The Map of Chaos (74 page)

Murray laughed nervously. “It's the brave Captain Shackleton!”

“Whoever he is, he's real, Gilliam. They're all real! And so are their weapons!” exclaimed Doyle, grabbing him by the arm. “We have to hide!”

He dragged Murray over to a mound of rubble large enough to shield them both. They reached it just as, in response to an order from their captain, four soldiers emerged from beneath the mound, encircling the startled automatons. They opened fire as one. Crouched behind the debris, Doyle and Murray were observing the skirmish in openmouthed astonishment, when all at once, a few yards away, the air seemed to rip open like a canvas slashed by a knife. The tear was accompanied by a deafening explosion that split their eardrums. Taken aback by that seemingly monstrous howl, the automatons and Shackleton stopped fighting. Then, with an equally earsplitting roar like a hurricane, the hole started sucking in everything around it. The reality around it crumpled like a bunched-up tablecloth. The bulky automatons quivered for a moment before being uprooted and dragged toward the tear by the suction force that had also overpowered the captain. Flabbergasted, Doyle and Murray saw them disappear inside the hole, which contained a throbbing, primeval blackness. From their hiding place, they seemed to be contemplating the first darkness—or rather, what was there before darkness was created, before any god appeared onstage to endow the world. Inside the hole was nothingness, nonexistence, whatever was there before the beginning, for which no one had invented a name. Then Solomon's support was torn abruptly off the ground and sucked through the orifice, too. The debris between them and the tear were gradually swept away as the suction field around the hole expanded. The air, and the reality painted on it, puckered into infinite folds around the opening. A few seconds later, the huge chunk of masonry they were crouched behind began to quake.

“My God!” exclaimed Doyle. “We have to get out of here!”

They started running back the way they had come but soon felt the suction power of the hole pulling them toward it, rolling up everything behind them. Doyle grunted with frustration. Running was like climbing an impossibly steep hill or swimming in a turbulent sea. Each step they took required a titanic effort, and they had the impression they were making less and less headway.

“We won't make it!” Murray declared, giving a strangled cry.

He was struggling forward, teeth clenched, face bright red, body tilted forward. Doyle realized that Murray was right. The greedy mouth of nothingness would soon swallow them up. Within seconds they would be pulled off the increasingly concave ground, following the captain and the automatons into the orifice, where a blackness awaited them that would obliterate their minds and shrivel their souls. With great difficulty, Doyle turned his head to the right and saw that they were only a few yards from Gloucester Road.

“Follow me, Gilliam!” he shouted, changing direction.

Murray obeyed, realizing that if they managed to veer off to one side they might free themselves from the force that was making their every movement an excruciating torment. Walking as though buried waist-deep in quicksand, and praying they wouldn't be hit by any of the smaller bits of rubble transformed into lethal projectiles by the terrible suction, they managed to gain a few agonizing yards. Finally, they reached the intersection and immediately noticed they could move more freely. It no longer felt as if they were sheathed in leaden armor. As soon as they were outside the suction field, they collapsed in an exhausted heap.

From the relative safety of Gloucester Road, they watched as the piece of masonry that had been their shield finally rose off the ground and flew toward the hole, into which the whole world seemed to be spiraling. The building on the corner of Gloucester Road and Cromwell Road was gradually beginning to tilt over, and Doyle and Murray realized that the strange fissure was not only sucking in whatever was around to it, but that its force was expanding, forming a semicircle in which everything was turning into an undulating carpet of bumps and hollows. Soon the street they were in wouldn't be safe either.

“What the devil is happening?” exclaimed Murray when he finally caught his breath.

Doyle gave a sigh of despair before replying. “I suppose we are witnessing the beginning of the end.”

A
ND WHILE
D
OYLE WAS REACHING
that ominous conclusion, in the vaults of the Natural History Museum, Wells was gazing with astonishment at Clayton's tall, thin body curled up in a ball on the floor after he had collapsed in front of them. While Captain Sinclair rolled his eyes, Wells and the creature fixed theirs on the book the inspector had dropped as he fainted, which now lay on the floor a few steps from Wells. Thinking about it only for the length of time a man as indecisive as he needed to think about anything, Wells took those few steps forward and snatched the book.

“I have it!” he announced unnecessarily, stepping back again until he was once more standing beside Jane.

The watery bluish silhouette of the Invisible Man shook with rage, trapped in his radiation prison.

“That book is mine! Mine! No one deserves to have it more than me! I have crossed deserts of time to find it! I have waded through oceans of blood! I have strewn the vast expanses of the void with the ashes of my soul! You can't take it from me now! You can't!” he cried frantically, ending his torrent of words with a howl of pain that seemed to cleave the air.

After this angry outburst, he fell to his knees sobbing.

“Well, I think this has gone far enough,” said Captain Sinclair, unimpressed, putting his gun away. “Summers, McCory, take Inspector Clayton and leave him somewhere where he won't be in the way. And you, Drake, tell them to bring round the carriage with Crookes's special cage, and park in front of—”

An almighty crash drowned out the rest of what Sinclair was saying. A dozen or so yards behind the line of detectives, something tore the air as if it were a piece of paper. They turned as one toward where the earsplitting noise had come from, only to see a strange rent in the surface of reality reaching from the floor up to the high ceiling. A draft as cold as all the winters in the world issued from it, where a pristine darkness reigned. Before anyone had time to react, Professor Crookes's columns began to explode one by one amid a deafening hum, hurling lightning bolts in all directions. Horrified, Wells and Jane flattened themselves against the nearest wall as the lightning flashes zigzagged around the room, searing the air and striking many of the piles of objects. Sinclair and his men broke ranks, scattering in all directions, dazzled and half-deafened. Then the intense light filling the room was abruptly extinguished. Rhys stood up, took a few tentative steps, smiling triumphantly as he realized he was no longer a prisoner. His head, becoming visible around its one empty eye socket, swiveled round, searching for Wells. It found him pressed up against the wall a few yards away, pale and trembling.

Wells looked imploringly toward the police officers, but one glance was enough for him to see that none of them was in a fit state to help. Captain Sinclair was on his knees, momentarily blinded and dazed, and his men didn't look any better. The lightning bolts had done quite a lot of damage: the bones from the alleged mermaid's skeleton were strewn all over the floor, a werewolf costume was engulfed in flames, the Minotaur's head had been reduced to a handful of ashes, and everywhere crates had burst open, revealing their mysterious contents. Thick plumes of smoke and clouds of ages-old dust darkened the room. After casting an approving eye over all that destruction, Rhys approached the defenseless Wells, half a languid smile traced in the air.

“Hand over the book, George,” he said, almost wearily, “and let's put an end to this. Can't you see that even the universe itself is on my side?”

Wells did not answer. Instead, clasping the book tightly to his chest, he grabbed Jane by the hand and started to run toward the Chamber door. Rhys breathed a sigh.

“All right,” he muttered to himself resignedly, “let's play catch one last time.”

However, scarcely had he taken two steps after them, when some of the objects around him began to vibrate, as though announcing an earthquake. Suddenly, the smallest and lightest ones rose into the air and flew toward the hole like a flock of birds released from a cage. Transfixed by the strange phenomenon, Rhys didn't notice the heavy bronze chalice, labeled “The Holy Grail,” hurtling through the air toward his head. The impact knocked him to the ground, leaving him dazed. Still running, Wells looked back over his shoulder at the scene. On the far side of the room, he saw Captain Sinclair, who had just stood up, flailing around for a handhold as the sudden rush of air threatened to pull him toward the hole. The whirlwind was also starting to drag Inspector Clayton's inert body across the floor, toward the lethal opening. Alas, Wells couldn't help any of them. The book was now in his possession, and he had to protect it from the creature, who had already come round and was rising to his feet, shaking off his dizziness. Without losing any more time, he and Jane slipped out the Chamber into the maze of corridors before the mysterious force could reach them.

“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.