Behind Sanity

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Behind Sanity

 Chapter Fifty-Nine

1

Elisa couldn’t believe it when she finally laid her eyes on the Red Queen – the source of all this trouble.  She couldn’t fathom it, but John had insisted to her that it was the truth.  She had been in their basement all along.

But she’s just a little girl, the nurse thought.  Though, she had also learned in her years here that little girls were capable of some decidedly nasty things.

Elisa held the lantern while John looked down at the girl.  She looked so peaceful, but behind closed eyes and plump cheeks there were depths of insanity that Nurse D. could not begin to fathom. 

She could have been Morgan, or Alice even.  The child had that look about her.  

Robertson peered down at her, contemplating what he’d resolved to do until finally, without a word, he reached his hand toward her face.

“This has to be done?” the nurse beside him asked abruptly. 

She hadn’t wanted to question him, and she knew she didn’t understand as much of this as he did, but something about killing a child – no matter how evil – didn’t set well with her.

“It’s equivalency,” he explained. “She killed Alice, and it will even out the sides.  Moreover, even if Alice doesn’t manage to save these people, the Queen’s link to this world must be destroyed.  That way, at least no more souls will be lost.”

John bunched his sleeve and put his hand on the child’s mouth, the other pinching her nose.  Elisa held her breath, but she couldn’t look away.  The doctor’s eyes were firm and unfeeling.  For a few moments, nothing happened.  Then the girl began to squirm slightly.

It wasn’t the kind of fighting a normal person would do when they were being attacked.  She was catatonic, but her body knew that it needed air.  The girl didn’t push at him with her hands, just moved her head around, trying to catch her breath.  She couldn’t.

The nurse looked at John Robertson, and somehow during the last few hours she’d forgotten that she’d caught him in the act of contemplating suicide.  Elisa saw the same look on his face now as when he’d had the gun in his mouth.  He was cold and unremorseful.  He was taking a human life – a child, no less – and he might have been doing paperwork.

Perhaps he really was mad.

Elisa realized then that he must have hated that little girl.  She had caused so much trouble for him and he’d not known it until now.  This “Queen” was the reason his father had gone mad; the reason his mother was dead.  She was responsible for all the heartache in his career.  All the people in this room were her responsibility.  Alice had died; he had cared about her.  That was also this girl’s fault. (Of course, neither of them knew that Alice was laying just a few feet from them, just as alive as they were.)

How long could such misfortune live within a person before it had to come out?  And was it possible that John only wanted to kill the girl who had started it all because he needed a release from his own pain?  Maybe there wasn’t a reason on a larger scale.  It was simply better than killing himself?

Even though these things passed through her mind, Elisa didn’t try to stop him or talk him out of it.  In her own way, she needed a release from this nightmare as well.

The girl struggled.  Her body began to arrest.  But when the child opened her eyes, Elisa dropped the lantern.

It surprised John as well, but he managed to hold his hands in place.  Her face was turning blue.  It wouldn’t be much longer.  But something was happening inside his head.  He felt dizzy.  The room was spinning.

There were voices – Oh God! The voices! – and they were all talking to him excitedly.  Hundreds.  

Time to go, John.  Your turn on the merry-go-round!

“No…” he muttered weakly, understanding what was happening.  He knew months ago that he’d been flagged.  Now the reaper had come.

His hands fell loose from the nameless girl’s face.  Her eyes rolled toward him slowly, seeing him, laughing. 

His legs gave way beneath him and he was falling.  Down, down, down through darkness.  Somewhere above, he could hear Elisa calling his name, but she was so distant now.  He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, he knew where he would find himself.

Alice was on her own.

2

Alice’s skin was on fire, boiling red as smoke rolled off her flesh.  She could smell her scorched skin and yet she did not burn.  This was the monster that she had become on the day of the fire, when she’d been burned so terribly that she’d nearly died.  Many nurses and doctors had tried to heal her wounds, mend her scars, but even when they had disappeared from sight, Alice had known they were still there.  Some wounds would never heal – they simply had to be lived with.

Through molten eyes, Alice viewed her enemy as she broke free of the frozen shackles, but she would not escape her wrath.  She roared, hardly recognizing the sound that came out from her mouth and rushed toward the Queen, the demon that had emerged from within Alice didn’t waste time rushing in toward its adversary, the Red Queen.  This battle was determined before it had begun, and it was time to end it.

The Queen was frozen to the floor, an easy target.  Alice raised the claw that her flesh hand had become…

And before her eyes, the Queen disintegrated.  She turned to ash, and the dust irritated the demon’s red eyes.  Was it done?  How could it have been so simple?  Had the creature simply chosen to self-destruct instead of enduring her wrath?  No.  It couldn’t have been so easy.

Behind Alice, there was a loud explosion, a crunching of stone.  A sucking wind filled the room and pulled at her dress.  Before she turned, she already understood that the back of the throne room had been ripped away, but what she didn’t expect to see what the thing that peered in at her, smiling.

It grinned with a lipless mouth from a head that was bigger than Alice’s entire body.  The rest of the thing could not be seen.  Behind it was only darkness, but Alice could hear the wind.

“Do you enjoy talking with that puppet?” the thing asked, and the voice was so loud and deep that it nearly ruined Alice’s ears.

This was the true Queen.  Like all the rooms of the castle – and maybe the rest of Wonderland with it – she had become a large blob of pulsating flesh.  A tumor.

“This is truth, but you fear the truth,” the Red Queen told her. “You live in shadows.  Your pathetic attempts to reclaim your sanity have failed!  Retreat to the sterile safety of your self-delusions, or risk inevitable annihilation!”

Alice heard the words, smelled the monster’s sour breath, but the demon that had taken over her body would not let her feel, or run, or speak.  The creature with the glowing yellow eyes opened its mouth again, but this time, a face came forward.  The Jabberwock was inside.  Alice was surprised; the demon was not.

The Jabberwock’s head pushed forward, trying to free itself as if the Queen was giving birth through the mouth.  But then the Jabberwock’s mouth opened, and it birthed another face.  The Mad Hatter’s olive flesh emerged.  Alice watched, and the Hatter’s face, taken with sickness, was forced to vomit up one last face from his belly.  It was her own.

Her own face spoke to her in the Queen’s thunderous voice.

“If you destroy me, you destroy yourself!  Leave now and some hollow part of you may survive.  Stay, and I will break you down!  You will lose yourself forever!”

The last word echoed off everything that it touched.  It shook the walls.    

Alice might have hesitated if she was alone, but the demon was not unsure of itself.  It scooped up the Blunderbuss before heading through the wall.