"Alice!"
This one word seemed to be the only thing that Helen Kingsleigh uttered these days. Her daughter had mysteriously disappeared not two weeks ago, after her run-in with that horrible lunatic. Apparently that wreched girl had gone missing as well. Police were always on the lookout for the escaped inmate, who had vanished as mysteriously and completely as Alice had. What her daughter had been doing with someone like that was completely beyond Helen.
Was it perhaps her father's old saying? Helen knew that Alice had always favored her father in her mannerisms. Yes, she'd loved her mother as a daughter should, but it was always Charles who would fuel that imagination of hers. Had it been his insistance that the best people were mad that made Alice seek such unsavory company. Had Alice perhaps run away with the girl? What if the girl had injured Alice? Calm yourself, Helen told herself sharply. Alice has the sense to know if someone is dangerous or not.
She sighed, pulling her coat closer to her. It was beginning to drizzle now, and the posters that displayed Alice as a missing person would be completely ruined. "Alice!" Helen called again, as she had every night for the two weeks that her daughter had been missing. Perhaps it was foolish to continue to search for her daughter like this, but a mother's devotion knows no bounds. Besides, what if Alice really was with the lunatic again? What if some harm had come to her? Oh Charles, Helen thought sorrowfully, her gaze turning skywards for a brief moment. Why did you have to teach her that the best people are mad?
"Alice...what's become of you...?" she murmered to herself, before setting off back to her home.
Across London, strange things were beginning to occur. A man in a resteraunt ordered a roast pheasent, only to have it get up and walk off of its plate. Children began spouting odd bits of poetry when they recited their lessons. Once or twice, bizarre creatures had been spotted wandering about the London streets, looking lost and confused.
Of course, the police tried to cover this up as best they could, less mass hysteria spread across the town. The man who's pheasent had walked was declared mad, and placed in Ruthledge Asylum. The poetry was blamed on overactive imaginations, and thought little of. The creatures were a trick of the light, or just people's minds playing games with them.
No one was prepared for what was about to transpire.