"Why kill kids who are overweight?"
"Are you afraid to say 'fat' kids?" She smirks. "Is that politically incorrect? Is the blunt truth always politically incorrect?"
"Wow. You do have a grudge against 'fat' kids." I don't like the sound of it on my tongue, but I need to speak his insane language so I can read between the lines.
"You will understand what I mean if you figure it out, Nancy Drew." She breathes into her paws. "You and your hookah-smoking Inspector Gadget." This seems to amuse him to death.
"If this is an old grudge between you and the Pillar—"
"It's not that," she cuts in.
"If it's about the grudge you hold against humanity, please remember that this happened so long ago." I don't even know what I am doing, conversing with the enemy.
"Nothing is long ago." She still scans my face, as if she wants to spot evidence of me being the Real Alice. I catch her/him staring at my neck as well. "Don't you watch the news? Humans are walky-talky apes, still stained with barbaric behaviors after so many centuries of evolution. They might dress better, talk mellower, and invent cool gadgets. They will say that they prefer love over war, but it's all nonsense. Humans are still monsters. Always will be." He stops and takes a breath, not finding what he was looking for in me. "But then, all my grudges aren't what the Wonderland War is about."
"What is it about, then?" If the Pillar refuses to tell, do I expect the Cheshire to?
"If you were the Alice, you would've known," he says. "Right now, I need to put you to continued tests, until you prove you're her."
"By killing children?" I can't digest his logic.
"Whatever it takes," he says. "Besides, you can still minimize the killings by solving the riddles." He cocks his head with another grin. "Think of it as a Catch-22. Either you don't solve the riddles and I keep allowing the murders, or you solve the riddle, I know you're the Alice, and we start the Wonderland Wars." He rubs his claws together.
"What kind of sick lunatic are you?"
"The unkind type," the mortician sneers. "Let's not waste time, Alice." She starts smoothening her fingernails with one of the metallic instruments on the tables. "You were smart enough to get the muffin message, and smarter to realize all the victims are fat kids." He cocks his head at me as I glimpse a mallet resting against the wall behind the tables. Why is there a mallet in a morgue? "I see that you and your Pillar haven't benefited wisely from the clues I left you." Although spoken in a woman's voice, it has this sinister undertone to it. Something I can't explain. Something only nightmares can produce. "So here is my final clue." He raises a hand in the air, his thumb and middle finger close enough it looks like he is about to snap them. "Are you ready for my major clue, Alice?"
"I am." I'd say yes to anything until I get close to that mallet. I need to have some weapon prepared.
The Cheshire snaps his fingers, and a few corpses on his left and right come to life. They abruptly sit straight up and grin at me. Four on his left. Four on his right.
I freeze in place.
I barely learned how to deal with lunatics—other than myself, some might argue. But I am not prepared to deal with the living dead. This is beyond absurd. Why are there eight corpses coming to life?
"You didn't know I can possess nine lives at the same time?" She laughs, picking up two fork-like instruments from the table. What is she going to do, cut them open? "I can even possess them when they are dead. How kewl is that?" The Cheshire seems to be catching up on the lingo. "Let's dance, Alice. Let's dance."
I really wish I was mad now. This can't be happening.
Chapter 19
The two instruments in the Cheshire's hands are used in the most unusual way. I never expected it.
He waves them at the corpses, like a conductor guiding his musicians in an orchestra. On cue, the eight living-dead corpses on the table prepare to chant a melody of sorts.
I grimace, confused, perplexed, and overwhelmed as I watch the first headless corpse pick up its head. It adjusts it slightly off above the neck, and begins singing:
"Do you know the Muffin Man?"
It says it as if it's an obedient girl in school—she is actually one of the five kids. Then she tilts her loose head toward her friend on the table next to her. The other corpse fiddles with his chopped-off head, unable to place it correctly. So he decides to hold it out in both hands, and let it do the singing:
"The Muffin Man, the Muffin Man?"
The corpse shakes its own head to the left and right when it says "Muffin Man," like a happy kid in a school choir. The head in the hand swivels toward the next corpse, indicating its turn. The third corpse has its head placed upside down on its neck, still good enough for singing with upside-down lips:
"Do you know the Muffin Man?'
It repeats the phrase, arching an eyebrow at the fourth corpse—downward, of course. The fourth corpse doesn't belong to the Watermelon crimes. Some old lady with an intact head, almost seventy, dressed as a cook with big a white hat. Her face is burned—she must have died in an oven, my guess. The lady finishes the rhymes with a raspy but faint voice.
"Who lives on Drury Lane?"
This time the old lady looks at me with no teeth.
I am not going to remove my head and sing a song!
The Cheshire gazes at me. So do the other four corpses on his right. "One more time." The Cheshire waves his forks. "With feeling!"
In unison they sing it all once more:
"Do you know the Muffin Man?
The Muffin Man, the Muffin Man?
Do you know the Muffin Man?
Who lives on Drury Lane?"
Following the Cheshire's conducting, they end the verse with a double clap from their dead, blood-stricken hands.
And then they repeat it. Louder.
I hold my head with both hands and consider screaming. Rarely does screaming solve any problems, I know.
If there is a clue, again, I don't get it. If the Cheshire's intention is to drive me insane, he has done an exceptional job. If none of this is really happening and I am just imagining it, I'd prefer shock therapy in the Mush Room over singing corpses in a morgue. I feel like Alice in the book, falling down an endless rabbit hole where the falling will never stop.
As they keep singing, the desire to hit the Cheshire grows inside me. I step forward and pick up the mallet, my hands trembling. I want to hit the Cheshire so the madness stops. It's not like me, but I've lost it. The pressure is too much. And their voices too noisy. It's all become too much.
I raise the mallet in the air and plod closer to him. He doesn't move. His grin widens.
"Are you going to hit a fat, poor mortician woman, Alice?" he asks calmly, backed up with the maddening rhyme. "You don't know if she has children, takes care of a mother or a husband, Alice. You can't do that to her."
"I can!" I flip the mallet back to gain momentum. "The madness has to stop!"