Read Online Splintered by A. G. Howard - Free Book Online Page A

not? I’ll be right back.”
Realizing how crazy I sound, I change tactics. “The window display. We have to . . .” The explanation stalls on my tongue as I notice she’s already finished it. “Oh.”
“Yeah, oh.” Jen eases my fingers off her sleeve. “I relit the candles, too. Why’d you blow them out? You need all the relaxing vibes you can get. I’m going to bring you a croissant and a drink—something decaffeinated. Never seen you this wired.” She’s across the room before I can respond.
The door swings shut behind her, leaving me alone with her window display. A blue wig and a clingy black angel costume hug Window Waif ’s form. The giant wings are strapped into place around the mannequin’s shoulders with a matching leather harness. Black sequins glitter on the feathers, and smoke pours out of the miniature fog machine, snaking around the macabre scene.
Somehow, those wings and the smoke belong together.
I think of my moth friend. Why was Alison chasing it with the shears? Just because it lured me outside in a storm? It had to be something deeper, some kind of ongoing animosity, but I can’t quite grasp it.
Reluctantly, I turn to face the poster. His dark eyes look straight at me, piercing. “You know, don’t you?” I whisper. “You have the answers.”
Silence . . .
I snort—a hollow, lonely sound. I’m officially losing it. Whispering bugs and flowers are bad enough. Expecting a poster to answer? That makes me asylum-worthy.
Trembling, I move to the computer on the other side of the register and find the site from earlier. I scroll past everything I’ve already seen, trying to find a connection to Alison’s ravings.
There’s another group of pictures: a white rabbit, bony enough to be a skeleton; flowers sporting arms, legs, and mouths dripping with blood; a walrus with something protruding from his lower half like tree roots. It’s the Wonderland crew after a heavy dose of radiation poisoning. It’s also a connection: In some way, the moth and these nether-realm beings are tied to the Lewis Carroll tale. No wonder Grandma Alicia kept painting the story’s characters on her walls.
Ever since Alice, my family has been nuts. Could be she really did go down a rabbit hole and came back to tell the tale, but she was never the same after the experience. I mean, who would be?
The hairs on my body lift as if a current runs through me.
After the last of the graphics, there’s an antique ivy and floral border on either side of the black background, and a poem centered in a white fancy font.
    ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.
    I’ve seen the riddle in Carroll’s original book. Notepad in hand, I scribble Wonderland at the top and jot down the poem, word for word.
    I open a new search window to look for interpretations. One site has four different possible meanings. What if they’re all wrong? I skim over two until the third one catches my eye.
    There are illustrations alongside the words—creatures with long curlicue noses digging holes beneath sundials. A sense of knowing overtakes me, and I close my eyes. Children play on the screen of my eyelids. A winged boy and a blond girl dive into a hole beneath a statue of a child that balances a sundial on his head.
    I don’t know where the images came from. I must’ve seen them in a movie—but I can’t remember which one. They seem so real— and so familiar.
    I jot down the definitions from that interpretation of the poem. According to whoever wrote it, brillig is four o’clock in the afternoon; a tove is a mythical creature—a mix between a badger and a lizard with a corkscrew nose. They’re known for making their nests beneath sundials. Gyre and gimble are verbs meaning to dig into the earth like a giant screw, turning out soil until a deep tunnel is formed. In the context of the poem, the hole is being dug in a distinctive location, considering