Deadlight Hall (Nell West/Michael Flint #5)(18)

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?

He would have to go in there to tell the twins to let Sister Dulce go. But there was no handle or latch on the door – there was only a big square lock with a keyhole. Leo pushed against this, but the door did not move. It’s locked, he realized in horror. They’re locked in there. I’ll have to tell someone what’s happening.

But this was the twins, his dear Sophie and Susannah, and Leo could not begin to think what kind of punishment they might get. And it seemed as if anything he did would be too late, because they had got the door of the furnace open – Leo did not know how, but Susannah was holding a long hooked rod, and one of them must have used it to unbolt the furnace cover and pull it open. Heat, fierce and almost blinding, was blazing out, smearing the glass window so that Leo could only make out shapes moving back and forth. But after a moment or two a small piece of the window cleared, and as Leo stared in, the whole scene, blackly dreamlike already, spun itself into the worst nightmare ever. The two girls were holding the helpless woman, and they were thrusting her head-first into the open furnace. Utter terror gripped Leo, and he shouted and banged on the glass, but either the twins did not hear or they did not care.

He pushed uselessly against the door again, then began to have wild thoughts of running to the main part of the house to call for help. But his legs were so weak and the floor kept tilting, and he was not sure if he could even stand up for much longer, never mind run for help.

He thought for a moment there was someone else in the room with the twins, but it was only a smeary kind of shadow, and Leo thought it was simply a drift of smoke.