“You, being the horrible Alice, needed his help in executing Black Chess’ plan in finding the keys, which Lewis had hidden long ago.”
“Why did he hide them? Why were they so important?”
“Don’t play me and pretend you don’t know!” The Chessmaster was losing it. “I’m never going to tell you what the keys are for.”
“Never mind the keys. Tell me about The Pillar.”
“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.”