Twelve Minutes to Midnight (17 page)

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 point 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.”

She took another step towards Penny, shortening the distance between them to a matter of feet.

“But I will be long gone by then,” she continued. Lady Cambridge raised the pistol and pointed it straight at Penelope’s head. “And so will you.”

As she stared down the barrel, Penny saw a flurry of images flash before her eyes. Not memories of her own life, but images of the world yet to come – aeroplanes, rocket ships, skyscrapers and laser beams – countless wonders she would never live to see if the bullet found its target.

As the pistol was cocked, the click of its hammer sounded like a cannon and Penny threw herself behind the crates stacked at the end of the desk. The wooden cases toppled forward and then a shot rang out, the bullet splintering the falling crates as they crashed down on to Lady
Cambridge. She let out a terrified yell, the crushing weight of the boxes sending her sprawling.

As Penny peered around the edge of the desk, she saw Lady Cambridge pinned beneath the shattered remains of a heavy packing case.

“Help me,” she called out, raising her hand pitifully, as the contents of the case crawled free. Penelope glimpsed the grimy label fixed to the lid of the broken crate.

The large black spiders scuttled inquisitively towards Lady Cambridge, her pale face frozen in fear. She struggled to free herself, but the crushing weight of the shattered case held her captive. A low moan escaped from her lips as the largest of the spiders began to crawl across her face. Penny could see the silvery mark on its back, the shape of a circle like a full moon. For a moment, her eyes met Lady Cambridge’s and she saw the fear and hatred burning there. Then the spider struck.

Lady Cambridge let out a banshee wail and Penny turned away in revulsion. She sank to her knees next to Barrett’s prone body, his blank eyes
still staring out into oblivion as if he was dead. Penny pressed her fingers to his neck, desperately searching for a pulse. She felt a distant throbbing beneath her fingers as Barrett’s heart pumped the venom from his veins.

The storeroom door burst open and Alfie stood framed in the doorway, flanked by the two stuffed grizzly bears standing sentry there. Seeing Penny kneeling over the journalist, he raced to her side.

“Are you all right?”

Alfie’s expression quickly turned to horror as he glanced past Penny and saw the black tide of bugs inching out of the wreckage and across Lady Cambridge’s trapped body. Her face was almost completely hidden by the spiders crawling over her skin. “What happened here?” he murmured. “Is that Lady Cambridge?”

Penny nodded, a haunted look in her eyes. “She got a taste of her own medicine.”

Between them, Barrett began to stir and the two of them glanced down to see the journalist’s eyes slowly swim into focus.

“Mr Barrett, are you all right?” Penelope bent her head closer to hear the soft whisper of his reply. “Don’t worry, it’s over now.”

Barrett stared up at her, his brow creased in confusion.

“Who are you?” he asked.