Outside the church the world was getting worse by the minute. What had started with red bubbles had now escalated to furious anger on the verge of violence. So many people were getting in fights that there wasn’t enough room in jail for anyone. Some individuals were burning cars and houses, and others were blocking all traffic intersections in London.
Lewis closed the church’s door behind him, a smirk stretching from cheek to cheek.
He turned around, walking to the podium while his followers clapped their hands.
“We love you!”
Lewis got to the podium and turned to face his followers. He looked terrible. He hadn’t slept for days, and that headache was killing him.
“I-I kn-know you all have it in your heart. A good thing, that is,” he began. His voice was soothing and relatable. He’d used to lure tens of children with it in the past. Sometimes he imagined his voice seeping through the paper of his Alice in Wonderland books. “It’s not an easy task to believe in the end of the world like you do.”
“The world has to end!” an old woman with a cane spat out.
“It’s about time!” another middle-aged man cheered.
“I know. I know,” Lewis said. “Those people outside have no idea what’s happening to them. First they didn’t believe me when I told them about the plague. Then they couldn’t deny it when they saw its effect on everyone who had bought the Hookah of Hearts last year. And trust me, this is only the beginning.”
“We’re curious, Lewis,” the old woman said. “You say you’ve been alive all these years. That you were imprisoned in Wonderland. We get that. But what does this plague do to people? Why do they hate each other so much now?”
Lewis smiled inwardly. As if I am going to tell you.
“The plague holds the one virus mankind can’t stand,” he began. “Revealing it now would spoil the impact of realizing what an awful world this is. But rest assured. Just right before the world really ends, I will tell you what it does to people.”
“So why are we gathered here?” another man asked. “You said you wanted us to help you with something.”
“Yes, I want you to find me a c...” Suddenly that migraine attacked him again.
Lewis swirled to the floor like a dying hurricane. It’d been so long since the migraine had attacked him this way. Long ago since Wonderland. His head was about to split open. He couldn’t take it.
His tongued curled inward. He was choking.
And as he did, he saw himself sinking into muddy ground. Deep down into a sea of mushrooms.
Chapter 15
Mushroomland, Columbia
My feet drag me through the Mushroom Trail.
Never mind my hallucinations. Never mind that I am going to die if I don’t get that drink from the Executioner’s coconut. I am just a girl trekking her way through a muddy mushroom-infested world, hoping to make sense of it all.
Aren’t we all?
“Tell me if the hallucinations increase to a point you’re going bonkers,” the cigar-smoking Pillar, acting like an older Indiana Jones, tells me.
But what am I supposed to tell him? That I just saw a playing card with legs running next to us in the mud? That when I asked it what it was doing, it told me it was ‘playing’ because apparently it’s a ‘playing card’?
No, I don’t tell him that. I pretend that never happened.
“In case I die, I need to know how come Lewis Carroll is a Wonderland Monster,” I say. “I am sure it’s impossible. I met him. He was the sweetest man in the world. I saw him leading the Inklings—which reminds me, why did you buy it for me?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” He’s pulling a mushroom off its roots to clear a way. “That’s your new headquarters in your war against Black Chess. Not everyone has access to the asylum.”
“Which reminds me again.” I am just babbling whatever comes to mind to forget about the fact that I’m drugged. “Shouldn’t it be Black Chess who manufactured the Hookah of Hearts?”
“Not this time. It’s the Dodo Corporation,” the Pillar says. “And trust me, Black Chess wants to bring chaos to the word, but they don’t want to end the world. Who would they rule and manipulate if they killed everyone?”
Then we stop abruptly.
I take a moment, staring at the next obstacle in the road. Or is it just a hallucination of my mind?
I am looking at a man sitting on a desk in the middle of Mushroomland. He is writing feverishly and seems to suffer from a continuous headache.
I am staring at Lewis Carroll—a very shattered and older version of him now, not the one back in London.
Is that the next obstacle in the Mushroom Trail?
Glancing back and forth at the Pillar, I realize he sees this too. Is it possible both of us are hallucinating?
The man raises his head from the writing and stares at us. He smiles, but it isn’t a good smile. Not a Lewis Carroll smile.
Then he utters a question the modern world has been asking for more than a century. It’s sort of one of the most thought after mysteries of life. “Why do you think a raven is like a writing desk?”
Chapter 16
“Is this real?” I ask the Pillar.
“I’m not sure,” The Pillar bites on his cigar.
“Aren’t you the one immune to the hallucinations?”