“Not exactly. But we’ll get into that later.”
“Later when?”
“After the Lullaby’s effect totally withers away.”
“Why did you give it to me, then, when it messed with my head so much?”
“I didn’t really give it to you,” he says.
“Who did, then?”
“It was Waltraud who popped it down your throat.” He pauses for a smoke. “But the real question is: whose idea was it to give you the pill?”
“Whose idea was it?” I realize I already know the answer. It’s slowly coming back to me, like a gathering of million crows veiling my soul with darkness.
“You asked for the Lullaby pill, Alice.”
“Me?”
“Yes. It was you.”
“I think I remember that now,” I say. The words are too heavy on my tongue. “I don’t quite remember why.”
“It’s a bit complicated,” Mr. Jay says. “I can’t imagine why, too. But it was your call. And I wouldn’t deny you anything you wish for, not after all you have done for me.”
“For you? What have I done?”
“You killed everyone on the bus, Alice,” Mr. Jay says. “You have no idea how much I’m pleased.”
Slivers of memories flash before my eyes. I can see clearer now. No rabbit was driving the bus. Not even Carolus Ludovicus, w;hom I saw embarking the bus in an earlier vision while I was in Mushroomland.
It was me who killed everyone on the bus. Always me. And I loved it.
“If you hadn’t killed them we’d never have a chance to win the Wonderland Wars,” he says. “Of course, it’s still a long shot to actually win the war and embrace the world with madness. But we’d never have the slightest of hopes if you haven’t helped.”
This is when I wish my bed were my coffin. I wish I’d sink deep into the dirt, deep enough to hide from the truth. “I helped you in winning the Wonderland Wars?” I remember the Reds in the future telling me they weren’t going to kill me. That Mr. Jay had advised against it. It just can’t be. I think I know now why I live in a Wonderland Compound in the future, and why Tom Truckle wouldn’t tell me why he led the revolution, not me.
“The best help we ever had,” Mr. Jay says.
“What do you mean when you say ‘we’? Whom did I help? Who are you?”
The man lets out a brief chuckle, one that cuts through my veins. “Black Chess, Alice. Black Chess.”
Chapter 54
Sometimes the truth is a slow burn of continuous pain. The longer it takes to reveal, the more it cuts through. A sword’s stroke is always merciful; a thousand small cuts are the real torture.
“Are you saying I’m…”
“Yes, you are, Alice,” Mr. Jay says. “Once the Lullaby’s effect leaves you, you will remember you’re one of us.”
All the tears in the world can’t baptize me now.
“We’ve been planning the bus accident for years. It was our best plan. And, of course, only you could do it, but let’s not get into why only you could do it now,” Mr. Jay says. “The Real Alice whom everyone in Wonderland feared. The one and only.”
“Feared?”
“Oh, girl. The heads you chopped off. The blood you shed.” Mr. Jay is overly impressed. He may be my boss, but he is fascinated by me. “Carroll had a point, making everyone forget your face. This, or every Wonderlander would have spent the rest of their lives crapping in their pants, remembering you.”
I’m darkness wrapped in black blood, dipped into the abyss of the deepest ocean. “So the whole search for the Real Alice wasn’t to find the girl who will save the world?”
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about. No one’s really searching now, but they surely will in the future,” Mr. Jay says. “The Inklings will gather someday. Some kind of prophecy. But they’ll be too late.”
“So the Inklings fear me, too?”
“Some of them do,” he says. “Some of them foolishly think you can be converted. But I know you will never do that. You’re Black Chess’s most precious warrior.”
“Why do you doubt that?”
“Let’s face it, Alice. You’ve done things that can’t be forgiven. Remember messing with Carroll’s mind, splitting his self in two, and creating the Carolus part in him? It was genius.”
“I did that?”
“You fed him a heavy dose of Lullaby pills, mixed with the Executioner’s drugs, until the man collapsed. He collapsed so hard he made a deal with his split image to kill himself through you.”
The curtains fall. I have nothing to say. The play is over. And when the curtains are draped, there will be no audience left to applaud. Because I may have killed them all.