The Gruesome Adventures of Alice in Undeadland (2 page)

Chapter Three

Alice fell into limbo. How long ago had she done so? She couldn’t guess as no time had fallen with her. Even the sensation of dropping was very mild with only the slightest flutter of Alice’s dress and the awkward position of her legs indicating her journey downward. It was as such that Alice’s mind began to wander and she was wondering if anyone would be searching for her when suddenly the strangest of events occurred. Memories began to play out around her and scenes from her previous life appeared.

She saw herself as a five-year-old, all smiles and long blonde hair and pretty blue dress; she was showing her father a picture she had drawn. Alice’s father was smiling, and put his stethoscope around Alice’s neck, before grabbing her, smothering her in cuddles. The play disappeared as if made from wisps of smoke and was replaced by another.

It was her mother: Alice sat on her knee; her mother, kindly and beautiful, read from a book of rhymes. Alice knew exactly which one. She mouthed it along with her mother:

The queen of hearts
,

Stole body parts
,

From the cemetery one day
.

The queen of hearts did sew those parts
,

To keep herself ageing away
.

Then tragedy forced itself before Alice. A scene she would never wish to see again but so strong she couldn’t help but watch. Her poor mother and father were in the parlour, seemingly asleep in their coffins. Alice’s father, the most generous doctor anyone had known, treated many of the very sick and poor. His kindness, however, fate repaid with pain and let cholera follow him home.

Chapter Four

There was a crash.

Then rolling.

Into what felt like dried sticks and dead leaves.

They pierced and tore through Alice’s skin. They snapped and crunched as Alice tumbled down a steep slope. Head over heels and head again. She rolled into a final and untidy heap. Alice lay there just to make sure she had stopped moving. She righted herself and wiped away the hair that covered her eyes. The crunching sound did not belong to twigs but in fact heaps upon heaps of pure white bones. She sat upon them, tiny skeletons and skulls of birds, mice, rats, shrews and even fish. They cracked horribly as she shifted. All around her were hills of bones, going on far into the distance. They were lit by flickering yellow gas lamps that hung in the air of their own accord, casting a wax light while eerily floating. Where Alice should have had revulsion at the bleached heaps, she had only indifference.

Alice tried to stand; however, her legs were misplaced. She felt around for them only to discover her arms were the wrong way around, elbows forward. She turned her head and realised that, while her body was sitting upright, it was her head that had snapped backwards from the landing. She thought for a moment before taking hold of her head and turning it as hard as she could. With a sickly creak it twisted back into place. Unfortunately she had twisted her head further the wrong way around, winding it tighter instead. The result was now her neck resembled a fleshy spring.

Alice began to climb the bone hill slowly as it shifted with each step; it was like climbing a mountain of pebbles. At times, the bones became so steep and brittle that Alice had to manage on all fours. She tumbled on a couple of occasions but failed to give in as the bones rattled and poured. Finally Alice reached the summit with sharper, tiny shards sticking themselves in her arms and knees. At the plateau’s summit stood a small iron table. It glittered with a black metal and was patterned by demons on the legs and rim of the table itself. A tiny clear vial containing a green liquid sat on the table. The vial had a head of a field mouse as a bottle top. Around the bottle neck tied with string, a label read
Drink Me
.

Unsure how to respond to the bottle, Alice decided to give the liquid closer investigation. She twirled the mouse lid easily but it squeaked painfully with each twist. Alice shuddered with the squeaking until the lid was free. There was something sad about the mouse-head bottle top. She placed it in her dress pocket.

“Drink me,” she whispered to herself.

Alice lifted the vial an inch from her lips before she could smell the contents. They smelt of death and rot and poison. Despite the label, this was not for drinking. As Alice poured the foul green liquid it hissed and bubbled and congealed over the bones. Immediately the huge pile shifted, toppling the table into the darkness and bringing Alice to her knees. With a terrible rattle, the hill of bones began to collapse as the liquid burned its way through. Unable to free herself, Alice was pulled along like coal pouring down a shoot. Buried under the bones it felt like drowning all over again — impossible as Alice knew she was dead. True, not fully dead, but a disconcerting sensation none the less. Then with a huge sound not unlike a jar of marbles smashing it was over. Alice found herself sitting in dirt, bones strewn in small piles around her.

“Now where has this taken me?” Alice asked, standing, dusting herself, shaking tiny skeletons from her hair and pulling them from her arms and knees. The sky was a pallet of deep grey. There were no stars, only clouds resembling bloated maggots slowly floating on an invisible breeze. Below, the landscape was a garden of dead weeds painted in shadow and awash with grey. As far as Alice could see, row upon row of gravestones, bent, broken in silhouette. It was as if evil had stolen the entirety of colour from the world.

“Just where am I?” she asked herself.

“Undeadland,” came a squeaking from Alice’s dress pocket.

Alice peered in her pocket and produced the mouse-head bottle top. She regarded it this way and that; the mouse head was exactly like the tiny stuffed creatures Alice had seen in a museum, sad and still and left to collect dust.

“What is Undeadland?” Alice asked.

When the mouse head spoke there was no movement, just a voice that suited the mouse well.

“This is Undeadland, where the unwanted dead go.”

“Can the dead be unwanted?” Alice wondered.

“Of course,” the mouse head explained. “Otherwise there wouldn’t be an Undeadland.”

This slightly annoyed Alice, being argued with a kind of logic that made no sense.

“You seem to know a lot for a bottle top.”

The mouse’s tone became less shrill and more sombre.

“Alas, I was not always so. Once I lived on a farm with many brothers and sisters, all running, nibbling and having fun as mice should. That was until the farm cat caught me unawares and made a present of my head to the farmer.”

“Oh,” Alice replied. “In that case I’m sorry to hear that. How did you come to be here?” she added.

“I spent a while longer on the shelf of the farmer’s wife stuffed in a bottle, watching the fat cat enjoy life, then one day the farmer tripped, knocking my bottle off the shelf. I landed right on that cat’s head, killing the monster instantly but shattering my bottle. The next thing I knew I was here.”

For the moment there was only quiet, save a grim wind blowing through the gravestones. The mouse coughed, murdering the silence.

“If you are not unwanted dead why are you here?”

“A white rabbit cut out and stole my heart. I followed it here.”

“Do you need your heart?”

“It is where I keep my love for my parents. It is the only thing I have left of them,” she explained further.

“I see,” replied the mouse head. “Perhaps I could help? I could be your guide and in return you could keep me safe? After all, I am a mouse bottle top without a bottle — we have both lost things.”

Alice thought for moment. The mouse head seemed pleasant enough and she had no clue to the rabbit’s whereabouts. The company would also not go unwanted.

“In that case,” she said, “I will keep you safe.”

“Oh, thank you. I won’t let you down, miss.” The mouse head was elated.

“Please, call me Alice.”

She fashioned a necklace from pieces of her dress with the mouse head as makeshift locket. She tied it around her neck. Into Undeadland she went, with Mousehead — the name she had chosen — as her companion. They walked amongst the gravestones, stopping occasionally to read the grim epitaphs from the many grim headstones.

Little Billy Brat swallowed a rat — it scratched through his throat
, said one, and there in the stone was a carving of a boy cowering in fear, while a giant rodent slobbered above him.

Mary Mary dead and scary
, said another and again in stone was a ghost child rising from a mirror held by a smaller little girl.

Victor Drake squeezed to death by a snake
.

Henrietta Cripps impaled with sharpened sticks
.

Little Bo Peep trampled by rabid sheep
.

And so it went on. It reminded Alice of a story the children of the orphanage would tell each other. It was a way of finding comfort in the pain of others. She spoke it out to Mousehead.

“‘Ten Victorian children playing amongst a long-lost shrine,

One disturbs the cursed seal,

Then they are nine.

Nine Victorian children bind a friend with weight,

They throw him into the murky pond,

Then they are eight.

Eight Victorian children pray to their two friends in heaven,

Down peels a lightning bolt,

Then they are seven.

Seven Victorian children doing magic tricks,

One summons a malevolent demon,

Then they are six.

Six Victorian children burying each alive,

One falls fast asleep in the dark,

Then they are five.

Five Victorian children answer a midnight rapping at the door,

One is sent insane by a raven

Then they are four evermore.

Four Victorian children climbing a haunted tree,

Arises the headless horseman,

Then they are three.

Three Victorian children poking victims of black flu,

Red rings blistered on the skin,

Then they are two.

Two Victorian Children steal a toy monkey banging a drum,

The monkey grants three evil wishes,

Then there is one.

One lost Victorian child lamenting under the moon,

Wandering lonely into the mist,

Joining dead friends soon.’”

Now Alice wasn’t sure if it was the strangeness of the place, but she couldn’t help the feeling she and Mousehead were not alone. She crept slower, looking this way and that as shadows seemed to move over the never-ending gravestones, washing over them like a dark tide. Alice quickly turned as if to catch any stalker unawares and glimpsed shapes in the dark, quickly peeping and ducking behind the gravestones. This was followed by a muted giggle and a shift in the grave dirt, as if something unpleasant was waking below.

“Mousehead,” she whispered, “can you hear that?”

Further into darkness Alice went, peering.

With each step grew an uneasy feeling.

Following.

Creeping.

Behind her.

Breathing.

“Mousehead,” said Alice, “I don’t think we are alone.”

“Here we never are,” Mousehead replied.

The giggling became louder. The shadows had shape. Alice instantly recognised the dark outlines of children and they moved in and out of the gravestones playing a ghostly hide and seek. Alice went to move faster but shadow children rose from the tombs in front, blocking any escape. The whispers were coming from all around. Alice spun to find a way out, only to find herself trapped by the ever-growing shadows.

“Stay out. Don’t let them touch you,” Mousehead pleaded.

“How can shadows harm me?” Alice desperately needed to know.

“How can shadows not? If they touch you then you will join them — we will join them.”

The whispers became fully audible words:

Time to play, time to play
,

Stay all the night
,

Never go away
.

There were eyes, blinking eyes, flowing within the shadows, pure white and horrible.

“Now,” said Alice, “let’s settle down. I have to be on my way.”

The shadows were inches from her feet and Alice stood on tiptoe like a child avoiding waves on the shore. Just as Alice was about to lose herself, there was a sudden commotion.

“Get back in there,” something shouted, waving a fiery torch. The heat singed past Alice as she fell backwards, landing with a bump.

“Get back, you buggers.”

The shadow children retreated back into their graves; they flowed in reverse. Alice was left with the bizarrest set of twins she had ever laid her eyes on, towering above her.

“Well?” said one.

“Off you go, back into the grave with you,” added the other.

Both were large, bordering on huge. Both wore striped suits not unlike criminals committed to an asylum for the insane. Both were, at first glance, exactly the same. However as Alice took a closer look she realised they were merely almost the same. Both had the same beady dark eyes fixed deep into small heads that looked as if they could roll off their rotund bodies at any moment. Yet one of the twins wore around his neck a large hangman’s noose. The other had the handle of knives and the odd cleaver stuck firmly along his back. On each of their massive right hands was a tattoo scrawled in blue ink. The tattoos read Tweedleglum and Tweedlegloom.

Chapter Five

“Why are you not getting back in your grave?” a Tweedle bellowed. The flames were waved an inch from Alice’s skin, which hissed.

“Do you mind?” snapped Alice. “That is very hot and dangerous.”

Tweedleglum looked at Tweedlegloom, or maybe Tweedlegloom looked at Tweedleglum.

“Hot? Hot? Hot?” the one with the torch and noose wanted to know.

“Shadows don’t feel. Shadows don’t like the light,” the other added. Their voices sounded exactly like tombstones crumbled and weathered with age. Alice got to her feet; the Tweedles were still more than twice her size.

“I am not a shadow. I am...” Alice corrected herself. “I was a girl.”

The closer Tweedle’s mouth opened and slowly closed again in disbelief. A cockroach ran from his dried lips to freedom. The pair burst into deep, guttural laughter.