Lost in Wonderland Read online

  Published by Evernight Teen ® at Smashwords

  www.evernightteen.com

  Copyright© 2016 Nicky Peacock

  ISBN: 978-1-77233-811-9

  Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

  Editor: Jessica Ruth

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  For imaginary friends everywhere.

  LOST IN WONDERLAND

  The Twisted and the Brave, 1

  Nicky Peacock

  Copyright © 2016

  Prologue

  He knew she’d be fighting, desperate to get back to them, gripping on to every dangling branch in the forest, wriggling from the monster’s grip. His mother would battle to find her way back home.

  Shilo’s hand was cold around his little sister’s fingers. He could barely feel her slim digits enclosed in his. They were running, their small legs pumping against the frozen ground. Kayla was breathing heavily, sobs lacing each strangled exhale. She cried out to him, but he didn’t stop their momentum. He couldn’t. Their mom was in trouble, and although he had no concrete plan as to how they could save her from the deadly Kushtaka, all he could concentrate on was catching up with them; the plan would have to come when he was face-to-face with the six-foot beast covered in dirty fur and sporting sharp talons.

  “Shilo!” shouted Kayla. She was weighing him down, slowing him down. Not for the first time in his life, he hated her existence.

  “Please!” she yelled.

  He didn’t turn around. He kept moving. It was only after another thirty minutes of frantic running that he realized his sister was no longer holding his hand.

  Chapter One

  Mouse

  Before I can scream, he stuffs me in his trunk. It is dark, smelly, and contains an empty plain black plastic bag and a dirty shovel; these are not good signs. I put my hands to the top of the trunk and push. It is locked. I wasn’t getting out till he wanted me to. I resign myself to curl into a ball, the acidic-smelling sweat of his palms still imprinted on my bare, narrow shoulders. I should be listening out for the car engine, hearing when it slows for corners or revs on open roads. I should be testing the resilience of all the sides of the black space around me. I should be doing all the things they tell you to do, but I don’t. I simply stay in my little ball, quiet and patient.

  The car bounces up and down and I realize we’re not on the main road anymore. He’s taking me somewhere remote…

  We come to a soft stop. The slam of a car door shivers through the metal of the vehicle. I know what is going to happen. It’s so inevitable that it’s almost laughable. Death comes to everyone at some point; what is that saying, “No one can avoid death and taxes.” Funny the things you remember when you’re in danger. I suppose your brain tries to distract you with all sorts of useless crap, anything to keep you from shutting down and freaking the hell out. I grab at my forearm, an almost robotic reaction, feeling down it to check that my tracking chip is still there. The hard edges beneath my skin make me smile. My small, metallic friend never lets me down, never abandons me.

  The lid to my dark place is pulled up and I see him. His face is blank. There’s no hint of emotion or even intent other than what can be derived through his actions. His hands are sturdy as he pulls me from the trunk and stands me up before him. Being barely five feet tall, I only stand to his chest. I look down to the ground between us and see the cheapest sneakers in the world, ones probably made by enslaved third-world children. Man this guy is pure evil.

  “Don’t worry, girl.” He puts a hand on my cheek and graces me with a twitchy smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. The hand lingers longer than usual polite social circles would allow. My eyes widen. I know that I am one of many girls he has brought here—one of the many that he planned to rape and strangle, then leave used and vacant by the side of the road, a hollow tangle of floppy limbs. How do I know this? Because I know him. I was looking for him. I’m not who, and what, he thinks I am. I’m not a fourteen-year-old girl, scared by the death sentence before her. No, I am something else entirely.

  I smack his palm from my cheek and use the momentum to reach over with my other hand to grab his wrist. I position myself in front of him and use his own body weight to pull him down and over my now bent back. He hits the ground so hard he cries out. I keep hold of his arm and twist it around and under. He moves his body, angling it in the same direction in an attempt to ease the tension I’m creating.

  “Stop!” he yells, those crappy sneakers frantically pumping to find enough purchase to get him to his feet.

  I push harder till I hear the bone snap. He screams, but thanks to the remote location he has taken us to, no one hears him. I let go of his wrist and turn to retrieve the shovel from the trunk. I take a minute to loom over him. He is trying to get up, but the weight and pain of his broken arm is putting him off-balance. Funny how fragile the human body actually is, even one that belongs to a sick serial killer.

  I raise the shovel and smack it over his knees. He howls and tries to shield himself with his good arm. An arm that is not intact for long, as I turn the shovel and this time use the edge to dig into his flesh. Blood pools on the ground and he begins to crawl. I’m not sure where he’s trying to go. I think his goal is just to get away from me. I walk the few steps to where he’s managed to drag himself to then bring my weapon down hard onto his skull. The splintering sound of bone meeting metal is my cue to get on with the operation. I pull my cell phone from my pink sparkle-covered jeans and dial the only number on it. An automated message greets me. “Off with their heads.” I take a breath and look over at the mangled mess of the serial killer they knew as the Doll Maker. “Here, here,” I say. The call rings off and I know that I have to make my exit now. They will come and clean up the mess. No one will ever know that the Doll Maker was an accountant with really bad shoes, and I mean really bad. It’s not till they’d stopped moving that I see peeling luminous go-faster stripes adorning their sides. Yeesh. The blood splatter does little to hide their ugliness.

  I stoop and check for a pulse, finding none. His skin is already clammy and I could swear slightly rubbery, but in truth it is probably just my imagination.

  I throw down the shovel and begin the trek back to civilization. The night air is bitter and cruel, so I pull up my lilac hood against it. An unmarked black car zooms past me. They were quick tonight. I rub my hand up my forearm and feel the comfort of my chip. My chip is a constant friend, albeit a chatty one; they will always be able to find me, know where I am, where I’ve been. Not that I’m complaining. I was lost once, when I was very little. And although that fear bubbles in my mind every day, I beat it back with my chip. I’ll never be lost again; or at least that is what my adoptive parents tell me. Wonderland doesn’t lose its operatives.

  Chapter Two

  Shilo

  He wants to be a good boy, so he quickly swallows his pills and sticks out his tongue at the nurse. She smiles like a puppet before turning back to her cart, their brief interaction done for the day. He watches her go, then drinks down all the water from his cup. The tablets are chalky and leave a sour taste in his mouth, but if he doesn’t take them, he won’t get better. Or at least that is what they tell him.

  “Shilo?”

  He turns to his friend, Mr. Custard. “Did you see?” Shilo asks. “I
took all four pills in one gulp.”

  “You’re a big boy now, almost twenty-one. I’d expect nothing less.” Mr. Custard puts an excited two thumbs up.

  “Is our program on yet?”

  “In a moment. I believe that we must sit through more of that man and his incessant waffle first.” He points at the hospital’s television, which sits neatly behind a wire cage. No one is free in a hospital like this, not even the people on the TV.

  The man on the screen has a chat show and is interviewing a personality-impaired actress. She has impossibly large breasts that stay motionless as she moves to expose more leg to the camera.

  For a moment, Shilo is transfixed by the two solid pieces of flesh. How they seem to wear her, not the other way around, the way he knows that they should.

  “Why do women do that to themselves?” Mr. Custard muses.

  “Maybe she wanted friends. Maybe she was lonely?”

  “Yes, maybe she was lonely.” Mr. Custard smiles at Shilo.

  “Although, perhaps she should have bought a dog.” Shilo laughs hard and a piece of tablet works its way back up his throat.

  “Spit it out, Shilo.”

  He coughs, then mutters, “No, it’s too hard to. It’ll hurt.”

  “But you could choke and die if it gets lodged in your throat. For goodness sake, get it out!”

  Shilo puts his fingers down his throat and retrieves the stray piece of tablet.

  “There, you’ll feel better for that. Those tablets are not doing you any good, you know.”

  “But what if the nightmares start again?” Shilo sniffles.

  “Maybe you need the nightmares.”

  “I don’t want to need them. I don’t want bad dreams.”

  “But maybe we all need them for something? To keep us alert, to remind us that there are monsters out there.” Mr. Custard’s gaze flickers to the window.

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we do.” Shilo drops the tablet piece on the floor and steps on it; he moves his foot around till it’s dust.

  “Look, your show is coming on.” Mr. Custard points at the television.

  Snapping his head up, Shilo hears the first jingle and beat of the theme tune to the local news.

  “Go watch your show, Shilo. Don’t worry, I’ll meet you back in your room. I’ll stand guard in case your nightmares come back.”

  Shilo smiles at Mr. Custard. Although always dressed in yellow, today he is wearing a very dapper PVC three-piece suit and ruffled cream silk shirt. His bowler hat droops jauntily to an angle, making him appear like an ill-dressed extra from The Clockwork Orange. Shilo goes to hug him and stops himself. You can’t hug imaginary friends, well, not without falling over and looking quite mad.

  Chapter Three

  Mouse

  It takes me three hours to walk back to my house. Looking the way I do, a number of cars stop to ask if I want a ride. I decline all their kind offers. I know firsthand what can happen to unprepared hitchhikers on dark, lonely roads.

  You’d never know it to look at me, but I’m nineteen years old. Dressed the way I am now, I look barely twelve. That’s why I’m part of Wonderland—my special power as it were—my age-defying looks. Everyone says it’s a gift that I won’t appreciate till I’m older but when you’re gagging for a cold draught beer on a hot night and there’s no one to buy it for you, yeah, looking perpetually on the verge of puberty can kind of suck ass. Hell, even with a really good fake ID most barmen won’t serve me.

  I get to the front door of my fake house and wrestle out my keys. I briefly nod at my fake parents, who are already packing up their things. Then I head straight for the shower. I take off all my glitter, gloss, and pink-frosted crap, and of course the bloody gore spots that the serial killer’s blood splatter made.

  I don’t bother drying my long, black hair. It’s poker straight without any mechanical or technical assistance; I can thank my Tlingit mother for my looks. I’m not sure who I have to thank for my small height and delicate frame. No one else in my family seemed to have it, that I can remember anyway. Most indigenous tribes from Alaska breed people stocky and hardy. Me, I’m kind of thin and breakable. Well, I look that way anyway.

  I pack up my small box of things and find another black car waiting on the sidewalk. The Suits have arrived for me. The Suits are Wonderland’s caretakers, cleaners, and all-round dogsbodies. They are those who are committed to the cause but have no usable talents. But unlike their Wonderland card namesakes they do not plant white roses when the Queen asks for red ones. No, they always do exactly what they are told, whether that is picking up an operative or cleaning up a mess said operative has left behind strewn across a secluded, scenic landscape. I really hope they burn those sneakers.

  With a blank stare, I give my bag to the nameless driver, who carefully puts it in the trunk. Sliding into the back seat, I’m mindful not to scuff my new Jimmy Choo heels. I take a deep breath and strip away my latest character. Her name was Tiffany. Tiffany dressed like a child’s plaything; she was all sparkles and smiles. I’m good at faking smiles, years of practice. I pull at my false internal layers like the skin from a dead tropical fruit. Tiffany was fourteen and went to Hummingbird High School. She hated math but loved English. She had a crush on her science teacher, Mr. Turner. She had two parents and a pink bedroom. And every night for the three months that Tiffany existed in the world, she would walk to one of three malls that a known serial killer would hunt for his victims, hoping to be abducted.

  Goodbye, Tiffany, so long and thanks for the memories. You did a good thing today, although it may have appeared to be a bad one. You saved countless young girls from a twisted, blood-soaked fate. No more sparkle now, no more pink to make the serial killers wink. Bye-bye, little Tiffany, you were fun while you lasted. I take a breath.

  I am now back to being me again, back to being Mouse.

  Chapter Four

  Shilo

  He looks out across the sprawling green lawn of the hospital, where patients are chasing one another in eye-squinting sunshine, rolling through the crisp, lush blades of grass.

  “You should join them,” says Mr. Custard.

  “No, I like it here.” Shilo reaches up and grips on to a nearby wall.

  “You think the monster is on the lawn?”

  Shilo contemplates that for a moment. “No, but there are those trees behind it…” His voice trails off as his eyes scan the wooded area beyond the tall hospital fences.

  “It can’t come in here. Go and enjoy yourself and have some fun.” Mr. Custard smiles and moves toward the lawn.

  “Don’t do that!” Shilo waves his free arm toward his friend. “Stay with me!”

  “Okay, don’t freak out. Remember, they are always watching you and your assessment is soon. If you ever want to leave this place, you need to at least act semi-normal.”

  “You always said that normal is relative.”

  Mr. Custard smiles at Shilo, then turns and stares at the other patients having fun on the grass. They are playing with brightly colored balls and soft foam toys that have a comforting bend about them.

  “Do you think that the Kushtaka is waiting for you?” Mr. Custard gently removes his yellow bowler hat and smooths his wild frizzy hair down beneath it. “Do you think that it traveled here, all the way from Little Bell? Alaska is a big state, you know.”

  “Please don’t say its name.” Shilo shakes his head and shuffles back inside.

  Chapter Five

  Mouse

  I arrive back at the Wonderland Ranch, ready for dinner. Kenneth and Sandra Kane, the King and Queen of Hearts, better known as Mom and Dad, are setting the table. I put down my bag just in time for my dad to bound over and crush me in his arms. He lifts me off the ground so my legs dangle like a child; he’s done this ever since the first day they adopted me.

  “How’s my little Mouse?” he asks.

  I wriggle to get out of his bear hug, but he holds me tighter. I pull my shoulder blades together, making
my back smaller, and slip out from his grip. We both adopt a fighting pose, gazes darting to potential weapons around us: knives set for dinner, a baseball bat in the corner, a slightly wet umbrella…

  “Good grief!” My mom laughs.

  My dad smiles at me and I grin back.

  “You two are impossible,” she says as she rounds the table to hug me properly. She smells like lavender and chicken hot pot and for a second I just enjoy breathing her in.

  “You’re back.” A voice from behind me breaks my mom’s hug. My fellow Wonderlander Cheshire lounges on the doorframe. He’s all lanky limbs and red freckles, just as I remembered. He steps forward and awkwardly hugs me.

  It’s been three months since I’ve been home; I’ve spent three months on the trail of the Doll Maker, living the façade of Tiffany, waiting to lure him out.

  “Congrats on the Doll Man,” Cheshire says.

  “Doll Maker,” my mom corrects as she moves to stand between us. “Ready to do the honors, Mouse?” She reaches into her clean apron and pulls out a small sticker collection. I know them so well. The stickers are all flowers, beautifully designed and intricate blooms mounted on velvety, rich quality paper. I pick one, a violet, and peel it from its back. I give the sheet back to Mom and walk the few steps to the mantelpiece. There is only one item on the long, mahogany beam, a large photo of a young girl dressed as Alice from Alice in Wonderland. The frame is heavy and carved from red wood. There are several flower stickers scattered on the frame. I place mine on an open spot and everyone claps.