Deadlight-Hall(21)

They half turned to look back at him, and one of them put up a hand to beckon him. They’re running away, thought Leo. They’re running away from the Todesengel. But they had beckoned to him to follow them, and he would have to try, so he took a deep breath and went across the hall and through the door after them.

The door opened easily, and on the other side were stone steps going down. There was a bad smell of damp and decay, but Leo, by now feeling dreadfully ill, managed to ignore it, and made his shaky way to the foot of the steps. Now there was a narrow stone passage. It was not absolutely dark because there were oil lamps fixed to the walls near the ceiling, which someone had lit. They were like huge swollen eyes staring down and Leo hated them. He began to walk along the passage, forcing himself not to look up at the bulgy eyes, willing the twins to appear. Once he thought he heard the whispery voice calling the children again, but then it faded and he thought he had been mistaken. He would probably reach the twins at any minute, although if they were running away, he was not sure if he would manage to go with them. And where would they go anyway?

The oil lamps flickered, blurring his vision and making him feel sick all over again, but he stood very still and eventually the sickness went away and the red mist melted a bit. Several doors opened off the passage – moving very cautiously, Leo opened them, because this would be exactly the kind of place the twins might be hiding. The rooms were all quite small and narrow, and they smelled dreadful. Leo thought it was not just damp and dirt – it was as if something very bad had happened in these rooms, and as if the badness was still here. But there was no sign of the twins.

The hot iron scent was stronger, and he could hear sounds as well now – hoarse gratings and clankings, as if some huge rusting machine was struggling into life. But nothing bad had happened to him yet and he had to find Sophie and Susannah, so he went a little further along. The shadows were thicker, but now they had crimson ragged edges, as if they had been dabbled in blood. Leo was careful not to tread in these shadows.

The oil flares flickered, and Leo saw the twins again – they were a little way ahead of him, moving away from him. He went towards them, but his head seemed to be opening and closing, and the passage was becoming endless, stretching out and distorting, like the dark passages in nightmares did. Each time he thought he was catching the twins up, they seemed to whisk away.

Then, quite suddenly, Leo was directly in front of a black door, with thick bands of iron across it. He stood still, staring at it. It was a dreadful door, an old, old door, and the iron pieces might be to shut people out. Or – and this was a really dreadful thought – they might be to shut people in.

The top half of the door had a round window. The glass was smeary and cobwebby, but beyond it the red-dabbled light glowed, and the machinery sounds were clanking. The Ovens, thought Leo, fighting down panic. That’s what is in there. That’s why there are those iron pieces across the door. Sophie and Susannah were right.

He still could not see the twins – did that mean they had they gone through that terrible door? Or perhaps there was a way outside. If he stood on tiptoe he could look through the window and see into the room. Only I don’t want to, he thought, with a fresh wave of panic. I want to run away, a long way away, and not know what’s in there.

But there was nowhere else the twins could be, and he would have to find out what had happened. With his heart pounding and his head aching worse than ever, he went up to the black iron door, and stood on tiptoe to look through the glass.

At first he could not see very much at all, because the thick glass blurred everything. But gradually he made out a huge furnace, a bit like the one in the schoolhouse at home, although that one had been much smaller. But it had growled in the same wheezing, coughing way, and the older children had sometimes tried to frighten the younger ones by saying there was a monster hiding inside it.

This furnace crouched blackly against a wall, and Leo thought it really must be one of the terrible Ovens. Huge thick pipes hung down from both sides, like a giant’s arms, and they were juddering and clanking. There was a round door at the front with a massive bolt across it, and all around the rim were spikes and trickles of flames.

Sophie and Susannah were in there. Leo could see them, not clearly, but enough to know they were there – he could see the way Sophie’s hair always tumbled forward when she had not tied it back properly. They were standing almost in front of the furnace, and with them was something wrapped around with a sheet. He tried hard to see what it was, then, with a fresh wave of horror, realized it was a person. Someone was a prisoner in there – someone who was tied up in a sheet. He rubbed the glass to make it a bit clearer, then with sick fear he realized the tied-up person was Sister Dulce. He could see the narrow, bony shoulders, and when a bit of the sheet fell back, he saw the scraped-back hair. The twins must have got her into this room somehow, and they were keeping her prisoner. Because she had hurt Susannah and was going to hurt Sophie in the same way tomorrow? Or was it because she had been going to feed them to the Ovens, as Sophie had seemed to think?