“Try me.”
“It’s an art that assumes that all kinds of real training is just bonkers,” I say. “Karate, wrestling, and martial arts don’t really need laws. Laws only imprison a person’s mind, and deprive him from the gift to be free. What you need is ‘True Will.’” I read about it in Jack’s book.
“Just that?”
“Just that.” I nod, aware of the absurdity of my words. “All you need is to ‘believe’ something is possible to get it done, although believing itself isn’t an easy matter.”
“So you say you can fight, defend yourself, by mere belief, without having to take a scientific approach or having trained properly?” His voice is flat. I can’t tell if he is mocking me or considering it.
“Yes.”
“Apparently you didn’t learn much.” Now he sounds like he’s mocking me. “I mean, all those bruises on your body. Did you really hit the walls with your bare hands and feet, like Waltraud informed me?”
“Yes,” I say. “It’s part of the training. I should be repeating it until mastery.” My whole body aches. I have been practicing all week in my cell. Jumping, running against the wall, and walking on my hands. I was following all the nonsensical instructions from the book.
“Mastery?” He smokes that pipe again. I can smell the weirdly familiar tobacco.
“Don’t make fun of me,” I say. “You’re my doctor. You’re supposed to help me.”
“I am helping you,” he insists, “by pushing your imagination so hard that your mind can’t accept the madness you’re imagining anymore. When we reach that tipping point, you’ll find yourself remembering, and accepting your reality.”
“Which is?” I shrug.
“That you’re a troubled girl who killed her friends by driving a school bus into a horrible accident, and that now you’re crippled, locked in an asylum because your mind refuses to admit the truth.” He blurts the sentence in one breath. “It’s a very simple truth, actually. Once you’re able to confront it, you’ll recover.”
I have nothing to say. It scares me to even think about it. Is that all there is to my life? Am I just a mad Alice, thrown down into an imaginary rabbit hole, and now all I need is to confess it was all a dream, just like in Lewis Carroll’s book?
“Alice?” He sounds as if trying to gently wake me up from a nightmare.
“Yes, I’m listening,” I reply. “You said you’re pushing my imagination to the limits until I won’t be able to imagine anymore. Right? And that only then will I be forced to retreat back to reality. Is that how you treat all your patients? Because I don’t think I’ve ever heard about this.”
“It’s a scientific process.” His rocking chair creaks against the floor. “We call it the Rabbit Hole.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“No. It’s a scientific technique,” he says. “The Rabbit Hole is a metaphor for the road you have to fall onto to push your imagination to the max, which will eventually result in igniting a certain suppressed memory or emotion. A memory so real and strong the patient can’t deny it. Thus the patient comes back to the real world, and is cured from their madness. Of course, it’s coined after Lewis Carroll’s book.”
I wonder why Lewis Carroll’s name comes up in this conversation. Why would a physician coin a scientific method after a man who wrote a children’s book? “Trust me, doctor,” I say, “I would love it if your method works.” I don’t know if I am lying. In all honesty, I am beginning to like my own world. The Pillar, the Cheshire, Tom Truckle, the Queen, Fabiola, and Jack. All the madness and nonsense and uncertainty seem to have had a magical impact on me.
“I certainly hope so,” he says. “How about I call Waltraud to roll you back to your cell? We’ve had enough for today.”
“One more thing, doctor,” I say. “There is something I’d like to ask you before I go.”
“Please do.”
“How come physicians are referencing Lewis Carroll in terms like the Rabbit Hole? I mean, isn’t Lewis Carroll just a Victorian writer who wrote a children's book?”
“Interesting question. Well, Lewis Carroll had an uncanny interest in mental illness.”
“He did?”
“Of course. It’s documented,” he says. “Also, Lewis himself suffered from terrible migraines, which presumably caused his stuttering. Sometime the migraines left him unconscious for hours, probably dreaming his stories.”
“What?” I knew Lewis stuttered. I saw it myself. But I didn’t realize he had such horrible migraines.
“He took so many drugs for the migraines, but they wouldn’t go away,” the doctor elaborates. “He tried to cure himself with the most horrible torture instruments.”
“What are you saying, exactly?” I am angered.
“Maybe Lewis Carroll was just as insane,” he says, “as you are.”
Chapter 2
The Six O’clock Circus, Mudfog Town, London
Sunday, 8:05 a.m.