Twelve Minutes to Midnight (16 page)

XXIV

“This is most irregular, Mr Barrett.”

Dressed in a shabby tweed suit, the
grey-bearded
curator selected a key from the bunch that dangled from his pocket chain. They had reached the end of a long corridor, tucked away in the bowels of the museum. Directly in front of them was a dark mahogany door, its sign almost lost under a layer of dust: DRY STOREROOM No. 2. Fitting the key to the lock, he turned the handle and then pushed the door open. The curator paused on its threshold, glancing back at them with an anxious expression fixed to his face.

“If the museum’s board of trustees knew that I had let you in here tonight,” he said, keeping his voice low as if afraid of being overheard, “my position as curator, indeed my career as a natural historian, could be in ruins.”

Penny and Alfie shifted uncomfortably under his gaze, but the young journalist just rested his 
hand on the older man’s shoulder.

“I think that’s the least of your worries, Mr Wallace,” Barrett told him, his tone a mixture of sympathy and menace. “I think the board of trustees would be much more interested in hearing about how that shipment of missing dinosaur bones ended up being delivered to Battersea Dogs Home. I can imagine the headlines now.”

The colour drained from the curator’s face.

“You wouldn’t print that,” he moaned despairingly. “You promised me!”

“Of course not,” Barrett soothed. “Anybody could make a mistake like that. Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me. We just need to see that spider I told you about.”

Glancing nervously over his shoulder, Wallace slowly nodded his head. Motioning for them to follow him, he stepped into the darkened room, pulling on a light cord as he did so. With a conceited grin on his face, Barrett hurried forward to follow him, with Penny and Alfie close behind.

The huge square room looked like a museum in miniature, its walls lined with glass display cases filled with collections of desiccated specimens. Stuffed crocodiles, the shells of giant tortoises, yellowing jars of pickled scorpions and snakes, galleries of beetles and bugs, dried and displayed on a pin. Under the glimmering lamps that hung from the ceiling, long rows of mahogany tables were covered with yet more bottles and jars filled 
with the eerie forms of other animals: spiders, scorpions and crabs. Stacks of wooden crates sat, unpacked, at the ends of these rows and, in the shadows, Penelope glimpsed the shapes of strange skeletons, their bones arranged into frightening poses. She shivered. A cornucopia of life preserved forever in death.

The curator hurried towards a long workbench in the centre of the room. Amongst the jars and fume-filled bottles arranged there sat a tank of scurrying spiders. At the sight of this, a cold shiver crawled down Penelope’s spine. She remembered the huge spidertorium hidden behind the bookshelves in Lady Cambridge’s sitting room and her courage retreated at the thought of what she had come here to do.

As the curator delved amongst the exhibits, Alfie glanced across at Penny, his face creased in concern.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked.

Penny nodded. She set her own features into a determined expression, even though her mind was crawling with fear.

“It’s the only way.”

Wallace turned back to face them. In his hands, he held a small glass jar filled with a sickly yellow solution. Inside the jar, Penny could see the shape of a large spider. Its bulbous black abdomen hung suspended in the preservative liquid as its long legs swirled in the yellowing brine. As the 
curator set the jar on the bench in front of them and began to unscrew the lid, Penny glimpsed the silver crescent shape marking the spider’s back. She quickly covered her mouth as a nauseating stench rose up from the jar.

“
Architarbi somnerus
,” Wallace began, his voice suddenly loud in the dusty storeroom as though he was addressing a lecture hall rather than just the three of them gathered around the workbench. He slid the spider from the jar on to a metal tray. “The dream-weaver spider. As you can see,” the curator continued, picking up a scalpel from the bench and pointing at the spider’s body, which was oozing stickily on the tray, “it got its name from these striking
moon-shaped
markings. Native to a remote part of British East Africa, it was apparently prized by the natives there as a delicacy, so much so that the creature is now sadly extinct.”

Penny frowned. If only the spider had really become extinct and prevented Lady Cambridge from making her momentous discovery.

Glancing up, Wallace eyed them suspiciously.

“Why do you want to look at it anyway?” he asked. “What’s so important about this spider?”

“Just a story I’m working on,” Barrett replied guardedly. “Nothing important.”

The curator raised a sceptical eyebrow.

“At eleven o’clock at night on New Year’s Eve?” 

Barrett glared back at him.

“That’s right,” he answered sharply. “Now, unless you want to read about how the stray dogs of Battersea have been feasting on dinosaur bones in the next edition of the
Pall Mall Gazette
, I suggest you give me some privacy to complete my research.”

His face swiftly reddening, the chastened curator beat a hasty retreat.

“I’ve got better things to do than stay here,” he muttered angrily. “Lock the door on your way out.”

As the storeroom door slammed shut behind him, Penelope turned towards Alfie.

“Go and keep an eye on him,” she said. “Make sure he stays away.”

Alfie looked at Penny with worried eyes.

“Will you be all right?”

“I’ll be fine,” she replied. Beneath her dark fringe, Penny’s face was already pale at the thought of what was to come. “I know what I’m doing.”

Alfie frowned. There was a heartbeat of silence and then he nodded his head. As he turned to leave, he called out to Barrett, who was tentatively poking the spider’s body with a pair of tweezers.

“Make sure you take care of her,” he warned him. “Or else you’ll have me to answer to.”

Alfie’s lanky figure disappeared through the door, leaving Barrett and Penelope alone in the 
eerie gloom of the storeroom. Penny turned back towards the workbench.

“Right,” she said, “let’s get started.” She held out her hand for the tweezers and Barrett reluctantly placed them in her palm. He stared down at the black-and-silver spider, a widening circle of amber liquid spreading across the tray beneath it.

“How are we going to get the venom out of this thing?”

With the tweezers in one hand and a scalpel in the other, Penny swiftly removed the spider’s abdomen, cutting away the legs with a series of precise incisions. Using the tweezers, she carefully lifted the head that remained on to a glass slide resting beside a microscope and slid this into focus beneath the lens. As she pressed her eye to the microscope, she answered the journalist in a calm and level voice.

“I’m going to dissect the venom glands.”

Open-mouthed, Barrett stared at Penny in disbelief, watching as, wielding the scalpel with her right hand, she delicately inserted the tip of a glass pipette into the spider’s head with her left. Gently squeezing and then releasing the rubber bulb at the top of the pipette, tiny droplets of cloudy liquid were drawn up inside the glass tube.

“How did you learn how to do that?” he murmured. 

Penny raised her head from the microscope as though she had just completed a classroom experiment.

“I’ve always been interested in science,” she replied.

Lifting the pipette to the light, she stared at the liquid collected inside. The glass tube was only half full, the pearly solution swirling with a nebulous glow. Penny glanced across at Barrett, a worried look etched on her face.

“The preserving fluid has contaminated most of the venom glands,” she said. “I don’t know if this is enough.”

Frowning, Barrett let out a long sigh.

“There’s only one way to find out.”

As he spoke, Penelope felt a prickle of fear run up her spine. The memory of the venom pumping through her veins crawled back into her brain. Penny remembered the spiders scurrying inside her mind, the silken threads of their webs dragging her to the very edge of madness. She couldn’t go through it again. It was too much to ask.

Then she thought of Monty and Mr Wigram, H. G. Wells and the long rows of silent authors, all entranced by Lady Cambridge. Penny recalled the alarming sights she had seen that day as they had wandered the city. Graffiti daubed on abandoned carriages and along the sides of empty houses, strange cryptic messages that made no 
sense at all. The passers-by sleepwalking through their lives, eyes glazed as they stared at a world that shouldn’t exist. Not yet.

If she couldn’t do this, then Lady Cambridge would win. She would control them all and the future would be hers. This was their only chance to fight back. She had to plunge into the heart of the madness and wake the authors from their nightmares. With her heart thudding in her chest, Penny nodded.

“Let’s do it.”

Carefully handing the pipette to Barrett, Penelope seated herself on a chair beside the workbench. Clearing a space on the desk, she pulled out a pen and sheaf of paper from her handbag and placed these in front of her.

“We need to do this properly.”

Inside her mind, she was screaming, but Penny fought to keep the emotion from her face. With the pipette held between his fingers, Barrett stood over her. He looked down, his eyes darting anxiously from Penny to the shimmering liquid captured in the pipette’s glass tube.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

Penny’s fingers whitened as she gripped the arms of the chair. Taking a deep breath, she could only bring herself to whisper a single word in reply.

“Yes.”

Tilting her head back, Penelope’s long black 
hair fell from her face. She slowly opened her mouth, fighting against every instinct in her body that wanted to keep her lips firmly closed. Leaning over her, Barrett squeezed the pipette. The venom fell on to Penny’s tongue like tiny teardrops, the acrid liquid burning as it slipped down her throat.

Stepping back, Barrett watched aghast as Penny gagged, her slender body racked with fierce shudders as the venom worked its way through her veins. Her fingers clawed at her throat, desperately trying to free herself from the onrushing darkness. Then Penny’s hands suddenly dropped to her side, her green eyes frozen into an unsettling blank stare.

“Penny!” Barrett reached towards her in alarm. “Are you all right?”

But no answer came in reply as Penny stared sightlessly ahead. Her gaze seemed fixed on the glass tank at the end of the workbench. Behind the glass, countless spiders scurried and crawled, their intricate silken webs echoing those spinning inside Penelope’s own mind.

XXV

As the spiders’ frenzied spinning reached a crescendo, Penny felt herself falling into the heart of the darkness that filled her mind. And then the dreams began.

A blizzard of images flashed before her eyes like a speeded-up stereoscope, almost too swiftly at first for her to make sense of. A towering airship exploding in a ball of fire … mechanical beasts rampaging across a battlefield … a sleek arrow of steel darting across the sky … smokeless factories run by machines … babies born from test tubes…

Penny sobbed as black silken threads wrapped themselves more tightly around her, dragging her down; her reason crumbling under the weight of the history to come. The past, present and future didn’t exist any more – everything was now. She saw great cities of glass and steel soaring into the sky and then exploding into ruins as bombs rained down before slowly rising again … a roaring procession of automobiles racing down 
an endless highway … her own face staring out from a mirror, impossibly old…

Penny felt herself falling again, tumbling through the darkness. A deafening cacophony of voices echoed around her, their frenzied shouts and screams filling her ears. Millions of minds caught in a huge spiderweb of black silken threads that stretched across the city.

As the dream-weaver spiders crawled inside her mind, Penny could see the glittering darkness at the heart of their web. She felt herself dragged towards it, the sticky threads wrapping themselves around her limbs. Waiting for her there, she glimpsed the shadowy shapes of shrouded figures, each and every one writhing in torment.

As she fell, a dizzying kaleidoscope of images burned through her brain. Fireworks exploding across the sky … tiny machines filled with the sounds of a thousand symphonies … a sinister man with a toothbrush moustache facing a vast crowd of people, their arms held aloft in salute … great walls of ice collapsing into the sea … earthquakes and tsunamis … gleaming shops … mechanical hearts … the crying face of a starving child…

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.