The Pillar and I are perplexed at this sick wack. I wonder why people like him aren’t institutionalized in the asylum.
The man frees himself from the Pillar. “Are you ready for the last question?”
“The suspense is killing me.” The Pillar rolls his eyes.
“Like I said before, the Hatter says only one girl can catch the rabbit,” the homeless man says.
“Mary Ann,” I interrupt. “Who is Mary Ann?”
The man turns around and runs away. When I am about to chase him, the Pillar grips my hand again. “Let him go, Alice. I know who Mary Ann is now. I should have put it together from the beginning.” He sighs then scans his surroundings, as if he is looking for someone.
“What is going on? Who is Mary Ann?” I ask him. “And how is she supposed to lead us to the rabbit’s whereabouts?”
“You seriously don’t know?” He looks straight into my eyes, as if I should. “I mean, I didn’t get it first, but I’m surprised you didn’t, too. I thought you knew Lewis Carroll’s book by heart.”
“There is a Mary Ann in the book?” I say as the memory hits me. It’s just a trivial sentence in the White Rabbit chapter, a detail everyone usually overlooks. “I get it now.” I feel like I am in a haze. “When the White Rabbit first meets Alice in the book, he mistakes her for someone. The rabbit says, ‘Why, Mary Ann, what are you doing out here?’
“Mary Ann is me?” I sound as if I’m asking, but deep inside I know it's a fact. I can't tell why I am sure about it. “This whole game was to tell me it’s
But why him? What did the Queen of England want with him? Did she know who he really was?
Something was wrong here. Very wrong.
Like a mad thief, I am climbing up the water pipe leading to my room in the house I supposedly lived at in the past. The Pillar waits by the corner of the streets to make sure no one sees me. Two-thirds of my climb up, I ask myself who I really am, and what in the world is happening all around me. When I almost slip and fall, I forget all about it and realize that sometimes in life all we can do is keep climbing, even when it doesn’t make any sense anymore.
I guess it’s some sort of survival mechanism for those who have no clue to what the snicker snack is going on with their lives.
At the top of the pipe, I look down at the Pillar, making sure this is my room I am about to enter. He nods and pulls out binoculars. He begins to track my sisters’ movements downstairs while I find the window to my room half open. I have very little time to get this done. About ten minutes.
There is a pot of tiger lilies by the windowsill of my room. It reminds of Jack. But I can’t afford remembering what happened to him at the Fat Duck restaurant right now. I avoid the lilies and try not to make a sound while I get inside.
The reason why I am here is the clue left by the Hatter. If I am supposed to be Mary Ann, according to the White Rabbit chapter in
Run home this moment, and fetch me a pair of gloves and a fan! Quick, now!
I am back
Now I only have nine minutes to get this done.
The room means nothing to me. Nothing. I don’t remember being here before. I don’t remember sleeping in this bed or playing inside these four walls. I don’t remember a mother tucking me into bed at night, nor do I remember playing with my sisters.
The room is strangely covered in yellow wallpaper, which also means nothing to me—what child has yellow wallpaper in her room? It reminds me of the asylum. The Pillar told me once that Alice’s dress was yellow in the original copy of the book, a gesture of madness.
As I rummage for the gloves and the fan, I wonder if I could sink deeper into my memories. How deep should I dig to get there? Will I ever remember what happened to me when I was seven years old, claiming I fell in a rabbit hole? Why don’t I have even one single memory of my younger self?
Eight minutes to go.
I shake the useless thoughts away, and think about saving lives by stopping the bomb.
It takes me a few seconds to actually find what I am looking for. It’s too simple to be true.
There is an exquisite fan tucked in the bottom of my lower drawer near the bed. It’s a bit old, although intact and unused. When I open it, I see pictures of tiger lilies, pink umbrellas, and golden keys, like the one Lewis gave me. This is definitely the fan I am looking for. It definitely belongs to me. But how is it supposed to help me stop the bomb?
I rummage further through the huge drawer. Far in the back, I find a pair of white gloves. They are small, maybe belonging to a ten- or eleven-year-old. One of the gloves is a bit heavy. There is something inside. I delve into it, and I find a small cell phone.
I push the ON button and look through the contact list. It’s the first thing that comes to mind. But there are no contacts. So what’s the point of it being in there?
Did I miss something? Finding the gloves in the drawer, and the phone inside, is enough evidence that I am following the clues the way the Hatter planned.
Then I hear a beep. It’s a message. No, it’s a picture. I tap my feet impatiently, waiting for it to load while I try to keep an alert ear in case one of my sisters decides to enter the room all of a sudden.
While the picture loads, the phone shows a rabbit late for an important date, running around a green garden.
I have only six minutes to go.
The picture finally loads.
When I see it, I clap my hand on my mouth, suppressing a shriek. My stomach churns. I can’t believe what I am looking at.
Edith pulled her gloves off and picked up her phone. She read the message. Her face began to twitch. Having seen a lot of mad things in her life, surprising her wasn’t easy anymore. But this message was different. Calling it scary was an understatement. It meant that someone knew one of her family’s biggest secrets.
Edith put the phone down and watched Lorina breathe on her recently manicured fingernails while watching TV. A reality show about teenagers aspiring to become professional models.
Looking over Lorina’s shoulder, Edith sighed. She was staring at an invisible memory. A seven-year-old Alice Wonder standing by the door with a glinting knife in her hand, blood trickling from her dress.
A recurring and haunting memory.
Usually Edith couldn’t see Alice’s face clearly in this memory. She always wondered why. Maybe because she wanted to suppress that horrible event and leave it behind.
The easiest way to deal with maddening events had always been neglect, as if nothing ever happened.
Edith snapped herself out of it, still remembering how Alice had tried to fool her last time, when she sent that girl from the Drury Lane Theatre to search her room for clues about the bus accident.
It was unlikely. Lorina and Edith had cleaned the room of major clues years ago. They had only left Alice's clothes and toys, at the request of their too sentimental mother.
Alice was looking for clues of her past in the wrong direction anyway. But it still bothered Edith—it wasn’t exactly the accident that gave away the truth; it was an older memory suppressed under the burden of shock therapy and medications in Alice’s mind.
And now, there was this message Edith had just received.
“Lorina?” Edith said.
“Hmm?” Lorina was still watching the show while waving a small fan at her fingernails instead of breathing on them.
“I just received a strange message.”
“Delete it,” Lorina said nonchalantly. “Unless they’re messages from cute boys—I delete messages all the time. Mum’s on top of the list.”
“This is different,” Edith said. “You need to pay attention.”
“I am.” Lorina pointed at the TV. “Did this girl really think she could become a model? In a barn, maybe.”
“The message says”—Edith shrugged—“‘
“What do you mean ‘just that’?” Edith began chopping carrots again, trying to silence her inner sirens of anxiety. “Very few people know about the circus.”
“It says 'the Event' but not the other word, right?"
"Are we supposed to wait for the other word? Why would someone send
“It could be a prank.” Lorina shook her shoulders.
“It seems un”—
—“like”—
—“ly.”
.
Edith accidentally cut herself. She wasn’t wearing the gloves this time. She dropped the knife but didn’t care to wash her hand. The pain could wait.
“Cut yourself, sis?” Lorina smiled.
Edith neglected her younger sister’s sinister curiosity, and began rinsing the bleeding finger under the faucet. When she turned around to look for a handkerchief, she found none. But there was something hung on the wall. Something she could use. A dress. One she had long forgotten about. It was of a small size, and it looked old. Dried bloodstains still stuck to it. Edith didn’t want to see that dress. It had been always Lorina’s morbid idea to keep it. Edith sighed and used it to dry her hands, then turned and faced Lorina again. “I think someone knows,” she told her again.
“Knows what exactly?” Lorina said impatiently.
“Someone knows what really happened to Alice.” Edith shrugged.
Chapter 17
The picture is actually a live video of a young girl, wearing an Alice-like dress. The girl is sitting among her friends in what seems like a kindergarten. She is holding a white rabbit in her arms. Other kids surrounding her are playing and patting the cute rabbit.
When the rabbit hiccups, it glows slightly red. However, the children seem to think it’s cute. They’re infatuated with the rabbit in the absence of teachers.
I grit my teeth at the Hatter’s cruelty. How can he do this to the children? It’s only five minutes to explosion. My heart sinks into my stomach. I feel this unexplainable haze in my mind, pressuring me again. Should I have taken my medication before leaving the asylum today?
It’s only a moment before my phone beeps again. A written message this time. The sender’s name: the Hatter.
Without even thinking, or consulting the Pillar, I message him back. My hands are trembling as I do. The picture of the kids about to be exploded by a rabbit already haunts me.