Insanity (Insanity #1) by Cameron Jace
Prologue
Christ Church, Oxford University, Present Day
The girl sprawled on the ground was dead...and loving it. Or why else would she be grinning like the Cheshire Cat?
It was early in the morning at Christ Church on the Oxford University campus. A thick mist hovered like veiled ghosts over the quadrangle garden known as Tom Quad. Water trickled steadily from a fountain in the middle like a ticking time bomb. The surrounding buildings loomed behind the cold air like a killer carefully watching the consequences of his brutal crime.
"Do dead people grin, mommy?" a young boy munching on a tart asked a woman in an expensive red coat.
The woman in the red coat was speechless, hypnotized by the grinning girl lying dead on the grass. It was as if the girl was laughing at the living, reminding everyone of their inevitable fates. A breeze of cold air chilled the woman back to reality. She sensed something evil lurking in the mist, so she dragged her son away from the scene of the crime. Some people don't like a murder for breakfast. It's just not their thing.
A few early-wakers stood around the corpse though. None of them questioned the girl's identity, or the significance of the murder taking place inside the college. Again, it was that frumious grin on the girl’s face that caught them.
"She must be in Heaven, with a grin like that," a senior student joked. He was athletic, not funny, and a typical jerk. The grin didn't conjure happiness. It was sinister, hollow, and nonsensical.
A professor in a tweed jacket knelt down to inspect the body. "It's not a natural grin. Someone did that to her," he declared. "Oh, my God." He looked away from the corpse, cupping his mouth with his hands.
"What is it?" Senior Jerk panicked.
A nerdy girl with thick glasses appeared from the mist, then knelt down next to the professor. "What is it?" she inquired.
"Her lips and cheeks were sewn up with a needle, bearing her teeth to look like she is grinning. It's sick." Professor Tweed said.
"That's bloody gross," Senior Jerk mooed like a cow.
"Look what I found." Nerdy Girl held a tattered copy of Lewis Carroll's Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in her hands. An original library edition from 1865. "The dead girl was gripping it. She had it open to this page."
"What page?" Professor Tweed’s curiosity seemed to have cured his nausea.
"This one, where Alice tells the Cheshire Cat she often sees a cat without a grin, but never a grin without a cat. It's highlighted." Nerdy Girl's mouth hung open, locking eyes with Professor Tweed, before they stared back at the grinning girl.
"Is this some kind of a sick joke?" Senior Jerk growled, craning his Ogre-thick neck.
"May I see the book?" I said in my raspy voice. I know I hadn’t spoken all that time, but I usually like to speak last, after I’ve heard what else there is to be said.
“Here,” Nerdy Girl kindly handed the book over.
I checked the highlighted page. "It's true,” I said. “There's also a message scribbled in the margin," I showed it to them. It read: Save Alice!
"Do you think she wrote it before she died, like a clue or something?" Nerdy Girl adjusted her glasses. "Or maybe her name is Alice." She rummaged through the dead girl's pockets, looking for an ID.
"I don't think so," I point out the necklace dangling from the dead girl's neck. "It says her name is Mabel."
"I know who killed her!" another squeaky voice popped in from the mist. It belonged to an old woman, hunching over her wriggling cane. "It's the Cheshire Cat!" the few teeth she had left in her mouth chattered.
Senior Jerk chortled. "Are we seriously having this conversation?"
"Don't laugh, young man," the woman struggled on her cane, eager to see the dead girl. "It's all over the news."
"I remember now," Nerdy Girl snapped her fingers. "Cheshire, the Cat. He's killed four girls, until now. Two in London, two in Cambridge, and now it appears that he’s killed one in Oxford. All the girls were grinning after they died. I saw it on TV."
"So that's what Alice meant by a grin without a cat?" Senior Jerk mocked them, tucking his hands in his pockets and shrugging his shoulders. Being a jerk is more of a habit or a personality trait of sorts, not an attitude. It's incurable.
"Let me take a closer look at her," the old woman held out a hand.
"I don't think we should be doing this," Professor Tweed snatched the book from my hand, as if I were a lazy student who just got an F in his class. I don't usually tolerate such behavior, but I made an exception. "We're tampering with evidence," he explained.
"He’s right," Nerdy Girl leaned away from the corpse. "We should wait for the police. Did someone call them?"
"They're on their way," I replied. "I called them once I came across the corpse."
"So you’re the one who found her?" Senior Jerk pointed his big finger at me.