Twelve Minutes to Midnight (11 page)

“Now get her back to Bedlam and bring me those papers.”

Penny could feel her eyelids growing heavy, a darkness crowding in on all sides as the venom flowed through her veins. Her brain itched with the scurrying of a thousand tiny legs; her mind crawling with spiders. As the darkness overwhelmed her, the last thing Penny saw was Bradburn’s twisted face leaning closer, his monstrous hands reaching towards her.

XVII

Thick fog clung to the streets outside, dimming the light from the electric street lamps to a feeble glow. There was a frost in the air and heavy clouds scudded across the blackness of the sky. Alfie sheltered in the shadow of the grand house, his hands thrust deep into his jacket pockets against the chill. He peered anxiously into the gloom, his eyes fixed on the servants’ entrance that sheltered beneath the broad stone steps that led to the front door.

Penny had said she’d only be in there for ten minutes – that was half an hour ago. Why had he let her talk him into this? It had been a lark following Bradburn through the streets of the city, hiding behind corners as he kept on his trail, but this was something else. This was breaking and entering – and the home of a Lady to boot! If they got caught it would be the reform school for the both of them or even worse.

Alfie frowned. He had to go and get Penny out 
of there before she got them into real trouble. He took two steps forward, but then pressed himself against the wall as the sound of horses’ hooves and grating wheels clattered in the street outside. Glancing up in fear, Alfie peered into the darkness. Through a gap in the hedge, he saw a horse-drawn buggy come to a halt at the front of the house.

He watched as the lone driver swung down from the high seat. For a moment, the burly man was framed in silhouette beneath a street lamp as he gathered together the two horses’ reins to tether them there. Then, he turned towards the house and Alfie saw Bradburn’s grim features glaring at him through the gloom.

Alfie shrank back in the shadows, praying that the scar-faced orderly hadn’t seen him there. Squinting through the fog, he watched Bradburn push open the front gate and then bound up the stone steps that led to the front door. The orderly rapped twice on the knocker, his second knock answered by a light inside. His heart pounding in his chest, Alfie glanced back at the servants’ entrance, but the door there stayed firmly closed.

“Penny, where are you?” he whispered beneath his breath.

He heard the sound of the front door opening and, half-turning, Alfie saw Bradburn disappear inside. The door closed behind the orderly with a slam, the sudden noise unnaturally loud in the 
silence of the night. With mounting horror, Alfie watched as behind heavy curtains the lights in the house came on one by one. From the entrance hall to the drawing room, the tall windows stared out like dimly-lit eyes.

Alfie was torn. There was no way he could try and get inside with what looked like half the house awake now. But with Bradburn on the scene, Penny was in real danger. He could only pray that she had found a place to hide. As a chill wind whipped around the side of the building, black thoughts raced through Alfie’s brain.

He wasn’t sure how long he stood there for, half frozen between action and despair, when the sound of a door opening jerked his gaze back to the front of the house. Alfie saw Bradburn hurrying down the stone steps, a heavy bundle wrapped in a cloak slung across his shoulder. Pushing the gate open, the burly orderly stepped out into the street. As he approached the open carriage, the two horses pawed the ground nervously.

Ignoring their whinnies, Bradburn hoisted the body-shaped bundle into the high seat of the buggy. As the brute turned to free the horses’ reins, Alfie saw the cloak slip from the face of the shrouded form. He gasped with horror as through wreaths of mist he saw Penny’s face, her features deathly pale. Before Alfie could even decide what to do, Bradburn had clambered up into the seat next to Penny. 

“Come on, my girl,” he growled. “Let’s get you back to the madhouse.”

With a snarl, he snapped the whip above the horses’ heads and they set off at a gallop down the fog-bound street. Alfie raced to the gate as he watched the wheels of the carriage disappear into the mist. The sound of the horses’ hooves slowly faded into silence, taking all trace of Penny with them. What had they done to her?

Penelope felt herself lifted through the air, her numbed body dangling loosely from the orderly’s arms. She couldn’t tell where she was being taken, her senses disorientated as the spiders in her mind began to spin their webs. Seconds became minutes, minutes bled into hours. Alone in the darkness, time had no meaning. Fragments of feeling broke free through the fog: a biting wind whipping across her face, the clatter of horses’ hooves and the babbling of voices.
Let’s get you to the madhouse
.

Penny tried to cling on to these memories as the venom crept through her veins. They were the only things keeping her anchored to the real world as her mind slowly slipped away. She could feel herself teetering on the edge of a vast abyss – an infinite darkness criss-crossed with countless black silken threads. Penelope knew that if she fell, she would be gone forever.

Fighting to keep her thoughts from the 
precipice, Penny felt herself lifted again. Rough hands grappled her to the ground, the cloak that had shrouded her falling away. Penny heard a rattle of keys and the slamming of doors and then she was dragged forward again, her legs scraping against the cold stone.

“Another one for the padded cells.”

The growl of Bradburn’s voice cut through her mind like a knife. Penelope struggled to free herself, but her limbs were frozen, useless. She felt herself pitched forward, her face sliding painfully against a polished floor as a second voice whined in reply.

“You can’t bring her in here without the proper documents. What are you trying to do? Get me the sack?”

Penny’s eyelids flickered open; the only part of her body that seemed able to answer the desperate pleas that her brain was sending. On the edge of her vision she could see Bradburn arguing with a second orderly, a pimply-faced youth who quailed beneath the older guard’s prodding finger. However, as Penelope’s eyes focused straight ahead, she saw the worn mask of a woman’s face staring back at her.

The woman was staring through the bars of her cell, a tiny window that revealed a
half-shadowed
glance of her wrinkled features. Dark green eyes peered down at Penelope with a pitying gaze. Her face looked strangely familiar, 
and Penny tried to dredge the memory from the darkness of her mind. It was the patient who had stopped her in the corridors of Bedlam; the
old-young
woman with strange messages scratched across her skin.

Penny tried to speak, her numbed lips struggling to shape the words.

“Help me,” she whispered.

The woman’s worn face creased in a bitter smile, revealing again the blackened stumps of her teeth.

“It’s no good asking for help,” she hissed in reply. “Nobody listens. You’re one of us now.”

She flinched away from the window with a shriek as Bradburn slammed his open palm against the door of her cell.

“Be quiet!” he roared.

Then Bradburn turned, reaching down towards Penelope with menacing hands. The second orderly had unlocked the door of the adjacent cell and Bradburn dragged Penny through this. In the dim light she could see the shadowy shapes of words stretching from the floor to the ceiling, looping whirls of black ink and bloodstains scratched across the walls. A renewed sense of panic rose in Penelope’s chest. This was Fitzgerald’s cell – the patient who had died only days before.

The burly orderly roughly laid her down on the cold, hard floor. Penny tried to move, her fingers 
twitching as the paralysis started to weaken, but then Bradburn grabbed hold of her face. With cruel fingers, he forced her mouth open, pressing the hard-edged rim of the glass vial to her lips. His voice rasped in her ear.

“So you’re still awake, are you?” he growled. “Well, a triple dose of this will soon send you off to dreamland with the rest of the blighters in here.”

The vile liquid slicked into her mouth, a trickle of it spilling from her lips and dripping down on to the cold, stone floor of the asylum cell. Inside Penelope’s mind, the spiders gathering there seethed in delight.

As Bradburn turned away, slamming the door of the cell shut behind him, the spiders’ frenzied spinning began to draw Penny inexorably towards the edge of the precipice. Beneath this, the shimmering darkness of a vast silken web shivered in anticipation, waiting for her to fall.

Monty muttered fearfully beneath his breath, the dark corridors of his dreams swiftly turning into a labyrinth. He ran without thought, blundering into the shadows as, all around him, a bedlam of voices called out his name. A hand grabbed at his shoulder and Monty turned in horror to find himself staring into the face of a nightmare.

“Mr Maples! Mr Maples!”

Monty woke with a spluttering start. 

“What! What!”

The club steward stepped back in surprise. Around them in the saloon-room, the slumped shapes of a dozen sleeping forms shifted uneasily in their armchairs. In the dim light, Monty’s last drink lay half-finished on the table beside him.

“What is it?” he slurred as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

“This young gentleman said that he needed to see you urgently,” the steward replied, studiously ignoring the thin line of drool hanging from Monty’s chin. “I told him that the club could not admit visitors at so late an hour, but he was most insistent.”

Glancing up, Monty’s gaze focused for the first time on Alfie, who was hovering anxiously behind the steward’s shoulder.

“You’ve got to come with me, Monty!” Alfie cried out, forgetting the sober decorum of his surroundings as his impatience overtook him. “There’s no way I can get into Bedlam without you.”

Monty recoiled in horror, the thoughts of his nightmare still fresh in his mind.

“What on earth do you mean?” he stuttered. “Why would we want to go there?”

“To find Penny,” Alfie replied, his eyes shining with fear, “before it’s too late.”

Lying on the cold, stone floor of the cell, Penelope gagged as the vile liquid swilled around her mouth. The taste of the venom burned her tongue, a tiny trickle of it slipping down her throat. Inside her mind, she felt the black silken threads of the web tighten their grip. She was clinging to the precipice above a pit of madness – if she swallowed just one more drop, she knew she would slip over the edge; her mind finally unhinged.

As the burning venom filled her mouth, Penny felt as though she was drowning in fire. She tried to move, but her numbed limbs still hung heavy by her sides. If she could just twist her head to one side…

Penelope strained to move her neck, willing the frozen muscles into life. As they spasmed in reply, she twisted herself sideways, retching as the acrid liquid spilled from her lips. The taste of it sent a fresh wave of nausea shuddering through her body, the venom-soaked bile pooling on the stone floor beside her until there was nothing left to bring up.

Gasping for air, Penny lay there in the darkness for what felt like an age. A skull-splitting headache thumped in her brain, but the scurrying spiders that had filled her mind were gone, the shadows of their webs slowly fading. Wincing, she slowly raised herself up on her elbows, her eyes straining against the gloom. 

The cell door was locked, the shutters drawn across its small, barred window. There was no sign of Bradburn anywhere. With a sudden shiver of realisation, Penny knew where he would be. She remembered Lady Cambridge’s command, the glass vials of spider venom clinking in her palm.
Administer a double dose to every patient
. She had to stop Bradburn before it was too late.

As Penelope scrabbled to her feet, she felt something metallic clatter against her hand in the half-light. Reaching down, her fingers closed around the copper handle of a bedpan. She could feel the rough edges of words carved into its surface; the madness that had possessed Fitzgerald had forced him to write even on this. Penny tightened her grip, feeling the weight of it in her hand. Maybe she could use it to get her own message out.

Hurrying to the door, Penelope pulled her arm back and, with all the strength she could muster, hammered the bedpan against the bars of the cell. A metallic clang rang out – a deafening noise to wake the sane and the mad alike. Penny pulled her arm back again, striking the copper pan against the bars until every muscle in her body ached.

Clang. Clang. Clang.

In reply, Penelope heard a thudding sound echo down the corridor; cell doors shaking as patients thumped their fists against the wood. 

Bang. Bang. Bang.

The hammering sound resounding through the walls of the asylum matched the thumping inside her skull. Message received.

Penny stepped back exhausted, the bedpan falling from her fingers with a clatter as her strength gave way. Then the door to the cell slammed open with a crash and Bradburn’s hulking figure stood framed in the doorway.

He leapt towards her, his brutish face red with rage.

“You meddling little twixter!” Bradburn roared, grabbing Penny by her neck and pulling her face close to his. “What have you done?”

Penny tried to pull herself free from his clutches, but she was too weak to fight back. She could feel his grimy fingers tightening around her neck.