Intertwined

Alison's Adventures in Wonderland?

5 years later....

"Astaria!"

I glance up from my game, pausing it, and scrunch up my nose a little. "What?" I'm at Jay's house, and he'd been a ghost ever since I'd gotten here with him a little over two hours ago. I came home with him from school, preferring to spend the afternoon with him and the kids than go home. Cringing and pushing the thought away, I focus on Jay's dust covered pants. "Were you rolling around in the dirt or something?"

Carlisle squirms next to me, furiously mashing down the play button on his controller. "Astraaaaaiaaaa," he whines, pouting. His cherubic 9 year old face turns up to me, big green eyes wide and currently filled with annoyance. "Press plaaay."

Jay looks at his younger brother as he unties his blond hair from the bandanna, letting it flop down over his sweat covered forehead. "Come here for a sec, you'll want to see this." He says, and motions me over to the doorway that heads toward the kitchen.

This house used to be a duplex back when my grandma Jen was a teenager. She and her brother and Jay's grandma Alyssa used to share it, but they knocked down the dividing wall years ago and reconstructed it to turn the two houses into one. We're currently heading towards the other living room that was turned into a sitting room, but we stop in the hallway. The attic stairs come down from the ceiling allowing passage up into the barely lit area above, explaining why Jay was covered in dust. I'm sure no one has been up there in years.

"You wanted me to come see a dusty old attic?"

Jay rolls his eyes and starts up the stairs, "Nooo, you dummy," He knocks on my forehead, making me swat at him. "It's what's in the dusty old attic."

I roll my eyes and head up after him, the stairs creaking unsteadily as we ascend. "Is this one of your little freaky hobbies?" I ask.

"Nope." And he leaves it at that.

The attic floor creaks precariously as we step up onto it. I glance around and he grabs my arm, tugging me towards a circle of light where I see that he has several old books and photo albums spread out on the floor around an old dusty arm chair embroidered with flowers. Several broken mirrors sit on its arms, the frames either broken or rusted. "Well it looks like it." I pick up a hand held mirror and turn it over. "Did all this come from your grandma Victor's house?" She was being moved into a nursing home so all her extra stuff was coming here to be put in the attic.

"Mmhm," he hums, sitting down crisscross on the floor, picking up a small book and handing it to me. "But look at this."

I put down the mirror and grab the book, flipping it open to the title page. It was originally an old copy of one of the Alice's Adventures in Wonderland books -Alice, who Jay's family is supposedly related to- but the name Alice has been scribbled out and replaced with Alison. The name sounds familiar to me but i can't place it. "The hell is this?" but as I flip through the pages, the answer is pushed farther away. Inside the book, on every page, there are notes scribbled in the margins, along the folds, and every previously blank space on the paper.

"Weird right?" Jay asks, taking the book out of my hands. "It looks like this Alison chick was really in love with this book. Maybe a little too much." He flips to a page and hands it back to me. "Look there."

I take the book back and my eyes scan over the page. It's the part where Alice meets the Caterpillar, but the word "caterpillar" has been scribbled out and replaced with the name "Morpheus". I frown, "Did she like, name him?"

"Looks like it, and if you flip farther in, it looks like she named everyone else too."

And he's right. Tons of words are scribbled out and replaced with names like "Chessie", "Twid One","Twid Two," "Red", "Hattington", and so on. Paying more attention the the words covering the page make me notice that they're really...notes. Like notes of advice and rules.