I wake up in the room that scares me the most. A room I suspected was a figment of my imagination. A room where I am a cripple. Where a psychiatrist tells me I am mad. That there is no hope for my recovery but falling deeper into the rabbit hole of my madness.
My knees are numb. I can’t feel them. I can’t move. This feels so real, even in the past. I am not imagining this. Being crippled in this darkened room has always been my reality. I just never knew the circumstances that led to it.
Now it’s clear to me. Waltraud broke my knees while I tried to escape the first day I arrived in the asylum. And that’s when I met the faceless doctor behind the curtain of darkness separating us now.
“Welcome, Alice,” he says. I can’t see him. I can only smell the tobacco he’s smoking from a pipe. “It’s been a long time since we last met.”
As he speaks, I realize I’m not under the Lullaby pill’s influence now. My mind reels with memories. A lot of them now. I think I know who I am. I think I know what happened. But it can’t be true. It just can’t be.
Better listen to what the doctor has to say.
“I think the Lullaby pill was an early call,” he says. “I should have waited a little longer.”
“Why? What are you talking about?”
“I understand if you don’t remember correctly. I also understand if your memories seem a little shuffled. Fact and fiction will meld into each other. But it will only take a few moments before you remember.”
“Remember what?” The headache is killing me once. The memories twice.
“Remember who you really are.” He slightly rocks in his chair. He seems satisfied with this conversation.
“Who in the world am I?” I tilt my head and stare into the darkness he is hiding behind. Imagine you stare into a mirror and all you see is black. “Answer me!”
“Who do you think you are?”
Playing games again. The tobacco smells like the Pillar’s smoke. I know that much now. Is that possible? “Who am I?” My voice is weakening. I don’t want to start sobbing. Everyone deserves to know who they are.
“You are who think you are?” he repeats.
“What’s this supposed to mean? Are you saying I’m not the Real Alice?”
“On the contrary,” the voice says. “You’re the Real Alice. Always was. Always will be. And that may be the problem.”
I dismiss his last sentence. I feel healthier in my body all of a sudden, because he said I’m the Real Alice. It’s all that mattered to me from the beginning.
“Say it again, please.”
He laughs. “You’re the Real Alice. Don’t doubt that.”
“And you are?” I squint at the darkness. “It’s you, the Pillar, right? For some nonsensical reason you played this game with me. Maybe you wanted to make sure I was up to the mission of saving lives. Right? Please tell me I’m right. Tell me you’re the Pillar. I won’t hold grudges. Just get over with it.”
The silence that follows is so profound I am aware of my beating heart. The rocking chair bends forward, just a little. Smoke drifts near my face and the voice speaks to me: “No, Alice. I’m not the Pillar. You can call me Mr. Jay.”
Chapter 52
THE PRESENT: TOM QUAD, OXFORD
Professor Carter Pillar sat on the bank in the middle of the empty quad. The sky was grey, the color of dull lives, and the rain fell like drops of unmet hopes from the sky.
Every student had left the university by this time. Everyone preferred to stay home on a day like this. A strange day, indeed. The Pillar didn’t mind. He had been used to a certain amount of loneliness in the past. It wasn’t always bad. Sometimes it helped him clear his mind.
He sat, fiddling with the watch in his hand.
Soon Fabiola would come. Soon everything would change. Soon she’d spit and shout in his face like she always did. But this time it was going to be the darkest hour for both of them. Soon it was going to be really hard to take sides in the Wonderland Wars.
Oh, how good and evil interjected in every aspect of life. Who was really good and who was bad? That should have been Hamlet’s most daring question, not “to be or not to be.”
In the middle of the rain, the Pillar pulled out a yellow piece of paper. With a ballpoint pen, he wrote something on it. One word. That was all it took. He folded the paper and tucked it back in his pocket, patted it a couple of times, closed his eyes, and let the rain wash over him.
He stared once more at his watch. It was time already.
The yellow paper in his pocket felt good. So good. Because the one word he’d written on it — it was all that mattered. The one word was the Pillar’s Wonder.
Chapter 53
THE PAST: PSYCHIATRY ROOM, RADCLIFFE ASYLUM, OXFORD
“Why do people call you Mr. Jay?” I say. “How do I know you?”
“We’ve known each other for a long time, Alice,” he says. “A little after the circus in Wonderland.”
“You were at the Circus?”