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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 twelve 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.”
    They were nearing the end of the corridor now, where a dark wooden door stood slightly ajar. Dr Morris reached out for its handle and pushed the door open to reveal a cramped office filled with desks, pigeonholes and dusty ledgers. 
    “Since then the patients’ writings have multiplied beyond reason. Every night brings yet more pages filled with their demented babblings. We have had to give over an entire annexe of the administrative