Twelve Minutes to Midnight

by Christopher Edge

  Penelope gasped.

  A stray lock of dark hair fell across the fur stole, as from beneath the veil the strikingly beautiful features of Lady Cambridge were revealed. Her face was deadly pale, the hard red line of her lips set in a disconcerting smile whilst her blue eyes shone with an unnatural fire.

  “So this is the cream of literary London?” she sneered coldly. “The finest imaginations of our generation snuffling like pigs in a trough in search of the prize. I knew that the promise of twenty thousand pounds would be enough to bring you all here tonight.”

  Lady Cambridge stared out at the rows of silent authors, still frozen, seemingly hypnotised by the cold beauty of her glare.

  “However, I’m afraid that the rules of this competition have changed somewhat. The drinks with which you have just toasted your own success were laced with a special preparation of the venom of the dream-weaver spider.” She glanced down at Monty’s spellbound figure in the front row, icy daggers in her eyes. “The last of my supplies thanks to the meddling of that niece of yours. This will give you all the inspiration you need.”

  Monty stood perfectly motionless; his ruddy cheeks now pale as the glass in his hand trembled slightly. From her hiding place, shrouded in the heavy velvet curtains, a cold shiver crept down Penelope’s spine, fearful that at any moment, Lady Cambridge could turn her gaze towards her.

  “This special preparation is twenty times more potent than the venom I used to dose the patients at Bedlam. Their minds were already broken, but yours need to be bent to my will, so I’ve mixed the solution to complete saturation with the mesmerising venom of the flat-sand scorpion. With the power of your words, I want you to hypnotise the entire city.”

  Her chilling gaze glittered with menace.

  “The stories that will flow from your pens will not only chart the future to come,” Lady Cambridge continued, her aristocratic voice cold and imperious, “but will send everyone who reads them spiralling into the same madness that possesses you now. Under my command, you will weave subliminal orders into the sentences you write, hypnotic triggers to take control of your readers’ minds. These subliminal orders will bear the imprint of the dream-weaver spider; a parasitic code spreading its poison like a plague. Soon every reader of your penny dreadfuls and shilling shockers will be haunted by the same visions that stalked the cells at Bedlam. All across London, they will pick up their pens with twitching fingers and write for me the answers that I have been seeking. With the power of all these minds working together, I will be able to unlock the secrets of the next thousand years. The prophecy will be fulfilled. As the New Year dawns, your words will seal my destiny as the most powerful woman in history. Already, the agents of a dozen enemy powers petition me for the secrets I hold. The auction of the century will commence on January the first.”

  She brought her black gloved hands together with a thunder crack.

  “Now get back to your Grub Street offices and filthy writers’ garrets and set down for me the stories that will make my fortune.”

  Roused from their stupor, the audience turned as one and silently began to file out of the meeting room, shuffling their way past the long lines of benches and out into the lobby beyond. Penny glimpsed Monty and Wigram in the midst of the crowd, their faces still frozen, emotionless, and their eyes oddly glazed. As the Society’s president slumped forward over the lectern, Lady Cambridge swept the train of her black gown behind her as she disappeared back into the shadows at the side of the stage.

  Penelope was torn, her mind still spinning at what she had heard. Should she follow Lady Cambridge or try and break this spell that she had cast over Monty, Mr Wigram and the rest of literary London? She shivered. Lady Cambridge had come back from the dead once already. She needed help before she faced her again.

  Darting back behind the curtains, she hurried down the dimly-lit corridor. Pushing her way through the doors, Penny stepped out into the crowded lobby. A mob of top hats and evening suits barred her path; the entranced authors, editors and publishers milling silently as they waited to leave Burlington House.

  “Wake up!” she cried out as she pushed her way through the throng. With sharp elbows, she battled her way forward, the glazed faces of the men she pushed past glancing down at her with deadened eyes, as though she was an apparition out of a dream. Nobody tried to stop her; they just carried on walking towards the exit like sleepers in the night. Penny caught a glimpse of Monty and Wigram ahead of her, the two men departing through the ornate double doors into the darkened street outside.

  In desperation, Penny launched herself forward, squeezing her way through the crowd. She felt the heel of her boot jab into a foot, and glancing back in apology saw Arthur Conan Doyle’s face crumpled in pain. The press of people around her was reaching a bottleneck as the entrance lay only a few feet away. With one last shove, Penelope barged her way past them and out through the doors.

  The cold night air hit her like a slap across the face; thick fingers of mist swirling across the courtyard of Burlington House. Squinting into the gloom, Penny tried to determine which way Monty and Wigram had gone. Through the archway to her right, she could see a line of hansom cabs, the light from their lanterns straining against the night. At the steps of the nearest cab, she saw two familiar silhouettes, one tall and lean, the second rather broader in beam, climbing up into the carriage.

  “Monty! Mr Wigram!”

  Penny raced towards the cab, her heels clattering across the misty cobbles. As she reached the footplate, a shadowy face appeared at the cab’s window; the thin, pinched features of her guardian dimly lit by a street lamp.

  “What do you want?”

  Her guardian’s bark echoed out into the night, wreaths of smoke clinging to his lips as he stared down at her with unblinking eyes.

  “After Lady Cambridge appeared, I didn’t know what to do.” Penny spoke quickly, the words tumbling over one another in her confusion. “When you all drank the champagne, I thought you had been—”

  “We don’t have time to listen to the girl’s nonsense.” Monty’s voice boomed out from the interior of the cab. “My mind is crawling with stories – I need to feel a pen between my fingers.”

  With a distracted expression on his face, Wigram half-turned and nodded his agreement.

  “Yes, of course,” he sighed. His voice was distant, as though he was listening to the scratching inside his own mind. “The stories must be written.”

  He turned back to face Penelope, his stern features wreathed in shadows.

  “Go home, young lady,” he told her. “Mr Flinch and I have a magazine to publish.”

  Penny watched horrified as, with a gesture towards the driver, her guardian briskly turned away from the window. As the driver whipped the horses, the hansom cab rattled across the cobbles and disappeared down Piccadilly, the thick fog soon swallowing even the sound of the horses’ hooves. Standing alone in the darkness, she felt lost, trapped in a huge web spun by Lady Cambridge’s cunning. The nightmare wasn’t over – it was only just beginning.

  XXI

  “So they just left you standing there in the middle of Piccadilly?”

  Alfie shook his head in disbelief as he trotted by Penelope’s side, the two of them turning left off the Strand as they headed for The Penny Dreadful’s office. An early morning mist was still clinging to the streets as they dodged past the empty barrows pushed by costermongers and street traders on their way back from Covent Garden Market. At a newsstand on the corner, a billboard proclaimed:

  NEW LITERARY PRIZE GRIPS LONDON

  Penny nodded. Her own face was as grim as the grey December dawn.

  “It was like they were in some kind of trance. I don’t think they even knew who I was. Mr Wigram didn’t return home at all last night, and there’s been no sign of Monty at his club. They must have come here.”

  They were nearing the broad stone steps that led up to the office.

  “And you think Lady Cambridge is behind all this?”
<
br />   “I saw her, Alfie,” Penelope replied. “Lady Cambridge is still alive. She must have started that fire just to cover her tracks, burning down her own home and disappearing into the night with the prophecies of the century to come in her possession. And now she plans to write the final chapter.” Penny shivered as she recalled the icy gaze of the black-veiled widow staring out from the stage. “She drugged them all – the minds of the finest writers in London bent to her will. And if her plan works, she’ll soon have the whole of the city under her spell.”

  Alfie’s face paled as he started to climb the steps, but when he reached the top, he threw his shoulders back in a resolute stance.

  “Maybe it’s worn off by now,” he said confidently as his hand grasped the door handle.

  Penny hung back, suddenly frightened at what they would find. Since her parents had died, Mr Wigram had been like a father to her – a strict and unsmiling guardian for the most time, but someone who cared for her nonetheless. If he didn’t recognise her again…

  “It’s locked.” Alfie turned back to Penny, the handle rattling uselessly beneath his fingers. “But there’s someone in there – I can see them.”

  Shaking off her nagging sense of fear, Penny stepped forward and peered through the frosted glass at the top of the door. She could see the soft glow of the gas lamps lighting the office. Beneath these, two shadowy silhouettes sat hunched behind facing desks, the faint clicking of typewriter keys the only sound that could be heard through the glass.

  “Mr Wigram!”

  Alfie rapped on the door knocker, its sudden thump causing Penny to jump in surprise. She turned towards Alfie with a hiss.

  “Don’t!”

  Alfie froze with his hand in mid-air, the door knocker dangling from his fingers. Mouthing an apology, he gently laid the knocker to rest. From behind the door, the noise of clattering keys came to a halt. Then there was the shrill shriek of a chair being pushed backwards followed by the sound of footsteps approaching.

  “Someone’s coming.”

  The heavy door slowly swung back to reveal Wigram’s haggard features peering around the frame.

  “What do you want?” he asked in a low growl.

  Penny took a nervous step backwards, shocked by her guardian’s sharp tone and his shabby appearance. He was wearing the same rumpled evening suit as he had been the previous evening, its starched collars now wilting and the white bow tie hanging unfastened around his neck.

  “We were worried, Mr Wigram,” Alfie replied, swallowing hard as the lawyer turned his venomous gaze on him. “Penny said you didn’t come home last night and with everything that—”

  “Too busy, too busy,” Wigram hissed, snapping Alfie into silence. His fingers twitched and twisted, weaving invisible webs in the air. Deep in the gloom of the office behind him, Monty was hunched in front of a typewriter, his shadowy fingers pecking at the keys like nervous crows. The actor didn’t even acknowledge their presence as he sat lost amongst the dreams that dripped from his fingers.

  Penny took a step forward to enter the office, but Wigram quickly pulled the door towards him, blocking her path.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  Her guardian’s frown tightened, his face creasing like an angry troll’s. His eyes were still set in the same unblinking glare, a thousand-yard-stare that seemed to peer straight through Penelope without seeing her at all.

  “To work,” Penny replied, her voice shaking. “The Penny Dreadful is my magazine, remember?”

  Wigram shook his head with a scowl.

  “The Penny Dreadful belongs to Montgomery Flinch,” he hissed in reply. “Now leave us alone.”

  The door slammed shut in Penny’s face. Despairing, she turned towards Alfie, who looked back at her with a bewildered expression.

  “This isn’t right,” he muttered. “There’s got to be some way of getting through to him.” Alfie grabbed the knocker and started hammering it against the door with a heavy fist.

  “Mr Wigram! Monty! Please let us in!”

  He paused, waiting for an answer. But the only reply that came was the sound of several bolts being slid across the door.

  With a sinking heart, Penny shook her head.

  “It’s no use,” she told Alfie, as he lifted the door knocker again. “They’re in her power. Lady Cambridge is running The Penny Dreadful now.”

  Alfie let the knocker fall back into place with a hopeless clunk.

  “What can we do then?”

  “I don’t know,” Penny replied, shaking her head as she stared at the locked door, the name of The Penny Dreadful etched across the frosted glass. This was her magazine – Montgomery Flinch was her creation. A cold, creeping fury rose up inside her, Penny’s fingers whitening as they slowly clenched into fists. She wouldn’t let Lady Cambridge take this away. She was going to find a way to stop her.

  “Come on,” she said to Alfie, turning away from the door and heading down the steps to the street below. “Let’s go.”

  A confused expression clung to Alfie’s face as he scrambled to keep up with Penny’s brisk stride.

  “But where are we going?” he asked.

  “Most of the authors in London were at that meeting last night,” Penny replied, her face set in a determined frown. “We’re going to find out if they’re under Lady Cambridge’s spell as well.”

  “I’m so sorry, sir, but these two young imps just barged right past me.”

  Framed in the doorway, the butler bent his head in apology as Penny and Alfie stood defiantly in front of him, just inside the threshold to the study. Through a long sash window, thin streaks of sunlight fell across the mahogany writing desk which sat beneath it, its surface crowded with manuscripts and papers. Turning in his chair, the hunched figure of a middle-aged man looked up questioningly at the interruption, the pen in his hand still racing across the page with scarcely a pause for thought. The plump walrus moustache perched on his top lip made him instantly recognisable to anyone who read his bestselling stories of scientific romance – The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds and The Invisible Man – but the author’s eyes were distant and glazed. He muttered under his breath as he turned back to his desk, scribbling frantically across the sheets of paper strewn there.

  “I’ll get them to leave right away,” the butler reassured him.

  “We’re going nowhere,” said Alfie, his arms folded tightly across his chest. “Not until we’ve spoken to Mr Wells.”

  Oblivious to their presence, H. G. Wells sat bent over his desk, his pen continuously scratching across the page as he talked to himself in a low mumble. Penelope strained her ears to try to make out the words.

  “Secrets of the flying machine … the land ironclad triumphant … a calculating machine the size of a thimble … the first men in the moon … the spiral of life … the end of the world.”

  “Now come along.” The butler laid a firm hand on Penny’s shoulder, breaking her concentration. “I’m really going to have to insist that you both leave.”

  Penny turned to face him, her eyes wide with concern.

  “You know that something is wrong,” she said. “Anyone can see that – so why won’t you let me help him?”

  The butler’s mask of reserve cracked, and Penny glimpsed for the first time the glimmer of doubt in his eyes.

  “How long has he been like this?” she pressed.

  The butler glanced nervously over Penny’s shoulder as though fearful of betraying his master’s confidence, but Wells was still hunched over his writing desk, his pen scratching across the page without a pause.

  “Since he returned home last night,” the butler confided in a low voice. “He’s not eaten, slept or even changed his clothes – he has just sat there at his desk filling endless pages with his scribbles. I’ve never known him like this, even when he is writing one of his stories to a deadline for the monthly magazines.”

  Alfie glanced down as, from the edge of the desk, a loose sheaf of papers teetered
and fluttered to the floor, but Wells carried on writing regardless.

  “Can’t you get him to stop?” he asked.

  The butler shook his head firmly, a horrified expression fixed to his face.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it. It’s not my place.”

  Penny stepped forward into the heart of the study, her slight figure dwarfed by the towering bookcases that lined the walls.

  “Well, I’ll make it my place.”

  She reached out and rested her hand on the author’s shoulder, trying to rouse him from his entranced state.

  “Mr Wells, Mr Wells, can you hear me?”

  Her voice was soft but insistent, yet Wells gave no sign that he heard it as the pen in his fingers scratched without a pause across the page. Penny peered down at the words spilling from the pen.

  Great cities teeming with millions of minds … the atom splits as the bombs rain down … a world overwhelmed by war…

  Taking a deep breath, she gently caught hold of Wells’s hand, trying to pluck the pen from his fingers.

  “Mr Wells,” she pleaded. “You need to wake up.”

  His hand still grasping the pen, the author looked up at her. For a moment, beneath his bristling eyebrows, Wells’s grey eyes swam into focus, seeing Penelope as though for the first time.

  “Unhand me, child,” he hissed. “My eyes have seen the glory – I have glimpsed the shape of things to come. Flickering visions of the future – they come so quickly – the triumphs and disasters, the inevitable and the unforeseen. There are the ideas for a thousand books swirling around my brain. I must get them down.”

  Snatching his hand away, Wells turned back to the page.

  “You’ve been poisoned,” Penelope told him, her sharp tone trying to break through the cloud of delirium that held the author in its grip. “These aren’t your words – they’re a dream of madness.”