Deadlight Hall (Nell West/Michael Flint #5)(15)

A man came shortly after that; he had a kind, creased face, and he carried a large black bag, and he sat on Leo’s bed and looked in his eyes and took his temperature, then asked Leo to try to sit up and to bend over to touch his knees with his forehead. When Leo could not do this, he said, dear, oh, dear, this was worrying, and Leo must be taken to Deadlight Hall. There was an outbreak of something – a word Leo did not know – which was affecting a number of children in the area. The man used the word brain several times, which was terrifying, and said all the children who had this illness were being kept together and nursed. He would take Leo to the Hall himself, right away, he said. Perhaps Miss Hurst would kindly pack a few night things.

Farmer Hurst demurred at first, saying it was a lot of fuss about what was nothing more than a bilious attack; children in his day had not had illnesses with fancy names like meningitis, and it was a bad journey to Deadlight Hall in this snow, what with the lanes being iced up and more snow to come. But the man who Leo supposed was a doctor insisted it must be done, and then Leo was sick again, which seemed to decide matters.

The journey to Deadlight Hall was horrid. It was growing dark, and the car jolted and slithered on the icy roads, and twice ended up in the hedges, and the doctor had to drive and reverse over and over again to get back on the road. Leo, wrapped in a blanket, huddled miserably on the back seat clutching a pudding bowl in case he was sick again, thought they would go on and on driving through the darkening world with the sky bulging with snow waiting to fall, and that they would never get anywhere. But in the end they did get somewhere; they got to Deadlight Hall, and that was when, as well as feeling dreadfully ill, Leo had started to feel frightened.

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.’