Twelve Minutes to Midnight by Christopher Edge Read Free Book Online

Penny’s eyes followed her along the corridor. What fresh sorrow could bring her to so bleak a place as Bedlam?
    As the doctor and Monty resumed their progress along the corridor, Penelope remained where she was standing, her gaze still drawn to the departing figure. With an author’s eye, she watched the twilight swish of the widow’s weeds; the part of her mind that crafted Montgomery Flinch’s fictions seeing the model for a character who could step into the pages of his next story. From behind her, she caught a snatch of Dr Morris’s hushed tones as the two men continued their conversation.
    “… quite terrible the tragedy that lady has had to bear – you see, even the finest of families can find themselves touched by the cruel finger of madness…”
    The echo of his footsteps obscured the rest of the doctor’s words. Penny watched as the black-veiled lady reached the entrance lobby. Waiting in the shadows there, she glimpsed the burly figure of the scar-faced guard. Her eyes widened in surprise as she watched the widow pause for a moment in front of him. With slender fingers clad in black kid gloves, the widow reached inside her purse and then pressed something into the orderly’s hand. Penny thought she saw an envelope, but in the gloom of the corridor it was difficult to be sure.
    As the guard stuffed his hand into his pocket, the veiled woman turned away, gliding like a spectre through the entrance doors and out into the world beyond. Intrigued, Penelope stared after her departing figure. A sudden itch in her fingers told her that here was another story, yet more mysteries for her mind to twist into story shape. Penny’s brain whirred with ideas. A widowed wife, a blackmail plot, a dark family secret lost in the corridors of madness. The next issue of The Penny Dreadful started to take shape in her mind.
    A sudden clattering sound jolted Penny’s thoughts from their plotting. Monty and Dr Morris were several paces ahead of her, both of them oblivious to the sound as they carried on walking. But as Penelope looked down she saw a metal bucket tipped on to its side, the spilled wax seeping into the floorboards and the wrinkled face of the prematurely aged woman staring back up at her.
    Penelope quickened her step to pass the woman by, but before she could, the woman rose to her feet. Dropping her cloth, she grabbed hold of Penelope’s arm with painfully sharp fingers.
    “You’ve got to stop them,” she hissed. Her open mouth revealed blackened stumps of teeth. “Stop them before it’s too late.”
    “Please,” said Penelope, trying to pull her arm free. “If you could just let me past—”
    The woman’s nails dug into her skin.
    “Every night they come, filling my mind with maddening visions. Glimpses of the secrets of the universe revealed.”
    Penelope stood transfixed, the pain from the nails digging into her skin forgotten as she listened to the woman’s pleadings. “But they’re watching me, always watching, and when I wake they take my dreams away.”
    Further along the corridor, Monty glanced back over his shoulder to check that Penelope was still following. Seeing the patient gripping her arm, he let out a shriek of alarm. At this Dr Morris turned and, with a shout that rang down the corridor, cried out for assistance.
    “Orderly! Orderly!”
    Fear flashing across her wrinkled face, the woman pulled Penelope closer. The heavy scent of sweat and waxed floorboards filled the space between them.
    “But they can’t take them all,” she told Penelope, speaking quickly as a thunder of boots echoed down the corridor towards them. She pulled back the sleeve of her grey dress and thrust her bare arm in front of Penelope’s face. “See!”
    Penny stared at the liver-spotted skin. The woman’s arm was pale and shaking, but scratched in black ink along her veins were the letters E=MC 2 . 
    “I don’t understand,” said Penelope, slowly shaking her head. “What does it mean?”
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