The Map of Chaos

by Félix J Palma

  “What was that?” his wife asked between gasps for breath.

  “I don’t know, Jane. Possibly one of Crookes’s columns short-circuited,” he replied.

  But he doubted it. He had only been able to glance fleetingly at the hole, but the darkness inside it, the icy cold exuding from it, and that suction power . . . He thrust the thought from this mind, quickening his pace as he tried to get his bearings in that labyrinth and listen for whether the creature was following them. He thought he heard the swift, angry pounding of his footsteps in the distance and his blood ran cold. It was definitely Rhys, and he was gaining on them. If they could only reach the street, they might stand a chance. He was sure someone would help them, or perhaps they could take a carriage and flee before he caught up with them . . . But Wells soon realized he was lost in those winding underground passages, which all of a sudden would end in a wall, forcing them to retrace their steps, or a door that would take them back to where they had started. It was as if the original maze of corridors had sprouted new offshoots that led nowhere or turned back on themselves. Some doors even had dozens of handles to choose from. With no time to stop and deliberate over this strange phenomenon, Wells and Jane ran haphazardly, with the sole aim of fleeing the footsteps resounding in the distance. When they came across the stairs leading up to the entrance hall, they bounded up them, grateful to chance for freeing them.

  As soon as they reached the upper floor, they heard the sound of footsteps running toward them, and a young guard in uniform, with a look of panic on his face, emerged from one of the side galleries. Wells tried to stop him to ask for his assistance, but the young lad didn’t seem to be in his right mind. He thrust Wells aside and carried on running as if all the demons in hell were on his heels. Wells and Jane exchanged glances, wondering what had given the young man such a fright. The only thing they knew capable of doing that was the creature chasing them. But they were mistaken.

  First they heard their chant. It was coming from the room the guard had fled from and seemed to emanate from throats that were not human.

  “His is the House of Pain. His is the Hand that makes. His is the Hand that wounds. His is the lightning flash . . .”

  Wells and Jane looked at one another, aghast. They knew the words of that blood-chilling chant by heart, but it was impossible that . . . A cohort of grotesque figures emerged from the gloom of the gallery. This ragged mob walked with the rolling gait of the lame, and all of them, without exception, possessed bestial features: the creature heading the company had a silvery pelt and was faintly reminiscent of a satyr, the issue of a coupling between a monkey and a goat; behind him followed a creature that was a cross between a hyena and a pig, and a woman who was half fox and half bear, and a man with a black face in the middle of which was a protrusion dimly suggestive of a muzzle. Fortunately, Wells and Jane were able to duck into the shadow of the staircase just in time. Chanting their grotesque song, the horde of beasts disappeared inside the museum, a confusion of imaginatively antlered heads, fanged mouths, bulging eyes that shone in the dark . . . Wells shook his head with a mixture of disgust and hilarity. How was it possible they had just encountered the cast of characters he had imagined for his novel The Island of Doctor Moreau?

  He had no time to answer his own question, for they soon saw Rhys’s figure appear at the foot of the staircase. The couple started running again toward the entrance, which, fortunately, one of the guards had left wide-open. But as they reached the door, they were forced to come up short. From the top of the museum steps, Wells and Jane contemplated the scene before them, paralyzed with fear. It was as if someone had spilled all of mankind’s nightmares onto South Kensington. Up in the sky, which looked like a web of blue, lilac, and purple hues, like sections of different skies tacked together, a huge flaming bird was tracing circles of fire. Below, a three-headed dog with a serpent’s tail was careering down one of the streets, the ground quaking beneath its feet; ahead of it, trying to escape its ferocious jaws, a panic-stricken crowd was scattering in all directions. Farther away, toward Chelsea, a swarm of strange flying machines with propellers on their wings was dropping bombs on buildings, which blew up in an orgy of destruction. While they were trying to take in what they were seeing, a herd of unicorns, like a wave of shimmering beauty, galloped out of Brompton Road, passed before their astonished eyes, and then vanished down Cromwell Road.

  “Look, Bertie!” Jane said suddenly, pointing toward one of the side streets.

  Wells turned and saw a Martian tripod, identical to the one he had described in The War of the Worlds, walking on slender jointed legs and firing heat rays at people and buildings. He was horrified to see his invention playing its part in that madness and mayhem, but he had no time to lament the fact, for the sound of loud flapping caused them to raise their heads to the sky. At that instant, a dragon straight out of some medieval bestiary circled the buildings opposite, scattering the group of bat-men who appeared to be idling on the rooftops, oblivious to the devastation around them. Tipping its enormous membranous wings, the creature swooped down on a row of carriages clogging one of the nearby streets. With no Perseus or Siegfried at hand to confront it, the dragon spat out a tongue of fire that set alight the carriages one by one. The occupants leapt out, fleeing blindly in all directions. A small group of them noticed that the museum doors were open and made a dash for the steps, hoping to take refuge inside, but the dragon anticipated their movements and, wheeling round abruptly, flew over them, spraying them with horrific flames, setting the poor wretches alight in front of the horrified couple. The fireball had come so close that Wells and Jane could feel the heat scorching their cheeks. Terrified, they retreated a few steps backward into the museum. Some of those caught by the flames fell on the steps, but others managed to reach the door, only to collapse, writhing grotesquely on the ground before suddenly becoming still. The sickening stench of charred flesh filled the air. Wells and Jane stood observing the grisly scene, aghast, until they spotted Rhys crossing the entrance hall toward them. The way out blocked by the dragon, they grabbed each other by the hand once more and fled toward one of the side galleries. Rhys set off in pursuit, determined to kill them once and for all.

  Meanwhile, the detective Sherlock Holmes and his archenemy Professor Moriarty were engaged in a violent struggle above the Reichenbach Falls. Although seen from below by untrained eyes they might have looked like a pair of clumsy dance partners on the narrow path beside the falls, the two men were exchanging well-aimed punches, each trying to throttle his opponent by means of surprise chokeholds, demonstrating their skills in the art of wrestling. At some point, the rivals gripped each other tight and a vigorous tussle ensued, which took them to the edge of the abyss, over which they finally toppled. It took Holmes and Moriarty seconds to fall into the deep well past the eight-hundred-foot black escarpment down which the mass of water plummeted. A continual spray drifted up like smoke from its craggy edges, making the air look like iridescent glass. A few droplets splashed onto Arthur Conan Doyle’s face as he stood at the foot of the waterfall. He wiped them away with the back of his hand, his eyes fixed intently on the mighty cascade stretched like a gigantic liquid sheet between two buildings on Queen’s Gate.

  “Good heavens . . . I’ll be damned if it isn’t the Reichenbach Falls!” said Murray, who was standing right beside him. “And that was Holmes, who just perished in front of us exactly as he did in your story. What the devil does all this mean?”

  Doyle made no reply. He was still in shock after seeing the scene he had pictured in his mind’s eye seven years before acted out with a degree of realism that human imagination could never hope to create. Then, rousing himself from his stupor, he grabbed Murray by the arm and forced him to carry on running.

  “Come on! It doesn’t matter now. We can think about it later . . . assuming we manage to reach the museum and save the world, of course.”

  “Do you really think we can stop all this?” Murray said, panting loudly bes
ide him.

  “I don’t know,” Doyle admitted. “As I explained, Inspector Clayton has a book that can supposedly do so. But for all we know, the Invisible Man has already snatched it from him.”

  “What of the brilliant plan you mentioned? The one you didn’t let me in on . . . ,” Murray reminded him, unable to prevent a note of resentment from entering his voice.

  “For the love of God, I told you I tried calling you a hundred times! And I only went to your house today because no one answered . . . Otherwise I would have stayed at home watching the kettle and would be taking part in the ambush right now!”

  Doyle suddenly came to a halt. They had reached the back of the imposing Romanesque building, but instead of walking round to the front, Doyle went over to a small door hidden discreetly down a narrow alleyway. Murray followed him with a disconcerted look.

  “Clayton gave George and me a set of keys to all the doors in the building, so that we could enter the museum even when it was closed to the public. I think this is the one closest to the Chamber,” Doyle explained as he started trying all the keys in the tiny lock, cursing each time one didn’t fit.

  “Well, he might have labeled them for you,” remarked Murray. “I don’t mean to sound pessimistic, but I think I detect a distinct lack of organization in your plan.”

  “You aren’t being very helpful, Gilliam,” Doyle muttered, poking around angrily in the lock.

  “What do you mean? May I remind you that I shot the Invisible Man with a bolt. Doesn’t that inspire you with some confidence?”

  “It would if you had your crossbow,” grunted Doyle, just as one of the keys clicked in the lock, finally opening the accursed door.

  On the other side, a maze of corridors awaited them. Doyle strode resolutely down one but had scarcely reached halfway when he spun round, walked back, and set off down another with equal determination. Murray tagged along, unconvinced it was the right way.

  “This Chamber of Marvels seems rather hard to find . . . don’t you have a map or something?” He snorted. “The Chamber of Marvels . . . Who the devil thinks up the names for these places?”

  Just then, they heard a clamor coming from somewhere among the maze of corridors. Doyle stopped in his tracks and Murray bumped into him.

  “Blast it . . . ,” he muttered.

  Doyle ordered him to be quiet and he pricked up his ears . . .

  “It sounds like they are in trouble,” he whispered.

  Following the noises, he changed direction and walked down another corridor. Murray followed behind, rubbing his bruised nose. As they advanced, the din grew louder: it was made up of desperate cries, deafening thuds, and, almost drowning everything else out, a familiar hurricane roar. At the end of the passage, they saw the door to the Chamber of Marvels flung wide-open. They hastened toward it, rushing into the room without stopping to think what they might find. But as soon as they entered they came to a halt. A rent in the fabric of the air similar to the one that had ended the skirmish between Captain Shackleton and the automatons had opened up inside the Chamber and was threatening to devour everything in it. The tear reached almost from the floor to the ceiling, widening slightly in the middle like the iris of some gigantic reptile. Its force field was spreading relentlessly through the enormous room. Close to the hole, where reality had already started to warp, they saw a handful of police officers clinging to crates or other heavy objects, which the whirlwind was unable to drag toward it, at least not yet. A few yards in front of the police officers, they saw Captain Sinclair holding on like grim Death to one of Crookes’s columns, the suction power pulling at him with such force that his stocky form was almost parallel to the floor. And finally they made out Inspector Clayton, sprawled unconscious on the floor, the whirlwind dragging his crumpled body along the ground, bringing it dangerously close to where the force field seemed strongest. If no one did anything, in a matter of seconds he would be sucked into the hole. Exchanging glances, Doyle and Murray rushed toward him with the admirable intention of grabbing him and dragging him away, but as soon as they entered the suction field they realized it would not be so easy. They immediately felt themselves pulled by a funnel of air, paltry in comparison to the one that had tried to suck them up on Cromwell Road, but strong enough to cause them to lose their balance. They fell on the floor and slid around as though riding on an invisible sleigh while Clayton’s body suddenly gained momentum as it neared the center of the hole. Meanwhile, Captain Sinclair, who had calculated that Clayton’s body would pass near him, extended his left arm as far as he could and managed to grab hold of Clayton’s metal hand. But the suction was so great, he was left holding only the prosthesis. One-handed and unconscious, Clayton’s body continued on its path toward the hole until it bumped into one of Crookes’s columns and became momentarily entangled in its wires.

  Doyle, who had been following everything as he slid around on the floor, cried out to Murray, “Grab hold of the captain! Let’s form a chain!”

  Murray, who at that moment was passing close to Sinclair, stretched out his arms and managed to seize Sinclair’s legs even as he felt Doyle’s viselike grip around his left ankle. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Doyle grab hold of Clayton’s collar just as the whirlwind wrenched him free from the tangle of wires. The four men remained like that, forming a kind of human snake of which Sinclair, clasping the column, was the head, and Clayton, unconscious and missing a hand, was the tail, while the hole pulled at them as if it were tightening the string on a guitar.

  “The column is giving way!” Captain Sinclair announced, to their dismay.

  • • •

  A DRAGON WAS BLOCKING their way . . . He had never imagined that the course his life took might lead to any such situation, Wells told himself as they fled from the invisible creature. And yet it was true. The dragon was from another world, from a world in which dragons existed because in a universe made up of infinite worlds, everything was possible. Everything man could imagine already existed somewhere, like the myths and fairy tales full of captive princesses, brave knights, and angry dragons that breathed fire. That was why they had come across the beast folk, and why Martian tripods were razing London to the ground . . . It was the end of the world, of all possible worlds, of all the imaginable worlds. And the book he was clasping to his chest, the book he himself had written, contained the key to preventing that, even though for them it seemed like mumbo jumbo.

  Still running, Wells and Jane entered one of the museum’s side galleries. They felt worn-out, but the sound of the Villain’s grunts behind them spurred them on. They ran through the whale room filled with skeletons and gigantic models of cetaceans, through another containing every species of plant, and finally they ventured into the fossil room, from which there was no exit. Gasping for breath, their faces bathed in sweat, the couple leaned against the end wall, too exhausted to regret their misfortune. The Villain’s watery form entered the room, found them propped against the wall, and sauntered toward them. He looked tired as well and eager to bring to an end this prolonged chase across so many worlds, in which Wells and Jane were the last relay. As the creature approached, they could see that the bluish substance had almost completely defined his figure, although a few patches still needed coloring in—for example, his left arm and part of his chest. His face, in contrast, was complete, although most of his head was still missing, so that his expression seemed to be floating in the air, as though painted on a crumpled cloth. He stopped a few yards from them and gave a sigh of genuine dismay.

  “Was this absurd chase really necessary, George? What good has it done you?” He contemplated Wells at length. “Give me the book. You have no choice, George. You can’t fight me alone.”

  Rhys extended his one visible hand, which looked as if it were made of glass. Wells stared at it with a distracted air, as though thinking to himself. Then, when it seemed he was about to hand over the book, he held it even tighter to his chest, shut his eyes, and bowed his head slightly, as he w
ere praying. Jane looked aghast at her husband’s submissive posture, while the Villain contemplated his final eccentricity with amusement.

  “As you wish . . . ,” he said sadly, as though regretting that things had turned out that way. “Then I will just have to take it from you by force.”

  But before he could take a step, an unruly group of about a dozen men burst into the room from God knew where—among them a tram conductor and a couple of laborers.

  “The Invisible Man!” one of them cried, pointing at the alarmed silhouette of the Villain.

  A huge laborer stepped out from the group and, hurling abuse, lifted his spade and brought it crashing down on the creature’s head. Rhys fell to the floor and was instantly surrounded by the men. His body started to flicker, but before he was able to jump, an angry torrent of kicks and punches rained down on him. Anyone coming into the room might have thought that an exceptionally vicious game of rugby was in progress. Despite the continuing blows, the Villain managed to drag himself to his feet, but the tram conductor grabbed him by the neck and shoulders and forced him to the floor again, where his companions gave him another savage kicking. Wells and Jane watched the scene from against the wall, appalled by the display of brutality. Then, when it was clear the Villain was not going to be able to get up or jump into a parallel world, Wells took his wife’s hand and led her toward the exit, skirting around the group of men still engaged in that fearsome beating, until suddenly they all stopped. From the doorway, Wells and Jane saw the men step away with bloodied fists, panting for breath, and in the center of the circle they saw the inert figure of the Villain.