Deadlight-Hall(47)

At first he could see them clearly, but as he plunged through the dimness, they seemed to recede and several times their outlines blurred. Then they were there again, moving away from him. Sophie turned and beckoned once more, and Leo went forward eagerly. This was where he had come that night, struggling against the pain in his head, fighting the fever and nausea.

Expecting at any minute to see the twins, he went on, towards the row of doors he remembered. He was level with the third door, when he realized that footsteps were coming into the corridor behind him, from the main hall. He stopped and looked back. Had someone followed him in? Perhaps it was almost twelve o’clock and Mr Hurst had come to look for him.

And then cold horror washed over him, because a soft voice came out of the dimness.

‘Children, where are you?’

It was the thick, breathy whisper Leo had heard all those years ago. It was with him, here in this narrow passageway. As he tried frantically to think what to do, a figure appeared in the corridor. It was indistinct in the uncertain light, but Leo could see that it was small and hunched over, as if the person was deformed. To walk towards it was unthinkable, so Leo turned and plunged towards the furnace room. Towards Sophie and Susannah, said his mind. They would be waiting for him. ‘We’ll always be linked,’ they had said on the night they had left Warsaw. ‘We’ll always know if you’re not all right, or if you’re in trouble.’

But that was six years ago, said Leo’s mind. They vanished six years ago; they can’t still be here, looking exactly the same, they can’t.

The words reached him again.

‘Children, are you here? I’ll find you wherever you are …’

And underlying the words, as if tapping out a rhythm, was a clicking. Machinery, thought Leo, and his mind looped back over the years. Old machinery starting up.

The furnace room was only a few yards away now. If he could get in there, he could slam the door against that horrid whispering figure. The iron door was closed, but a faint glimmer of light showed through the thick round window.

‘Children, where are you?’

The words trickled through the shadows, and Leo gasped, and went towards the iron door. Light, crimson and baleful, poured out, lying across the worn old stones, and he could smell the burning iron. An ancient heat, Sophie had called it.

Sophie and Susannah were not really here. It had only been his mind that had pretended to him that he could see them. He would not see them again.

But he did.

Framed by the iron staves of the old door, as if to make a macabre painting, was the same scene that had printed itself so deeply on his mind all those years ago. The black lump of the furnace, its innards glowing with the fierce, ancient heat, and the figures of the two girls moving through the red light. There was the struggling, squirming figure again, exactly as Leo remembered it.

The heat of the furnace was scorching his eyes, making them water and blurring the scene before him. But even though he could not see it clearly, he knew what was happening, and he knew who was in there. Sophie and Susannah, and the sharp nursing sister – Sister Dulce – whom they had believed was going to feed them to the terrible ovens – the ovens their parents had dreaded. The twins had killed her all those years ago, rather than face the ovens, and they were killing her again today. She would burn alive, all over again.

Leo began to pray that he was asleep and having a nightmare, and that he would wake up at any minute, because none of this could possibly be happening. Then he thought: but what if I’m being given a second chance? A chance to stop it happening? He took a fearful step closer, and behind him the iron door made a slow grating sound. Leo spun round, and managed to grab the door’s handle, dragging it back before it could close. It was much heavier than he had expected, and he had the sudden terrifying impression that someone was standing on the other side, just out of sight, pulling the door back into its frame. In another minute it would clang shut, and he would be trapped.

He did not dare look back to where the twins were. He only wanted to run away and find somewhere safe to hide. He had hold of the door handle and if he could manage to pull it a bit wider, he could dart out into the passageway before it closed altogether. The hunched-over figure might still be out there, but Leo would rather face that than be shut in here with the blazing furnace and the twins, who had suddenly become sinister and menacing. He knew they were still here; even though he had not looked back into the room, their shadows were moving on the walls.

He had not realized he had been shouting for help, but he heard his voice reverberating along the narrow corridor. There would not be anyone to hear, but he went on shouting anyway. Once, something seemed to move in the dark corridor, and Leo yelled to this something to help him, no longer caring that it might be the hunched figure.