Beware the Little White Rabbit Read online

  She wheeled around him, nearly at a run, and did not look back.

  When she arrived at her house, her mother was asleep on the couch. Alice grabbed a pot and spoon and banged until she startled awake.

  “Alice?”

  “You need to get out of the house,” Alice said. “There’s a fire.”

  Her mother looked around, disoriented. “There’s no smoke.”

  Alice lifted the gas can from the wheelbarrow. She set it on the coffee table and began unscrewing the lid.

  “Alice, what are you doing?”

  “This house is a prison, Mother. Ever since we got here, we’ve been captives. This is the only way to be free of it.”

  Her mother was fully attentive now. She sat up straight as a rod and wrung her hands together. “If you destroy this house, we’ll have nothing.”

  “Do you love this house, Mother?”

  Her mother frowned.

  “Do you love it more than me?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Alice.”

  “You must. Because you traded it for me. This house, for my silence. Isn’t that the arrangement you made? If we kept our mouths shut and didn’t press charges, we could keep this house?”

  Her mother stood. Her hands flew to her chest like twin doves. “It wasn’t as simple as that.”

  “After what he did to me.” His meanness she could tolerate; his senseless discipline she could withstand; but when he came at her so unexpectedly, so violently. Alice remembered how she barely struggled, didn’t even make a sound, just screwed her mouth shut and waited for it to be over – so polite. Then afterward, instead of acting sorry, he tried to buy her silence with a new car. Alice couldn’t be bought, but apparently her mother could.

  Alice shook her head. “I hate myself. I hate him. But most of all, I hate this house.” She tipped the gas can so that a little spilled on the floor.

  “He’s a powerful man, Alice. He has resources we can only imagine. He would have ruined us.”

  Alice began crying. Her breath was labored. “He already has ruined us. He’s ruined me. And you.” She splashed a little more gasoline on the tile. The fumes tickled her nose. She imagined striking the match and dropping it at her feet, going up in flames with the rest of it.

  “Please, Alice. I know he’s a terrible man. More than terrible, but I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “You could have protected me. You could have fought for me.” Alice sniffed and dragged one arm across her face. “You’re my mother.”

  “I know that.” She dropped her head. Her face contorted in pain. “I’m so sorry.”

  Alice glanced around at all the meaningless glass globules, all the high-priced art, the antique furniture and expensive upholstery. She hated every inch, every thread, and every splinter. She wanted to be rid of it, once and for all. How easy it would be to light the flame and burn it all to the ground. If only that would obliterate her memory of him along with it. But Alice knew that it would not.

  Destroying things was easy. The congressman had taught her that. It was repairing that which was broken that took the most effort.

  “You have to sell this house,” she said.

  Her mother nodded. “I will.”

  “Promise me.”

  Her mother raised one hand. “I promise.”

  Alice dropped the gas can and walked out of the house. She needed to see the rabbit, and she couldn’t wait until morning. But when she arrived at his hutch, the rabbit was gone.

  “Over here, Alice,” the rabbit called from the woods behind Finn’s house. How did he get out?

  “Are you leaving?” Alice didn’t want to be left all alone.

  “I’ve found another way.”

  “What is it?”

  “Follow me.”

  Alice chased after the rabbit as he nimbly jumped over felled logs and thorny vines. He was a splash of white in the dark, dark woods. His form alone was all Alice could see clearly.

  “What’s this?” Alice asked when the rabbit finally stopped.

  “Here in the forest, dark and deep, I offer you eternal sleep.” He pointed with one ear to a hole in the ground, a sort of burrow. The tunnel looked deep and without end.

  “Where does it lead?” Alice asked.

  “It matters not where it leads, Alice, only that it will take us far away from here.”

  “Can I come back?”

  “How long is forever, Alice?”

  “I believe it’s a very long time.”

  “Sometimes, it’s just one second.” The rabbit hopped closer to the opening of the tunnel. “Come with me, Alice, and your troubles and heartache will be forgotten. It will be as if they never even happened.”

  The rabbit was offering an escape. A new beginning or, more likely, an end.

  “We haven’t much time, Alice.”

  Alice took a step closer, her toes just over the edge of the tunnel. She peered down into the endless abyss. How easy it would be to tip forward and fall in.

  “Are you my friend, white rabbit, or do you mean me harm?”

  “I present you with a choice, Alice. Will you take this leap with me into this new world, or will you stay and suffer certain pain, the injustice of life?”

  To Alice, happiness was a pretty thing just out of reach, a sweet in a jar on a too-high shelf. The girls she knew, they walked in the light. For them, happiness lay down before them like an obedient dog. It was never that way for Alice, for whom happiness came in snatches and tatters or not at all. Alice might never be happy, but she had not yet given up hope that somewhere in all this, she could find peace.

  “I’ll not be following you, white rabbit. I choose to stay and endure.”

  “You would choose to live this broken, unjust, and unhappy life with no certain outcome?”

  Alice stepped away from the tunnel. “I would. And I do.”

  “Terrible pity, Alice. I thought I could help you.” The rabbit sighed and shook his head, deeply disappointed. “Perhaps one day you’ll change your mind.” He winked at her once more. “But, for now, I must say, adieu.”

  The rabbit leapt into the hole and disappeared from sight. There was no sound of his footfalls and no cry from his mouth. He was simply and utterly, gone.

  Alice looked away for only a second, but when she turned back, the rabbit hole had disappeared as well. The forest floor looked as fresh as a newly made bed.

  “Alice?”

  She recognized Finn’s voice and turned toward a flashlight beam wobbling through the dark forest.

  “Alice, is that you? Are you all right?”

  Alice was not all right, and she might not be for a long time. But she had chosen to endure, and in doing so, she vowed to look deep within herself and rediscover who she was. Not as her stepfather’s secret or her mother’s loss, not as the girl shrouded in mystery in the halls of Bradford Hills Academy. But as Alice, and Alice alone.

  Like a weed, she would survive.

  This story is dedicated to a hill,

  a girl with green hair,

  and my shadow.

  It is not a moonless night, nor is the moon full. It is not a half moon, which can be argued is more symbolic than either. It is not even a crescent, which can be meaningful enough for the magical practitioner on a budget. It is a waxing gibbous. Bulging. Grotesque. And hanging too low in the sky like the misshapen eye of a cosmic horror that has taken an unusual interest in humanity.

  Your name is Alice. Your last name is uninteresting and will soon be irrelevant. Your name is Alice, and you are walking home. It is too dark for your mother’s purposes, and she worries about you being out too late, but Katherine’s house is less than fifteen minutes away, and down two hills. No one waiting to ambush a defenseless teenage girl is going to bother walking up two hills, you told your mother.

  You still believe this, but you’ve since developed other concerns.

  None of the streetlamps are working and your shadow is beginning to worry you.

 
; You are particularly worried that it may not belong to you.

  It is stretched out in front of you and you don’t remember it looking like that.

  Your mother has told you that you’re going through a late growth spurt, which is apparently why you keep walking into doorframes.

  This might, might, account for the fact that your shadow’s limbs are unnaturally long and moving in ways you don’t recognize.

  It does not account for your shadow’s head.

  Your shadow’s head is freakishly large, weirdly distended, and there are two bumps emerging from the top of it.

  You try not to speculate about the bumps.

  You move your arm. Your shadow moves its arm, maybe a fraction of a second later.

  You shiver and fold your arms in front of yourself. Maybe it’s just the way you moved, but your shadow seems to swell.

  You stop. The sound of your footsteps seems to continue a little longer than it should. When you start to walk again, the noise echoes a little more.

  You reach up, nervously playing with your hair. Your hair feels alien and wrong, like the fur of some diseased – You’re wearing a hat.

  Katherine gave you a white knit hat with rabbit ears and a little face on the front. You loved it so much that you put it on five hours ago while you and she were watching a movie and forgot you were wearing it.

  Your shadow’s head looks weird because you were wearing. A goddamn. Hat.

  You start to laugh. Your shadow doubles over with you, and if it does it a hair slower, it’s probably a trick of the light.

  You start to walk again, a spring in your step. You’re only five minutes from home. Your shadow walks ahead of you, its step, if anything, slightly springier.

  Wait, you think.

  It’s nighttime.

  There are no streetlamps. The moon isn’t bright enough.

  Why do you have such a distinct shadow?

  It’s far more solid than the rest of the night, and such a deep black that it seems to suck in the meager light of the gibbous moon. And if there was a source casting it, it would have moved by now. But there isn’t, and it hasn’t. It’s stayed exactly in front of you the entire walk.

  So where the hell is it coming from?

  A cold breeze caresses your neck like a breath, and brings with it a smell not unlike desolation, a smell like books rotting in an abandoned room in the small hours of night. The smell of a truly haunted house, where there are no ghosts, no “spiritual presences,” but only an empty, forgotten dwelling filled with nothing.

  The smell a place gets decades after everyone’s forgotten about the murder.

  You feel it again on your neck, and the smell becomes stronger, because it is no breeze. There was no wind tonight, and you break into a run.

  You run for only thirty seconds, tearing up the hill to your house, unconcerned about your footing, until your heel pops out of your shoe (unless something catches it) and you stumble. You put out your arms to prevent your face from plowing into the asphalt and land badly. Though you’re winded, you struggle to your feet and stand, panicked.

  Nothing takes advantage of your vulnerability. Nothing leaps onto you, clawing at your back, tearing away strips of flesh with claws as big as your thumb. You don’t scream. The night is silent.

  You are perfectly, immaculately still.

  You hear a small noise, like a shoe tapping on pavement.

  You whirl around, arms flailing.

  And you see yourself, white bunny hat wedged firmly on your head, arms folded, gently tapping your foot. Your shadow is gone.

  “Alice,” the other you says, “it’s so cool to finally meet you.” She smiles, and her teeth are cartoonishly pointed like a pirahna’s. Her tongue lolls between them, the color of tar.

  Only then do you scream.

  You wake up on the pavement. Your left arm and side hurt, most likely because you fell on them. You feel a pressure on your mouth, and you open your eyes.

  You see your own face and you try to call out, to make some sort of noise. Not for help, you know instinctively that there is no escape from this, but just to express that you’re still alive, still real. The hand on your lower face tightens.

  “Hey, so I’m really sorry, but I just can’t have you making noise, ’kay?” The other you smiles again, and the desolate smell of her breath washes over your face. She’s lying on the ground parallel to you, one hand bent at the elbow, propping up her head, the other hand over your mouth.

  “Mmmm,” you whimper.

  “I know, right? This is, like, such a big moment for me.”

  “Mm?”

  “I’m such a big fan of your work. Like, eight to eleven changed my life.” Her tongue snakes out over her lips.

  “Mm?” you say again.

  “Of your life, silly. I watch you all the time. You’re so interesting. My favorite arc was when you were fighting with Eli. I thought there was going to be this whole resolution, but then you never talked to him again and he moved away. Ohmygod, I was devastated.”

  “MmmMM – ”

  “And when Olive broke up with you, that came out of nowhere. Such a cool twist.”

  “Mm – ”

  “And when your father died when you were nine, I couldn’t even deal. I just couldn’t. Too many feels. Too many.”

  “MMMM – ”

  “Listen, don’t get me wrong, I would totally love to talk about this all day with you, but I gotta get to the point. Hey, so I’m gonna take my hand off your mouth in a second, but if you try to scream or move too much – I mean, like, you can move a little bit, obviously – I’ll put your eye out with my tongue. It’s really strong.”

  The other you lowers her hand and opens her mouth. Her teeth are a perfect white, and they drip with whatever tarry substance coats the inside of her throat.

  You stuff your fist into your mouth and bite down on it to stop the scream.

  “Thank you,” she says. “I didn’t really want to put out your eye. You have such pretty eyes. I’m so jealous.”

  She pauses.

  “Oh, silly me. We have the same eyes now. I just did the eyes tonight. Good, huh? People say the eyes are the windows to the soul, but in this case it’s my mouth. Can’t do much with that, I’m afraid. It’s internal.”

  “What are – ?”

  “I’m you, silly! Just look!”

  “But – ”

  “I would love to tell you about my life, but honestly, I don’t have much time and it’s not nearly as interesting as yours. Obviously. Or else we wouldn’t be having this little chat.”

  “Why – ?”

  “Well, that’s the thing. I’ve been such a fan for so long and I’m really sorry to say it, but you’ve gone downhill lately.”

  “I – ”

  “Birth to twelve was amazing. Loved birth to twelve. I wish I’d been there for in utero. You can’t get reruns anywhere. Thirteen was pretty good, but it wasn’t the same, you know? I figured you were dealing with puberty and the quality would get back to normal soon, right? But then fourteen was bad. And fifteen was even worse. God, we don’t talk about fifteen. Sixteen was pretty amazing, actually, but it was in spite of the problems, you know?”

  “Are you talking about – ?”

  “Your life, yeah! You don’t interact with your fanbase much, which I totally respect, genius in isolation and all that, and there aren’t really any forums or gatherings, so I haven’t met anyone else, but I bet you’ve got tons of fans. You’re the best. But the thing is, seventeen isn’t shaping up too well. Lot of the same problems as fourteen, and I just got so depressed watching. You’re my favorite, you know? It’s always so sad when one of your favorite artists just doesn’t have it anymore.”

  You don’t say anything. She’s starting to make a warped, frightening kind of sense.

  “I didn’t know what to do. I kept watching, I had to, but it just made me upset. I got sort of angry with you back in February, but that’s never been a good mont
h. Except at nine, that one was amazing. But anyway, my point was, in February, I got so mad I said, (I’m pretty sure I said it like this): ‘Oh, I could do better than this!’”

  You are still. A thought is occurring to you, bearing down like a glacier. You think if you don’t move, you can avoid its inevitability.

  “It was such a big epiphany moment for me, you know? I started building another you right away. It was really hard, that thing you did with your hair back in May set me back weeks, but look at me! I’m so pretty.”

  She licks her teeth.

  “So I’m gonna be you now, if that’s cool. I mean, not that it matters if you’re cool with it, because you’re not even anybody now. I’m you, and you’re some weird girl with no name. And your old name was so cute. Oops, I mean my name!”

  The glacier hits just as she tells you. She doesn’t want to hurt you. Nothing so small as hurting you. She wants everything. Your mind goes numb. You think about your life and your memories seem…wrong. They don’t belong to you anymore. You just found them somewhere, and now Alice wants them back.

  “Seriously though, I’ve put a lot of thought into this, and I think it’s the best thing for both of us. ’Kay? Anyway, I gotta get home. I was out late, and Mom’s gonna be mad. Seeya, nobody!”

  Your eyes begin to flutter as you see yourself striding away across the street. Her legs are so long, you think. Why are they – ?

  You’re gone.

  Alice lets herself into her house with her key and, without hesitation, walks to her bedroom and takes out her pajamas. She knows exactly which drawer they are in without even having to think about it. She goes to put them on, then places the top in front of her face and inhales deeply through her nose.

  “Ohmygod.”

  She discards the pajamas and begins to open all of her drawers, tearing articles of clothing out and rubbing them on her face, bathing in their scent.

  “Ohmygod.”

  After nearly ten minutes of feverish sniffing, she very carefully folds all of her clothing and returns it to her drawers. Trembling, she changes into a pair of blue footie pajamas adorned with bananas. She turns to the bed, pulls up the rumpled sheets, and then with great reverence tucks herself in.