“A light bulb,” he finally says. “They have turned it on. They can see everything.”
I lean back, waiting for his episode to subside, but it doesn’t. His
Alice in Wonderland
“I need to cover my head with something. I need to dim the light bulb.” He pulls his head into his outfit, looking like he’s wearing a cloak now.
“Did you turn the light bulb off?” I ask, not knowing how to help a man who thinks he’s been spied on through a light bulb shimmering in his head.
“I just dimmed it, which is fine.” He wipes drool from his mouth. “I buried my secrets in a special part of my brain. When I hide my head under my clothes, they usually can’t find their way around for a while. Then they usually give up and leave me alone when they’re frustrated.”
“You have a special place in your brain where you hide things from others?” I am making conversation until he cools down.
“Come here,” he whispers. “You know there is a left side of the brain and right side, right?”
I nod. Did I learn this in school? If so, what school did I attend?
“The right hemisphere controls the muscles on the left side of the body.” He’s playing professor, and I am his student now. “And vice versa.”
I nod again, a little impatient.
“The left hemisphere is dominant in language, speaking, memory, and in charge of carrying out logic and equations.” I continue listening to him lecturing. Maybe this is getting somewhere. “The right hemisphere is in charge of everything that has to do with arts. It performs some math, but very little. It loves visual imagery.”
“So?”
“The light bulb looks into those two parts of the brain,” he explains. “Do you know in which part I buried my secrets?
“In the right?”
“No.” He smiles broadly. “In the middle.” Now he chuckles like a Mad Hare.
I don’t comment. I push the conversation further. “So we can talk now? They aren’t spying on your brain now, right?”
He nods.
“I need to know how to get to Wonderland.”
Professor Jittery stiffens again. He shakes his head violently and says, “I wish I knew that one. But you can’t get to Wonderland without the Six Impossible—”
“I know. We just talked about that. Then how do I get to Snail Mound?"
“I will tell you, but I have to warn you,” he says, sounding much quieter and saner than before. “To get there you will have to visit one of my gardens. But bad things happen there.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “All I am looking for is to find the rabbit and find a way to defuse the bomb.”
“You’re not listening to me.” He pounds his hands on the table again. I am really fed up with this roller coaster of emotions. “The garden might lead to a dangerous place. A place that ordinary people shouldn’t know about.”
“Does that place have a name?”
He stiffens more, and neglects my question. “Did you ever hear about the Invisible Plague?”
“No.”
“This place in the garden leads you to the Invisible Plague.” He leans forward.
“So that’s it? Some kind of a plague will consume me if I try to catch the rabbit?”
He says nothing, apparently thinking I am a lost cause.
“Now can you please, please, tell me where this door and garden are?”
“Scotland."
“How is the rabbit supposed to be in Scotland?"
"You asked about Snail Mound, and I am telling you where it is."
"Where in Scotland?” I ask, since I have no other option.
“In a place called the Garden of Cosmic Speculation, one of my designs," he says. "I used to live in a house there, and wanted to use it as a portal to Wonderland."
"Did it ever work?"
"It did.” He shrugs. “But...”
“What?”
“It’s some kind of weird version of Wonderland.”
“What do you mean by weird?”
“I can’t really explain it.” He seems to be hiding something. “I mean it somehow only showed certain dark memories of Wonderland. It’s really hard to explain. It messed with my head.”
“Will I find the Snail Mound through these portals?”
“I assume so."
It’s not the greatest answer, but I’m taking what I can get. ”Is that why you fear the place?” I ask. "Because of some bad memories of Wonderland?”
“Yes. And I wonder why you're being sent there," he says. “I designed endless gardens all around the world, in hopes to cross over to Wonderland. Only this one worked. But it doesn’t really work—I know I’m contradicting myself, but I can’t explain it any other way. Let’s say it’s a portal of one of many versions of a possible Wonderland, like a parallel reality. And it messed with my head."
I refrain from saying anything for a moment. Somewhere in the deep end of my mind, I remember having read about parallel worlds, and how scientists assumed there were a million other version of our realities, where we are slightly different people than who we are now.
I think this is the kind of Wonderland the March Hare found. Which I don’t really mind, as long as it will lead me to the rabbit—I have faced madder things than a parallel world.
But why did this version of Wonderland scare him so much? And why was I supposed to go there to find the rabbit?
"Tell me, professor,” I say. “Why was it so important for you to go back? Why can’t you just accept your role in this world as a brilliant landscaper?”
“You don’t understand.” His bulgy eyes are getting moist. “I miss Wonderland. I am like a child who became a scientist, only to learn that all he really wanted was to never grow up in the first place. I wanted to stay in Wonderland. I wanted to find Alice again.”
I don't know why, but it hurts thinking I am not Alice.
“Whoever led you to me, and will lead you to the garden, may not be interested in bombing anyone with this rabbit.” He isn’t the first to tell me this. It’s the Pillar’s theory. "I don't know what his motives may be, but it seems a sinister one to me, because this place you’re going will show you bad things."
“I understand.” I stand up. “Thank you.” I say the words, but can’t leave. I feel sympathy for him. Why is he locked in here, really? Is it this Black Chess organization? Are they really trying to find the secrets in his head? If so, who needs those secrets?
Reluctantly, I pace around the table and approach him personally, worried he might freak. But he doesn’t. I wrap my arms around him, and can feel the warmth and happiness in his body. “Thank you again.” When I raise my head, I see tears in his eyes. Professor Jittery, with all his madness and light bulbs, is the second Wonderlander I’ve met and actually liked—after Fabiola. He isn’t a Wonderland Monster, like the Cheshire. He isn’t mysterious with an agenda, like the Pillar.
Professor Jittery is practically a grown-up kiddo hiding behind the fur of a March Hare. All he wants is to go back to Wonderland and leave this mad world behind.
I wave to him one last time and turn to walk out. I press the red bottom to call the guard.
“One last thing,” Professor Jittery says. I turn around. “The place in the garden you should be warned of.”
“What about it?”
“I can only tell you one thing about it."
“Please tell, Professor Jittery.”
“Every time I entered it, it led me to an even scarier place where bad things happened in the past. Stay away from that location, whatever the temptations are.”
“Does this place inside the place have a name?”
“They used to call it the circus.”
Chapter 33
He had an idea about what he would find inside, but he needed to make sure.
As he read the invitation, a wide grin slowly formed on his face. Finally, the Queen of England had taken the initiative and called for the Event.
He flipped the envelope over and saw the list of the names invited. He was impressed.
God, if all of those people got together, there would be no stopping the likes of him and the Queen.
He tucked the envelope in, knowing he couldn't make it to London in time. But that was okay. He'd send one of his men, currently in England, to attend the Event on his behalf.
It was about time Black Chess revealed itself to the world.
Chapter 34
I can’t help but wonder about the Pillar’s connections—and fortune—but he dismisses my inquiry whenever I ask. The idea of a super-rich professor favoring being in an asylum over his wealth in the outside world thickens the pile of questions on my part. I know the Pillar will only tell me what he wants to tell me, so it’s up to me to figure out the rest of the puzzles.
Once we leave the airport, we’re told we’ll soon meet up with Inspector Dormouse at the Garden of Cosmic Speculation. It’s an hour drive to Dumfries, where it’s located. I also learn that the inspector had to coordinate with Scotland Yard to allow us a visit to the garden.
“So you actually knew about Snail Mound?” I ask, sitting in the back of another limousine, driven by the Pillar’s chauffeur.
“I knew about the Garden of Cosmic Speculation, but not Snail Mound,” the Pillar says, entertaining himself with a hand-held hookah. “The Garden of Cosmic Speculation is incredibly vast, so it needs a specific map. I didn’t know there was a place called Snail Mound inside.”
“So what is this garden exactly?” I scroll through my phone, staring at the unbelievably amazing pictures of the inside of the garden. Uncannily, it reminds me of Wonderland. I think whoever sees it would think of Alice’s books instantly. I wonder why Lewis Carroll movies haven’t been shot here.
“There are two versions about the Garden of Cosmic Speculation. One that is told to the public, and one that is the truth. Let me educate you with what is generally told to the public.” The Pillar drags from his pipe. Eyes turning beady. He loves it. “The garden is a thirty-acre sculpture garden. It was created by professor, architect, and landscaper Jittery March at his own home, Portrack House, near Dumfries in South West Scotland.”
“Okay?” Still looking at the pictures, I am mesmerized by the garden’s beauty. It’s almost hypnotic looking at it. Part of it is designed to look like the man-sized chessboard in
I blink at the complicated words. Am I insane to not understand half of what he just said?
“See? It’s all some jibber-jabber, snobbishly complicated talk, mainly meant for you to not understand anything and not question why it looks uncannily like the Wonderland carved in the collective conscious of the world.” He coughs. “Scottish tobacco. Horrible.” He puts his small hookah away and orders the chauffeur to hand him a Scottish bagpipe. Instead of playing some tune with it, he amazingly starts to drag from it like a regular hookah. “Hmm...” His beady eyes smile. “So where were we?”
“You told me about how the public is supposed to think of the Garden of Cosmic Speculation,” I remind him, in case he is wasted by now.
“Ah, that.”
“So what is the version the public doesn’t know about?” I say, pretending I didn’t hear it from the March Hare. I’d like to hear the Pillar’s version.
A moment of silence passes before he continues. “This garden was created by the lunatic scientist you met in the secret asylum they call the Hole.” The Pillar lowers his voice, as if reading a children’s mystery novel in a book club. “Who in reality is the March Hare, another Wonderland character thrown out into this world.”
“So what?” I shake my shoulders. “This isn’t the first Wonderland character who lives a completely different life in the modern world and excels at it. Like Fabiola.”
“Indeed, but the March Hare designed this garden for a reason,” the Pillar says. “The March Hare mapped the Garden of Cosmic Speculation after his faint memory of what Wonderland really looked like. That’s what they don’t tell you on Wikipedia.”
“Because he wanted to find a way back to Wonderland,” the Pillar explains. “Jittery is one of the most sentimental people/hares. He wasn’t in tune with living in this modern world. He didn’t like it. He thought it was utterly harsh, insane, and rubbish. Unlike others, he looked for you all the time.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you, Alice. He believed you can take him back to Wonderland.”
“But you need Six Impossible Keys to go back.” I am not even going to discuss the fact characters like the Cheshire did their best to
Wonderland. So why go back?
“Of course you need the keys to go back.” The Pillar drags from his bagpipe some more. “Jittery, however, claimed he found a magical way back. Some kind of a cosmic spell.”
“By replicating Wonderland in real life?” I am just guessing.
The Pillar nods. “It’s some kind of bizarre wishful thinking, if you ask me. I never paid attention to the idea. I believe the March Hare was just nostalgic, unable to live in the mad world we live in now. Replicating Wonderland helped him cope with his own insanity. The March Hare had always been a child in a grown man/rabbit’s body.”
“So the Garden of Cosmic Speculation is actually a replica of Wonderland?” I think this is insane, but also incredibly fascinating. It means we have some kind of clue of how Wonderland looked like.
“Not exactly,” the Pillar says, debunking my speculations. “But it works fine as a map. Meaning the distance and location of places is very similar to Wonderland, although he changed the names of locations to sound modern and scientific.”
“That’s why you didn’t know what Snail Mound is.”
The Pillar nods.
“So why does this Hatter hide the rabbit in the garden?” I ask.