How did the Cheshire leave the room without opening the door? And why is he mirroring my footsteps? He must be trying to scare me, that's all.
I grip the door handle, my mallet ready in my other hand. A deep breath helps me to lower my blood pressure, just enough to think straight. All I have to do is pull the door open and then hit hard. That's it. I hope I am really thinking straight. I have no combat training, after all—or if I did, I don't remember it.
I grip the door tighter, and then pull.
I didn't expect that. But like the Cheshire said, the door is locked.
The keychain in the mortician's hand!
I turn around to go fetch the keys from the woman's hands, only to see her standing on her feet again. There is a slight problem with her posture now. She has her head chopped off and holds it in one hand. The other hand holding the keys.
"Looking for these?" She grins.
The Cheshire is back. Who was approaching the door from the other side?
The horrible scene chains me for a moment. But I am about to run full throttle against the Cheshire and hit him. Let's get done with this.
The door behind me suddenly flings open.
I close my eyes, as I suppose another Cheshire-possessed human is behind me. How am I supposed to kill him? Am I supposed to kill the nine of them?
"Alice!" a voice calls from behind me. "Here you are!"
A hefty smile forms on my face. The voice behind the smile is so dear to me. It's Jack Diamonds.
The mortician's face knots in anger when she hears Jack Diamonds' voice. Jack prefers not to enter the room. It's hard to understand why. He just opened the door from the other side. The Cheshire can't actually see Jack from this angle. I haven't seen Jack yet either; I've only heard his voice.
It drives the woman mad that someone is saving me.
"Come on, Alice," Jack urges me. I can only see his hand, reaching out from behind the door. "It's so cold where you are. I don't think I can get in."
"But I have to kill him first, Jack," I say.
"Kill who? Is there is someone with you in the room?" He wiggles his hand. "They are all dead."
"Who are you talking to, Alice?" the Cheshire blurts in anger. "There is no one there behind the door."
"Don't play games with me, Cheshire." I raise my mallet, ready to strike, as he is approaching again. "Who else do you think opened the door from outside?"
"I don't know." He shakes his shoulders and puts his head on. Sometimes, I really don't understand his intentions. Is he trying to give me a message so I continue my investigation, or is he trying to hurt me? The more time I spend with him, the more nothing makes sense. "But I know there is no one out there." Now he grins again. "And I know you can't kill me. You might have wounded and injured a poor woman, but you can't kill me."
"Alice!" Jack finally pulls me outside. He does it fast and with a bang. Never have I thought he was that strong. He pulls the door behind me and locks it with a digital code on a pad next to the wall. The code is 1862. The date in my vision when I met Lewis was 1862. What are all these puzzles, and what are they supposed to mean?
"Are you okay?" His hands search my face, looking for a bruise. He makes sure I am all right. Never have I seen someone so concerned about me. "Thank God you're okay, Alice. I was so worried." His cuteness doesn't match his seriousness, but it's understandable. When I lay my eyes on Jack, all I think about is fun.
"I am so glad to see you, Jack." I wrap my hands around him as he touches my face with his gentle hands. His touch is warm. I need it, even inside a morgue.
I hit him lightly on the chest while I am in his arms. His silly jokes make me think this world isn't worth any anger. I wish I could be like him.
"I was thinking about you, Jack." I stare at the closed door, waiting for the Cheshire to open it from inside at any moment. "You make me feel..."
"Funny?" His hands run through my hair. I can feel his breath on my ears.
I nod.
"You're a funny girl, too," he says. "You just have bad taste in clothes. Always stained with blood."
"Come on, you confessed you liked me in the Vatican. I heard you in the booth," I tease.
"Guilty as charged." He raises a hand to his chest.
"We have to go, Jack." I stare at the door. "He has a key."
"Who has a key?"
"The Cheshire."
"Who?"
"You remember the nasty old woman chasing me in Belgium?"
"Wow. She must hate you so much." He rolls his eyes, not even questioning what is happening.
I nod, not having the strength to explain.
Suddenly, sirens blare outside the asylum as we speak. I gaze at Jack for an explanation.
"It's the police," he says. "We need to get you out of here."
"I guess someone reported suspicious activity in the morgue," Jack says. "We need to hide from the police. They will not understand."
"What will they not understand, exactly? I have no idea what's really happening."
"Nor do I, Alice," he says. "But it doesn't matter. What matters is we're together. Come on." He pulls my hand and walks me to a side door leading to another doctor's room. I look behind me one last time, wondering why the Cheshire didn't come out. Maybe it's the code Jack entered. Does it prevent the door from getting opened manually with a key?
"Jack, where did you get that code you just entered for the door?" I turn to him.
"There is senior nurse who I saw use it on all other doors, so I gave it a try," he replies. "Let's rid you of this thing in your hand." He tries to pull the mallet away as he closes the door behind us. It's a doctor's private room. "You look like a maniac."
It shocks me that my grip is still tight on the mallet. I can't give it away. My hands are stiffened with fear.
"It's all right, Alice." He gazes straight into my eyes. "It's me, Jack. I won't hurt you." He loosens my hand, finger by finger.
The sirens are getting closer outside.
"Wear this." He hands me a nurse's uniform from the wardrobe. A pair of nerdy glasses and shoes he'd brought from a storage room nearby complete the ensemble. "You will pretend you're the nurse, and I will hide in one of these." He points at one of the death bags on the tables. There are three of them. "You play the nurse and I play dead." He smiles. "Don't forget the nametag." He hands it over. "All you have to do is pull me out and tell the police there were intruders in the morgue. It's common. Thieves love to steal corpses and sell them."
"You think it will work?"
"It's the only chance we have," he says. "Neither of us know what to tell the police when they arrive. Now I have to turn around, so you dress up."
We both turn to opposite sides as the sound of police cars surrounds the morgue. I peek over my shoulder and see if he is checking me out while I am getting dressed.
He is.
But he turns around and clears his throat once I see him. I blush and turn back, facing the wall. I feel awkward being the weak one with Jack, now that my heart is unconditionally open to him. I wonder how intimate we were when he was Adam, my boyfriend. I know we were in love because my heart tells me so, but how intimate?
"Jack," I say, unbuttoning.
"Yes?"
I am contemplating asking him if he knows anything about our past lives, but don't want to turn him away if he thinks I am crazy. "How do you always find me?" I ask instead.
"I don't know, really," he says. "It's strange. I'll be sitting somewhere, and then feel this need to see you. This intuition that you are in danger. And suddenly I find myself near you."
I don't know what to think of that. I pull on the nurse's dress and glasses.
"And you?" he asks. His voice is muffled now, having zipped himself inside the bag.
"Excuse me?" I put on the glasses.
"Aren't you going to tell me where you live so I can pick you up for our postponed date?"
I turn around and smile at his persistence. My face changes when I realize I can't tell him I live in an asylum. He might be a weird guy. But I am nutcase. At least my life fits a nutcase. The song "I am a Nut" replays in my head.
"If we survive this, I might tell you," I say as I roll the bed out to the entrance.
Outside, the main doors spring open, and an endless horde of men with guns enter. I am surprised when they greet me with concern. They ask me if I am all right.
I play shocked for a while and recite the story Jack told me. I point at the Cheshire's room. Funny how they buy it. There aren't any signs of breaking in. But they believe me. They are good to me. Maybe it's my looks, wearing a nurse's outfit.
Is that what the world asks of me? To blend in? A nurse's outfit or a doctor's would do the job? Is that mandatory to fit into any society, to become a recognizable stereotype?
I feel like I've had too much Pillar in my head lately.
Still rolling the bed toward the main door, I am expecting to meet the Pillar's chauffeur on the way.
"Wait!" Someone summons me right before I leave through the main door.
I turn around, and it's another nurse. A buff policeman stands proudly next to her. I hope my cover isn't blown.
"Yes?" I adjust my glasses and wiggle my nose.
"Who's that you are taking out?" the nurse asks.
"A patient who'd been wrongly admitted about an hour ago." I twist the truth. "An ambulance is waiting for him outside to transfer him to another morgue."
"Him?" Her face knots as she reads the charts.
"Oh, silly me." I play nerd of all nerds. "I mean her. It's a deceased girl."
"What's her name again?"
I shrug. "Wonder," I say. "Alice Wonder."
"Hmm..." She nods as the curious officer peeks into her charts.
"She died in a bus accident."
"Oh. That's right." The nurse points at the name on the chart. "Poor girl. She killed her friends, driving a bus herself."
"Really?" I try not to grimace.
"Aren't you from around here?" The police officer chuckles, hands proudly tucked in his belt. "The incident was all over the news a few months ago," Mr. Know-it-all says.
"Ah, I've only worked here for a month." I smile like a weird girl. What am I doing about the fact that it's impossible the corpse is still unharmed when it's a few months old? Why would I be moving it at this point? "I am from a small town near Oxford."
"That's why," the nurse says. "Haven't seen you here before. You're good to go." She waves a hand without looking at me.
"Thank you," I say. "But wasn't this girl admitted to an asylum?"
"Nonsense." The policeman laughs with the nurse. "It's such a rumor. She is dead like the rest. How could she survive the accident when the rest died?"
"Then how did you know she killed them?"
"A note, honey," the nurse says. "She left a note with her sisters before she did it. You talk too much. Now get going. They say we have an injured mortician inside."
I nod and roll Jack outside.
A few strides into the red-and-blue-glaring street, the chauffeur, dressed as a medical driver, approaches me. It takes him a moment to realize I am the one rolling the bed, not the one inside it.
"I believe things didn't go as planned," he says in his mousy voice. Seriously, he has to shave the whiskers off. I shake my head as he ushers me toward the ambulance.
"We thought so when it took you too long to leave the morgue." He opens the back doors for me. "The toe tag prank was the Cheshire's, by the way," he says, and stops me from rolling the bed inside. "Don't ask me how he knew you'd be at the morgue. I guess he expected it."
"A friend is hiding inside," I whisper.
"A friend?" The chauffeur's mousy ears pop out like two pointed parachutes. "Who?"
"His name is Jack."
Suspiciously, the chauffeur zips the bag open, and then stares with confusion at me.
I don't understand the conflict at first. But then I look into the bag. There is no Jack inside. Just the corpse of some guy I don't know.
The nameless corpse is stretched on the ledge between us. The cold metal of the ambulance is set against my back. The chauffeur is driving us to the outskirts of London, so we take the Pillar's limousine back to Oxford and then to the asylum. He is struggling with activating the ambulance's siren, slowing us down. Foolishly, he sticks his head out of the window and yells, "Wee-woo. Wee-woo!" at the dense traffic so they will make way. "Wee-woo. Wee-woo," he repeats. "Ambulance! Dead man in here. Make way!"
I pretend I never saw this happen, and gaze at the Pillar, who is genuinely amused by the corpse in the middle.
The Pillar cocks his head, sucking on a mini hookah with a sticker saying,
The Pillar is interested in the corpse's mouth, touching it and inspecting it. He hands me his hookah for a moment and uses both hands, trying to make the dead man smile.
"It's a shame you can't smile when on your way to meet your maker," he says to the dead. "You don't want to leave a bad impression when meeting Him. It will be the most important interview in your afterlife." He winks at me and pulls his hookah back.
"Hey," he calls his Chauffeur. "If I told you that this miserable corpse"—he stops and points at the deceased—"is too tired to fly up there and meet his maker, what solution would you suggest?"