“What’s getting better?” Truckle couldn’t hide his curiosity. The Pillar knew how to trigger his buttons.
“Be patient, Tommy. Insane things come to those who wait." The Pillar leaned back on his couch. He looked content. A bit drowsy, too. Truckle remembered a moment in the eccentric professor’s trial a couple of months ago. The Pillar had informed the judge that he preferred looking at the world from behind a curtain of smoke. The smoke was like a filtering screen, he had said. It helped him to see right through people’s invisible masks.
“I suppose I can make an exception and get her to meet you briefly,” Truckle considered. “But only if you tell me—”
“I know, I know,” the Pillar waved his gloved hand in the air. “You’d like to know why four times seven is fourteen. The answer is actually buried somewhere in your own childhood, Tommy, but let’s say you can find it here.” He nudged a copy of Lewis Carroll’s original Alice’s Adventures Under Ground toward the edge of the cell. Truckle was going to reach for it through the bars, but pulled his hand back.
“Oh,” the Pillar said. “You’re scared to even reach in. How very sane of you,” he smirked. “Rest assured, Tommy. In Lewis Carroll’s book, there is a part when Alice wonders if she’s hallucinating. She questions her own sanity, and if she’s even Alice at all.”
“What?”
“In chapter two, The Pool of Tears, Alice tries to perform multiplication, but produces some odd results. She does it to assure herself she isn’t mad,” the Pillar said. "Alice finds out that while she is in Wonderland, four times five becomes twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven is…” the Pillar’s eyes glittered, looking at Truckle.
“According to this nonsensical logic, fourteen.” Truckle felt ashamed of having said that, but he wasn’t good at caging his curiosity.
“Frabjous, isn’t it?” the Pillar waved his hands like a proud magician.
“So this is some nerdy code for those obsessed with the book?” Truckle expected more than this. The professor was a killer for God’s sake. What in the world was his interest in children’s books?
“Nerdy is an awfully racist and out of fashion word,” the Pillar raised his forefinger. “We call ourselves Wonderlanders.”
“Are you kidding me? You sound like you believe that Alice Wonder is the Alice in the book,” Truckle chortled. “You’re the optimum zenith of insanity. I don’t think I can even profile you.”
“It’s time insanity has a role model,” the Pillar dragged long enough on his hookah to make a whizzing sound. “Now, go get me Alice, before I change my mind and escape again.”
Chapter 12
VIP Ward’s Door, the Radcliffe Lunatic Asylum, Oxford
On my way to meet this mysterious Professor Pillar, I break free from the warden and run toward Tom Truckle’s office, to get my Tiger Lily. My attempt is overruled again as the wardens grab hold of me and tie me back up in a straitjacket. This time, they squeeze me in hard, so I can’t untie myself.
Ogier grins, watching me buckled up. He taps his prod on the thick flesh of his palm, as if reminding me how much he'd enjoy shocking me if I untie myself again. As they walk me up to the VIP ward, I try to squeeze my head for deeper memories of Wonderland and the people I supposedly killed. I can’t remember anyone, not even the Pillar who wants to see me.
"You're by far one of the worst Mushrooms in my asylum," Dr. Truckle says, adjusting his tie as he walks beside me. He's always been self-conscious about the fancy way he dresses and how he looks. But it's the first time he calls me a Mushroom. "And even though you killed your classmates, I know you're not a naturally born killer. I have been treating you for some time, so I know what I am talking about." He stops before the metallic door leading to the VIP hallway. It looks much cleaner than the mess I live in downstairs. I think of it as purgatory, one step away from the sane world outside. "Like I told you, Professor Carter Pillar is a cold-hearted murderer. He's done horrible things, like pulling his victim's eyes out and stuffing their sockets with mushrooms. He used laughing gas on another victim, and smoked his damn hookah while watching him die of internal bleeding caused from the laughter. He even once hypnotized a man and made him jump off a rooftop of the Tom Tower in Oxford University after persuading him he had wings."
"What's your point, doctor?" I can't help but notice Truckle's uneasiness with the Pillar. It makes me curiouser and curiouser.