“The Pillar agreed to help you,” the Chessmaster said. “Together you two were the most brutal monsters in Wonderland.”
I shrug, speechless, wishing I can disappear and not hear the rest.
“However, The Pillar had a problem,” the Chessmaster says. “The Cheshire Cat.”
“What about him?”
“They’d always been rivals and hated each other in Wonderland. Not in a good verses bad way, but bad versus bad. They competed on who was the most evil, who killed and hurt more people. No one could ever stop them,” the Chessmaster said. “But the Cheshire always topped The Pillar with his ability to possess souls. His nine lives.”
“And?”
“The Pillar agreed to help you with finding the keys for Black Chess, under one condition. That you help him with a ritual that would grant him, not nine lives, but fourteen, so he can top the Cheshire.”
“You can’t be serious.” Strings of the rest of the story knit before my eyes. A jigsaw of a puzzle completing itself, too soon for me to take it all in.
“The ritual had you kill fourteen innocent people and use their blood or souls or whatever, with another fourteen people.”
“Why?”
“It created a bond of fourteen souls and granted The Pillar fourteen lives.” The Chessmaster had completed the reorganizing of the chessboard. “Fourteen Wonderlanders who have the blood of another fourteen innocent Wonderlanders inside them. Fourteen Wonderlanders who carried part of The Pillar’s soul. So if he dies, he can use one of the others.”
“That’s the creepiest story I’ve ever heard.”
“Not creepier than the Cheshire’s grin,” the Chessmaster remarks. “The fourteen had to carry The Pillar’s chosen name. Carter Pillar. They were granted immortality and lived long enough to follow him into modern day Oxford.”
“They lived that long?”
“Carrying his fourteen lives so he can beat the Cheshire Cat.”
“I don’t believe this. The Pillar can be borderline bad, but not this evil.”
“Why do you think he made you find the Cheshire Cat on your first mission?” the Chessmaster argues. “He wanted you to rid him of his nine lives, but you failed and the Cheshire got his mask back. This was the only reason to do so.”
“You’re lying.”
“Really? How about the Executioner?”
“What about him?”
“You think you and The Pillar went to Mushroomland to save the world from him? This was The Pillar’s plan all along.”
“How so? This doesn’t make the faintest of sense.”
“The Executioner was one of the fourteen. And one of two people who carried The Pillar’s soul and betrayed him.”
“Betrayed him how?”
“They used another Wonderlastic ritual where he managed to keep the soul and The Pillar’s powers for himself,” the Chessmaster says. “So The Pillar, in his utmost vengeance, decided to kill them all, and the hell with immortality.”
“And lose the fourteen powerful lives that easy?”
“You’re acting like you don’t know him. He is the devil in disguise. He has no friends. He hurt Fabiola. He played you and played the world. The fourteen’s betrayal was only met with death in The Pillar’s book.”
I try to connect the dots, and it strikes me that The Pillar only killed twelve people before being admitted to the asylum. Those, plus the Executioner, are thirteen. If the Chessmaster is right, then someone is missing. “Those are thirteen. One’s missing.”
“The one that got away.” The Chessmaster laughs in a loud roar, the desire to burn the world showing in his eyes. “The one reason The Pillar is still there with you. The reason why he hasn’t killed you yet. Because he was hoping you can lead him to the one who got away.”
I sit opposite to the Chessmaster, contemplating what to believe. Half of his story makes sense. The rest, no so much. I’ve been working on warming up to The Pillar for all these weeks, tolerating one thing after another. What has really won me over was his belief in me, and helping me become a better person. How could this be an act? How?
“Let’s say I believe you,” I tell the Chessmaster. “How did you become Death?”
“Part of the ritual,” he claims. “There was no Death before in Wonderland. Lewis, being the happy puppy and child inside a man that he was, wanted Wonderland to be deathless. But the ritual demanded the sacrifice to give something back to the forces of evil. And that was Death,” he stares me in the eyes. “And, as The Pillar had killed my family, I accepted the position to create balance in the universe.”
“And you killed Lewis.”
“I did. But Lewis, in spite being dead in his grave, always finds a way to stay alive in people’s visions and dreams. I guess it’s a power he has been granted by higher forces for writing a book like Alice in Wonderland that had so much effect through the years. Children must have handed him that kind of power. Don’t ever underestimate children.”
“But you just said The Pillar killed them, not me,” I point out.
The Chessmaster shrugs. “I’m sure it was both of you, not just him.”
“But you could be mistaken.”
“Even if I am, only killing you will make me sleep better. These chess pieces will determine which one of us will live, Alice. Now get ready to play — and die.”
Chapter 72
Tom Truckle’s Car, Oxford University
Inspector Dormouse was back in Tom’s car. He’d picked the keys from the sleeping man’s pocket and walked the Tom Quad all alone; the only man awake in this neighborhood. He plugged the player in and listened through the speakers.
The recorded sessions were really long, mostly boring, but Dormouse caught a few slip-ups here and there. The story was peeling itself easily.
Back in Wonderland, The Pillar conspired with Alice to create fourteen lives with an unholy ritual. The Pillar and the Cheshire turned out to be lifelong nemesis, who, in spite the significance of the Wonderland Wars, were pure and shameless monsters who cared for no one but themselves.
There may have been a long lasting War between good and evil, personified in the Inklings and Black Chess, but there was another great war between The Pillar and the Cheshire. A war of souls. Who possessed more lives? The Cheshire, being a cat, had been granted nine lives through an ancient mask, which Lewis once tried to scatter all over the world. The Pillar’s technique was that of being a caterpillar, morphing into a cocoon then a chrysalis and then a butterfly, which gave him four short-lives lifespans. The Pillar wanted much more.
The recording also showed The Pillar’s plan to kill the fourteen after two of them betrayed him by taking their powers into their own hands, and the other twelve thinking it over.
Dormouse couldn’t fathom the carnage of evil in this world, let alone Wonderland. Wasn’t it supposed to be the children’s friendly place with all the cute rabbits and enchanting roses? What made it that way? Was this Carroll’s plan, or did something evil slip from this beautiful creation?
How in heaven’s name did our beloved and enchanting childhood turn into this bloodbath of adulthood?
Dormouse didn’t know what to do. It was all clear now. But somehow he had a soft spot for Alice. First, she reminded him of his daughter. In fact, she reminded him of all the struggling teenage daughters in his neighborhood. Those girls, fighting for their own identities in a world that imposed nonsensical rules and obligations to grow up.
What if every teenage girl from around the block had the power to save the world? Which teacher or parent in this scary world outside would ever notice?
Inspector Dormouse didn’t feel like sleeping now. It was The Pillar he had to get, at all costs. This evil embodiment of darkness. He had to be put back in the asylum – or prison.
But where would the Inspector start?
A question with a simple answer that he suddenly heard on the recording. One of the fourteen people was explaining why The Pillar couldn’t track number fourteen.
It turned out that the mysterious Mr. Fourteen, with a plan to beat the devil, longed for the help of another devil. The Cheshire.
Inspector Dormouse chuckled, listening to this. Everything was really messed up in this story.
Mr. Fourteen asked the Cheshire to help him. Why? Because it turned out that The Pillar, having decided on killing them, had to kill each and every one of them. Kill only thirteen and the ritual gets reversed, meaning The Pillar’s life’s expectancy was lessened and shortened. That’s why The Pillar was having a skin problem, a rare disease that he kept secret.
Of course, the Cheshire liked the idea, and granted Mr. Fourteen the power of splitting his soul in two — it was the best the Cheshire could do, but it was more than enough.
Doing so, apparently so many years ago, helped Mr. Fourteen have two bodies, one which traveled abroad and left the continent completely, and the other which still lived in London, under a disguise and different name.
The Cheshire’s plan was to delude The Pillar into killing the one in London and thinking he is safe, and then die suddenly without even knowing it.
“This isn’t Wonderland,” Dormouse told himself. “This is London’s Chainsaw Massacre tripled by Hannibal Lector’s madness. In short, this is a British Horror Story.”
In the end, Inspector Dormouse needed a lead. Something in the recording that would give a clue to where to find Mr. Fourteen, because thinking logically, this was why The Pillar came back to London all of a sudden, instead of helping Alice.
The Pillar was about to kill Mr. Fourteen, and Inspector Dormouse was ready to stop that from happening.