The Pillar sinks deeper into this chair, shielding his face with his arms. The look on his face is priceless. He stares at me and says, “Is the hookah you’re smoking that good?”
Chapter 67
THE PRESENT: INSIDE THE INKLINGS, OXFORD
“What’s going on with her?” Fabiola said. “What’s happening to Alice?”
“Not good,” Mr. Tick said, reading the paper, some unearthly publication called Newsweek. No, it was actually called Nextweek. “Tell her, Mrs. Tock.”
“Alice can’t find Jack,” Mrs. Tock explained.
“So?” Fabiola said.
“She can’t save him.”
“I don’t care about Jack. What about her Wonder?”
“Well, she can’t find that either.” Mrs. Tock seemed worried. Unlike earlier when she had all the fun, now she knew if Alice died, they couldn’t get the keys.
“Good,” Fabiola said.
“Good?”
“As long as she can’t find her Wonder, she will die in the past.” Fabiola sat down, relieved.
“Really?” Mrs. Tock said. “You want her to die?”
“The Real Alice must die.”
“I thought you loved her,” Mrs. Tock said. “You’ve repeatedly helped her fight monsters.”
“Thinking she was a regular girl doing good in the world.”
“And letting her think she is Alice?”
“We’re all delusional.” Fabiola didn’t mind her blunt deflations. “If it serves the good cause, so be it.”
“And now you want her to die in her past, even though you know she may change and become good in the future? Aren’t humans always redeemable? What about absolution?”
“Don’t feed me the words I fed the world when I was in the Vatican,” Fabiola said. “Evil has to be cut from its roots.”
“Well, she still has a chance to live,” Mrs. Tock teased her.
“How so?” Fabiola stood up.
“She found the Pillar.”
“The Pillar? The day of the accident?”
“Yes.”
“The Pillar was useless that day,” Fabiola said. “His memory was wiped out a year earlier at the time.”
“Is that so?” Mr. Tick lowered his newspaper. “I don’t quite remember it, Mrs. Tock.”
“That’s because we’ve got a lot of things to remember. Hundreds of thousands of years of memory mess up our memories.”
“What happened to him?” Mr. Tick scratched his cantaloupe head.
“I think someone secretly fed him a string of Lullaby pills to put him to rest.” Mrs. Tock scratched her head as well, hoping to scratch a memory out of it. “I wonder who.”
“Maybe if you scratch my head you will remember,” Mr. Tick offered.
“Thanks, dear husband, for allowing me to scratch your head,” Mrs. Tock said. “But I’m afraid if I scratch it you’d lose one of your hairies, and blame it on me.”
“Wise woman,” Mr. Tick said. “Remind me again, why did I marry you?”
“That was a long time ago.” She sighed. “I don’t even remember when.”
“Not even me,” he said. “But I think I remember a big bang rocking this world that day.”
“That’d be our wedding bells, Mr. Tick.” Mrs. Tock patted him, turning back to Fabiola. “So anyways, even though Alice found the Pillar, she can’t make it, right?”
“I don’t think so,” Fabiola said. “At this point the Pillar hardly remembered anything.”
“I’m disappointed. I really wanted to see the Real Alice live,” Mrs. Tock said. “I still can’t understand who was able to fool the Pillar into swallowing Lullaby pills. This has to be someone as devious as devils.”
“It was me,” Fabiola said. “I had to do it.”
Chapter 68
THE PAST: OXFORD UNIVERSITY
For a whole hour I keep pushing the Pillar to the edges. Until something happens. A headache so severe he drops to the floor, just like Lewis Carroll did a million times. I wonder if this is the moment when another Carolus surfaces out of the Pillar.
But it doesn’t happen that way.
“I think I remember something. But I’m not sure what.”
“I can help you remember more.” I help him stand up. “Does Fabiola ring a bell?”
“The nun from the Vatican?”
“The White Queen, actually.”
“Don’t be silly,” the Pillar says. “Next thing you’ll tell me the Queen of England is the Queen of Hearts.”
“It hasn’t happened yet, but yes, she will be.”
The Pillar stops then ruffles his hair. He hasn’t yet acquired a hat at this point.
“How about you will kill twelve people in the next two years?”
He laughs, adjust his glasses, and says, “Me?” He raises an eyebrow. “I don’t even know how to use a gun.”
“Of course you do. Someone has wiped out your memory or something. I can’t figure it out.”
“I can shoot a gun?” He thinks it’s cool. “I prefer a whip, like Indy.”
“Stop it!” I say. “You’re much more…”
“Much more what?”
I don’t tell him the crazy killer he is going to become. I shouldn’t have told him about the twelve men as well. What if he has a chance to become a different person?
“Oh.” He jumps on his desk with his hookah hose in one hand. “I will kill them with this.”
Some things never change. I am starting to worry Mrs. Tock is right. I will not be able to change anything.
“A brilliant idea.” He examines his hookah. “I’ve always thought it could be a weapon. But I wouldn’t tell anyone. They’d think I’m weird.”
“How about love?” I ask him. “You remember loving Fabiola?”
“Who wants to love a nun in the Vatican?” he says. “Is that even legal?” Then his eyes glitter. “I’m really going to be that bad? Seducing a nun?”
“Forget about it.” I rest my hands on my hips.
“What else do you know about me?”
This is when I nail it. “The Executioner.” The most suppressed memories will always surface when tickled long enough.
The Pillar drops the hookah. His eyes are gleaming.
I take advantage of the moment and grip his hands. I pull off the gloves and point at his missing fingers. “Remember this?” It’s odd that I don’t even know what really happened to him. I was just told about the Pillar’s missing fingers by Fabiola last week. She refused to tell me the whole story, though.
The Pillar shrugs. The shrug turns into inanimate features. Then into a darker part of him, not so much like in the future, but noticeable.
“I remember something,” he says. “Can’t fully remember it.” He pulls off his glasses and throws them on the desk. “It hurts so much, though.”
“I’m sorry to do this to you, but I need your help.”
“I need to kill the Executioner, don’t I?”
I nod.
“Why?”
“I’m not sure, but you may have been his child slave in some drug cartel in the past. Whether it was in Wonderland or the real world, I don’t know.”
“So Wonderland is real?” He sits back.
“It is.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Why? You seem to have persuaded half of the girls in Oxford it is.”
“A hope. A child’s wish. Reality is a bit scary. And I’m a Wonderlander?”
“Yes. The Pillar himself.”
“That whack atop a mushroom.”
“If you want to call yourself names, yes.”
“Wait.” He closes his eyes. “Why do I remember a book?”
“A book?”
“A book by Lewis Carroll.” He stands up again and starts to rummage through his wall-long library, dropping books left and right. “If you’re from the future you should know what I am searching for.”