The property had long since been forsaken. The building sagged like some dreaming beast, shutters on the roof peeled away to reveal the swollen wood beneath. Despite her being offered a key to the place by the owners themselves, the locks were layered in rust so thick that Dawn was forced to shimmy through one of the windows. The inside of the place was hardly in any better shape, she found. A thick layer of dust coated just about everything- the floors, the furniture, the rat spoor scattered about here and there, powdered with age. As she slipped inside, tightening the respirator against her face (the last thing she wanted was to contract asbestosis from this little venture), she eyed the little art gallery of graffiti amassed on the walls.
’KATY IS A FUKIN SLUT’, declared one. Another simply said
’DREAM’ in bold, bubbly font. There were depictions of thousand-eyed monsters, of pouty-lipped women, crudely drawn genitalia. It was a shame, Dawn mused. Beneath all the ruin and the grime, the building itself must have been quite beautiful in its youth. She could see flashes of its past here and there in the faded wallpaper, in the very layout of the place- although she wasn’t here to play interior decorator. She moved on, carefully swinging open one of the doors in the place and scanning the room behind with her flashlight.
Daryl Young. That was the name of her client’s son, and the same person she was seeking now. Dawn had been provided a picture of him upon taking on the case- a young man about thirteen, just teetering on the brink of entering adulthood. There had been the telltale flush of acne blossoming beneath his skin, peach fuzz sprouting up on his upper lip. He had been wearing an old, ratted beanie over slicked up hair and a sneer, and Dawn was already well aware that, if she had been younger, she would’ve kept a careful berth between him and herself. But the her of the present saw the remnants of baby fat lingering on his jaw, the almost awkward discomfort at being shoved into the spotlight. A kid.
She could only hope that Daryl was safe, wherever he was.
Shaking herself out of her reverie, Dawn kept on the search, sweeping her light back and forth like a prison guard. It was in the third room on the right that she began to find signs of life- a few old blankets, relatively free of dust; a discarded set of men’s clothing; and, perhaps most tellingly, a can of stew, the fork resting lazily against the rim. What remained inside had dried, but was fresher than most things she had seen. There was no guarantee that this was a lead- if anything, the odds were higher of it being the residence of an unrelated squatter- but it was something, at least. Dawn snapped a few pictures of the setup, and, fingers flying, went to message Ms. Young.
Someone had been staying on her property. Did any of the blankets look particularly familiar? The clothing? With that done, Dawn pocketed her phone once more, and was turning to resume her investigation when the low creak of wood caught her attention.
Her hand immediately flew to her holster, resting against the butt of her gun. The sound had come from one of the doors she had previously tried to open, only to find stuck. Dawn had been planning to try and pry it open so far, but there was no need for that anymore, by the looks of it. It hung open now, yawning wide to expose its dark belly. Lips pursed into a thin line, Dawn approached, aiming her flashlight inside to find none of the shadows giving way. Her attempts to set a foot inside led to her quickly discovering that there was no floor- it was as if, in place of a room, someone had managed to build in a bottomless pit.
Dawn had read before about an odd sort of mental phenomenon- “l’appel du vide”, or ‘the call of the void’, was the term. It was that niggling sort of curiosity you felt when standing on a cliff to see what would happen if you hurled yourself over, allow yourself to plummet who-knows-far to your doom. Or, when standing with a friend, to shove them over instead and watch them fall. It wasn’t something that was necessarily rare or present in only a few unfortunate people- it was common enough to haunt scores of people. It was something Dawn felt now as she peered into the gap, wondering with a sort of morbid fascination what it would be like to jump. How far was the bottom? For how long would she fall? The odd sort of spell lasted only a few moments before Dawn shook herself out of it, and she went to turn away from the blackness…
...Only to find herself affixed where she stood, eyes still locked onto the doorspace. She couldn’t move. With a rising alarm, Dawn tried to jerk away, only to feel herself being tugged back- dragged towards the door in a sudden gust of wind. Her fingers clawed at the frame for support, peeling away what remained of the paint before, after a few moments of struggle, Dawn was sent tumbling forth into the abyss.
The wind stole the scream from her lungs.
That had been a week ago, now, although it felt almost like years given all that had happened. Never in her life would Dawn have thought Wonderland more than a pleasant little storyland for children. And yet here she was. In a place where flowers talk, cats turned into men in the blink of an eye, and several people (along with herself, much to her mild discomfort) were seen as “special” for stumbling into the place. “Alices”, the Wonderlanders called them. Originally, Dawn had been firm in her conviction that she was dead. Dead or drugged. The whole place was far too surreal to logically believe to be real.
But as time went on, Dawn had been forced to consider the possibility that, yes, all this was real. It was still an idea she had trouble wrapping her mind around at times, but it helped that she hadn’t been the only one to “fall”, and that the residents themselves had been nothing but friendly and helpful. She had been trying to make up for their kindness by taking up a job at the tea shop, but at times she wasn’t entirely sure if what she was doing was enough.
And then there was the matter of the enigmatic royalty- the Red King and Queen of Hearts, who Dawn still hadn’t met. From what she had heard, however, that was likely for the best.
Tying off her freshly plaited hair with a ribbon, Dawn swept her hat from the table and slipped out of her room. Of course, for all of Wonderland’s pleasantness, treating the situation without some level of caution was a risky one. The sting of her leg rubbing against its wrappings served only to reinforce the thought.
The streets were quiet as Dawn made her way to the teashop, the gentle sounds of shopkeepers bustling about and animals chattering keeping the morning from being wholly in silence. A far cry from the winding labyrinth that made up Chicago. She found herself idly reminiscing about home as she entered Mr. Heginbotham’s store, but she snapped out of it upon seeing that she wasn’t alone in the store. A warm smile lit Dawn’s face as she brought her hat into her hand, hanging it upon the nearest stand before ducking her head in polite greeting.
“Good morning, Allison,” she said. Her accent hung crisply off her words, giving them a sort of lilt here and there.
“How’s your arm doing?” Alison was like her- another “Alice”, that is- and from what Dawn had learned of her, she seemed a fairly reasonable woman. Amiable. It was something that Dawn appreciated.
❖
