Twelve Minutes to Midnight

by Christopher Edge

  Penny couldn’t just see the images – she was inside them. Every person, every place, every single moment: she was there.

  She tumbled down into the heart of the web, its black silken threads shivering with delight as she landed, sprawling, in the tangled jungle of darkness. Rising to her feet, Penny looked out into the shimmering void. The shrouded shapes of silken cocoons surrounded her, their forms twisting and writhing in the shadows. Straining her eyes, she saw a skein of silken threads emerging from the top of each cocoon, spinning upwards into the darkness. Each thread pulsed with a spiralling torrent of images, ensnaring the fragile minds of the city above them. From every corner of the sky, she could hear the low moan of their voices, driven slowly insane. The web connected them all: millions of minds brought together as one. A single mind; as vast as the city itself.

  As she stood there, frozen in wonder, the sticky strands of the web wrapped themselves around her limbs. She tried to tear herself free, but the dream-weaver spiders kept spinning their threads ever tighter. Penny cried out in despair. The tangled threads of the web shivered as her voice echoed into the darkness. All around her a tumult of voices rose up in reply, drowning out her cry completely.

  She tried to block out the whirl of whimpered words and snapshot images, a demented clamour that was driving her to the edge of madness. But there was no way out.

  In the gloom of the museum’s storeroom, Penelope’s fingers twitched, grasping hold of the pen as she began to scratch a torrent of words across the paper. Barrett watched in amazement as Penny scrawled across the empty page, his eyes widening as he read what she was writing.

  Lost in the heart of the web, all should have been lost, but as the silken shroud enveloped Penelope completely, the distant feeling of the pen in her fingers felt strangely familiar. Somewhere in the farthest reaches of her mind, Penny remembered who she was. She was a writer. An author. That was why she was here – to bring meaning to this terrifying mystery.

  As the skirrying whirl of images threatened to blind her – hoverships and flying liners … miniskirts … living skeletons … electrified guitars – a growing fury flushed the madness from her veins. She wasn’t some helpless bystander caught up in Lady Cambridge’s scheme; she was going to be the writer of this damned tale. And she was going to end it now.

  Penny tore her way free from the shroud, its silken threads hanging limply from her fingers. The tremors rippled through the web and a whisper of voices rose in the darkness. Pulling her legs free from the sticky threads that still clung to her, Penny felt the spiders inside her mind scurry in fear. She turned towards the twisting shapes of the silken cocoons rising up in the darkness. With a sudden rush of realisation, she knew who was trapped inside these shrouded tombs.

  Scrambling across the web, Penny reached the first of the cocoons. Her hands sunk into its sticky morass of threads. As the writhing form inside the shroud shuddered in response, she tore at the tendrils of silk, the threads snapping as her hands clawed their way free. The trailing webs tried to wrap themselves around her, but with a howl of defiance, she ripped the heart of the cocoon open, dragging the shrouded figure inside out of the darkness.

  The freed man slumped at her feet, sticky webs still clinging to his face. Sinking to her knees, Penelope peeled the snarled threads from his whiskers. Her heart rose in her mouth as she saw the semiconscious features of Arthur Conan Doyle staring back at her. Doyle’s eyes slowly flickered open as though waking from a dream. He looked up into her eyes with an awestruck gaze.

  “We’re so small,” he breathed, his voice a cracked whisper. “We reach so high, but we fall so far. I’ve seen behind the veil. Everything we’ve dreamed will be dust by the time we are gone.”

  A glazed look began to descend over Doyle’s eyes again; the spiders still at work inside his mind. Penny brought her hand back and slapped him across the face. The effect was instantaneous. Doyle’s eyes opened wide in indignation, his hand reaching towards his stinging cheek.

  “What are you doing, girl!” he roared. “Have you gone mad?”

  Doyle’s anger died as swiftly as it had come as he caught sight of the shimmering darkness surrounding them. He could see the bewildering maze of webs stretching in every direction, their gleaming threads pulsing with light, and, even closer, the grove of mummified cocoons, the shrouded shapes inside still writhing in madness.

  The author glanced back fearfully at the tattered cocoon that Penny had torn him from, its silken strands hanging in shreds.

  “My God,” he murmured. “It wasn’t a dream.”

  Reaching out her hand, Penny helped Doyle to his feet. His frightened eyes looked down into hers, his face transfixed in wonder and dread.

  “What manner of place is this?” he asked her. “Where are we?”

  “Inside our minds,” Penny replied. “At least, that’s where I think we are.” She gestured up at the countless threads of the glistening web. The darkness throbbed with a clamouring maelstrom of voices. “We’re inside the minds of every soul in London who’s fallen under the spell of the stories you’ve written.”

  Open-mouthed, Doyle stared at her in disbelief.

  “How can that be possible?”

  Penny shook her head.

  “I don’t have time to explain.” She gestured at the dark shapes of the cocoons. “Help me get the others free.”

  Stifling a shiver, Doyle nodded and the two of them scrambled across the web. As they slashed and tore at the shrouds, the webbed cocoons grudgingly spewed out their captives. H. G. Wells and H. Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling, Max Pemberton; every author, editor and publisher whom Penelope had seen entranced by Lady Cambridge, was soon crouched shivering in the shadows as they pulled the clinging webs from their skin.

  Penny’s guardian, Mr Wigram, raised a watery smile as she pulled the silken threads from his pale, time-worn face.

  “Still researching your new story, Penelope,” he murmured.

  Penny nodded, a relieved smile breaking across her own face. Beside them, Conan Doyle tore open the last of the cocoons. As its silken webs hung free, the broad-shouldered body of a man slowly slid to the floor. His hands reached up to his face, clawing at the clinging cobweb mask. As it came away with a tearing sound, Penny saw Monty’s ruddy face, his bloodshot eyes blinking in surprise.

  “I feel quite ill,” he wheezed.

  XXVI

  “But I don’t understand what you’re telling us.” Rudyard Kipling scratched at his thinning hair as he stared up at Penelope over the frames of his silver-rimmed glasses. His face was creased in bewilderment. “You’re saying that we’re trapped here?”

  Penny shook her head, trying to keep an assured air as the assembled authors looked up to her for salvation. The empty husks of the cocoons around them swayed with low moans, their tiny oasis surrounded by the glistening darkness of the web.

  “It’s the venom that’s been keeping you trapped here,” she replied. “When Lady Cambridge poisoned you, she took control of your minds. The things that you’ve seen, the stories that you’ve written – it’s all been for her. She’s the one who has stolen your imaginations.”

  “That damned woman!”

  Penelope flinched as the stout figure of H. Rider Haggard rose to his feet. Beneath his bristling eyebrows, his dark eyes glowered with a look that was as black as his beard.

  “If what you’ve told us is true, this so-called Lady has used us all like a bunch of ha’penny hacks! If I have my bullwhip when I finally get to meet her, I’ve a good mind to—”

  Conan Doyle held up his hand to calm him.

  “My dear Henry, I hardly think that will help us in our current predicament,” he remarked dryly. Doyle turned towards Penny, fixing her with an enquiring gaze that brought to mind his creation, the great detective, Sherlock Holmes. “What do you suggest that we do, Miss Tredwell? How do we get out of here?”

  Penelope paled beneath his gaze. The wave of determination that had brought her to this poin
t came crashing down on to an empty shore. She could see Monty, Mr Wigram, the faces of every person there turned towards her in hope. Her mind blank of solutions as she slowly shook her head.

  “I don’t know,” Penny finally stammered, a blush rising to her cheeks. “I thought that if I freed you then the madness would stop.” She paused and glanced up into the void; flickering images spinning across the latticework of webs as the darkness throbbed with a pandemonium of voices. “I was wrong.”

  Monty wailed in despair.

  “I want to go home!” he cried. “This is all just a terrible nightmare.” Monty grabbed hold of the flesh on his forearm and pinched himself hard, then wailed again in pain. “Why can’t I just wake up?”

  At Monty’s words, a faint glimmer of hope crept into Penny’s eyes. She looked up again into the darkness, the shimmering web trembling with a million dreams of madness. That was what was keeping them here – the countless minds locked together, trapped, mesmerised, inside their own private hell. It wasn’t just the authors who she needed to wake…

  “I’ve got it!” she cried, her eyes flashing with excitement. As the authors glanced up in surprise, Penny flung her arms skywards. “Listen to their voices. It’s your stories that have sent them into madness, but you can save them as well. You’ve got to write the way out. Not just for yourself, but for everyone.”

  They stared back at her blankly. Scratching at his thick moustache, Wells was the first to ask the question they all wanted to know.

  “How?”

  “You tell them a new story,” Penelope explained. “A story that will help them to make sense of all this and finally wake them from their madness. At the moment, the visions they have seen are a cage trapping their dreams. Why try to escape when the future is already decided? You need to break down the bars – let them know that their lives still matter. Make them see that nothing is impossible.”

  There was a moment of silence and then a single voice spoke out in reply.

  “I suppose it’s not beyond the realms of reason,” Doyle began.

  Wells nodded in agreement.

  “A mass hallucination, perhaps…”

  “The Machiavellian scheme of a sinister society,” Haggard continued, his eyes glinting as inspiration struck.

  “Every living soul in the city rising up to fight back—”

  The authors’ voices grew louder as the frenzy of ideas took hold. Watching them, Penelope stepped forward, her own eyes shining with the spark of invention.

  “Don’t just talk about it,” she cried. “We need to write our stories straight into their minds.”

  Penny raced to the nearest cocoon, its crown still spinning out a spiral of threads into the darkness. She grasped hold of the trailing strands, wrapping the glistening cords around her fingers. Glancing back over her shoulder, Penny shouted her instructions to the rest.

  “Get to work,” she ordered them. “Wake the sleeping city. Set them free.”

  Rousing themselves from their conference, the authors hurried to the empty shrouds. As they lashed themselves to the cocoons, willingly wrapping the silken threads against their skin, the web started to pulse with a new light. The flickering spiral of images glowed with strange hues, their brightness almost blinding amidst the darkness.

  Penelope could feel the minds of the city above turning towards them, desperate for the freedom they had gained. Tightening her grip on the silken strands in her hands, Penny shook the web with all her might.

  You’re not sleeping, she told them, her voice ringing across the darkness. You’re not dreaming. You are alive.

  The words came back to her in an echoing reply.

  We’re not sleeping. We’re not dreaming. We are alive.

  This doesn’t have to be your future. Penny screamed into the void. Fight back. The future is yours to write.

  As the threads of the web hung free, the clamour of voices in the darkness rose to an answering crescendo.

  Fight back. Fight back. Fight back.

  The huge spiderweb shook, its glistening threads straining as the authors spun their tales. Penny gripped the silken strands of the cocoon more tightly, her eyes blazing with imagination’s unquenchable fire. From every tattered shroud shone a brilliant skein of threads, lighting a path through the darkness of their minds and setting the dreamers free.

  Great tremors tore at the web. From every corner of its vast latticework there came a hideous creaking, the spiralling threads flailing wildly as they snapped. A deafening cacophony of voices filled Penny’s mind, their cries now charged with joy. With a sudden wrenching sound, the shimmering web collapsed into the darkness of the abyss. The clamour of voices suddenly snapped into silence as, out across the city, the sleepers began to wake.

  In the shadow of Big Ben, a bedraggled tramp rose from the gutter, rubbing the mists from his eyes. He shrugged a tattered blanket of newsprint from his shoulders as he gazed up at the clock, its large hand pointing twelve minutes to midnight. Beyond the clock tower, he could see a glittering sea of stars filling the sky.

  “I had the most remarkable dream,” he murmured.

  As the pen fell from Penelope’s fingers, Barrett finished reading the last sentence she had written. He sat there in a stunned silence, his brow furrowed in thought.

  Everything that Penny told him, from the madness spreading across the city to the fact that she was Montgomery Flinch, was true. He stared down at the stack of papers by Penny’s side as she began to stir from her sleep. Here was his proof – the pages filled with Penelope’s elegant handwriting setting down every twist in the tale and telling of the world yet to come. It was the story of a lifetime – a guaranteed front-page sensation. Forget about the Pall Mall Gazette, he could take this to The Morning Herald, The Times even.

  The journalist eased the papers from beneath Penny’s hand, gathering them up into his arms as he turned to leave.

  “I’m sorry,” he muttered as Penny’s eyelashes began to flicker. “But I can’t miss out on a scoop like this.”

  Barrett scurried towards the door, skirting the shadowy margins of the storeroom in his hurry to leave. As he reached up to brush a hanging cobweb from his path, a large brown spider fell on to his face. Stumbling back in fear, Barrett screamed as the spider’s fangs sunk into his skin, colour quickly draining from his face as the venom pumped through his veins. The journalist clutched at his chest, the papers scattering to the floor as his mouth contorted in a rictus of pain. He staggered forward, then toppled and fell, his body lying motionless by the feet of a stuffed panda.

  A dark figure stepped from the shadows, her long black coat fastened to her chin. She stooped to collect the fallen papers, smiling as she glanced down at the pages, and then stepped towards Penny as she slowly stirred from her sleep.

  Leaning over her, she gently brushed her hand across Penelope’s cheek as her pale green eyes flickered open.

  “Wake up, dearie,” Lady Cambridge purred. “It’s nearly midnight.”

  XXVII

  Trying to shake the sleep from her bones, Penelope pulled herself upright. Her heart thudded in her chest as she saw Lady Cambridge standing in front of her, a nightmare come to life. In her right hand she held a small pistol, its sleek black barrel pointing straight at Penny. A mocking smile played across Lady Cambridge’s lips.

  “I’m so glad you could join me,” she said. “The new century approaches – my finest hour is at hand.”

  “You’ve failed,” Penny retorted. “All across the city the people are waking up. The madness is gone.”

  Her smile widening, Lady Cambridge shook her head.

  “I’m afraid you’re quite mistaken,” she replied in a triumphant tone. “The madness is yet to come. We stand on the brink of a century of insanity – all reason lost as the world tumbles towards wars, famines, plagues and disasters. And with these –” in her left hand, she brandished the pages Penny had written – “I have the map to chart a course through the madness – available, of
course, to the highest bidder.”

  She glanced down at the papers again, her icy blue eyes narrowing in delight.

  “I must congratulate you, my dear,” Lady Cambridge continued. “I thought the other writers were good, but you make the future read like poetry. If I had realised sooner that you were really Montgomery Flinch, then I’d have kept you chained in my cellar writing the history of the world still to come.”

  Penny shivered. Rising to her feet, she eyed the pistol nervously as she began to back away. Her right hand trailed against the edge of the workbench, trying to find some kind of weapon she could use to protect herself. Lady Cambridge watched her, her eyes twinkling in amusement.

  “There’s no way out,” she gently scolded. “This is my father’s museum; I spent my childhood here studying these beautiful creatures and learning their secrets. You should have remembered what the spider does when its web is destroyed. It spins a new one – even grander and more beautiful than the last. You are at the heart of my web, Miss Tredwell, and soon it will cover the entire world.”

  She advanced towards Penelope; a smiling huntress stalking her prey.

  Still backing away as she reached the end of the aisle, Penny stumbled over something lying half-hidden in the shadow cast by a towering stack of crates. She glanced down to see Barrett’s sightless eyes staring back at her, a large brown spider crawling hungrily across his face.

  “You’ve killed him,” she gasped.

  Lady Cambridge frowned. “The funnel-weaver spider isn’t deadly,” she replied sharply. “Apart from a mild case of paralysis, temporary blindness and irreversible memory loss, most of its victims soon recover in a matter of minutes.”