The Gruesome Adventures of Alice in Undeadland (3 page)

“Leave her alone, you lumps,” Mousehead squeaked. Before Alice had the chance to protect the tiny, brave and foolish thing, the Tweedles stopped their laughter. The one with the noose that the tattoo identified as Tweedlegloom lurched forward and snatched the mouse from Alice’s neck. Alice jumped after her companion but was held back by Tweedleglum’s huge fist.

“Please don’t hurt him,” begged Alice.

Tweedlegloom sneered and held the mouse-head necklace dangling above his mouth chasm. Mousehead squeaked for a final time before Gloom let it go and swallowed the poor creature whole.

“Delicious,” he bellowed; the other Tweedle joined in with the laughter.

“Monsters,” Alice screamed, pulling to no avail at her captor’s grip.

Alice’s protest caused more laughter again and again, until a screeching sound pierced from beyond the gravestone garden. Immediately the two fell silent. Alice noted how they seemed to shrink into themselves and something resembling fear fell upon their cruel faces.

The sound came again, a screech, a caw of a raven perhaps? Gloom put his hand across Alice’s mouth and held her fast. “Shush,” he whispered.

Jabberwocky
, the sound was coming closer.

“It’s near, it must have heard us,” Tweedleglum said as meek as something his size could.

“Why is it so far from the Rigor Mortis Forest?” Gloom asked.

“I think it’s hungry. We have to go. Let’s take this one to the undertaker and he’ll know what to do.”

A huge hand covered Alice’s head and for a moment the world disappeared.

Chapter Six

Alice heard a merry tune:

It comes as no surprise
,

The dead regard the living through hollow and envious eyes
.

Passed loved ones sever all emotional ties
,

So have no tears to dry
,

For the dead regard the living through hollow and envious eyes
.

And the song drifted away and her mother spoke:

“Open your eyes — time to join the land of the dead.”

Alice was greeted again by the monochrome world of Undeadland. She tried to turn her head, but was unable. She found herself equally restricted when testing her limbs. Alice noted from the corner of her eye that she was bound to a strong wooden chair. She pulled to free her arms but leather binds cut into her flesh; there was a wet tearing sound like damp cloth ripping. She had been placed at the head of a long oblong table. It was covered in a sickly green sheet and upon that a countless amount of medicine bottles. Alice could see some of the labels. They read: formaldehyde, methanol, glutaraldehyde and phenol, each sounding as horrid as the others. Whips of smoke formed an evil cloud of steam above the bottles that resembled a ghostly skull.

However, the sight was not as disturbing as the other “guests” to the left and right of Alice. To her left: a suited gentleman, bound to his chair like Alice. Unlike Alice the gentleman had the head of a March hare. Its brown fur was thread bear and like a worn carpet. Its eyes were buttons sewn into place. A pair of ears were bent awkwardly from its head. To Alice’s right: a human-sized pot doll girl. She wore a sweet pink dress with bows and lace and flowered patterns. She had a porcelain face with painted eyes, hair and grin, her surface a criss-cross of tiny cracks. The pair turned to Alice, shaking their heads and rocking. The pair were also tied firmly to their seats.

“Oh, settle down, you two,” a voice from the end of the table said. “Honestly, it’s as if you don’t like being here.” The words dripped as if from a grin grinning grimly.

It coughed expectantly and from the edge of Alice’s vision a Tweedle thumped to the end of the table. The behemoth reached down and placed a man, the size of a toddling child, amongst the bottles of nastiness. The tiny man wore the black suit and top hat of an undertaker. Alice recognised such from her parents’ own funeral. Even with the top hat the undertaker was no taller than three feet. He looked ridiculous in his size, yet Alice knew evil things, like poison, came in small packages.

He danced towards Alice, skipping around and over the bottles, tipping his hat, and gave a bow.

“Hello, my dear,” he said through yellow teeth the colour of embalming fluid. “The Tweedles here tell me you came through the shadow graves. They tell me you say you don’t belong — why is that?”

“I don’t belong anywhere, I suppose.”

“Hmm, curious,” the undertaker replied. “Enlighten me, dear, where do you belong?” As he asked the question the tiny undertaker had begun picking and pouring the contents of each of the bottles. A faint hiss escaped from the mixture.

“I’m not sure,” she forlornly said. “I escaped the pain of the orphanage and found myself here. I realise now, there is no escape from pain. It was waiting for me.”

The undertaker, the hare and the pot-doll prisoner stared in stunned silence. Then suddenly all three burst into insane laughter.

Then pot-doll girl had a wincey, high-pitched fit of tee-hees through broken glass. The hareman gave a dusty, muffled dry cough, a choking ha ha. The worse, by far, was the mad undertaker himself with his small chuckles suggesting dark intention. He danced with his mixture and sang:

“Decaying, flaying little corpse,

How I wonder how you rot,

Far below the earth so deep,

Letting worms fester in your meat.”

The undertaker the mixture and in one movement gripped the hareman mouth opened wide, pouring the oozing liquid into the dry throat.. Shaking, the Hareman went into a spasm, choking on the smoke that rose from him. It engulfed his eyes and ears, choking his entire head. The pot-doll girl screamed, trying to shake herself free. The undertaker forced the bottle of stuff over the pot-doll girl’s mouth, yet as she had no human mouth the horrid black stuff poured down her smooth chin and over her dress. The effect was the same, as both prisoners shook. Alice tried to rear away as the smoke gained form and became two shadows identical to the inhabitants of the graveyard garden. They swirled for a moment before floating away giggling as if sailing on an invisible sea. The bodies of the two were now shrunken and empty; their heads flopped uselessly on their chests.

“We are born children, we die children,” the mad undertaker said, drool hanging from his thin lips.

He picked up more bottles and began mixing. The Tweedles looked on with horrendous glee as the undertaker danced and tapped towards Alice.

“Wait,” she said.

“For what, my dear?” The undertaker hopped excitedly from one foot to another.

“ JABERWAAAAAAK,” Alice cawed.

The undertaker, puzzled, stood aghast. The Tweedles, confused, slowly stood by the undertaker’s side.

“JABERWAAAAAAK.”

“What are you doing?” asked Tweedleglum.

“Sanity has abandoned her,” Tweedlegloom noted.

“Stop her,” the undertaker whispered.

“JABERWAAAAAAAK.”

“Stop her,” the undertaker shouted at the top of his voice.

“JABERWAAAAAK,” came a squawk that rattled all their bones. It was not Alice, however.

“You pair of fools,” sobbed the undertaker. “She’s called it here.”

There was a gust of air that blew Alice backwards and obliterated the tables. Amongst the splinters and glass, the undertaker was snapped into the air and disappeared down a gullet. Alice lay in the debris. A Tweedle ran for cover before a
whoosh
quartered him. The other crawled and pleaded to no avail as the creature landed over him and peck-pecked him to rags.

The turmoil began to settle and dirt lazily fell to the ground like filthy snow. The beast regarded Alice, tilting its head this way and that, its black eyes blinking and reflecting Alice back at herself. It resembled a raven to a degree, almost like the ones Alice had seen in London more times than she remembered, except this raven was at least twenty feet tall. At one time it would have had shiny black feathers, but now they were few and far between with bald spots of dry blistering skin patches covering its body, where the creature’s wings were mostly bone and scraggy.

“JABBERWARK,” it squawked from its blade-sharp beak.

Alice raised a hand and stroked the beast on the closest wing.

“Thank you.” Alice spoke softly.

And with that the raven thing reared and, with a great cough, regurgitated something at Alice’s feet. Then in a gust of wing, the creature was away into the dark sky. Alice looked down to see a Tweedle’s hand and forearm floundering like a dying fish. Next to it lay the Mousehead bottle-top necklace.

“Hello, Alice,” it chirped.

Chapter Seven

Mousehead told its tale…

“I was swallowed and lost, scared and alone,

So near, yet so far from my undead home,

Down dry tubes and into the stomach I go,

When on the shore of stomach acid,

I spotted the head of the extinct dodo.

‘Hello,’ said the bird all eaten and rotten,

Doomed for ever to be forgotten,

As I replied, I started to cry,

Missing my Alice, who was once alive but then did die,

The dodo listened intently and pittied my story,

With glee it said it had seen the rabbit in a hurry,

Before the Tweedle ate the dodo just for fun,

The dodo spied the rabbit towards forest on the run.”

Alice picked up Mousehead and blew the “bits” from it. Before she positioned it around her neck, she gave it a little kiss.

Chapter Eight

Into the Rigor Mortis Forest, so called because the dry twigs snapped like bones and the huge Skelegtrees smiled like corpses. Alice walked under the twisted canopy and the bare dead trees welcomed the pair through gnarled and opened arms. The Skelegtrees themselves reminded Alice of the poor that her father had helped. She had been with him amongst the most squalid areas of London where there was more disease than air.

“Now, Alice,” her father had said, taking Alice by the hand, “you will see things here that will cause you to be horrified, but it is important you remember these people do not deserve your revulsion. They deserve your pity and your ability to help.”

Alice had nodded.

She had seen those who had starved to death. She had seen those taken by wasting ailments that drained the life from their bodies. There had been babies too weak to cry and mothers too weak to help them. She had seen how a human could become rags of flesh on a frame too brittle to walk. Yet when Alice’s father had come to help, they had still managed to smile.

They were all around here in the forest. Each tree twisted like a skeletal thing. Branches resembled painfully thin arms, bark shaped like ribs, knots in the wood that were the image of tortured faces.

“What I don’t understand,” thought Alice out loud, “is why is everything so dark and gloomy here? Where are the colours? Where is the—?”

“Life?” added Mousehead.

There was the answer. The lack of life, of being, of existence, leaving a warped echo of a world.

“Was your old world full of colour and life?”

“Yes,” lamented Alice, “but that made it all the crueller.”

With each of Alice’s steps, a rustling creak took the path she had walked only moments before. The trees slowly turned and followed Alice as she walked by. She paced herself carefully amongst roots that threated to trip her. They twisted and undulated like a mass of worms amongst the undergrowth. Her dress would snag and when she looked into freeing herself, she found branch claws pulling at her, with a skull-etched tree grinning with mischief.

“There is no need for that,” Alice said, as friendly as she could, pulling herself away.

Her dress tore as she stepped back from the grip of the branches. In the orphanage the girls were given one dress and that was it. Miss Scrim said it discouraged growing. Alice had been lucky, her blue dress had been four sizes too big, but now that Alice was dead finding a new dress would be impossible. Alice tried to fight back but another branch gripped at her long hair. Again Alice pulled away and was met with a sickening rip. Sizeable pieces of lank hair dangled from the tree. Alice put her hand to the raw patch, blood oozing from her scalp.

“Alice, be wary,” cried Mousehead too late.

Alice snatched for her hair but found her legs tied into roots. Into the rancid undergrowth Alice sank as easily as she had into the Thames. Weeds and matter stung her eyes and filled her ears. There was a crawling under her skin; this was not a metaphor. Alice twisted and writhed in the dirt, snapping and biting at the things that held her. With an effort she managed to stand, spitting dirt and removing roots that had burrowed into her dead flesh. All around her the branches shook in creaking laughter.

“What is happening?” Alice demanded to know.

“It’s the forest,” Mousehead volunteered. “The forest haunted by the unwanted dead. They attach themselves to the trees, looking for life. Alas in Undeadland there is only death, and what is left is only malice.”

Stumbling, hindered, Alice explored deeper in the wicked woodland. With each step a branch would pull at her or lash out as she went past. Amongst the trips and stumbles Alice couldn’t help but be worried that by the time she found the white rabbit there would be nothing left of her but flayed bone. Alice held up her arms to protect her face from further attacks. She opened her eyes and spun in a confused circle. She found herself in a clearing of uprooted and pulped trees. The forest floor was a carpet of rotten woodchip. A white mist held in the air.

“Look,” Mousehead warned.

Alice saw the creature. A cherub, yet grey and dead, flew towards her, bobbing up and down as if its wings were too small to keep it afloat.

There was an unmistakable sense of pleading from the creature as it sought refuge in Alice’s direction. Without thinking she held her arms for the creature and it flew towards her. What happened next was as unexpected as it was horrifying. A beast rose from the debris, huge in size and bloated, pulsating. It looked like a pale greyish maggot, yet as it rose Alice could see row upon row of stumped feet.

“Caterpillar?” mouthed Alice.

“Hide, quickly,” Mousehead added.