Deadlight Hall (Nell West/Michael Flint #5)(16)

‘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 …’

‘What?’

‘We think this is where the Ovens are.’

‘But they’re at home,’ said Leo, after a moment. ‘That’s why we had to come here.’

‘We think they’re here,’ said Sophie. ‘We can smell hot iron, like a huge stove burning.’

‘Isn’t it the stove over there you can smell?’ said Leo. The stove was in the corner, and it was hissing quietly to itself. It was not a friendly kind of stove, like the one at home; it was fat and swollen and ugly, and it had short iron legs.

‘No, it’s a bigger heat. Massive. And old. Ancient. We can sort of hear it.’

Sophie did not try to explain what she meant by hearing the massive old heat, and Leo did not bother to ask, because this was the kind of thing the twins often said. He asked what they would do.

‘We don’t know. We might try to run away. Properly, I mean. Miles and miles away.’

‘But it’s snowing,’ said Leo, horrified. ‘And where would you go?’

‘We don’t know yet.’

‘People in stories run away and they’re usually all right,’ said Susannah. ‘Somebody always finds them and takes them to wherever they want to go. Sometimes it’s in a forest, and there’s a cottage. But it’s always all right in the end.’

They all knew this was true.

‘But the really frightening thing,’ said Sophie, whispering even more softly, ‘is that our mother used to talk about the Todesengel coming for us.’


The Todesengel. Leo was able to think partly in English now, and he said, half to himself, ‘The Angel of Death.’

‘Yes. We aren’t sure what she meant, but she was really frightened about it. We think it had something to do with the Ovens.’

‘We think,’ said Susannah, ‘that it might be here now, that Angel.’

‘But angels are good, aren’t they?’ Leo knew this from Sunday school.

‘We don’t think this one is. We heard Mother tell our father she would do anything to stop the Angel of Death getting us. So we think it’d be better to run away, even in the snow.’

Leo could not decide if this was sensible or not. He felt too ill to think about it clearly; his head hurt too much, and he thought his bones were burning. But he said, ‘If you run away, I’ll help. I’d come with you if I could.’ He would not care if he was dying, he would still help his beloved twins, and he would run away with them if they asked him to.

‘Will you? We’d like that. We’ve brought the silver golem with us. My father said it would protect us, and Sch?nbrunn said so as well, so it must be true.’

‘It’s your golem, really, of course, so we think it’ll be extra good,’ said Susannah.

‘Although we might need to sell it to get some money.’

Leo started to ask how they would go about this, but the door opened, and the twins gasped, and scurried back to their own beds. A thin lady with narrow, bony shoulders, scraped-back hair, and fingers like dry sticks, came in and walked round the beds. There was to be no talking, she said. Her name was Sister Dulce, and she was here to make them better. They must all do what she told them. It seemed to Leo that she stared at the twins when she said this.

Shortly after this, two men came in and did something to Susannah as she lay in the bed. Leo could not see what it was, but there was a large needle and a metal tray, and whatever was done made Susannah cry and squirm with pain. He clenched his fists and wished he dared go over to the bed to stop them, but he was not brave enough. He heard some of what was said, but he did not really understand it. One of the men used words that sounded like lumbar puncture, which was puzzling because Leo thought punctures were what cars had, and then another talked about spine fluid, which sounded terrible. One of them said, ‘Look here, can’t we put the child out to do this?’ and Sister Dulce said, ‘We can’t. You know that. She’ll have to endure it.’

‘What about her sister?’

‘Leave it until tomorrow morning. I’m still not sure about her.’

‘How about that one?’ said the man, looking across to Leo’s bed. ‘He’s only just been brought in, hasn’t he?’

‘Yes, but leave him as well for the moment.’

Leo burrowed back under the sheets, and shut his eyes, and through the haze of pain and fear he heard Sister Dulce say they must all go to sleep, because it was eleven o’clock at night, which was no time for children to be awake. She went out, closing the door, and the room became silent, apart from the occasional sob from Susannah’s bed. Sophie was next to her; Leo could see her hair spilling over the pillow. Most people could only tell them apart because Sophie’s hair was redder than Susannah’s. If Susannah was hurt, Sophie would be hurting as well. Leo knew this, and he hated it for them.