Текст книги "Hookah"

Автор книги: Cameron Jace

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Chapter 24

Outside, I don’t bother finding the bathroom. I just want out to look for the children.

Among the Executioner’s soldiers, I pretend I am an airhead brat with a colorful umbrella, trekking around the vast landscape and admiring the roses.

Some of them are irritated by me, borderline offended, but none of them can do anything about it. I have the Executioner’s permission to be out here.

Flashing my stupid-girl smiles, I’m looking for the children in my peripheral vision.

Nighttime isn’t helping much. All I have for light is a small moon up in the sky. For a moment, it looks like a mushroom lighting up the world. But I know better. The coconut’s effect hasn’t fully worked on me yet.

Farther into the landscape, I am happy to be hiding between folds of darkness and even darker trees in the castle’s garden. I am like a cat now. I see everyone from my vantage point but none of them see me. The Cheshire comes to mind instantly, but I don’t want to think about him.

Then I glimpse the children in the distance.

They’re being loaded like sheep into a barred Jeep, surrounded by machine gun men.

Like a cat, I tiptoe closer. Each child is given a gun before getting on the Jeep. Oh, my God.

I mean, I’ve read about drug lords and cartels using young, poor children in their drug business, even in war, but I never thought I’d see it with my own eyes. It seems that the words we read in newspapers, the videos we watch on news cable, no matter how atrocious and unbelievable are never really processed by our brains. We watch these things as if they are a movie, as if they’re not real, until you see them with your own eyes.

But right now, I can’t stand it. Those children aren’t going to become machine gun drug traffickers. Their childhood isn’t going to be taken advantage of by this mean man called the Executioner. I will find a way to get them out of Mushroomland.

This means more to me than the end of the world.

Because frankly, the world will end anyway. It’s the crimes we don’t do anything about that are the real evil.

Chapter 25

Taking my shoes off, I pad as slowly as I can, closer to the Jeep.

There are about twenty children, and for some reason, they’re shown out of the Jeep again. One of the machine gun men tells them to wait next to a huge mushroom tree—haven’t seen one before, really, but hey, I could still be imagining things.

Once the kids are alone, I approach them, worried they’ll shoot or resist me because I’m foreign or something.

But they don’t.

They actually look at me as if they know me, anticipating whatever I have to say.

“I’m Alice,” I begin. “I will get you out of here. You want to get out of here, right?”

They nod eagerly, and I realize they don’t speak my language, but they seem to understand me, still. Maybe freedom and children’s rights is a universal thing. No language is really needed.

“Look,” I try to explain things with my hands while I talk. Common sense sign language should work, right? “I don’t know what I’m going to do, but how about you all get into that Jeep again. I can drive it away until we figure out what to do next.”

They follow my pointing finger to the Jeep, guns still in their hands.

“No,” I say. “No guns. You don’t need them.”

They’re reluctant about it, but cooperate eventually. One after the other they get into the Jeep, smiling at me. It’s lovely how a child’s smile makes your life seem worthless in order to save them.

But it’s not funny at all seeing each one of them is missing knuckles on their last two fingers, starting from the pinky. I can’t explain how this breaks my heart. I suddenly feel embarrassed complaining about shock therapy back in the asylum. At least no one cut off a piece of me.

“Hey.” I stop a boy and kneel down to face him. “Who did that to you?” I point at the missing fingers.

“The Executioner.” Of course.

“Why?”

“Mark.”

“Mark?” I blink. “Who’s Mark?”

“No.” The boy waves his forefinger. “Slave. Mark.”

My hands reach for my mouth to cup a shriek. “It’s a mark? Like a tattoo? You’re a salve?”

“Executioner slave.” The boy taps his chest and then points to the rest of the children. “Travel. Drug. Sell.”

“Not anymore.” I hug him closer. “I will take care of you.”

The boy smiles broadly, as if I have bought him a gift. I mean, God, he doesn’t even know what they are doing to him, trapped within the walls of mushroom all around.

Before he gets in the Jeep, he turns around and touches my hair. “Alice,” he whispers. “Mother say Alice come. Alice save us.”

Chapter 26

Inside the Jeep, lights still out, I try to think of a plan.

So what? I am going to ignite the vehicle with the kids inside and just try to escape Mushroomland?

It doesn’t really sound like a plan, and now that I’ve given the children hope, it really doesn’t sound like a plan.

“Think, Alice.” I bang my hands on the wheel, staring at the machine gun men in the distance. It’ll only be minutes before they come back.

My hatred for the Pillar increases. Or maybe I should blame myself for counting too much on him. Who was I fooling? I wasn’t the least bit surprised when I learned he was a drug lord. I bet he marked children like the Executioner does. That bastard.

I fiddle with my umbrella, realizing it only has a few bullets. I can go back to put one in the Executioner and then another in the Pillar, but what good will that do for the children?

Suddenly, one of the machine gun men sees us and blows red fireworks in the sky, exposing the Jeep for everyone to see.

It’s too late now for a plan. Survival instinct at its core.

I push the pedal and bump into every hedge and mushroom in my way, trying to chug my way out of here.

Jeeps start following me, shooting at us.

Now I’m worried one of the kids will get hurt. I ask them to duck, but for how long?

Farther I drive, my hands gripping the wheel, my brain still foggy.

Alice save us. Had the boy’s mother predicted my arrival, like Constance believed in me?

What do you do when everyone believes in you, and deep down inside you know you’re insane?

I take a left onto an even muddier road. The Jeep slows down. But I am not stopping. I grip the wheel harder, grit my teeth as I push the pedal against its capacity.

But it’s not the chasing that stops me. It’s the flaring white light someone directs in my face.

I end up seeing nothing, only feeling the weight of the Jeep rolling on its side. My head bumps into something, and all I end up with is the aching sound of the wheels circling the air.

Are the children hurt?

It’s only a minute before I see the Executioner looking down on me. “I should have killed you once I saw you.” He pulls his gun out again.

Next to him, the Pillar’s face comes into focus. His face is inanimate. And for the first time, I can see his real intentions. His eyes are so dead I don’t think he ever cared for me one bit.

He tucks his cigar back in his mouth and says, “Love that look on someone’s face, just before they die.”

Chapter 27

Westminster Palace, Margaret Kent’s Office

Margaret stood in front of her favorite mirror in her office, checking out her face. She wanted to see if her surgeons, who’d cost her a fortune, had messed up anything in her operation.

But on the contrary, everything was just fine.

The face she’d asked for to cover up her ugliness, and put her Duchess days behind, was like nothing she’d ever seen. In fact, she loved how she looked. It suited her prestige and made people trust her—which was most crucial to her title in the Parliament.

Then why did the Queen of Hearts keep calling her ugly?

Margaret looked away from the mirror and out at the River Thames. She knew why the Queen treated her this way. Because she couldn’t forget how ugly she was in Wonderland. Because the Queen envied her for being able to pull such a trick in the real world.

The Queen herself had asked the same doctors to make her taller—the Queen’s biggest setback. But science in this world only knew how to make extreme makeovers with faces. Making someone taller wasn’t an option yet.

How Margaret wished to kill this obnoxious Queen. How she wished to rip her to pieces.

But none of that was feasible before they collected the Six Impossible Keys.

It just had to be done. And now she had to find someone to send after that madman, the Pillar who seemed to be looking for a cure in Columbia.

Never mind that Columbia was the best place to look for those who created this plague, but it was also where Margaret had made most of her fortune.

Margaret had been one of the first to arrive from Wonderland. With her political position, she was able to make millions of pounds by endorsing drug trafficking and child slavery in Columbia.

A very profitable business, indeed.

She worried the Pillar would mess up things there. His travel to Columbia seemed to have a deeper reason behind it. True, he was there to find a cure of sorts, but why go back to that place he hated so much?

Why go back to that dark pit of his past?

Margaret sighed, deciding her priority was to find a cure and keep her assets in Columbia safe. She had to call someone to do it.

She walked back to her desk, and dialed a number. It belonged to the last Wonderlander she’d ever work with, but it seemed that every Wonderlander needed to make a stand now.

Either you were part of Black Chess, or you were an Inklings. There was no other way around it now.

Chapter 28

Mushroomland, Columbia

With the gun’s barrel in my mouth, I can only speak in nonsensical vowels.

And even though no one understands me, the Executioner ends up curious to know what I have to say before I die.

“I was only coughing.” I wipe the gun’s staining powder from my lips. From the corner of my eye, I can see the kids aren’t hurt.

The Pillar raises an eyebrow at me, probably impressed with my comeback.

The Executioner loads his gun again, ready to finish me.

“Wait,” I say. “Since you’re a Wonderlander, you must be looking for the keys like everyone else.” My look is sharp and challenging. “The Six Impossible Keys.”

The Executioner pulls his gun to a halt. I believe I caught his interest. Behind him, the Pillar scratches his temples.

“Continue...” The Executioner waves the gun at me.

“I know where one of them is,” I say, reminding myself I’ll never tell about the one key I have hidden in my back pocket. The one Lewis Carroll gave me. “Last week, the Mad Hatter took it from me.”

“From you?” The Executioner seems skeptical. “Why would you have a key to Wonderland?”

“Well.” I rub the back of my neck. “Like I said before, I am Alice from Wonderland. I just don’t remember a lot of it. I had the key hidden in a bucket in the basement of my family’s house.”

The Executioner scans me from top to bottom.

“You don’t want to kill me, in case I know of the whereabouts of the other keys,” I follow up, not sure if the Pillar will back me up if I mention him to the Executioner, so I don’t. He wanted me dead a minute ago.

The Executioner gazes back at the Pillar and then back at me. His eyes are sharp, as if he’s trying to read through my soul.

It’s a long moment. I take advantage of it and smile at the children behind me, assuring them they will be all right.

The moment stretches even more, and I begin to worry the Executioner won’t believe me.

But he breaks the long silence with a spitting laugh. His men laugh with him. He lowers his head toward me and says, “You’re the maddest girl I have ever seen.” He raises his eyebrows. “I love mad people. That’s why I will not kill you until I’m thoroughly entertained by your hallucinations.”

Chapter 29

The Pillar, me, and the Executioner are sitting around a table in the middle of his garden. I can hear the sounds of war in the distance, still not sure what his men are fighting over.

But the war is the least of my worries now. It’s the Executioner and his sadistic games. He literally wants us to play a game now.

“It’s a very easy game,” he says. “But most entertaining to me.”

The Pillar says nothing, and neither do I. The Executioner had each of us hold a gun and place it atop the table, both hands placed palm down.

“Here is how it’s going to be played,” the Executioner says. “I will ask you a question.” He is talking to me. I’ve become his priority now. He thinks I am mad, and it amuses him. “If you give the right answer, you will pass for this round. If it’s wrong, I will shoot you.”

“Suspenseful.” The Pillar puffs his cigar. “I love suspense.”

“Then it’ll be your turn to ask me a question.” The Executioner is still talking to me. “If I answer it the wrong way, you can shoot me.”

“Justice,” the Pillar says nonchalantly. “Not a fan.”

“Then Senor Pillardo will join in,” the Executioner follows. “Easy game. Say the truth and you will live.”

“How can you tell I am telling the truth when you ask me?” I say.

“The same way you can tell I am telling the truth when I ask you.” The Executioner grins.

“Nonsense,” the Pillar comments. “My favorite.”

“I’m not following,” I tell the Executioner.

“Here is the thing, young lady,” the Executioner says. “This is a game of nonsense—which, if you think you’re Alice, you should know a lot about.”

“Trust me. Nonsense has been my middle name since I met the Pillar—I mean, Senor Pillardo,” I say. “But I still don’t have a grip on this game.”

“Here is how this game is really played,” the Pillar finally interjects “The thing is that all questions asked have only one answer.”

I tilt my head, worrying I am not going to grasp this fully.

“All questions in this game are answered by saying ‘Hookah Hookah,’” the Pillar explains, his eyes on the Executioner. I am more curious than ever to know whatever is happening between those two. “I ask you, ‘How are you?’ You answer, ‘Hookah Hookah.’ I ask you, ‘Where have you been?’ You say...”

“Hookah Hookah, I get it,” I say. “So how is anyone supposed to know if the other is telling the truth?”

The Pillar and the Executioner exchange mean looks for a moment.

“It’s how you say it, Alice,” the Executioner explains. “If you can convince me with you tonality and facial expressions it’s the truth, then it’s the truth.”

Chapter 30

I don’t have enough time to object.

The Executioner demonstrates the game by asking the Pillar, “What’s your name?”

“Hookah Hookah,” the Pillar says, as if he’s just used to answering it this way. It’s mind boggling how believable he sounds.

“Where are you from?”

“Hookah Hookah,” the Pillar answers with a home-sick expression on his face. I suppose that deeper in his mind he was saying ‘Wonderland.’

Then the Executioner turns to face me. “Do you think the Pillar is a good man?”

Now, that’s a shocker.

Sneaky. The Executioner just asked the question I’m not sure how to answer. The game demands confidence and truth in the way I say Hookah Hookah.

It takes me a while to answer. “Hookah Hookah.”

In my mind, the answer is ‘I don’t know.’ It’s the truth. I try my best to sound as if I mean it.

The Executioner’s sharp eyes pierce through me, his fingers reaching for his gun.

I shrug.

“Good answer,” he says. “I don’t know either.”

What? He read my mind?

“My turn,” I say. “Do you truly believe I will not shoot you without waiting for the next question?”

“Hookah Hookah.” He nods toward his guards standing all around us.

Okay. He can actually read my mind. And I am toast because of the guards. But wait!

“But this means that even if I catch you lying in this game, I won’t be able to shoot you,” I argue. “Because your guards will shoot me first.”

“Smart girl,” the Executioner says. “In this game, only you or the Pillar will end up dead. Can you see how nonsense always plays in my favor?”

Chapter 31

Somewhere in the streets of London

The mayhem in the streets of London fascinated the Cheshire.

All those lowlife human beings getting in fights with each other, some of them taking it far, as in really hurting one another. That was just fantastic.

He roamed the streets on foot, possessing one person after another and contributing to the madness. A punch in the face here. A tickle there. Setting a place on fire here. It was all fun.

Revenge on humankind felt so sweet he was about to purr like his ancestors once did.

Blood was everywhere on the streets. Traffic had stopped hours ago. This was better than anything he’d ever seen. He wondered what kind of plague it was, but couldn’t put his paws on it.

Lewis Carroll turned out to be one mad nut, even crazier than all the rest. How hadn’t the Cheshire ever known about this man’s crazy tendencies to spread chaos to the world?

But even though he enjoyed possessing a soul after another, it suddenly occurred to him that he had no idea of who he really was.

Of course, he was a cat in a way or another. But he’d even lost his recollection of what he looked like as a cat many years ago.

Who was he, really? What did he look like? What was the look that really suited his personality?

Had the Cheshire been lost among the many faces he’d possessed, now that he was just a nobody?

His thoughts were interrupted by a phone call. Yes, he possessed many souls, but always passed on his phone so he’d be in contact with whoever wanted to benefit from his expertise.

Like all cats, the Cheshire needed to make a living.

“It’s Margaret,” the Duchess told him on the line. “I need your help.”

“You know I stopped assassinating for you long ago.”

“Yes, but this isn’t about assassinations,” she explained. “I want you to send someone after the Pillar in Columbia.”

“What’s the Pillar doing in Columbia?”

“He’s looking for a cure for the plague.”

“Why? I was beginning to just enjoy it. Did you know it doesn’t affect Wonderlanders?”

“No, I didn’t. That’s good to hear. But the Queen made her point.” Margaret explained how none of them would benefit from the end of the world. Not an argument the Cheshire was fond of.

Who said I wouldn’t be happy with the end of the world?

Although he’d never been on good terms with the Queen of Hearts in Wonderland, he’d started to warm up to her and Black Chess a little. After all, he’d been a bit too lonely in this real world.

It was time to choose a side. Black Chess or Inklings.

“Okay,” he said. “I will send someone to Columbia.”

“You know what kind of someone that is, right? The Executioner will kill anyone who enters his territory.”

“Trust me, I know. That’s why I can’t go there myself. Whatever person I use as a disguise, the Executioner will recognize me. We didn’t all stay away from him for nothing in Wonderland. I will send someone.”

“Do you mean...?”

“Yes,” he said. “Only if I can find them. Because no one’s been able to since we left Wonderland.”

Chapter 32

Mushroomland, Columbia

“My turn,” the Executioner says.

Looking at guards all around us, I wonder what I’m going to do now. I have no way out of this, unless I shoot him and risk being killed one second later.

But why would I shoot him without freeing the children or knowing who cooked the plague?

This is some paradox I’m trapped in.

“So tell me, Alice,” the Executioner says. “Do you think you’re getting out of here alive today?”

“Hookah Hookah.” In my mind, the answer is ‘Hell yeah!’ I just have no idea how.

“Impressive,” the Executioner says. “Even though I know you will die in a few minutes, I still believe you. You know why? Because you definitely believe it. Now ask me.”

“Who cooked the plague?” I shoot.

The Executioner laughs. “Hookah Hookah,” he says. And I realize that in his mind he just answered, but I am not going to know it, not in a million years. Some silly game.

But wait, he doesn’t look like he is telling the truth. What am I supposed to do?

My hand grips my gun. A wide smile forms on the Executioner’s face.

That’s when I realize how tricky this game is. He deliberately gave me the wrong answer. At least he made sure I’d sense it, so I’d try to shoot him and then have his guards finish me off.

Chapter 33

Never have I been so much on the edge of my seat.

The Executioner’s sly grin cuts through me. My hand gripping the gun starts shivering in the nonsensical game played in a nonsensical world. The one thought that is on my brain is: am I still under the mushrooms’ influence, unable to make the right decision?

“It’s the perfect paradox!” the Pillar compliments the Executioner. “Now, that you’re lying—and it shows on your face—she is obliged to pull the trigger and shoot you, but your guards wouldn’t let her.” He leans forward, looking very amused by the situation. “It’s like playing cards with the lion in his den. You winning isn’t really going to prevent him from having you for lunch.”

An inner voice tells me to pick up the gun and shoot the Pillar instead. I have tolerated many of his crazy actions in the past, but I can’t anymore. I should have listened to everyone who warned me of him.

“I applaud you, Executioner.” The Pillar stands up, raising his glass. “I mean, shouldn’t we toast for this before the girl dies? I totally think we should have this on video.”

The Executioner seems puzzled for a moment, shifting his focus from me to the Pillar. Or is it something else that has been going on between them that I am not picking up?

“I didn’t think you’d like my trick, Senor Pillardo,” the Executioner says. “You really have nothing against killing her?”

“I don’t give a Jub Jub about her.” The Pillar sips his own drink and let’s out a big ah. “Frankly, I brought her here as a gift to you. I mean, all your slave boys are, let’s face it, boys. I thought, why not get the Executioner a girl. She’s very feisty and can be of pretty good use to you.”

I’m tired of gritting my teeth. Who invented it anyways? It doesn’t do any good when your anger hurts so much inside.

“But it doesn’t make any sense,” the Executioner says. “Why would you bring her to me? We both know this isn’t true.”

I don’t know what the Executioner means, but I sense the underlined tension between them.

“Of course it’s true.” The Pillar asks the guards for one of their hunting knives. “And here is proof.” He pulls my hand violently toward him and plasters it on the table, then does the one thing that never crossed my mind. The Pillar raises his knife. “I will cut her two fingers myself. Isn’t that how you like your slaves marked? Isn’t that what the war beyond Mushroomland is about? All you drug cartels fighting over the kids, so you get the most labor in your business?”

The realization sends surges of lightning into my body. Even though the Pillar is about to mark me, I can’t seem to fathom the cruel world, the real world, outside my asylum walls.

“Interesting.” The Executioner stands up. “So I suppose you want to know who cooked the plague now in exchange?”

“Now you get it,” the Pillar says, tightly gripping my hand. “You said you wanted us to go back to your house, get a meal, and ask me to entertain you. I know you thought we’d shoot jokes and drink like the old days, but this wasn’t the kind of entertainment I had cooked for you.”

The Executioner laughs, glancing around at his guards. “Senor Pillardo. I don’t know what to say. You certainly have entertained me. I’m surprised I didn’t understand at first.”

“That’s because you’re one dumb animal hiding behind an army of poor little kids you think you’re enslaving!” I shout at him.

It only makes him laugh more and then address the Pillar. “Shouldn’t you cut her fingers first to fulfill the deal?” The Executioner folds his arms and watches.

Again, there is something in the air between those two. Something I’m dying to find out.

“Alice.” The Pillar turns to me, lowering the knife to my fingers. “This is going to hurt.”