Matt looked Richard straight in the eyes. "Promise me you won"t write about this," he said.
"I"ve already said. I won"t write about anything unless you let me."
"I won"t let you. I don"t want people to know."
"Go on, Matt..."
"Gwenda"s house was really gross. It was terraced and it was half falling down and it had a tiny garden that was full of bottles. Brian was a milkman. The whole place smelled. All the pipes leaked, so the walls were damp and half the lights never worked. Gwenda and Brian had no money. At least, they had no money until I came along. But that"s the point, you see. My mum and dad had left everything they owned to me, and Gwenda got control of the money. And of course she spent it. The whole lot."
Matt stopped. Richard could see him looking back into his own past. The hurt was right there, in his eyes.
"The money ran out pretty fast," he went on. "The two of them spent it on cars and holidays and that sort of thing. And when it was gone, that was when they turned nasty. Brian especially. He said it would have been better if I"d never come in the first place. He started finding fault with everything I did. He"d yell at me and I"d yell back. And then he started bashing me around a bit too. He was always careful not to leave bruises. Not ones that showed.
"And then I met Kelvin, who lived down the road from me, and he became my mate. Kelvin was always in trouble at school. He had a brother who was in prison and people were scared of him. But at least he was on my side a or that"s what I thought. It felt good having him around.
"But in the end he only made things worse. I started missing a lot of school and even the teachers who"d been trying to help gave up on me. We used to go shoplifting together and of course we got caught, and that was when I had to start seeing a social worker. We used to take things from supermarkets. It wasn"t even things we needed. We just got a buzz out of doing it. Kelvin used to like scratching new cars. He"d run his key ring up the paintwork ... just for the h.e.l.l of it. We did all sorts of stuff together. And then one day we broke into this warehouse to nick some DVDs and we were caught by a security guard. It was Kelvin who stabbed him, but it was my fault as much as his. I shouldn"t have gone there. I shouldn"t have been there. I just wish I"d tried to talk him out of it."
Matt rubbed his eyes.
"Anyway, you know the rest. I got arrested and I thought I"d be sent to prison, but in the end I didn"t even have to go to court. They sent me to Lesser Malling as part of this thing called the LEAF Project. Liberty and Education ... that was what it"s meant to stand for. But since I arrived it"s been more like Lunatics and Evil Freaks. I"ve already told you about Mrs Deverill and all the rest of it, and you didn"t believe me. I suppose that"s fair enough. I wouldn"t have believed any of it either. Except I"ve had to live it. And what I told you, at the paper a it"s all true."
"Why do you think she wants you?" Richard asked.
"I don"t know. I haven"t got the faintest idea. But I think I know what she is. I think I know what they all are."
"And what"s that?"
"You"ll laugh at me."
"No, I won"t."
"I think they"re witches."
Richard laughed.
"You saw the dogs!" Matt protested. "You think they came out of Battersea Dogs" Home? I saw how she made them. She sprinkled some sort of powder on the flames and they just appeared. It was like ... magic!"
"It was an illusion," Richard said.
"Richard, this wasn"t like something on TV. There wasn"t a girl there in spangly sequins. I saw the dogs. They came out of the fire. And what about this?"
Matt was still wearing the stone talisman. He tore it off and threw it on to the table. The golden key lay face up in the light.
Richard looked at it. "Yeah. All right," he said. "Witches! Yorkshire used to be full of them, it"s true. But that was five hundred years ago."
"I know. She"s got a picture in her house ... some sort of ancestor. And Mrs Deverill said she got burned. Maybe she was burned as a witch!" Matt thought for a moment. "If there were witches five hundred years ago, why can"t there be witches now?"
"Because we"ve grown up. We don"t believe in witches any more."
"I don"t believe in witches. But the cat was killed and it came back. Tom Burgess died but I heard his voice on the phone. And there was a detective from Ipswich..."
"What?"
"His name was Mallory. He said he was going to help me. He argued with Mrs Deverill. And the next thing I knew, he was dead too. He was killed on the motorway."
There was a brief silence. Then Richard spoke again.
"They"re not witches, Matt," he said. "They may think they"re witches. They may act like witches. They might have made you believe they"re witches. But whatever"s going on at Lesser Malling, it"s real. It"s something to do with the power station. And that"s science, not magic."
"What about the dogs?"
"Genetically modified. Mutants. I don"t know. Maybe they"d been exposed to some sort of radiation."
"So you don"t believe in magic?"
"I enjoy Harry Potter, like everyone else. But do I believe in it? No."
Matt stood up. "I"m tired," he said. "I want to go to bed."
Richard nodded. "You can have the spare room upstairs."
The spare room was built into the roof of the house. It was filled with junk. Richard used it as a dumping ground for anything he no longer needed. Matt was lying on a sofa bed, tucked under a duvet and feeling warm and drowsy. He was gazing up at the ceiling that slanted over his head, when there was a knock at the door and Richard came in.
"I just wanted to check you were all right," he said.
"I"m fine." Matt turned on to his side to face him. "What are you going to do?" he asked. "How long can I stay here?"
"I don"t know. A couple of days, maybe." Matt"s face fell. "I told you, Matt. You can"t stay with me. It"s just not right. I don"t even know you. But I do want to help you." Richard sighed. "I must be crazy, because the last two people who tried to help seem to have ended up dead a and, personally, I had other plans. But at least we can take a look into Omega One. I mean, forget witches and all that stuff. The old power station seems to be at the heart of whatever it is that"s going on."
"You said you knew the man who built it."
"I"ll call him tomorrow. All right?"
Matt nodded.
"Goodnight then." Richard turned to go.
"Wait!" Matt said. "There was something I didn"t tell you."
Richard hovered once again in the doorway.
"You said you wanted to know who I am, so you might as well know all of it. My mum always used to say I was strange. All my life, I"ve been involved in a lot of strange things. Mrs Deverill and all the rest of it ... I sometimes think it was meant to happen. I"m meant to be here. I don"t know why.
"The night before my mum and dad were killed, I had a bad dream. I often had dreams but this was something else. I saw the bridge. I saw the tyre burst. I even saw the water, flooding in through the windows, filling the car. It was like I was in the car with them and it was horrible. I couldn"t breathe." He stopped. He had never told anyone this before. "And when I woke up the next morning, I knew they would never get to the wedding. I knew the accident was going to happen exactly the way it did..."
Matt hesitated. This was the difficult part.
"My dad was like you. He didn"t believe in stuff like witches and magic, and things he couldn"t understand. I suppose it was because he was a doctor. And I knew that if I told him about my dream, he"d just get angry. It had happened before ... once or twice, when I was very young. Dad would say I was just being silly, letting my imagination run away with me. And maybe he was right. That"s what I told myself. It"s just a dream. It"s just a dream. Everything"s going to be all right. Don"t get into trouble with Dad...
"So I said nothing.
"But I was too scared to get in the car. I pretended I was ill. I threw a tantrum and made them leave me with Mrs Green, next door. I was only young. I didn"t know what was going on. I still don"t. But I know that I"m different. Sometimes I seem to be able to do things that are impossible. You won"t believe me, Richard. But I can break a jug just by looking at it. I can do it! I have done it! I know when something bad is going to happen before it does. When I was in the warehouse, I knew the guard was there. And tonight! Maybe I managed to call to you a when I was in the bog a without opening my mouth. I don"t know. It"s like I"ve got some sort of power but I can"t control it. It just flickers on and off by itself."
Matt yawned. Suddenly he was exhausted. He"d had enough.
"I told Mrs Green," he said. "I told her that my mum and dad weren"t going to come back from the wedding. I told her about the tyre. I even knew about the bridge and the river underneath. She got very angry with me. She didn"t want to hear all this stuff. And what was she meant to do? She couldn"t ring my parents and tell them not to go to the wedding. In the end, she told me to go out and play in the garden. She didn"t want to hear any more.
"I was still out in the garden when the police arrived. And I"ll never forget the look on her face. She was horrified. More than that. She was actually sick. And it wasn"t just because of what had happened to my parents. She was horrified and sick because of me.
"And the thing is, Richard, I didn"t believe in magic either. I didn"t believe in myself. And almost every hour of every day since then, I"ve asked myself why I didn"t try to warn my mum and dad. I could have saved their lives. But I said nothing. I just let them drive off by themselves. Every day I"ve woken up knowing that I"m to blame. It"s my fault they"re no longer here."
Matt turned over and lay still.
Richard looked at the sleeping boy for a long time. Then he turned out the lights and crept quietly downstairs.
SCIENCE AND MAGIC.
Matt woke up slowly and with a sense of reluctance. It had been the best sleep he"d had for weeks a and for once there had been no dreams.
It took him a few moments to get used to the unfamiliar surroundings and remember where he was. His eyes took in a slanting roof, a narrow window with the sun already shining brightly through, a box of old paperbacks and an alarm clock showing ten o"clock. Then he remembered the events of the previous night. The power station, the dogs, the chase through the wood. He had told Richard Cole everything, even the truth about the way his parents had died. For six years he had managed to live with the knowledge of what he"d done.
I could have warned them. I didn"t.
And finally he had unburdened himself to a journalist who probably hadn"t believed him anyway. He wished now that he hadn"t. He felt embarra.s.sed. He remembered how Richard had dismissed his theories about witchcraft and magic. It wasn"t surprising. If it had been the other way round, he wouldn"t have believed it himself.
And yet...
He knew what had happened. He had lived through it. The dogs had come out of the flames. Tom Burgess had died trying to warn him.
And then there was the question of his own powers.
He had seen the car accident that had killed his parents before it happened. It was the reason he was still alive. And there had been other things too. The jug of water that had smashed in the detention centre. And the night before, the way he had somehow managed to get Richard to stop his car.
Suppose...
Matt lay back against the pillows.
...suppose he did have some sort of special ability. The police report he had found in Mrs Deverill"s bedroom had mentioned his precognitive abilities. By that they meant his ability to see the future. Somehow Mrs Deverill had got hold of a copy and that was why she wanted him. Not because of who he was. Because of what he was.
But that was ridiculous. Matt had seen X-Men and Spider-Man at the cinema. Superheroes. He even liked the comics. But was he really pretending that he had some sort of superpower too? He had never been bitten by a radioactive spider or zapped by a mad scientist inside a s.p.a.ce machine. He was just an ordinary teenager who had got himself into trouble.
But he had broken the jug of water in the detention centre. He had gazed at it across the room and it had shattered.
There was a gla.s.s vase on the windowsill. It was about fifteen centimetres high, filled with pens and pencils. Matt found himself gazing at it. All right. Why not? He began to concentrate, breathing slowly and evenly, his back supported by the pillows. Without moving, he focused all his attention on the vase. He could do it. If he ordered the vase to smash itself, it would explode then and there. He had done it before. He would do it now. Then he would do it again for Richard, and after that the journalist would have to believe him.
He could feel the thought patterns emanating from his head. The vase filled his vision. Break, d.a.m.n you! Break! He tried to imagine the gla.s.s blowing itself apart, as if by imagining it he could make it happen. But it didn"t move. Matt was gritting his teeth now, holding his breath, desperately trying to make it break.
He stopped. His chest fell and he turned his head aside. Who did he think he was kidding? He wasn"t an X-man. More like a zero kid.
There were new clothes piled at the bottom of the bed: jeans and a sweatshirt. Richard must have come in some time earlier that morning. And although he had threatened to throw them away, he"d also washed Matt"s trainers. They were still damp but at least they were clean. Matt got dressed and went downstairs. He found Richard in the kitchen, boiling eggs.
"I was wondering when you"d get up," Richard said. "Did you sleep OK?"
"Yes, thanks. Where did you get the clothes?"
"There"s a shop down the road. I had to guess your size." He pointed at the bubbling saucepan. "I"m just making breakfast. Do you like your eggs hard or soft?"
"I don"t mind."
"They"ve been in twenty minutes. I have a feeling they"ll be hard."
They sat down at the table and ate together. "So what happens now?" Matt asked.
"Right now we have to be careful. Mrs Deverill and her friends will be looking for you. They might even have called the police and reported you missing, and if they find you with me, we"ll both be in trouble. You can"t just pick up fourteen-year-old kids these days and hang out with them. Not that I intend to hang out with you. As soon as we"ve found out what"s going on, it"s goodbye. No offence but there"s only room in this place for one."
"That"s fine by me."
"Anyway, I"ve been busy. While you were asleep, I made a few calls. The first one was to Sir Michael Marsh."
"The scientist."
"He"s agreed to see us at half past eleven. After that, we"re going to Manchester."
"Why?"
"When you came to the newspaper office you told me about a book you"d found in the library. Written by someone called Elizabeth Ashwood. She"s quite well known. This will probably grab you, Matt. She writes about black magic and witchcraft ... that sort of stuff. We"ve got a file on her at the Gazette and I managed to get hold of one of our researchers. She gave me an address for her. No phone number, unfortunately. But we can drive over and see what she has to say."
"That"s great," Matt said. "Thank you."
"Don"t thank me. If this leads me to a story, I"ll be the one thanking you."
"And if it doesn"t?"
Richard thought for a moment. "I"ll throw you back in the bog."
Sir Michael Marsh looked very much like the government scientist he had once been. He was elderly now, well into his seventies, but his eyes had lost none of their intelligence and seemed to demand respect. Although it was a Sunday morning, he was formally dressed in a dark suit with a white shirt and blue silk tie. His shoes were highly polished and his fingernails manicured. His hair had long ago turned silver but it was thick and well groomed. He was sitting with his legs crossed, one hand resting on his knee, listening to what his visitors had to say.
It was Richard who was talking. He was more smartly dressed than usual. He had shaved and put on a clean shirt and a jacket. Matt was next to him. The three of them were in a first-floor sitting room with large windows giving an uninterrupted view of the River Ouse. The house was Georgian, built to impress. There was something almost stage-like about the room, with its polished wooden desk, shelves of leather-bound books, marble fireplace and antique chairs. And Richard had been right about the matchbox label collection. There were hundreds of them, displayed in narrow gla.s.s cases on the walls. They had come from every country in the world.
Richard had given a very cut-down version of Matt"s story. He hadn"t told Sir Michael who Matt was or how he had arrived at Lesser Malling but had concentrated instead on the things Matt had seen at Omega One. At last Richard came to a halt. Matt waited to hear how Sir Michael would react.