Matt stood in the narrow, cobbled street called The Shambles and looked up at the flat that rose on three floors over a souvenir shop. He had been happy here for a while. Living with Richard was odd – the journalist was more than ten years older than him – but after all they had been through together in Lesser Malling, it had sort of worked. They needed each other. Richard knew that Matt could provide him with the newspaper story that would make him famous; Matt had nowhere else to go. The flat was just about big enough for the two of them and anyway, they were both out all day. At weekends they went hiking, swimming, go-karting… whatever. Matt tried to think of Richard as a big brother.
But during the past weeks, he had become increasingly uncomfortable. Richard wasn’t his brother, and as the memories of their shared nightmare faded, there seemed to be less and less reason for them still to be staying together. Matt liked Richard. But there wasn’t going to be any Pulitzer-prize winning scoop and the simple truth was, he was in the way. That was why he had suggested going back to the LEAF Project. Despite what Richard had said, an ordinary family somewhere in the country couldn’t be so bad.
And there was a second reason to leave York.
Matt wondered if the school would have phoned Richard and told him what had happened. There was no reason why they should. Despite Gavin’s accusations, none of the teachers seriously believed he had been responsible for the explosion in the dining hall. But Matt knew differently. He had felt the power flowing through him. It was the same power that had stopped the knife and snapped the cords when he had been a prisoner, tied down in Omega One. But this time there had been one difference. It had been directed at someone his own age. Gavin wasn’t his enemy – he was just a stupid kid.
He couldn’t stay at Forrest Hill. Not now. Another taunt from Gavin, another bad morning with Mr King and his English class and who could say what might happen? All his life, Matt had known he was different. He had been aware of something inside him… this power… whatever it was. Sometimes, when he’d gone to films like Spider-Man or X-Men, he’d wondered what it might be like to be a superhero, saving the world. But that wasn’t him. His power was useless to him because he didn’t know how to use it. Worse than that, it was out of control. Once again he saw the blood oozing from Gavin’s hand, saw the terror in his face. He could have torn the chandelier out of the ceiling. He could have crushed the other boy, buried him under a ton of twisted metal and broken glass. It had almost happened. He had to leave, go far away, before it happened again.
There was a movement behind the first-floor window and Matt saw Richard standing with his back to the street. That was strange. The journalist had said he wouldn’t be late, but even so he was never home before seven o’clock. The editor of The Gipton Echo liked to keep him in the office just in case something happened – although it very seldom did. Richard was talking to someone. That was unusual too. They didn’t often have visitors.
Matt let himself in, using his own key, and climbed the stairs. As he went, he heard a woman’s voice. It was one he recognized.
“There’s a meeting in London,” she was saying. “Three days from now. We just want you to be there.”
“You don’t want me. You want Matt.”
“We want both of you.”
Matt put down his school bag, opened the door to the living room and went in.
Susan Ashwood, the blind woman he had met in Manchester, was sitting in a chair, her back very straight, her hands folded in front of her. Her face was pale, made more so by her short, black hair and unforgiving black glasses. A white stick rested against her chair – but she hadn’t come alone. Matt also knew the slim, olive-skinned man who was sitting opposite her. His name was Fabian. He was the younger of the two, perhaps in his early thirties, and Matt had also met him before. It was he who had first suggested that Matt should continue living with Richard and who had managed to get him a place at Forrest Hill. As usual, Fabian was smartly dressed in a pale grey suit and tie. He was sitting down with one leg crossed over the other. Everything about him was very neat.
Both Fabian and Susan Ashwood were members of the secret organization that called itself the Nexus. As they had made clear from the start, their role was to help Matt and to protect him. Even so, he wasn’t particularly happy to see either of them here.
Miss Ashwood had heard him come in. “Matt,” she said. It wasn’t a question. She could sense it was him.
“What’s going on?” Matt asked.
Richard moved away from the window. “They want you,” he said.
“I heard. Why?”
“How are you, Matt? How’s the new school?” Fabian smiled nervously. He was trying to sound friendly but Matt had felt the atmosphere the moment he had walked in and knew that it was anything but.
“School’s great,” Matt said, without enthusiasm.
“You’re looking well.”
“I’m fine.” Matt sat down on the arm of a sofa. “Why are you here, Mr Fabian?” he asked. “What do you want me for?”
“I think you know.”
Fabian paused as if unsure how to continue. Even though he had changed Matt’s life, Matt knew very little about him, or about anyone else in the Nexus.
“The first time I came here, I warned you,” Fabian went on. “I told you that we believed there might be a second gate. You destroyed the first one, the stone circle called Raven’s Gate in the woods outside Lesser Malling. But the second one is on the other side of the world. It’s in my country. In Peru.”
“Where in Peru?” Richard asked.
“We don’t know.”
“What does it look like?”
“We don’t know that either. We hoped that after what happened here in Yorkshire, we would have time to find out more. Unfortunately, we were wrong.”
“The second gate is about to open,” Susan Ashwood said. There was no doubt at all in her voice.
“I suppose you’ve been told this,” Richard said.
“Yes.”
“By ghosts.”
“Yes.” Susan Ashwood was a medium. She claimed that she was in contact with the spirit world. “You still don’t believe me?” she continued. “After what you’ve been through, after everything you’ve seen, I’m frankly amazed. You didn’t listen to me last time. This time you must. It’s as if winter has come in the spirit world. Everything is cold and dark and I hear the whispers of a growing fear. Something is happening that I don’t understand. But I know what it signifies. A second gate is about to open and once again we have to stop it, to prevent the Old Ones’ return. We want Matt to come to London. Only he has the power to prevent it.”
“Matt’s at school,” Richard growled. “He can’t just get on a train and take a week off…”
Matt looked out of the window. Soon it would start to get dark. Shadows had already fallen over The Shambles. Richard reached out and turned on the lights. Light and dark. Always fighting each other. “I don’t understand,” Matt said. “You don’t even know where this gate is. Why do you think I can help you?”
“We’re not the only ones looking for it,” Susan Ashwood replied. “There has been a strange development, Matt. You would doubtless call it a coincidence, but I think it’s more than that. I think it was meant to happen.”
She nodded at Fabian, who produced a DVD. “Can I play you this?” he asked.
Richard waved a hand at the TV. “Be my guest.”
Fabian fed the DVD into the player and turned on the television. Matt found himself watching a news report. “We recorded this last week,” Fabian said.
The DVD began with a shot of a leatherbound book, lying on a table. It was obviously very old. A hand reached forward and began to turn the pages, showing them to be thick and uneven, covered with writing and intricate drawings that had been made with an ink pen or perhaps even a quill. Matt had seen something very like it at schooclass="underline" the history teacher had brought in pictures of a fifteenth-century book of poetry rescued from some castle, and the letters had been drawn so carefully that each one was a miniature work of art. Many of the pages in the diary were the same.