The Last Mayor Box Set Page 24

  Maybe a dog could fix that.

  "I just want a horse to ride around on. Daddy, can't I? It's only fair, you know. He'll be the best fun and the best friend to us both."

  He sighed. She could feel the thoughts turning in his head.

  "Maybe," he'd said.

  They ended up with the Hatter. They would both love him, and he would change and save their lives.

  * * *

  Anna screamed. The Hatter screamed. His little bones cracked and his skin tore as her Daddy's big jaws crunched closed, then Anna ran at him and hit him in the belly and the leg.

  "Stop it!" she cried without thinking. He didn't stop. She hit him and shouted until her fists hurt and her voice went hoarse. "Stop it stop it stop it!"

  He kept on eating, and the Hatter's hot blood splashed through his hands and into her hair. It poured down his pajamas in a dark trail, making the carpet sludgy. Soon the Hatter was all gone.

  Anna staggered back. Her father's scraggly beard was smeared with blood and fur. She wanted to be sick. She backed away from him, eyes wide and terrified.

  "Daddy, what have you done?"

  In the hallway below the horrible thumping was still going on. Sobs jerked up her throat like hiccups, and she hurried as her Daddy followed. She stumbled down the hall and back into her room with his wet face and white eyes bobbing after her.

  In her room she slammed the door shut. He thumped against it a second later but the handle didn't turn and the door didn't budge. His thumping joined with the thumping from below.

  Anna was frantic with tears, breathing madly, shuddering uncontrollably. This wasn't right. This wasn't supposed to happen. Nothing like this ever happened in Alice.

  "Daddy!" she moaned, but no answer came but more of the thumping.

  It was too much. She climbed back into bed, and tucked her arms and legs into the tight covers and snuggled down low under them, like she was tiny Alice in a giant's pocket again. She pulled the pillows after her and wrapped them around her head.

  The thudding diminished a little. Warmth crept in, and she sobbed herself to sleep.

  She dreamed she sailed upon an ocean.

  The ocean was vast and made of people. They flowed upon each other smoothly, each a gray speck of water just like all the others. Anna sailed atop them with her bed as a boat, using the sheets and blankets as sails, wearing a blue and white petticoat like Alice.

  "Ahoy there!" she called to the bodies below.

  They carried her forward. She used the footboard as a tiller. Occasionally flapping birdwomen flew overhead, and she waved. She fished in the ocean of gray wriggling bodies, and came up with bright red chunks of tongue. They flapped at her like fish but said nothing.

  The tides carried her for thousands of miles. The water-people lapped against her bed with low thuds. She stood at the prow looking to the horizon where her Daddy was waiting for her, a giant man sitting on a giant stool in the middle of the ocean.

  "Darling Alice," he would say when she finally reached him, "why have you come so far?"

  "I'm searching," was the answer she always gave, "am I home yet?"

  He'd smile. "What is home, little Alice, but threads and cobbles, bits of old lint plucked from your pocket? Build it up, child, build it up."

  Then she'd lie down at his feet and pluck old lint from her pockets, and he'd sing a song with words that were probably about sailing and comas, but she never could tell.

  It was a dream she'd had many times. But when she reached the stool-island this time, things were different. Her giant Daddy's eyes shone like lighthouse beams, projecting a strange white light over the ocean and into the murky clouds. He didn't look down when she spoke to him.

  "What are you looking for, Daddy?" she asked.

  "The Jabberwock," he said in a deep and dreadful voice.

  This confused Anna, but confusion didn't last long within a dream.

  "What can you mean? The Jabberwock's not even a real thing."

  "But it is," he said, "and darling it's so terribly cold."

  He bent his burning white eyes down to her, and she was lost within the light.

  3. ALONE

  She woke lost within the light.

  It was bright in her room for the first time since the coma. She wormed out of the covers like a birdwoman coming up from her feather chrysalis. The black velvet curtains on the window were still pulled open and bright light flowed in. It lit her art spread around the walls: crayon drawings of unicorns and caterpillar-men and Alice. Normally even glimpsing all these colors brought the hurt on hard.

  Now it didn't. Anna lifted her head and ran her eyes over the collection again, but still felt nothing.

  That was quite peculiar.

  "Daddy?" she called.

  No answer came.

  She sat up in bed and saw her arm. It gave her quite a shock. There was a thin line of crusted black running down it, like a scab, which meant…

  She strangled a scream in her throat. Screams and shouts brought the hurt on harder. Instead she followed the scab-trail with wide eyes. It could be anything. It could be paint or ice cream or even old strawberry jam.

  "Jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today," she whispered to herself, but the words were not very convincing or reassuring. It wasn't jam, and she knew it.

  "Daddy?" she called again. Her voice sounded louder than usual. The temptation to duck her head back under the covers was strong, but she pushed it away. Alice wouldn't do that and neither would Anna.

  She climbed from bed carefully, wary of the hurt. There were dark brownish-red footprints on the gray carpet. Standing by the bedside she lifted her right foot and looked at its sole.

  Dark brownish-red.

  She gulped and went to the door. The handle turned with difficulty, like it had been wedged in position. The door swung inward.

  Her Daddy lay there on the floor.

  Anna leapt back. For a terrible moment she expected him to lunge up and bite her like he'd bitten into the Hatter, but he didn't. Instead he lay still with his eyes closed and his head pressed against where the door had been, sleeping soundly.

  He hardly even looked like her Daddy anymore. His skin had gone an even whiter gray and his scraggly beard was solid with black, like he'd been scarfing down chocolate syrup. His black pajamas were crusty and dark too.

  And he wasn't alone.

  The dim corridor was filled with sleeping bodies. There were so many, heaped on top of each other like the Queen's card-men fallen after battle. Arms lay across faces and legs lay across bellies, and all of them had white-gray faces and white-gray skin, and none of them were supposed to be there at all.

  Anna closed her eyes tightly shut. This was enough to bring the hurt on for days, but somehow the hurt wasn't there.

  She opened her eyes a crack: no change. She went back to the window and peered out. Hundreds of gray-faced people were out there too, lying in the street and the front yards. She opened the window and heard their raspy breathing, rising and falling like a tide lapping at the beach.

  "What are you all doing?" she said quietly.

  She went back to the door.

  "Daddy?" she whispered. He didn't respond. He didn't get up and start thumping or chewing, he just breathed like the rest of them. She knelt down and looked into his white eyes.

  "Daddy, what's happening? Why are you sleeping there?"

  He didn't answer.

  She poked his cheek quickly with her toe, but he wasn't play-acting. He was really asleep. They were all really sleeping. She looked over the others. They definitely didn't belong.

  "It's not a sleepover here, you know," she said, addressing them firmly. "It's time for you to go home."

  They didn't budge. She stepped over her father and bent down to prod the pudgy gray face of an old lady.

  "You, why are you in my house?"

  The old lady rasped breathily back at her. Her breath smelled like dead fish.

  Anna pinched her nose
. "It's no good being like that. It's a simple question."

  The old lady breathed out again.

  "You can go now or I'll call the police."

  No response.

  She wasn't really sure how to call the police, though it did seem a good idea. For that she'd need a phone, and a phone meant…

  They were blocking the hall with their bodies. She imagined picking her way through them, like a maze. Alice would do it.

  "I'll be right back," she whispered to her sleeping father, then started tip-toeing away. There weren't many spaces left uncovered by bodies, but she placed her feet very deliberately and held to the banister, making a kind of game of it. At one point she walked on an old man's wobbly bald head, but he didn't seem to mind.

  "Terribly sorry," she whispered, "though you shouldn't be sleeping there anyway."

  She reached her Daddy's room and went in.

  There were no people inside, but there was a black patch where the Hatter had died. It looked like a deep yolk-stain. She cried a little, then rubbed her eyes, because crying wouldn't help.

  Her Daddy's phone was on the nightstand. She worked her way around the stain toward it. Also there was his wallet, phone and keys, alongside some coins, a blue crayon and a small clay figure of Alice that she'd made for him.

  She picked up the phone. She hadn't ever made a call on it, though her Daddy had showed her some of the apps, most recently the one for tracking the Hatter's chip. She twisted her tongue between her teeth and jiggled at various little pictures, trying to find the phone app to dial the police, but she couldn't find it. She didn't even know the number anyway.

  It didn't matter. She tucked the phone into the pocket of her pajamas, then on second thoughts added the other bits. All that weight made her elastic waistband sag so she held it up with one hand.

  What next?

  Breakfast seemed like a good idea. Impossible things then breakfast, that was the normal order of things.

  But not in pajamas.

  She worked her way back down the hall, half-stepping on faces and shoulders and bottoms.

  "Do excuse me," she said to each one, talking like Alice in very proper English, which made her feel braver. "I do beg your pardon."

  In her room she put on an old pair of jeans over her pajamas, and slid into a bright orange jacket plus pink shoes that were now too small for her feet.

  Next she picked her way down the stairs, trying not to step on faces. She hadn't been downstairs for a long time, and on the ground floor there were bodies lying in the hall, as if this was all very natural.

  In the kitchen she made herself a bowl of cereal. She hadn't done this in a year, and her fingers were fumbly and uncertain, but at least she remembered how to eat.

  While she was chewing, sitting at the counter and watching the gray bodies on the floor, they started to get up.

  That was shocking. Milk dribbled out of her mouth. Should she run? She wasn't sure, but it quickly became clear they weren't coming for her. Instead, they were walking out.

  She stared as the kitchen emptied, with the people shuffling away.

  She followed them, jaw slack. In the hall she saw them coming down the stairs. All of them, even the old lady. Anna felt a new release of confidence.

  "That's right," she said, nodding now. "Out you go. Back home and go to bed without any breakfast. Go sleep on your own floor."

  They went and went. They came down the stairs in a thudding line. They bounced off each other like silly gray worms.

  "Careful," she warned them, when they pushed up against her Daddy's pictures on the walls. "Those are important." None of them listened. She danced a little closer and shoved a few of them on the bottoms, helping them on their way. It seemed so rude and fun, but they didn't mind.

  "Hurry hurry," she urged, laughing. What had been so scary the night before now became a kind of game.

  They filed out. They kept coming.

  "Daddy, come see this!" she called up the stairs, but the stairs were almost empty by now, and a horrible thought came to her. She scanned the backs of the last few stragglers, and recognized one by the lightning bolt on his pajamas.

  "Daddy!" she shouted.

  He didn't turn. He kept on walking. Her Daddy walked clean out of the house, following his new friends and leaving Anna alone behind.

  4. TIDES

  She ran after him.

  Down the hall she lurched, through the door and over the borderline between inside and outside at full speed. Bright light hit her eyes, she couldn't see the steps in the yard ahead, and fell.

  Her head smacked off the hard ground before she could get her arms up, and she rolled out of control. The pain and shock overwhelmed her, and for a moment she lay there stunned, while on the street beyond the flow of gray bodies continued onward, like a tramping river.

  "Arh," she whispered, as the pain shifted through various flavors of overwhelming. Her head was a piercing numbness, her left elbow and arm throbbed awfully. She raised her hand up and saw blood on the palm. She touched her head, which was cold and trembly.

  "Daddy," she said, and craned her neck just in time to see him fold into the flood of gray bodies on the street. It made her want to cry more than anything, but there was no good in that. Alice wouldn't cry.

  She staggered to her feet. She bounced off the hedge by the gate, unable to walk steadily. Her legs shook and her vision doubled. She looked at the crush of bodies pouring themselves past her house, and saw a nearly solid wall of people. She couldn't see her Daddy at all.

  She pushed her way in.

  And almost went under at once.

  The flood drove her sideways and she was swept along, staggering for space in that dark and tramping flow. On all sides clammy bodies pressed and towered over her, stinking of dust, and she ducked and staggered for footing as best she could. They stepped on her toes and kicked at her heels, their knees punched at her back and smacked her head, and it took all her meager strength to stay afloat and not get trampled down.

  "Daddy!" she yelled, but the sound was swallowed up in the tramping of bodies. She looked up at faces desperately, trying to pick out his bloody chin from below, but there were just so many people.

  She pushed against them wildly, ducking awkwardly between and around legs, but she was tiring fast. Her body wasn't ready for this. Her legs were trembling and her ankles barely held her weight.

  "Let me out!" she shouted, but the people didn't listen. She could feel herself slipping under. They'd walk all over her and squash her to bits. They'd kill her like the Hatter.

  She tried pulling with her arms as though she was swimming, past a fat bare-chested man and a woman with a gray baby hanging from a sling, past a little girl the same height as her and an old grandpa wobbling by, but the flood went on and on and she couldn't find her father.

  Then she did.

  His broad black back was right there, with a sharp yellow lightning bolt drawn on it, shuffling in and out of sight amongst the hundreds.

  "Daddy!"

  She half-ran, half-climbed through the ranks of the flood, driven by a final burst of energy. A man with a red bath robe kicked her in the chest with his knee. A woman scraped her face with her hand. Then she was there. She clasped hold of her father's cold hand, and looked up into his cold face, with his bloody beard still on his chin like a mask, and began to cry.

  "Why did you leave me?" she asked. "Why, Daddy?"

  He didn't say anything. He didn't even look at her. He kept on walking, and she barely clung on.

  Long minutes passed, as the tears were forgotten and Anna used all her concentration to stumble along in her father's wake, clutching his hand and surrounded by people. All her cries of, "Daddy!" were ignored. She tried several times to pull him to a stop, but he was too strong and she was too small, and she was dragged along behind.

  So they walked.

  They walked along the street until it twisted to the side, but they kept going, over the curb and down an embankm
ent until they were walking through fields. The grass was damp underfoot and Anna's too-tight shoes got soaking wet. Every part of her hurt and was cold, and home was very far behind now, but there was nothing she could do about that. He had to keep up with her Daddy.

  Together they walked through a bush, mostly trampled already, then through a field of tall golden grain. They walked across a low stream which made her feet even wetter, then they climbed up a low hill and walked over another road where her wet shoes went slosh slosh slosh.

  At the middle of the road there was a railing which she had to climb over. Her Daddy got stuck for a little while, trying to walk straight through it, so she used the time to rest. Most of the others got stuck too, which was funny and scary at the same time. Something was wrong with them.

  After a while she tired of trying to reason with him, and managed to guide him over, lifting his legs for him. Some of the others saw and followed his example, while others just got shoved over helpfully by those coming up behind. In some places the fence broke with a loud bark.

  For a while they walked along a new road, mostly at the head of the group now. The crush of bodies had ended, and there was room to breathe. Anna's legs hurt and shook; she hadn't really walked in a year. Her arms hurt just to hold to her Daddy's arm.

  The road was filled with cars, sat at crazy angles across the blacktop, like dropped crackers on the bedspread. Some had broken through the railing, others seemed to have crashed into each other and were still steaming.

  "What happened here?" she asked her Daddy breathlessly.

  He walked on. She yanked on his arm.

  "You have to talk to me. This isn't fair!"

  He pulled her on. Some of the faster members of the flood folded back around them, closing off her view. Soon the road swerved and they walked off it again, down another low hill and into a dark forest.

  "Stop!" she shouted, but he didn't stop. There was no use arguing. He pulled her into the dark brambly undergrowth and she stumbled through behind, while thorny bits of scrub tore at her jeans. She tried a new thing; clutching to his leg with her whole body, letting him do most of the walking for her. It worked for a while, but she kept slipping down.