Deadlight-Hall(12)

It had seemed an ordinary evening at first. Leo had his supper as usual, Mother washed up the dishes, and Father worked on some school papers – Leo thought they were exercises from pupils in his father’s class at the school. Leo did not yet go to his father’s classes, which were for learning French and English, but his father had taught him a few phrases of both, because he said it was important to know about other lands and the way people in other countries spoke. That night, as he sat over his pupils’ homework, occasionally making tsk-ing sounds if he came across a mistake, Mother read a story to Leo, and it should have been an ordinary night, exactly like all the others. But it was not. There was something different, something frightening. Nothing you could see or hear, but a feeling that something was spinning a huge black spider’s web, and as if the threads were being spun closer and closer … As if the spider at the heart of the web had turned all of its eyes on to Leo and his parents and all their friends. When Leo thought about it afterwards, he realized the fear had been in his house – in everyone’s house – for a very long while. Once – no, it was more than once – he heard the grown-ups whispering and looking worried. One of them said something about ovens, and some of the women turned away, trying to hide that they were crying. People at school talked about the ovens, as well, doing so in a scared, whispering way, but Leo did not think anyone really knew what they were. Sophie Reiss said they might be like the oven in Hansel and Gretel, which the bad old witch had made roaring hot in order to roast children for her dinner, but Susannah, who was inclined to be more practical, said that was stupid, that people did not roast children and it was just a fairy story.

Leo knew Susannah was right, but he also knew that the grown-ups were very frightened indeed. Once, when his parents thought he was busy with his school work, his father said, ‘The ovens are being fed with thousands every day now.’ And Leo’s mother said, in a voice Leo had never heard her use before, ‘How long until they come for us?’

It was two nights after that when Leo’s father woke him up in the middle of the night and said he must get dressed in his warmest things, because they had to go on a journey, but Leo was not to be afraid, and everything was going to be quite all right.

Leo had never been woken up in the middle of the night and told he was going on a journey, and he although he was a bit afraid, he was also a lot excited, because this could be the start of an adventure, the kind of thing people did in books.

They had gone along to the church on the edge of the village, Leo holding tightly to his father’s hand on one side and his mother’s on the other. He was still a bit frightened, but this was starting to be an adventure all by itself, because he had never been inside the church – he had never been inside any church – but one of his friends at school knew someone who had, and he said churches were a bit like synagogues where you had to chant things and there was a priest, and music.

When they got to the church, Leo’s friends were all there. Sophie and Susannah came straight over to him; they were wearing their scarlet coats and mittens, and their cheeks were pink with excitement and apprehension. They had known he would come, said Susannah. They had felt his fear in their minds when he set off from his house.

This was the kind of thing the twins often said, so Leo did not bother to question it. He asked what was happening.

‘We don’t know,’ said Susannah. ‘Sophie thinks it might be something to do with the Ovens.’

‘What about the Ovens?’ asked Leo, but neither of the twins knew any more than Leo did about the Ovens, except that the grown-ups talked about them a lot and always seemed frightened of them.

A register was called, as it was in school, and they had to answer to their names, then go down some crumbly stairs to a long dark room under the church. Leo would have liked to stay in the real church and look round – there were carved bits of stones and beautiful tall windows with sparkly colours in them – but it seemed there was no time to do that, and anyway it was all in shadow and they must not put on any lights. Sophie and Susannah did not think there were any lights, on account of it being an old, old church where hardly anyone ever went.

The room under the church was cold and there were huge stone boxes with carvings on them, and stone figures lying on their lids. It smelled damp and musty, and the twins put their scarves over their mouths so they would not have to breathe in the smell.

‘Dead people,’ said Sophie. ‘But a long time ago.’

But then Leo’s mother, who was dreadfully pale, brought them all hot soup, and after that they did not notice the smell, and drinking soup in the middle of the night inside a church seemed part of the adventure.