Twelve Minutes to Midnight

by Christopher Edge

  Penny shivered, the unsettling beauty of the words chilling her blood. She’d expected to read the half-formed rantings of a mind touched by madness, but she sensed some deeper secret was buried beneath these unfathomable words. The strange visions they conjured crept into her mind.

  “Quick,” the rasp of Dr Morris’s voice interrupted her troubled thoughts, “it’s nearly twelve minutes to midnight.”

  He ushered Monty back out into the corridor, Penelope following close behind. Opening up the shutters of the viewing window into the next cell, the doctor motioned for them to watch. Lifting herself up on her tiptoes, Penny peered inside. In the darkened room, a patient lay sleeping, his face just visible in the half-light spilling from the window as his body slumbered, shrouded in a sheet. The doctor glanced down at his fob watch as the second hand approached the twelve.

  “Now,” he whispered.

  The patient sat bolt upright in his bed, his hands suddenly scrabbling for the paper and pencil left on the table by his bedside. His eyes were still half-closed in some kind of trance, but as his fingers closed around the pencil, he started to write, the words flowing across the paper without a pause. From the cells around them, Penny could hear the sounds of more patients waking, the thud of their footsteps echoing down the corridor as they rose from their beds, quickly followed by the incessant scratching of pens and the scrape of chalk against stone.

  “Mr Flinch,” the doctor turned towards them, his eyes wild with despair, “can you help us?”

  Penelope looked up at Monty, the actor’s pale face frozen in fear and then back towards the doctor.

  “My uncle will do everything that he can,” she replied. “Rest assured of that.”

  IV

  The silent man sat facing Penelope and Monty from across the broad mahogany table, his troubled countenance reflected in the sheen of its polished surface. His eyes were downcast, avoiding their gaze, as his fingers nervously twisted and knotted in a twitching cat’s cradle. The same man they had watched hunched over the desk in his cell, his pen scritch, scritch, scratching across endless sheets of paper, less than twelve hours before.

  Rays of watery sunlight peered in through the high windows, their frames too small for any patient in search of escape to climb through. The sunlight crept across the faded carpet and shabby furnishings, banishing their melancholy shadows to the edges of the room. In a standing cage in the far corner, a small green bird fluttered anxiously behind its bars.

  Back at the table, Penny slyly dug her elbow into Monty’s midriff as the actor sat slumbering by her side. With a sharp gasp of surprise, Monty jolted forward, his palms pressed to the table as Penelope’s gentle reminder prompted him to ask again the questions that had brought them there.

  “Ahem.” Monty coughed to clear his throat. “Mr Kemp – what exactly happened at twelve minutes to midnight last night? Why did you wake? What were you writing?”

  The man raised his dulled eyes, fixing Monty with a listless stare. He was a thin, sharp-featured man, heading into middle age as he passed the wrong side of forty. His closely cropped hair was peppered with grey and a half-forgotten sadness lurked in his pale green eyes. He held Monty’s gaze for a moment before dropping his eyes back to the table once more. A maddening silence filled the room.

  Monty turned to Penelope, an exasperated frown furrowing his brow.

  “It’s useless,” he hissed out of the corner of his mouth. “I don’t know why you had to drag me back here. We’ve been asking the same questions for the last half-hour without any hint of an answer. The man’s a vacant fool – he won’t tell us anything.”

  They had arrived back at Bedlam late that morning after a restless night spent holed up in Penelope’s guardian’s house on the outskirts of the city. As they left again for the hospital, Mr Wigram had pressed another cheque into Monty’s hand, the second instalment of his fee for playing the part of Montgomery Flinch – insurance to make sure he kept to his lines and followed Penny’s every instruction. But now as Monty glanced around at the whitewashed walls and barred windows, the actor looked as though he’d rather be playing the back-end of a pantomime horse.

  Penny shook her head.

  “Dr Morris said that Mr Kemp was one of the first patients to succumb to the condition. Whatever’s happening here, he’s been involved from the start. He must know something.”

  On the other side of the table, Kemp’s pale fingers continued to twist and twitch in quickening knots, his hunched body rocking backwards and forwards. An untidy stack of papers sat on the table between them. As Penny reached across and picked up the topmost sheet, Kemp flinched at the movement, a naked flicker of fear flashing across his worn face.

  Penny stared down at the litany of words scratched across the page in ink, desperately searching for some kind of meaning among the madness.

  Countdown. Ignition. Lift off.

  A towering rocket splits the sky, filling the night with fire.

  Saturn Five. Apollo Eleven. The Eagle has landed.

  One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

  Collins. Aldrin. Armstrong.

  Footprints in moon dust – the stars and stripes flying across a lunar sea.

  She shook her head. These were the outlandish imaginings of a mind that had lost its moorings and was floating free into the realms of fantasy. Rockets and eagles. Moon dust and madness. None of it made any sense at all, but some strange power lurked in these words and she was determined to find out what it was.

  “What does it mean?” she asked Kemp, the soft tone of her voice low and reassuring. “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind?”

  Kemp’s eyes darted nervously to hers, his knuckles whitening as his fingers tightened their grasp.

  “Please,” Penelope continued, reaching out towards him as her soothing voice tried to coax a response from his lips. “I want to help you.”

  Kemp shrank back from the table, a wary look drawn across his pale face. He swallowed hard. Then his mouth opened a crack, his tongue flicking nervously across his top lip, before he finally began to speak.

  “Every night, I dream such dreams.” His voice was a whispery croak, as though he hadn’t spoken for an age. “I’ve seen incredible, impossible things. Rocket ships, star sailors, moon men and satellites. I’ve seen this world spinning silently in an endless blackness, held in the palm of one man’s hand.”

  Kemp flung his arm out, gesturing towards the walls of the drawing room – of the asylum that kept him imprisoned.

  “None of this matters. The days of solitude, the doctors and the drugs. When I sleep, I am free. The world soars beneath my feet and I see such wonders that my heart can barely hold them.”

  A single tear ran down Kemp’s face and fell on to the polished mahogany.

  “But why do you write them down?” said Penelope, as next to her, Monty leaned forward to inspect the sheet of paper in her hand.

  Kemp’s face suddenly darkened. He snatched the sheet out of Penny’s grasp. His arms greedily gathered together the stack of papers remaining on the table and hugged them close to his chest.

  “These are my stories,” he hissed. “All mine. They come every morning to take them away, but this one isn’t finished yet.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Penny, taken aback by the man’s sudden change in mood. “Who takes them away? And what for?”

  Kemp glared at her, his brown eyes filled with suspicion.

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know,” he sneered. “You’re all in on it; every single one of you. Keeping me locked away here, whilst the world hungers for my genius and the latest tale to fall from my pen. For The Penny Dreadful, of course – I am Montgomery Flinch.”

  Penelope and Monty glanced at each other in surprise, Kemp’s ridiculous words striking them both momentarily silent. It was Monty who spoke again first, a soft chuckle in his voice.

  “My dear fellow, you must be mistaken,” he told him. “The Penny Dreadful publishes
only the finest tales of gothic fiction – stories of supernatural horror and suspense. Not scientific romances about moon men and rocket ships. Are you sure you’re not Jules Verne or perhaps H. G. Wells? After all,” he added pompously, “I am Montgomery Flinch.”

  Sitting next to him, Penny’s hand reached out towards Monty in warning, but it was already too late. Kemp’s face crumpled with rage and he flung himself across the table, scattering the papers that fell like snow-white petals to the floor. He grabbed hold of the lapels of Monty’s jacket, and pulled his face close to his own.

  “You’re not Montgomery Flinch,” he snarled, spittle flying from his lips.

  “Guards! Guards!” Monty’s voice cried out in alarm, his face blanched white with fear.

  The drawing-room door was flung open as two white-coated orderlies rushed inside. The men pulled the snarling Kemp’s hands from around Monty’s throat and forced the patient down on to the floor. Penelope watched, horrified, as the two men wrapped a long white coat around Kemp to restrain him, the straitjacket pinioning his arms to his side.

  “Thank God,” Monty sobbed in relief.

  His shaking hands reached up to straighten the dishevelled collar on his jacket. Behind him, Kemp howled in despair as the orderlies dragged him backwards towards the door.

  “Do you have to hurt him?” Penelope pleaded.

  One of the burly orderlies glanced back and she saw the scarred face of the guard who had shown them to the cell last night.

  “It helps if you don’t provoke them, Miss,” he replied with a surly sneer. He yanked hard on the straitjacket collar, choking Kemp’s cries into silence. “Come on, let’s get you back to your cell where you can’t disturb the young lady any more.”

  The two men bundled Kemp out through the door, his anguished eyes meeting Penelope’s gaze for a split second before they disappeared for good.

  “That’s it,” said Monty, his voice trembling as he turned towards Penelope. “We’ve got to get out of this dreadful place right away. It’s not safe. That madman could have killed me – murdered the both of us. If those guards hadn’t been there outside…” His sentence stumbled into silence as he glared indignantly at Penelope. “Are you even listening to me?”

  Penny didn’t acknowledge Monty’s question. She stared down at the papers strewn across the floor, the scattered words making no more sense than when she had first read them. Kemp said that he had dreamed them; every night, at the same time, these fantastical visions. Was that what was happening here? A hospital filled with dreamers?

  But Kemp was insane. His delusions of literary grandeur proved that beyond doubt. His claims that his stories were destined for the pages of The Penny Dreadful – that he was Montgomery Flinch himself.

  “Penelope!”

  Penny shivered as she glanced up at Monty, the snap of his voice jolting her out of her reverie. Montgomery Flinch didn’t exist.

  “Did you hear what I said?” Monty asked, a flushed glow slowly returning to his cheeks. “We need to leave right now.”

  Penny shook her head.

  “There’s something happening here – something that we’re missing.” She bent down to gather up the scattered papers. “If these are just dreams, then where are they coming from? What’s causing them?”

  Her eyes skimmed over the loops and whirls of Kemp’s scrawled handwriting that filled the sheet in her hand.

  Soviets. Sputnik. Space race.

  A meaningless babble of words. If only she could work out how they fitted together.

  “Where are they coming from?” Monty repeated, his voice incredulous. “This is Bedlam. The place is filled to the rafters with lunatics. Every dream they dream is a dream of madness.”

  At Monty’s words, a sudden gleam of realisation shone in Penelope’s pale green eyes. Maybe the clue was in the dreams themselves. She stared again at the papers in her hand. These were Kemp’s dreams. On their own they were incomprehensible, but if they were part of some bigger picture…

  She remembered the dimly-lit corridor stretching beneath the hospital; the sounds of the sleeping patients rising from their beds to scratch their dreams across countless pages. If she could just see these – find a way to read the puzzling pages in the right order, then she might be able to catch a glimpse of what was causing these unnatural nightmares.

  Penny looked up at Monty, a nervous twitch flitting across the actor’s face as he met her determined gaze.

  “Mr Maples, must I remind you that the contract you signed committed you to play the part of Montgomery Flinch at his every public appearance.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And that the fees that we have already paid you cover your services for at least the next week.”

  “I know, but—”

  Penny raised her hand to cut off the actor’s protestations.

  “There’s a story hidden here,” she told him, her pale eyes glittering. “An astounding tale of mystery that’s ripe for the telling. Montgomery Flinch wouldn’t rest until he had found it and neither should we. There’s still work to do.”

  Monty quailed in the face of her certainty.

  “But you can’t expect me to interview any more of these maniacs,” he cried, his hand reaching unconsciously towards his collar. “It’s too dangerous. You’ve seen for yourself how murderously unhinged they are. I’d be lucky to get out of here alive.”

  Penelope shook her head.

  “We don’t need to speak to them,” she replied with a reassuring smile. “We just need to read their dreams.”

  Monty’s brow furrowed and his mouth began to open, but before he could speak, the rotund figure of Dr Morris barrelled through the door.

  “Mr Flinch! I came as soon as I heard. Thank the Lord that you are unharmed. I had no idea that Kemp was capable of such violence. He’s always been a model patient, suffering only from a surfeit of melancholy and these strange delusions of literary fame. It’s this terrible affliction that has warped and twisted his emotions.” He clasped hold of Monty’s hand and fixed him with a gimlet stare. “I only hope you can help us bring an end to this nightmare. Pray tell me, have you made any progress?”

  “Well,” wheedled Monty, his fingers trying to wriggle out of the doctor’s grasp as he groped for an answer, “we think that – that is to say – without making any rash judgements – the difficulty is—”

  Penelope cut off Monty’s blustering in mid-flow.

  “Dr Morris, what my uncle is trying to say is that he first needs to review all of the relevant evidence before he can begin to unravel the mystery behind these sinister events.”

  “Of course,” Dr Morris exclaimed, gripping Monty’s hand more tightly, “just tell me what you need.”

  “The writings that the patients have made – we’d like to see them,” Penelope replied. “All of them.”

  V

  Dr Morris led Monty and Penny down a gloomy wood-panelled corridor, their footsteps squeaking across newly-polished floorboards as they passed beneath the disapproving stares of the doctor’s illustrious predecessors, their dusty portraits hanging from the walls.

  On her hands and knees in front of them, a young woman in a grey smock-like dress was grimly buffing the floor, the cloth in her hands sticky with wax. She kept her head bowed as the doctor passed, but as Penelope glanced back, the woman raised her eyes to reveal a worn, wrinkled face. A chill shiver crept down Penny’s spine as the woman lifted her hand from her task and pointed towards her with a long, skinny finger, like a witch addressing her victim. Penny hurriedly turned away, scurrying to catch the doctor’s stride as, deep into his monologue, he continued along the corridor.

  “As you can see, Mr Flinch, as part of the restorative regime in place here at Bethlem Hospital, able-bodied patients are set to work as soon as possible. Making beds, washing laundry, sweeping and polishing the hallways and galleries. We find that through such physical labour, the mind can soonest be mended. However, since the curse that begins at twel
ve minutes to midnight every night, there are barely enough patients in a fit state for the hospital to function.” The doctor traced his finger across a dusty glass case. Beneath the glass stood a forlorn arrangement of wax flowers, their faded petals frozen in an imitation of life. “If things get much worse, soon the only places that we will need to keep swept will be inside the padded cells.”

  Monty visibly paled as he kept step with the doctor, glancing nervously at the padlocked doors that they passed.

  “Is it much further?” he ventured, his hand stealing to his collar again.

  “The administrative offices are just this way,” Dr Morris replied, gesturing towards the end of the corridor. “At first we kept the patients’ writings with their medical records. A visiting psychiatrist from Vienna, Dr Freud, claimed that by studying them he could reveal the root causes of the patients’ nervous disorders. He said that the strange visions the writings described were symbols that could be decoded to unlock the secrets of the unconscious mind.” Dr Morris let out a snort of derision. “Stuff and nonsense, I thought, but I let him have his head. Dr Freud spent hours holed up in that office poring over the pages.”

  “And what did he find?” Penny asked excitedly as she appeared at the doctor’s side.

  Dr Morris glanced down at Penelope, answering her impertinence with a withering stare.

  “What I said he would find, young lady,” the doctor replied, “stuff and nonsense.” He turned back towards Monty to continue his explanation. “Dr Freud studied the writings of a young newly-married woman who had been admitted suffering from bouts of hysteria. She had written of a titanic, unsinkable ship, which was capsized by an iceberg on her maiden voyage, the passengers drowning in the freezing waters of the Atlantic. Dr Freud claimed that the ship was the young woman’s life, the iceberg her new husband, and the drowning passengers her happiness! He said that she wouldn’t be cured of her hysteria until she had divorced her husband!” Dr Morris glowered indignantly over his gold-rimmed glasses. “I sent Dr Freud packing back to Vienna soon after that.”