by Sarah Rayne
‘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.
He lay on his side, watching the stove. If he half-closed his eyes, he could make it seem to move. Or was it moving by itself anyway? Yes, it was. It was waddling forward towards the nearest bed. Leo half sat up, alarmed, and he was just wondering whether to call out to the others, when he heard another sound. This time it was not anyone crying or the stove, it was someone walking around outside this room.
It ought not to have been frightening to hear those footsteps, because people had been walking around ever since Leo got here. But these footsteps were different. They were slow, sort of dragging. Across the room, Sophie sat up and looked towards Leo’s bed.
‘Can you hear that?’ said Leo, as loudly as he dared.
‘Yes.’
‘Who is it?’ Leo did not dare ask if it might be the Angel of Death, the Todesengel so feared by the twins’ mother, but Sophie heard the thought, of course.
He said, ‘Is Susannah all right? What did they do with that needle?’
‘It hurt a lot,’ said Sophie, her voice wobbling. Leo knew she was trying not to cry. ‘They dug it into Susannah’s back, into her bones. They’re going to do it to me tomorrow.’
‘And to me,’ said Leo, remembering this with a shiver.
‘And after they’ve done that,’ said Sophie, her voice trembling even more, ‘they’ll take us to the Ovens. That woman – Sister Dulce – she’s the one.’
‘But where—?’ began Leo, then broke off. ‘Someone’s coming,’ he said. ‘Lie down. Pretend to be asleep.’
Sophie flopped down at once, and Leo turned on his side, watching the door. After a moment, it began to open, not quickly and firmly in the way Sister Dulce and the others had opened it, but slowly and stealthily, as if whoever was there did not want to be seen or heard. Leo’s heart started to race. Very gradually, the door opened wider, and a shadow fell across the floor – it was a black shadow, but the red from the stove ran in and out of it. Leo lay absolutely still, waiting for it to go away, but it did not. It stood in the doorway as if looking round.
Then a low blurred voice said, very quietly, ‘Children, are you here …?’
Leo was shaking uncontrollably, and his head was hurting so much he thought it might explode.
‘Children, are you here …?’ There was a pause. ‘I’ll find you … Wherever you are.’
It’s come for the twins, thought Leo, sick with the horror of it all. This is what they saw – it’s what followed them to England, and watched their house. It’s followed them in here.
The shadowy figure stepped back into the passage, and Leo sank gratefully back into the pillows. It was all right. Whatever had been there had gone away. The twins were safe and everything was all right.
Except that everything was not all right. There was a movement across the room, and to his horror he saw two small figures walking hand in hand to the door. Sophie and Susannah.
They went very quietly across the room, almost like shadows themselves, not looking towards Leo. Sophie’s arm was round Susannah – Leo thought Susannah must be still hurting from the needle pushed into her bones earlier. They went through the door and it closed with a soft little click.
Were they running away as Sophie had said? Surely they would not go out into the snow by themselves? And Leo could not believe they would run away without telling him, either. Sophie had said they would like it if he went with him. Or did they think he would follow them? We’ll always be linked, they had said that night. We’ll always know if one of us is in trouble.
Leo did not know what to do, but what he did know was that the shadow was still out there – he could feel that it was. Which meant the twins would walk straight into it.
His whole body was still burning up and his bones felt as if they were melting with the heat, but he would put up with worse than this to help his beloved twins. He got out of bed and went across to the door.
SIX
At first he thought he was not going to manage it, because he felt so ill that it was difficult to walk. Mr Hurst had talked about people cast into hell being made to wear iron cloaks, and Leo wondered if this had happened to him now. It seemed perfectly possible.
But somehow he got out to the big hall. It was in shadow, but it was not completely dark, and he could smell hot metal. Was that the old heat that Sophie had talked about? She and Susannah had thought the scent was from the Ovens. Leo was just thinking that rather than risk the Ovens he would go back to his bed, when there was a movement ahead of him. His heart bumped and the hot confusing mist swirled around him. He stood very still, then two figures walked in and out of the shadows, and Leo, fighting not to fall over, saw the unmistakable tumble of Sophie’s hair.
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 ban
ds 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.
And now it was too late. The furnace roared up greedily, and there was a massive clanging sound as the iron door of the furnace was slammed back in place. And that woman – Sister Dulce – was inside. Burning. Sick dizziness closed over Leo in a huge engulfing wave, and he fell against the cold stone wall of the passage, his mind spinning. She was in there, that woman who had hurt Susannah and threatened to hurt Sophie, and who might have been going to feed them to the Ovens. But she had been fed to the Ovens instead, and she was burning alive. Leo knew that burning alive was the worst thing in the whole world. He crouched shivering in the darkness, wanting to wrap the shadows around him so no one could see him, wanting them to smother the pictures in his mind.
But the pictures were there in his head – he thought they would always be there – and the pain in his head exploded. A shuddering, uncontrollable sickness swept over him, and he bent over, retching helplessly, his eyes streaming, unable to see or hear or think.
When at last he managed to straighten up and wipe his face with his handkerchief, the room was in darkness and the iron door was still locked. All he wanted to do was lie down and go to sleep, but he could not leave the twins. Were they still in there? Hiding until it was safe to creep out? Leo did not think they had crept out while he was being sick. You could not be sick and look around you at the same time, but he was sure he would have known if they had come out.
He looked through the window again, but the furnace was cool and dark, and nothing moved. He leaned against the door, listening. And then – he had no idea how he knew this – but someone inside the room did the same. Leo could not hear it and he could not see it, but he knew someone had come to stand on the other side of the door, and that someone was pressing its face against the hard cold surface of the iron. Whoever it was, they were inches from him.
He forced himself not to flinch, and he laid his hands flat against the door. In their own language, he said, ‘Sophie – Susannah. It’s all right. I shan’t ever tell anyone what you did. I promise I’ll never tell anyone.’
The words came out very softly, but the twins would have heard. They would know they could trust him. They would know he would keep his promise and never tell anyone what they had done tonight.
There had never been any sign of Sophie and Susannah again, not that night or the next, and not throughout the confused, pain-filled days that followed, with the agonizing lumbar puncture Leo had to endure. He had to stay in Deadlight Hall for what felt like a long time, together with the other children – it was not until a long time afterwards that he understood they had all suffered from an illness called meningitis.
It was a strange time. Leo thought some of the children died, but no one actually said this, and the freezing, blizzard-torn winter made it difficult for people to visit. Two of the younger nurses devised games and simple puzzles for the children, and one found a store of children’s books somewhere in the house. They had been very old books and Leo had not understood them all, but he had liked listening when the young nurse read them aloud. He would have liked to take some of the books back to Willow Bank Farm, but it seemed they must go back to wherever they had come from.
He heard afterwards that there had been a search for Sophie and Susannah, although the frozen ground and incessant blizzards made it difficult. But the police combed the area, using dogs, and the children were all questioned, although none of them knew anything. Leo said he had seen the twins, but that was all. He had not said anything about the Angel of Death, or about the twins’ plan to run away.
Miss Hurst told Leo later that the search had gone on for a long time, but nothing had been found. Mark her words, said Miss Hurst, they would never hear of Sophie and Susannah Reiss again.
Nor did they. In the end people stopped searching, altho
ugh it was a long time before they stopped talking about it.
Leo believed the twins had run away as Sophie had said, and he tried to think they had reached somewhere safe. Perhaps they had been found in the storm by a kindly person, like in stories. There was sometimes a woodcutter. To reassure himself he read all the books that were stored at Willow Bank Farm – the books that had been Farmer Hurst’s and Miss Hurst’s when they were children. There were people in forests in those books who were often disguised, but always good, and children did not get lost because they marked the way by scattering pebbles or bits of bread. Reading about all this, Leo thought the twins would surely be all right.
For a long time he kept hoping that one day they would write to him, but they did not.
*
The School House, Nr Warsaw
December 1943
My dear M.B.
Your letter reached me yesterday, and came as a blow to the heart. We had taken so much care to ensure the children would be safe, and to hear that the Reiss girls have disappeared is devastating.
I know you will spare no effort to trace the twins. I know, as well, that Schönbrunn will be tireless in his search. As to their eventual fate, I know you are right to say their pronounced gift of telepathy will make them an attractive proposition for Mengele and to warn me that they would always have been in extra danger because of it. I always knew it, but still I cannot bear to think his people could have found them. If you should track down the informant or the agent, I beg you will let me know. There is an old maxim that to know one’s enemy is to be strong.
Your friend, as always,
J.W.