But before I lunge into another limbo of dizziness, I wake up to Professor Jittery pounding on the table.
“My gardens. They want to know the secrets to my gardens,” he slurs all of a sudden, drooling a little. He wipes his mouth. The chains give him enough slack to reach for his face. “They want to know about...”
Suddenly he stiffens, as if someone has shocked him with an electric prod. His eyes are fixed like arrows at the top of his head.
“They want to know about what?” I demand, infected by his nervousness.
“Can’t say,” he barely says through his teeth. “It’s on. They can see me now. They can hear everything I am saying. It’s on!”
“What’s on?” I press hard on the sides of the remote, arching my head forward.
“The thing in my head,” he says. “It’s on. They can see everything now.”
“What’s that thing in your head? Can you see it? What is it?” I am tense, as much as he is. I think the man’s going into a seizure. “What’s in your head?”
“A light bulb,” he finally says. “They have turned it on. They can see everything.”
Chapter 32
Time remaining: 18 hours, 11 minutes
There is hardly anything I can say now, not after Professor Jittery announces he has a light bulb in his head. I mean, I hoped he was at least a little bit sane until that last sentence. But a light bulb? How am I supposed to believe that?
I lean back, waiting for his episode to subside, but it doesn’t. His jittery moves intensify. He is a tall and strong man. I am worried he can unchain himself, although he doesn’t look like he’d hurt me. He is just another Wonderland loon, a product of Alice in Wonderland, the weirdest book in history. But aren’t we all weird-speaking nutcrackers on the edge of our minds?
“I need to cover my head with something. I need to dim the light bulb.” He pulls his head into his outfit, looking like he’s wearing a cloak now.
“Did you turn the light bulb off?” I ask, not knowing how to help a man who thinks he’s been spied on through a light bulb shimmering in his head.
“I just dimmed it, which is fine.” He wipes drool from his mouth. “I buried my secrets in a special part of my brain. When I hide my head under my clothes, they usually can’t find their way around for a while. Then they usually give up and leave me alone when they’re frustrated.”
“You have a special place in your brain where you hide things from others?” I am making conversation until he cools down.
“Come here,” he whispers. “You know there is a left side of the brain and right side, right?”
I nod. Did I learn this in school? If so, what school did I attend?
“The right hemisphere controls the muscles on the left side of the body.” He’s playing professor, and I am his student now. “And vice versa.”
I nod again, a little impatient.
“The left hemisphere is dominant in language, speaking, memory, and in charge of carrying out logic and equations.” I continue listening to him lecturing. Maybe this is getting somewhere. “The right hemisphere is in charge of everything that has to do with arts. It performs some math, but very little. It loves visual imagery.”
“So?”
“The light bulb looks into those two parts of the brain,” he explains. “Do you know in which part I buried my secrets?
“In the right?”
“No.” He smiles broadly. “In the middle.” Now he chuckles like a Mad Hare.
I don’t comment. I push the conversation further. “So we can talk now? They aren’t spying on your brain now, right?”
He nods.
“I need to know how to get to Wonderland.”
Professor Jittery stiffens again. He shakes his head violently and says, “I wish I knew that one. But you can’t get to Wonderland without the Six Impossible—”
“I know. We just talked about that. Then how do I get to Snail Mound?"
“I will tell you, but I have to warn you,” he says, sounding much quieter and saner than before. “To get there you will have to visit one of my gardens. But bad things happen there.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “All I am looking for is to find the rabbit and find a way to defuse the bomb.”
“You’re not listening to me.” He pounds his hands on the table again. I am really fed up with this roller coaster of emotions. “The garden might lead to a dangerous place. A place that ordinary people shouldn’t know about.”
“Does that place have a name?”
He stiffens more, and neglects my question. “Did you ever hear about the Invisible Plague?”
“No.”
“This place in the garden leads you to the Invisible Plague.” He leans forward.
“So that’s it? Some kind of a plague will consume me if I try to catch the rabbit?”
He says nothing, apparently thinking I am a lost cause.
“Now can you please, please, tell me where this door and garden are?”
“Scotland."
“How is the rabbit supposed to be in Scotland?"
"You asked about Snail Mound, and I am telling you where it is."