pills he swallowed like the kids gorge on M&M's.

The architects called the idea of tunnels implausible. In fact, they declared that escaping the asylum was physically impassible.

"Impossible, you mean," Dr. Truckle replied to the architects.

"No, we mean impassible," the twin architects had insisted. "Nothing is impossible." They had laughed, and Dr Truckle hadn't understood why. "You've never read Alice in Wonderland?" one of the twin architects asked. Dr. Truckle shook his head. He hated Alice in Wonderland. "It's an inside joke," they told him. "You can only get it if you've read the book."

 Dr. Truckle didn't want to get it. He wanted to know how the Pillar escaped.

Of course, the Pillar was expected to show up soon, claiming he was out buying a new hookah or something. Dr. Truckle knew otherwise: Pillar the Killer was almost uncatchable. He could escape and live in an uncharted island full of mushrooms for the rest of his life. But he didn't. He preferred to spend his days imprisoned in this stupid asylum. And his sole reason for that was Alice Wonder.

That, at least, Dr. Truckle was sure of.

But why Alice? What in the world did such a young and mad girl possess that was so valuable to the Pillar?

Dr. Truckle swallowed another pill—the fifth today—and closed his eyes to calm down. He stood next to his desk, his eyes monitoring the Pillar's cell through the surveillance screens fixed on the wall. The Pillar hadn't arrived yet.

One of the screens was broadcasting news on national TV. Dr. Truckle liked to watch the local news while he was waiting. Watching the madness plaguing the world helped him tolerate his relatively mad job in the asylum, particularly after the horrifying incident in Stamford Bridge stadium yesterday.

Since the incident, Dr. Truckle knew things wouldn't end just there. The incident of a stuffed head in a ball was a beginning of something madder. Soon enough more bodies would pile up all over Britain, if not the whole world.

And here it was, right in front of his eyes.

The news host on national TV was announcing the discovery of another chopped-off head, found with the phrase "Off with their heads" written in blood on its forehead.

"Ramon Yeskelitch, a Ukrainian immigrant," the news reporter—a nerdy middle-aged woman with red glasses and an uptight but fancy suit—reported, "who lives near Borough Market in London, a divorced and unemployed father of two, went to buy his weekly mouthwatering watermelon today. Mr. Yeskelitch and his family have a certain liking for watermelons."

Dr. Truckle leaned forward, excited by the morbidity lurking in the air.

"Arriving back home, Mr. Yeskelitch tucked the slightly oversized watermelon in the fridge for a couple of hours," the host continued. "Then, when it was dinnertime, he decided to serve the watermelon to his children, who were eager for their weekly dose, only to be shocked with what they saw stuffed inside when they cut it open." The woman shrugged for a moment, unable to comprehend the words she was supposed to read to the nation. "Bloody, blimey, bollocks!" Her tongue slipped as she adjusted her spectacles. She raised her head back to the camera with kaleidoscope eyes of surprise. "Mr. Yeskelitch and his children found a human head inside the watermelon." Then she stopped, her eyes a bit watery, like a girl in a Japanese Manga about to burst into tears. "Another human head like the one which was found stuffed inside the ball in Stamford Bridge," she continued, almost stuttering.

Dr. Truckle wondered if she hadn't been informed of the heaviness of the subject before going live on air. Or was she occupied manicuring her fingernails, cleaning her glasses, and showing off her expensive dress?

But Dr. Truckle wasn't really interested in the pretentious world of TV—although he secretly wished they'd interview him on Good Morning Britain. The doctor was wondering whether the news had anything to do with the Cheshire killer, thus the Pillar as well.

Was it possible that the Pillar was somehow linked to the killings?

The doctor's eyes darted back to screens monitoring the Pillar's cell. The damn professor hadn't returned. Where was he?

Dr. Truckle snapped like a rubber band to the sudden ringing of his office's landline. Who used landlines these days? He had begun considering the landline operator as an antique long ago.

"Dr. Truckle speaking," he answered, adjusting his tie in the mirror.

"I'm Professor Pillar's chauffeur," a mousy voice replied. "I have a message from him."

Dr. Truckle looked around, making sure no one was with him in the room. "What kind of message?" He grabbed the receiver with both hands, trying to stick his ear closer and closer.

"Professor Pillar wants you to do something right now. He says time is not on our side. We need to move fast."

"I'm not doing anything before you tell me where he is right this moment." Dr. Truckle almost cracked the handset open with his intensity.

"You really want to know?"

"I do." He was almost panting like a dog longing for a bone.

"He's playing football with an oversized watermelon in Hyde Park," the chauffeur said. "Oh, wait."

"Wait for what?" Dr. Truckle panicked. "What's happening?"

"Oh, nothing," said the chauffeur. "The watermelon split open. There is someone's head inside."

Chapter 6

Walled garden, Radcliffe Lunatic Asylum, Oxford

Amidst my confusion and frustration, I sit on the walled garden's ground. I need a moment to catch my breath and decide what I am about to do. Lewis sent me a message through a daydreaming vision. I am not sure what to do with it. Nor do I have any idea whom he failed to help—or save.

Whether Lewis is my mind's doing or for real, I can't discard his apparent caring about the world. He loves people unconditionally. He wants to make things right. He wants to make the world better. Lewis, the stuttering artist, doesn't shy away from what he is, from his fears. I think this is why he impacted so many children in the world. Older folks usually wear their own masks when they deal with children, but Lewis opened up and let go. He accepted who he was and what the world around him was like, and decided he would only see the good in all the mess.

Unlike what I did the past six weeks. I know now it was a mistake pretending what was not.

If I am mad, make my day. I should have not avoided the Mush Room in order to pretend last week's events didn't happen. The Pillar's words ring in my ear again: Insane people are only sane people who give in to the madness in the world. I am not sure he said those exact words. I am remembering the meaning behind what he said—again, if he ever existed and wasn't a figment of my imagination.

As I sit, I hear the girl's muffled screams from the Mush Room inside the main building again. Her screams send shivers of anger down my spine this time.

Waltraud and Ogier must enjoy torturing her, laughing at her and buzzing her over and over again.

Don't even think about it, Alice, my inner voice warns me. You're not meant to save other people's lives. You're just a mad girl trying to avoid shock therapy at best.

I fist my hands and clench my teeth when the girl screams again. This could have easily been me. Each time she screams, I remember the unexplained visions of poor children asking for a loaf of bread. Did Lewis mean he couldn't save them? The regret in his eyes was unmistakable. Do I want to regret not saving the girl in the Mush Room now? Do I want to regret not saving myself?

I can't. I am no hero, but I just can't stand witnessing someone's unjustified punishment.

"Stop it!" I scream at Waltraud and Ogier from behind the wall. "Stop torturing her!" My voice seems louder than I can handle. A surge of electricity runs through my veins, and I can feel the pain of the Mush Room's instruments already. "Stop torturing her!" I repeat, pounding on the ground.

I still can stop. Maybe Waltraud hasn't heard me. But I am stubborn and I can't tolerate the screams. I throw boulders at the walls.

The screaming stops.

A few minutes later, the main door to the garden springs open. Waltraud stands in front of me, slapping her prod on her thick palms. A smirk, ten miles wide, illuminates her face.

"You were saying something, Alice?" she asks as Ogier approaches me. "I knew you couldn't play your game long enough."

The grin on Ogier's face deserves an Oscar for the Most Stupid Portrayal of Evil. He keeps grinning at me with such joy while Waltraud handcuffs me to send me down to the Mush Room—and it's not the Cheshire's evil grin.

I don't care anymore. I will stay my ground, and say what I feel is right, even if I am mad.

"So, you're mad after all," Waltraud grunts. "You still believe in Wonderland. You believe in it so much you're willing to exchange places with a girl you don't know in the torture room."

"Why don't you shut up and just finish this," I grunt back.

"Do you know I tricked you into this?" Waltraud lights up a cigarette. "I had to make the girl scream her best so you'd hear it. We weren't really treating her that bad. I knew you think you're born to save lives. Foolish you." She laughs and high-fives Ogier.

They pull me down and usher me along the corridor leading to the torture room. My lips begin to slightly shiver at the taste of the coming pain I know so well. The Mushroomers on both sides bang the bars of their cells again. "Alice. Alice. Alice!"

At the room's entrance, Waltraud's phone buzzes.

She checks the number and grimaces. "It's Dr. Truckle," she mumbles, and picks up.

Waltraud listens for a while, her lips twitching and her face dimming. She hangs up finally and stares disappointedly at me.

"You're very lucky, Alice," she says. "Dr. Truckle is sending you for further examination outside the asylum."

A faint smile lines my lips. This must be the Pillar. Something has come up. A new mission, maybe? I am baffled at how happy I am. Who was I fooling for the past six days? I am addicted to this. I am addicted to leaving the asylum, addicted to the madness in the outside world. I am addicted to saving lives.

Waltraud unties me, her lips pursed. "Go get dressed now. But remember, when you come back, your brain is mine. I'll mush it into mushed potatoes with ketchup made of your blood!"