Chapter 13
Alice was in complete disbelief, seated on the floor with her hands still positioned as if holding the silver slipper. Wendy was gone. And Alice was left there without her.
No one spoke as the driver quickly moved to her.
Guinevere’s mouth hung open, revealing all her teeth, as if she were biting an apple.
Her eyes bulged, and she shook as if words were caught somewhere inside her.
Alice thought for a moment that Guinevere might be suffering from some sort of devastating ailment of the brain.
Then Guinevere lunged towards Alice, her face red with rage.
“Now!” Jin shouted to the guards. Just as Guinevere had her hands at Alice’s throat, the guards were at Guinevere’s back, grabbing her arms and holding her with elbows pinned.
Guinevere began to laugh lowly. Candles flickered as the sound of wind came from all around.
The wind was unmistakably inside the manor.
A shadow passed the open doors. Guinevere’s laughter dropped to a low maddening grunt.
“I see you,” Guinevere growled, smiling at the door as boot heels clicking on polished marble echoed from the entry and a figure entered slowly, cloak swishing.
The flickering candelabras cast orange light upon her face.
Goose bumps stood up all over Alice’s body.
The driver gripped her hand, startling her, but she couldn’t look away from the face, one she almost knew.
Beneath the hood, deep shadows were cast on pale skin which was as thick and cracked as mud that had dried in the sun.
“Miss Marker!” Alice’s gasp was cut short by the dry panic in her throat.
“We’ve not seen eye to eye, girl,” Marker said, removing her hood, and Alice saw that beneath the cracks of skin, which raised from her face like the potato topping of a shepherd’s pie, was raw pink flesh, new skin.
Her face is shedding, Alice’s mind screamed as her eyes blurred and her ears began to ring.
“Not another step!” the driver shouted beside Alice as Marker continued to approach.
Marker stopped and raised her head, and a smirk painfully grew, causing the creases of her smile to grow bright red raw flesh.
“You are so lucky, Alice, to have found such a charm of luck in your friend here.” Miss Marker’s eyes flickered, her voice mocking the driver as though she had ensnared him in a trap.
“You are not who you project to be,” the driver said, the clamminess of his palm betraying his fear to only Alice.
“I’m afraid not,” Marker said. Alice’s mind reeled, and the room began to feel and look more like the distorted reflection above than reality.
Her collar felt sharp and tight. Breathe, Alice told herself, now is not the time to faint.
“You will come with me.” The woman who looked like a monstrous version of Marker was calm, almost confident, in broaching a proposal.
“I will not! What have you done with Miss Marker?” Alice’s voice felt weak. She tried to clear her throat, but it was dry and sharp. Guinevere had calmed her performance to hear what the other woman had to say, but now her laughter began to escalate again.
“Enough! Do you know how long I have waited? How much time you have cost me in this dreary piss bucket? Hundreds of years! I should destroy you here and now!”
“I have no idea what you are speaking of.” Alice felt nausea rolling in her.
Guinevere’s chuckles became an uproar of shrieks. “How did you manage that, you wretched excuse for a witch!”
Marker sharply flung her cloak, and, from a concealed part of her skirt, she drew and pointed a long rod with a small metal sleeve and stone at its tip.
Alice’s balance shook as Guinevere screamed, a violent howl that pierced Alice’s ear before breaking into mocking laughter yet again.
“And just how is it that you are here? Has he sent you?” Marker spat at Guinevere.
“Alice,” the driver said, taking her arm to steady her, fear reflected in the red of his eyes.
“I will make you queen, Alice!” Guinevere said abruptly, wrenching herself free of the guards to pull Alice from the driver. “Don’t you want to be queen?”
“What?” Alice struggled and blinked against the ringing in her ears that returned. Something in the distance cracked. Thunder? Alice’s eyes blurred in and out.
“And tell the girl how you mean to crown her.” Marker’s voice was deep, and she held the jeweled rod steady, but the room began to feel as though it were tilting.
Alice felt a rush of heat and grabbed her collar.
She was going to faint. She wasn’t sure if she spoke, but immediately the driver’s hands were at the back of the collar, pulling button loops free.
“Show Alice the price of what this loon offers!” Marker shouted with a flick of the rod to the man called Jin.
“You! Did you summon this witch?” she spat at Jin, who said nothing as he approached her.
“Don’t you dare! You traitor. You coward!
” Guinevere screamed. Guards fought against her flailing and pinned her arms behind her back again.
She screamed wildly, shaking and spitting, but she was caught.
Jin circled her to reach behind her neck, as the driver had done to assist with Alice’s buttons, and, with a flick of his wrist, in an instant, Guinevere’s face fell still.
Her eyes closed and twitched as though she dreamed.
Quiet fell for just a moment before the guard lifted Guinevere’s head, with her neck still attached to her choker, from her body.
Alice’s stomach dropped as Guinevere’s headless body kneeled on the floor and crawled into a ball like a child at bedtime. Alice looked away as dry heaves spasmed in her chest and gut.
“Alice,” Marker said with a steady calm, “you are nearly out of time. You must come with me, or your fate will be sealed, and your head will be off. Another to add to her collection!”
“She will not go with you!” the driver shouted, still holding Alice by the arm.
Alice’s vision, hearing, and sense of where she was all began to fade.
The sound of rain hitting glass suddenly began to pound like a hammer in every part of her body.
Marker shouted back at the driver, but Alice could not hear the words over the sound of lead glass being pummeled by rain.
Then the ringing returned, and Alice felt as though she was thrust back inside her body from floating in the sound of water.
“Where is it?” Marker said to Jin, who was holding Guinevere’s head while a guard picked up the limp body from the ground. Jin hesitated, glancing nervously around at all the guards.
“Where is the mirror?” Marker shouted, pointing the wand.
“The mirror?” Alice said to herself, amid muffled sounds, before the rush of blood returned to her head and limbs. Her voice returned. “The mirror.” Was the mirror a passage? Or was everyone raving mad?
Alice felt a sharp prick at her neck and quickly cupped the spot where the pain was.
There was a fluttering beneath her hand and the distinct buzz of a bee.
Alice pulled the insect from her neck. It was as large as a moth, and its stinger curved from its behind.
Its green eyes nearly glowed. Alice flung it away.
“Alice, please, come!” The driver tugged again.
She could not make sense of what was happening.
“No! Foul sorceress!” Marker shouted, swatting at bees before turning to Alice. “Come with me or you won’t survive what comes next!”
Alice shot a glance at the driver, who shook his head urgently, tugging her hand once more, but she didn’t know where he meant to lead her. “I accept no world where my destiny leads to you!” Alice blurted to Marker as the guards began to swat at the stinging bees.
“The devil you know beats the devil you don’t, girl.” Marker began backing toward the door. In the corner of the room, the second fireplace began to buzz. And then, like a cyclone, a swarm of bees rushed forth.
Marker’s terrible smile appeared, and she raised the metal rod, pointing it toward Alice, and suddenly the serpent-like cloud of black insects poured in from the foyer doors and rushed around Marker, tearing the topiaries and roses to pieces and strewing them across the floor.
Alice spun around, partially propelled by the gust of enormous fur-covered bees.
Mid-spin, the driver yanked her hand again, pulling her violently into a run, so quickly that, though the bees zigzagged and pelted her face, they weren’t able to land a sting.
“Run!” the driver said, hurling her toward the door as he ran to the fireplace.
Alice, now outside the solarium, hesitated as Marker, in the center of the room, swatted at the endless attacking cloud of bees, screaming, then fell to the floor.
The driver appeared with the large fireplace poker, and as the swarm’s serpent shape made a wide turn up into the atrium dome, then dove like a whale towards them, the driver pulled her through the double doors, slammed them closed and slid the poker through the handles.
The doors banged as the bees hammered into them, and guards shouted from inside.
Lone drones squirmed through the cracks below and above the door.
Alice had no time to think as the driver took her hand again and pulled her along the marble steps toward the upstairs. Midway up the staircase, Alice yanked back, pulling her hand free. He wished to take her to the mirror! How did he know of it? “I’m not going through a mirror!”
“We are not safe in this realm!” he said, from a step above her. Alice turned to rush back down the steps toward the banging doors, but suddenly misjudged the next step and overextended herself, crumbling to her knees and then hands to skid, belly down, to the bottom.
In a moment, the driver was at her side, and the double doors beside them flung open with a startling force as the poker’s metallic clang echoed around them.
Alice stared in terror as a woman emerged, her body smeared in black tar that poured from her skin with no distinguishable source.
The bees crawled into the oil, disappearing into her skin.
Ash and dust swirled around her, and her black hair squirmed beneath the oil.
Her black eyes gleamed with swirling silver flecks against her grey oil-drenched skin.
A guard covered in welts and stings crept from the floor behind her with his saber pointing.
He charged and his sword slid through her gut—but to no effect as he tumbled down.
She did not wince or move. She grabbed the guard by the throat and screamed.
The shrill sound howled like the wind through trees.
Within seconds, the guard’s skin and nails shed, and his flesh stretched and ripped open, revealing stone that had somehow formed within him.
He had been transformed into a statue of jagged, malformed rocks. A scream froze in Alice’s throat.
The driver yanked Alice up the stairs as wind continued to gust, and Alice, terrified, ran with him towards the room she had briefly shared with Wendy.
Before they slipped inside, Alice glanced over her shoulder, and at her back the shrieking woman stood, her arms outstretched, eyes fixed on Alice.
The driver pulled Alice behind his back and faced the woman, who latched onto his pale throat with a grip and nails like a raven’s claw.
Slowly, she began to raise him from the ground.
Alice screamed, and so did the woman, when suddenly, from behind the woman, there was a crack and a flash of light.
Marker at the base of the steps, unrecognizably swollen and covered in blood, sent oil and bees ricocheting from the woman’s body with her sparking wand, and the screeching woman howled, hunching forward, releasing the driver, who fell to the ground.
Standing behind the woman at some distance, Marker began to race up the stairs.
The driver, now free, grabbed Alice’s hand and took off running, and she whirled to follow him into the room. “There!” Alice pointed to the wardrobe apartment, and he quickly slid the hidden closet doors closed. The wind shook the doors before them.
“Which way?” he shouted, letting go of Alice’s hand.
Alice pointed him to the center of the room, and this time, it was she who dragged him, yanking him toward the trifold.
Without a moment of hesitation, Alice passed right through the glass, which shimmered and rippled like water as she entered it, pulling the driver behind her.
Inside what appeared to be a mirrored tunnel or hallway, Alice braced herself as the space began to tilt radically and the mirror itself began splintering, the room beyond it breaking apart into glass shards that shifted and floated, finally reflecting only the exterior room’s chandeliers, as the hallway continued to tip downward.
Alice knew that, from the outside, the mirror lay shattered on the floor.
She gripped a mirrored wall as the uneven surfaces began moving and changing direction like a kaleidoscope.
She tumbled backward as the light of the distant ceiling reflection dimmed, and she was caught for a moment by the slight angle of the fractured walls before she began to freefall with the driver just above her.
They fell slowly at first, like in her dreams, but soon they were plummeting faster than a train, and the pressure became enormous.
The driver tumbled, reaching toward her.
They collided, sending her away from him in a spin.
Her back smashed against a wall that shattered and vanished.
He managed to grab her again by the arm and waist, and they tried to right themselves.
Now holding onto each other, they spun and spun, and the pressure became unbearable as their mirrored reflections spun into a blur and they tumbled through into a dimming reflective tunnel.
A blinding flash of light flared in Alice’s eyes before it stabilized.
Through squinted eyes that watered in the rushing wind and burning light, she saw her and the driver’s blurred reflections become ribbons of colors that began to glow as though they were now the light source.
As they fell through a tunnel of bright prismatic light, she braced herself for wherever they would land, for the impact would end her life and his.
I don’t even know his name, she thought, clinging to him.
She felt a sudden jolt, and he was no longer in her arms. She tore violently out of control as she fell—alone. She was lost, and Wendy was gone. Alice’s ears began to ring, and her eyes went black.