EMIRATE AIRLINES — SOMEWHERE IN THE ITALIAN SKIES
I t's only hours before we're on a plane to Rome, then a taxi to the Vatican. I don't even know what's going on. Everything is happening so fast. I feel like Alice whisked to a surreal, but real-life Wonderland.
All I am hoping is that I can save Constance in the end. At least, this would be the only sane thing that happened in the last couple of days. Whenever I remember her hugging me and making me promise her I would never give up on her, I remind myself that this is why I am following the Pillar. I wonder if she's still alive.
The Pillar is looking forward to the sunset and hoping we'll catch it while on the plane. We have a few hours before I have to be taken back into the asylum, as per our unbelievable deal with Dr. Truckle.
"I can't believe you blackmailed Dr. Truckle to buy us the airplane tickets," I comment, looking over the Pillar's shoulder to see the world from above. He'd insisted on sitting next to the window. Sometimes, he sounds like a four-year-old.
"I can't believe he didn't get us first-class tickets." He pouts. "Besides, I have never been comfortable with Emirates Airlines. I don't like their slogan: When was the last time you did something for the first time? "
"Why? I think it's a brilliant slogan."
"When was the last time you did something mad? That's a slogan, Alice."
I ignore his comment and start surfing the internet on my phone, looking up the girls' names.
"Someone's learning fast. Yesterday you weren't comfortable with typing on the phone." The Pillar turns his head and puts on his glasses. "What are you surfing? Celebrity gossip, Barbie games, and music videos?"
I ignore his silliness. "Actually, I am studying the names of the girls the Cheshire killed," I say, scrolling on.
"Why the ones he killed, and not the names on the list?"
"The ones on the list are just young girls Lewis Carroll photographed," I say. "They are black-and-white photos, and sometimes sepia. Some of them are actually a bit creepy. I don't know what to do with those photos of girls who died a long time ago. So I had to start somewhere. The names of the Cheshire's victims seem convenient to me."
"And what did you find, Inspector Alice Wonder?" He lowers his glasses and peeks at my phone. It's one of the rare moments he looks like a real college professor.
"I researched the names of the six girls he killed," I explain. "Two of them were from the same town, and the other two from another. Only the last two were from two different towns."
The Pillar looks puzzled.
"The four towns the girls originally came from are near Warrington, Cheshire, where Lewis Carroll was born," I elaborate.
The Pillar raises an eyebrow. "Interesting. Anything common among the girls?"
"Not in a physical way. Not even their ages or their hobbies. Some of them were blonde, some brunettes. Some seven and some fourteen."
"But?" He cups a hand behind his ear.
"The towns they came from have something in common." I am proud of my research.
"The towns? Curiouser and curiouser." The Pillar gives me his full attention.
"Each town the girls came from was at some point considered the origin of where Lewis Carroll was inspired to write about the Cheshire Cat."
"You didn't get that from Wikipedia, did you?" The Pillar closes his eyes and sighs.
"What's wrong with that?"
"Wikipedia, to me, is what Wonderland is to the so-called sane people." He opens his eyes and rubs them. "It doesn't exist. Most of its info is Jub Jub." I am taking it that Jub Jub is the total opposite of frabjous . "Anyways, go on. What do you think this means?"
"At first, I had no idea. I just thought their proximity to each other was a bit strange, but then I figured it out," I say. "Each of these towns has stone carvings of a grinning cat in one of its churches."
"Grinning cats? Churches? Never thought those two would mix." The Pillar is even more interested now. "What are the names of the towns and the churches?"
"St. Wilfrid Church in Grappenhall, a village adjacent to Lewis Carroll's birthplace in Daresbury in Warrington, Cheshire." I scroll down on my phone. "St. Nicolas Church in Cranleigh. It's a town close to Guildford, where one of Carroll's sisters lived. It is also where he died. A nameless church in the village of Croft-on-Tees. And finally, St. Christopher's in Pott Shrigley."
"Each one of those churches has a statue of a grinning cat in it?"
"Each one." I nod. "And each one claims it was the inspiration for Lewis to write about the Cheshire Cat."
"That's one hell of a connection, although I can't see what it leads to," he says. "But the corpses of the Cheshire's victims were found in Cambridge, London, and Oxford."
"It's where the girls' families moved later. But the five girls were born in the smaller towns with the churches. Can't you see that all of these towns were visited by Lewis Carroll, or at least he had access to them?"
"Let me think this over," the Pillar says. "The Cheshire kills girls who were born in villages around where Lewis Carroll lived. Not just that, but places where sandstones or statues of a grinning cat exist. What could that mean?"
"Like I said, I can't interpret the meaning, but this is no coincidence."
"And where is Constance from?"
My eyes widen. Why hadn't I thought of that?
"Wait. You probably won't find that info on the net." He checks his phone, surfing some secret forum or something. "Just a minute." He keeps searching. "Here it is. Constance Richard—" The Pillar stops in the middle of the sentence. "In London."
"So no connection to the other girls?" I feel disappointed. Another lost lead.
"Not necessarily. Who said there isn't a statue of a grinning cat in London? I just don't know of it. Your theory is still possible," the Pillar says.
The light above our seats flashes, urging us to fasten our seatbelts. We've arrived.
"Now that we're about to land," the Pillar says, "there is something I have to do." He stands up and faces everyone in the plane. "Ladies and gentlemen, honored visitors of Rome, and probably the Vatican City after, may I have your attention?"
"Please sit down, sir," the flight attendant demands, but he ignores her.
"I'm the archbishop of the Frabjous Christians of Monte Carlo," he says. I am sure there is no such thing. "And I'd like you to recite this little prayer with me before we land."
"Sir!" the flight attendant repeats, to no avail. "Please sit down! We're about to land."
"Do you think we can land without the will of God, young lady?" he says to her and wins the passengers' attention immediately. "Do you think your seatbelts will save you from the wrath of God if He so desires to crash this plane to pieces?"
The flight attendant shrugs and the crowd begs the Pillar to recite his landing prayer. "Okay, just make it quick." She lowers her head and walks away.
"After me, please." He raises his hand to the plane's ceiling and begins, "Now I sit me down to land," and the passengers repeat after him, all in one voice. "I pray the Lord with open hands"—this has become the Vatican Airlines—"that if I die before we land"—I can't believe how poor his rhyming is. Why are these people even following him?—"please don't take me to Wonderland!"
"Amen," everyone says, and I feel like I want to dig Lewis Carroll up from his grave and ask him who the Pillar really is.