Deadlight-Hall(18)

Deadlight Hall was not a real hospital. It was a horrid dark house with old trees all round it, so that it seemed to crouch behind them as if not wanting to be seen. There were round, staring windows and creeping shadows, and oil lamps glowing in corners like yellow watching eyes. The doctor carried Leo up stone steps and inside.

‘You’ll be all right, my boy,’ he said. ‘It’ll be all right.’

As they went inside, Leo could hear cross voices; somebody was saying something about it being ridiculous to expect them to turn a dingy old place into a hospital overnight, absolutely crazy it was, and no proper supplies and goodness knew how many more children to come.

The doctor carried him into a long room with high, narrow beds, and a squat iron stove glowing in one corner. There was a smell of hot metal and shadows flickered from the stove’s light. Leo began to think he might have died and gone to hell. He knew about hell by this time – the real place, not the swear-word some of the older children used at school – because the Hursts talked about it. Mr Hurst said it was where sinners went: the devil carried them down into hell and watched them burn for ever and ever. So Leo must be very watchful that he did not become a sinner. Miss Hurst had said, glumly, that even if you did not commit sins of your own, you might be held accountable for the sins of your ancestors. The devil had you all ways.

Leo had thought he had been watchful as Mr Hurst said, and he had not thought he had been bad enough to be counted as an actual sinner, but clearly either he – or somebody in his family – must have been, because this place looked as if it was the hell that Mr Hurst had talked about.

There were children in the room with him – he had not known that there was a part of hell kept specially for children, but that was what it looked like, because there were about ten of them, some quite small, one or two around Leo’s age, and they were all lying on narrow beds, crying with pain, or struggling to get away. But the people in charge would not let them get away, even though they were fighting and even though some of them were shouting, and others were beating the air with their fists. Leo, bundled on to a chair while a bed was made up for him, stared at everything, and through the red shimmery haze that kept coming and going in front of his eyes, he saw that the people in charge were really devils. They wore ordinary clothes, and they said ordinary things like, ‘Drink up your medicine’ and, ‘You mustn’t try to get out of bed,’ but Leo thought they were devils, as sure as sure. When they moved to and fro across the squat iron stove, their eyes shone red and glinted from the glow.

It was not until later that night that he discovered that Sophie and Susannah were there as well. He was not sure what he felt about this. He liked having them with him, but not if it meant that they too were bad, black sinners, and going to burn in hell for ever and ever.

They managed to wave to one another, and when no one was in the room, they both tiptoed across to his bed and sat on it, one on each side.

‘Are you ill?’ Leo said in their own language. They were not supposed to use it at school, but it was friendly and reassuring to use it now.

Sophie glanced towards the door, then said, very softly, ‘No. We pretended because we wanted to get away from the house. We’ve been so frightened.’

‘What of? Why did you pretend?’

‘We saw that man again,’ said Sophie. ‘The one who talked to us in the street that time.’

‘In our own language.’

‘It’s what our parents and Sch?nbrunn told us to be careful about,’ said Sophie. ‘We’re worried that somebody came after us when we left our village. All the way to England.’

‘We’ve seen other people watching us,’ said Susannah. ‘Standing outside the house for ages. In the rain and everything.’

‘Hiding behind trees and things.’

Leo said, ‘But why would anyone do that?’

‘We thought it might be something to do with – you know – the Ovens.’

Leo stared at her in horror. The Ovens: the nightmare from home.

‘And then some children near us got ill with this menin-thing, and they were brought here,’ said Sophie. ‘Susannah thought if we pretended to be ill as well, we might be safer in here. We didn’t think anyone could get at us. But …’ Sophie broke off and glanced nervously around again. ‘But now we aren’t sure.’

‘And,’ said Susannah, ‘the really bad thing is that now we’re here, we think …’