Lewis pulled up the last drink to his mouth, which I later learned was poisonous – the kind of poison that strangely worked after the seventh sip – and gulped, glaring at the guest with a challenging stare.
"Don't worry," the guest says. "It won’t hurt. You will be dead in seconds."
Lewis' face was reddening and he appeared to be choking when he said, "I am sorry Wonderlanders. I failed you."
"Don't be hard on yourself," the guest stood up and patted him. "You were killed by Death himself. Like I said, I never lost a game of chess, not when my opponents played for their lives," his laughter escalated. "Of all those whom I appeared to and challenged with the game of chess, no one ever beat me; and I doubt anyone will. But to tell the truth, nothing feels as good as killing you."
"But you won't be able to kill her," Lewis clung to the edge of the table while on his knees, chess pieces rolling left and right on the floor. "I hid the pieces from my bones."
I shivered in place, watching my brother die, and listening to a man claiming to be Death itself.
And then the cloaked man turned and faced me.
In my mind I wanted to run, but my limbs were frozen. Even though he was an old man with a silly moustache, something inside me assured me that I was looking Death in the eyes.
“Don’t worry,” he brushed at his moustache. “I won’t kill you. Your time hasn’t come yet.”
I stood speechless and paralyzed with fear, clinging to the door’s frame.
“But when it does, I will come for you,” he craned his head closer. “And I will challenge you in a game of chess, and I will win,” he laughed proudly again. “What? Did you think it was the Grimm Reaper, some spooky guy with a scythe coming for you when your time comes?” he turned to face Lewis for one last time. “Rest in peace, Wonderland man," Death said. "As for Alice, I will settle for nothing than watching her burn in an eternal hell.”
Chapter 43
Tibet’s Autonomous Region
The storm ends the minute I finish the last sentence from Lewis Carroll sister’s diary. Even though, I don’t rise from underneath my coat yet. I’m not sure what I really read. The shock of reading this way outweighs the mystery of the storm.
Is the Chessmaster really Death? Then what does he want to protect himself from? And why does he want me to burn in hell?
And all aside, how can you kill Death?
My coat furls off by itself, and I feel the sudden chill of cold outside. The world around me is an endless whiteout; I can’t see anything before me. Propping myself up on my knees, the storm snatches the notes away from my hands and swirls them upward. The notes are swallowed by the thickness of white, but I am not worried. I know what I’ve read, and have memorized it.
So the Chessmaster killed Lewis Carroll? If so what’s Carolus doing in this world? Why did Carolus even bother to fool me into killing him earlier? So many unanswered questions. The one thing that seems clear to me is that Wonderlanders — and maybe humans — die playing a last chess game against the unbeatable Chessmaster.
Is that really how people die? Does the Grim Reaper give them a last chance in a game of chess? Who’d have thought?
Out of the silence surrounding me, I suddenly hear heavy breathing, but can’t see anything.
“Who’s there?” I inquire.
I wonder if it’s the Dude; that mysterious guardian of mine. Why does he do this, and who is he?
Suddenly a bloody hand slithers out of the thickness of white snow. A gloved hand, covered in blood, stiffening like a predator’s claws.
“Don’t worry, I’m not Freddy Kruger from Nightmare on Elm Street,” The Pillar pants, his head protruding out.
I let out a shattered laugh. “You’re alive!”
“Of course I am alive,” he coughs, crawling toward me on all fours. “In fact, I’m a caterpillar. I may not have been born into a butterfly yet.”
My laugh splinters into tiny sighs when I see his face. What has the giant done to him? The Pillar is scarred on the cheeks and the forehead — the giant certainly pulled out that balding wig as well. There is a wild, thick slash underneath his neck, right about on his chest bone, which shows because his cloths are cut left and right, all but his white gloves on his hands.
I am speechless, feeling guilty, I should have helped him.
“I could use a Hookah right now,” he lays his head on my lap. “I’d smoke the pain away.”
“You killed the giant?” I brush my hand through his hair.
“Ever seen Fight Club, the movie? It was the same down there. But yes, I killed the giant.”
“You should have let me help?”
“You’re more important than me.” he coughs a trail of blood on the white snow. “I’m just a nutty professor; Indiana Jones at best.”
“Severus Snape, I’d say.” I want to laugh but can’t. “And what’s with you and the movies today? I bet the monks never went to New York. It was you who taught them the American slang.”
“You’re too smart, Alice. It may kill you,” he says with beady eyes. “Did you ever notice ignorant and stupid people live happier — longer?”
“I did,” I say. “Only they never live to have such adventures life like you and I. And hey, don’t buy into this future thing. I’m not going to kill you, ever!”
“That’s like saying I won’t let Jesus be crucified if I go back in time,” The Pillar says in his most morbidly sarcastic way. Who can blame a man so much in pain now? “I’m not afraid of dying.”
“I won’t kill you.” I shake his head in my hands. “Do you hear me?”
“If you keep shaking my fragile head like that, you’ll actually kill me now.”
“I’m sorry.” I pat him and stop it. “Why didn’t you fight the giant back, Pillar? Why did you let him hit you so many times, for God’s sake?”
“You mean ‘for Todd’s sake.’” he tries to wink but his eyebrows are stiffened by his wounds. “I had to let the giant hit me so I can win.”
“What kind of logic is that?”
“It’s a known None Fu technique. It’s called ‘He Who Laughs Last.’”
“Never heard of it. And it doesn’t make sense. He could have killed you before you had your last laugh.”
“True, but you see, the idea is that the big troll was too strong so I’d never had a chance to fight him like a man, not even choke him with my hookah if I had it with me,” he says. “The trick when fighting an unbeatable opponent is not to play their game.”
“I’m not sure I get it.” I use the edge of the coat’s sleeve and dry some of his blood.
“In every war, there is one person reacting to the other, Alice,” he says. “Like when a terrorist blows up a building. Suddenly he becomes the master of the game, because he sets the rules. Most people fall in that trap and play it his way.”
“Which is the normal turn of events.”
“No it’s not. He who makes the rules of the game always wins — like the Chessmaster. So when the enemy enforces their rules, the one way out is not to abide by them.”
“Are you saying you repeatedly told the giant to hit you so you’d become the one who makes the rules?”
“That’s right. Instead of playing his game, I was now playing mine with my rules.”
“But he could have killed you.”
“Common sense certainly endorses the idea, but no, not when he never knew why I asked him to hit me. Every time he hit me and I laughed at him and asked more, he was puzzled, wondering what was really going on?”
“And what was really going on, Pillar?”
“I was wearing him out.”
“You must be joking.”
“I’m not. Think of it. Giants like him kill with one stroke. It’s their norm. Like most ruthless villains in this world, they’re not used to a prolonged fight. All I had to do was to make sure I take minimal damage with each hit until he became frustrated with me. Bit by bit, his confidence in himself diminished, his perception of his giant self thinned, and he started to doubt himself just like any of us, because I didn’t die or collapse — and took it to the chin and laughed. I was just a boxing sack with thick skin — or will — hit over and over again and smiling back at him. I was like all of us, any of us, suffering each day to make it through, and he, being a giant, had never seen such strength.”