Evil Star

DREAM TALK

There were eight people sleeping on the floor of Sebastian’s house. The youngest of them was only five, the oldest about seventeen. They had arrived, one at a time, as the light began to fade, some carrying shoeshine boxes, some with buckets and sponges, one with a basket of brightly coloured finger puppets. Sebastian must have already told them about Matt, as none of them seemed surprised to find him there and nobody tried to talk to him. They ate dinner – more beans and stew – then spent the rest of the evening playing a game that involved cups and little wooden dice. The room was lit by fat, white candles that Matt suspected had been stolen from a church. He watched for an hour, listening to the rattle of the dice in the cups as they were shaken and then tipped onto the floor. Pedro was playing with the others. He glanced at Matt once or twice and for the first time Matt could see a sort of curiosity in his eyes.

He’s seen you before… in his dreams.

Sebastian’s words echoed in his head. Matt examined the Peruvian boy as he concentrated on his game, furiously rattling his dice, throwing them down and shielding them with both hands, his eyes fixed on the other players. Of course Matt knew who he was. How many times had the two of them sat together in the reed boat with the wildcat’s head for its prow? He was annoyed with himself for not realizing it sooner.

He remembered the moment when he’d woken up to find Pedro stealing his watch. He had recognized him there and then. But in all the confusion of what was happening, he had thought back only as far as the traffic lights, on the way from the airport. That was when he had seen Pedro for the first time. But of course he had been aware of him for many years before that.

Pedro was one of the Five. Matt could imagine Susan Ashwood saying the words. She would be delighted. Was it perhaps something of a coincidence that Matt had stepped off a plane in a country of twenty million people and Pedro had been almost the first person he’d met? No

… not at all. There were no coincidences. It was meant to happen. That was what the blind medium would have said.

So was Richard meant to be kidnapped? Was Matt meant to be beaten up at the hotel? Did Matt have any control over what was happening or was he simply being pushed around by forces that he couldn’t see and which were way outside his own comprehension? And if so, where were they taking him? What did they have in mind?

There were a thousand questions Matt wanted to ask and he didn’t have answers to any of them. But he took some comfort in the thought that somehow he and Pedro had found each other. Now there were two of them and that meant that the other three might not be far behind.

Pedro won the game. Matt saw him laugh delightedly and scoop up his dice. He wished his new friend spoke even a smattering of English. How were they supposed to fight together when they couldn’t even talk?

The game was over. The smaller children were already asleep and now the others drew up their blankets and joined them. In England, going to bed had always been a routine of getting changed, washing, brushing teeth and all the rest of it. Here it was very matter-of-fact and happened very quickly. The evening just stopped. Everyone took their places, huddled together around the single, empty bed and soon the whole floor was a sea of blankets that rose and fell while the candles spluttered, throwing strange shadows across the wall. Matt couldn’t sleep, still trapped in the wrong time zone. The room was much too warm with so many people in it and there was a mosquito droning around his ear. He hadn’t got used to the smell either, even though he was now part of it. He hadn’t showered for forty-eight hours and he could feel the grime, clinging to him. He thought about Richard. Sebastian had said he was probably dead but Matt wouldn’t even consider the possibility. He wondered how the two of them had allowed themselves to walk into all this and whether they would ever see each other again.

About an hour later, Sebastian came in. Matt saw, to his dismay, that the man was quite drunk. He staggered over to his bed and collapsed onto it without removing any of his clothes, not even his shoes. Within seconds he was fast asleep and snoring.

It took Matt much longer. Half the night seemed to slip by before his eyelids finally closed. To his relief, because this time he knew exactly where he was, he wasn’t afraid to be there. He was with Pedro on the beach. The reed boat was moored just in front of them, waiting to take them away.

“Matteo,” Pedro said.

“I’m glad to see you, Pedro.”

“Yeah. Me too. I suppose…”

And here was the strange thing. Matt was speaking in English. Pedro was speaking in Spanish. And yet somehow the words were changing in mid-air so that both boys understood each other perfectly. Did this island only exist in a dream? Matt had always thought so. But now that there were two of them, sharing the sand, the sea, the boat and all the rest of it, he wasn’t so sure. Part of him was aware that even as he stood here facing Pedro, the two of them were also lying just a metre apart in Poison Town. Perhaps this was why they were finally able to talk to each other, why they never had before.

“I don’t get any of this,” Pedro began.

“You’re one of the Five,” Matt said.

“Yes. I know. One of the Five! One of the Five! I’ve been hearing that all my life, but I don’t know what it means. Do you?”

“Some of it. There are five of us…”

“I’ve seen the others. Over there…” Pedro pointed, but there was no sign of the two boys and the girl on the mainland.

“We’re Gatekeepers.”

“What gate?”

“It’s a long story, Pedro.”

“We’ve got all night.”

Matt nodded. For the moment, they seemed to be out of any danger. In Poison Town everything would be quiet. On the island, they were alone with no sign of the swan that had twice come swooping out of the darkness. And what was the significance of that, Matt wondered? There was still so much he didn’t understand.

He told Pedro as much as he knew, starting with the death of his parents, his growing awareness that he was never going to have a normal life, his life with Gwenda Davis in Ipswich, his involvement with Raven’s Gate and everything that had happened since then.

“I came to Peru to find the second gate,” Matt concluded. “That was two days ago, although it feels a lot longer. Everything went wrong the minute we arrived. If I can find the Nexus, maybe they can help. Or they may be looking for me. I don’t know.”

Matt took a deep breath. The reed boat rocked gently on the water. He wondered if they should get into it – and if they did, where it would take them.

“I knew you’d come,” Pedro said. “I’ve always been expecting you. But there’s something I want you to know. When you were asleep… when I took your watch… I thought you were just some rich tourist kid who’d got lost. I didn’t know it was you. I’m sorry.”

“When did you realize?”

“When you woke up. I recognized you then. And the truth is, I wasn’t too happy to see you. I wish you hadn’t come.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re going to bring trouble with you. Everything’s going to change now.” Pedro paused. “You may not think I have much of a life but it’s the only life I’ve got and I was sort of happy with it. I’m sure that’s not what you want to hear. But this isn’t what I want.”

“No. I understand.”

Matt knew exactly what Pedro meant. He felt the same.

“I don’t know anything about you,” he said. “Only your name. Do you have another name? What do you do in Lima when you aren’t juggling in front of cars or stealing from tourists? And who is Sebastian? Why do you live with him?”

“I don’t like talking about myself,” Pedro said. He paused. “I will, because I suppose you ought to know. But I’m telling you now, there’s not a lot to say… and anyway, you probably won’t remember any of it when you wake up.”

That possibility hadn’t occurred to Matt. He sat down on the sand, wondering what time of day it was in this strange dreamland. Was it even day? The sky was dark but he could see quite clearly. The sand was warm although there wasn’t any sun. It wasn’t day or night but something in between.

Pedro sat down opposite him with his legs crossed.

“First of all, Pedro isn’t my real name,” he began. “Everyone just calls me that. It’s what Sebastian called me when I first came to Poison Town. He used to say he named me after his favourite dog. I know I had a family before I met him although I don’t remember very much about them. I had a sister. She was a few years younger than me.

“I used to live in a village in the province of Canta, which you’ve probably never heard of. It’s about sixty miles from Lima. A three-day walk. It was a very boring place. The men went out to work in the fields – they grew potatoes and corn – and the women stayed at home and looked after the kids. There was no school in the village but I went to one that was two miles away. I didn’t learn very much though. I mean, I learned some of the letters of the alphabet but I’ve never been able to read.”

He reached out and drew a capital P in the sand with his finger.

“That’s P for Pedro. It’s also P for parrot – papagayo. I remember the letter because it always looked like a parrot to me.

“My mother used to say that I was born under an evil star but I don’t know what she meant. There were four of us in our family and we had a nice house even if it was mainly made of wood and cardboard. And we had a big bed. All four of us used to sleep in it. I can’t tell you much about my mother. I don’t want to think about her. Sometimes I remember the feel of her next to me in the bed and that makes me sad. That was always the best part of the day for me… falling asleep.

“The worst thing about Canta was the weather. The wind used to come down from the mountains and it went right through you. I never had enough clothes to wear. Sometimes I only had a T-shirt and my underpants and I’d think I was going to turn into a block of ice.

“It used to rain at the start of the year. You never saw rain like it, Matteo. Sometimes it would rain so hard that all I could see was water and I used to wonder how I could live if I wasn’t a fish! It would be raining when I woke up and it would never stop. You couldn’t walk from one end of the village to the other because of the great sheets of rain and if you slipped over in a puddle you might drown.

“And then there was a day – I must have been about six years old – when it rained so much that the river burst its banks. The River Chillon… that was what it was called. There was too much water and it got out of control and this great flood came pouring down. It was like a monster… brown and freezing. It swallowed up our house and just threw it away. I remember someone shouted a warning but I didn’t know what they meant and then the whole world exploded. Not with fire but with water and mud. It all happened so quickly. All the houses were smashed up together. People and animals… they were just killed. I should have died. But someone grabbed me and put me high up in a tree and I was lucky. The tree must have had strong roots because it wasn’t ripped out like the others. I stayed in the branches of that tree all day and all night and when the morning came my village wasn’t there any more. It was just a sort of swamp with dead people floating on the surface. I guess my parents and my sister were among those who were killed. I never saw them again and nobody told me. So they must have all drowned.”

Pedro stopped. Matt was amazed that he could tell all this in such a matter-of-fact way. He tried to imagine the horror of what it must have been like. A whole community had been destroyed. He realized that this sort of thing must happen often in some parts of the world, but that it wouldn’t have been given more than half an inch in a British newspaper.

“After that, things became very difficult,” Pedro went on. “I think I wanted to die. Inside me, I thought it was wrong that my parents were dead and I was still alive. But the strange thing is, I knew I was going to be all right. I had nowhere to live. There was no food. People were falling sick all around me. But I knew that whatever happened, I would make it. It was like my life was beginning all over again.

“Anyway, some of the survivors came together – there were quite a lot of them – and they decided to go to Lima. They’d heard there was work there. They thought they’d be able to build themselves a new life. I went with them. I was the youngest and they didn’t want to take me. But in the end I followed and there was nothing they could do.

“And so we came to the city but it wasn’t like we thought. Nobody wanted to see us. Nobody wanted to help us. We were the desplazados. That’s the word we use for people with no place. There were already enough poor people starving and dying in Lima. They didn’t want any more.

“There was a woman looking after me and she had a brother in one of the shanty towns and for a while I lived with them. They made me work, searching for food in dustbins. I hated it. I’d leave at five o’clock in the morning, before the dustcarts came, and I’d take anything I could find. Vegetables that weren’t too rotten. Bits of fat and gristle cut off meat. All the scrapings from rich people’s meals. That was what we lived on and if I didn’t find enough or if it was too rotten, they’d give me nothing to eat and they’d beat me. In the end, I ran away. If I stayed, I was afraid they would kill me.

“And that’s my story. Did you enjoy it? I’ll tell you the rest of it. You wanted to know about Sebastian. Nobody knows who he is exactly, Matteo, and we don’t ask too many questions. I’ve heard people say he was a university professor until his wife left him and he took to drink. But there are others who say he was a waiter in an expensive hotel and that’s where he learned to speak different languages. Anyway, I went to Poison Town to get away from the woman and her brother and I found Sebastian and he took me in.

“He’s not a bad man. He’s only ever hurt me when he’s very drunk and he always apologizes the next day. All the kids in his house work for him. He was the one who taught me how to juggle in front of tourists’ cars. Sometimes I can get five American dollars although I have to give four of them to him. We wash car windows. We sell finger puppets. Sometimes we get work collecting tickets on the buses. Sebastian knows all the drivers and that’s how he’ll get us out tomorrow.”

Pedro fell silent.

“There’s one thing you haven’t told me,” Matt said. “Did you know the river was going to flood?”

“How would I know that?”

“You didn’t get any warning… perhaps the day before?”

“No.”

“When my parents were killed, I knew it was going to happen. I saw it in a dream.”

“I never had dreams like that. Forget it, Matteo. I’m not like you. I don’t have any special powers if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m not special… except that I have these stupid dreams in which I see you. And they don’t help much either.”

“You’re coming with me to Ica,” Matt said.

Pedro frowned “I don’t want to. But Sebastian says I can’t stay with him any more. It’s too dangerous. And anyway…” He relaxed a little and the frown left his face. “Now that we’ve found each other, I don’t see how I can walk away… even if I want to. So – yes. I’m coming along.”

“Thank you,” Matt said.

It was all the help he needed. He was no longer alone.

He stood up and at that very instant it was as if the entire dream world had been cut in half by a vast, white guillotine. He felt no pain. There wasn’t even any sense of shock. But suddenly the sea and the island had gone and he was sitting on the floor in the house in Poison Town and he saw that he had just woken up.

He looked across at Pedro, still fast asleep underneath the blanket. The Peruvian boy hadn’t changed but now Matt saw him differently. He knew everything about him. They could have been friends throughout their entire lives. In a way, Matt reflected, they had been exactly that.

Outside, dawn was breaking: the first ribbons of pink light bleeding through the sky, signalling the start of another day.

Midnight in London.

Susan Ashwood was sitting in the spacious living room of a penthouse flat, high above Park Lane. Floor to ceiling windows provided a panoramic view over Hyde Park, an area of dense black, with the lights of Knightsbridge twinkling far behind. She had her back to it. Sometimes she was able to sense the appearance of a city from the way its sounds travelled, from the feel of the breeze against her face, from the smell of the night air. She knew beauty. But tonight all her attention was focused on the woman who owned the penthouse and who was sitting opposite her now.

“Thank you for seeing me,” Susan Ashwood said.

“There’s no need to thank me,” Nathalie Johnson replied.

The American woman was sitting on a sofa with her legs tucked up under her, holding a glass of white wine. Her reddish hair was tied back and she was wearing a simple black dress. She had been about to go to bed when the blind medium had called. This was her home when she was in London. She had a similar apartment overlooking the Hudson River in New York.

“I didn’t know who else to come to.”

“You don’t need to worry, Susan. My door’s always open to you.”

Nathalie Johnson had been a member of the Nexus for eleven years. In that time, she had built up a huge business empire selling low-cost computer hardware, mainly to schools and youth clubs. The newspapers called her the female Bill Gates. She found the description sexist and irrelevant.

“Matthew Freeman is still lost,” Susan Ashwood continued. “But it’s now been confirmed that there was a gun fight near Jorge Chavez Airport. Richard Cole was kidnapped but Matt managed to get away. As far as we know, he hasn’t been seen since.”

“We sent him to Peru because we wanted something to happen,” the American woman said. “It seems that we got more than we bargained for.”

“None of us could have expected this.”

“What shall we do?”

“That’s one of the reasons I’m here. I was hoping you might be able to help. You have business interests in South America…”

“I could talk to Diego Salamanda if you like.”

“You said you’d had dealings with him.”

“I’ve never met him but we’ve spoken often on the telephone.” Nathalie Johnson paused. “But I think we should be careful. Salamanda is our number one suspect. It seems more than likely that he’s the one who’s trying to open the gate.”

“Fabian is trying to find Matthew,” Susan Ashwood continued. “He’s worried sick about him and blames himself for not driving personally to the airport. He’s already spoken to the police but he’s not sure he can trust them. He’s suggested an advertising campaign in the national press.”

“Like, ‘Have you seen this boy?’” The idea seemed to amuse Nathalie.

“Someone must know where he is. An English teenager on his own in Peru…”

“Assuming, of course, he’s still alive.” The American put down her wine glass. “I’ll pay for advertisements if that’s what you want,” she said. “My New York office can organize it.”

“There’s something else…” The blind woman paused, trying to collect her thoughts. Her face was grim. “I’ve been thinking about what happened,” she went on. “First there was the business with William Morton. We were the only ones who knew where he was going to be and he told us only twenty-four hours before Matthew met him. But someone still managed to follow him to St Meredith’s. They killed him and took the diary.

“And then there’s Matthew and Richard Cole. They travelled to Peru under false names but it seems that somebody knew they were coming. There was an ambush. Fabian’s driver was almost killed. Richard Cole was taken.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“That our enemy knows what we’re doing. Someone is telling him our every move.”

Nathalie Johnson stiffened. “That’s ridiculous.”

“I’ve come to you because I’ve known you for a long time and my instincts tell me I can trust you. I haven’t said this to anyone else. But I think we need to be careful. If there is a traitor inside the Nexus, we could all be in danger.”

“What should we do?”

“First of all we have to find Matthew Freeman. He’s our main priority. The second gate is going to open very soon and he’s the only one who can prevent it. It doesn’t matter what happens to us, Miss Johnson. If we don’t find the boy, we’ve lost.”

The bus station was like a crazy outdoor circus, a jumble of colour and noise with people and packages everywhere, street vendors shouting, old women in shawls sitting behind little piles of papayas and plantains, children and dogs chasing each other around the rubble – and the ancient buses themselves, rumbling at their stands. Nobody was going anywhere yet but everyone seemed to be in a hurry. Great sacks and cardboard packages were being passed from hand to hand before being thrown up, to be tied in towering piles on the buses’ roofs. There were old tickets strewn all over the ground like confetti and fresh ones being sold from cubicles hardly bigger than Punch and Judy stalls. There was an Indian woman cooking cau cau – tripe and potato stew – in a large metal can at the edge of the bus yard and some of the travellers were squatting on their haunches, eating from plastic bowls, the smell of the food fighting with the exhaust fumes.

Matt took this all in as he approached the bus station with Sebastian and Pedro. They had walked here from Poison Town, leaving just after five o’clock. Sebastian already had the tickets and had announced that he would be coming with them as far as Ica. Although he had been drunk when he went to bed, he seemed clear-headed enough when he woke up. In his own way, he was even cheerful.

“There is almost no chance that you will find your friend in Ica,” he had said. “But after you have given your compliments to Senor Salamanda, you can continue down to Ayacucho. I will be waiting for you there.”

They walked past a row of shops and, looking through an open door, Matt noticed a boy standing there watching him. He was his own age, dressed in a bright-green T-shirt with jeans that stopped a few inches below his knees. He had no socks and wore black rubber sandals. The boy had black hair cut in a straight line across his forehead, and dark skin. He was completely dishevelled and dirty.

He moved and so did the boy. It was only then that Matt saw he was actually looking at a full-length mirror. The boy was a reflection of himself.

Sebastian had seen what had happened. “You didn’t recognize yourself,” he chuckled. “Let’s hope it’s the same for them.”

He glanced in the other direction and Matt felt his mouth go dry as two policemen appeared, both carrying semiautomatic machine guns, walking through the bus yard. They could have been here for any number of reasons, but instinctively Matt knew that they were looking for him. Pedro asked something in Spanish and Sebastian reassured him. From the moment the other boy had woken up, Matt had known that he, too, had remembered the dream conversation of the night before. He might not be happy but he wasn’t going to leave Matt.

“Remember, keep yourself hunched,” Sebastian whispered. “Your height will give you away. And here – take this…”

Sebastian handed Matt a large bundle, tied in white sacking. Matt didn’t know what was inside. He wasn’t even sure if it was luggage or merely a sort of prop, to make them seem more like real travellers, but he understood Sebastian’s strategy. Doubled over, with the bundle balanced on his shoulders and the back of his neck, Matt looked like a servant carrying the luggage for his master. It disguised his true height and, fixing his eyes on the floor, his face was also hidden.

The three of them made their way forward. The policemen moved slowly through the crowd, which parted to let them pass. People were careful to avoid their eyes.

“This way,” Sebastian said, quietly.

He was steering Matt towards a bus that was already half full. The two policemen hadn’t noticed them. Matt reached the door and his heart missed a beat. A third policeman had appeared, stepping off the bus. Matt had almost knocked right into him. Bent underneath the bundle, he couldn’t see the man’s face – just his leather boots and the barrel of his gun. But then the policeman said something and with a hollow feeling in his stomach, Matt knew that he had just asked him a question. He said nothing. The policeman repeated what he had just said.

And then a hand grabbed hold of the bundle and tore it off his back. For a terrible moment he thought it was the policeman. But it was Sebastian. He was shouting at Matt in Spanish and before he could react, Sebastian had slapped him, hard, on the side of the face. Sebastian hit him a second time, then threw him into the bus. Matt was sent flying onto the floor. Behind him he heard Sebastian talking to the policeman and laughing. There were about twenty people in the bus, all staring at him. With the skin of his face burning – with pain and embarrassment – he stumbled forward and found himself a free seat.

Pedro got onto the bus and Sebastian followed him. The man sat next to Matt but didn’t say anything. More people got on, some with tethered goats, others with baskets packed with live chickens. Soon every seat was taken and the aisle was filled with people squatting on the floor. Finally the driver arrived. He swung himself into his seat and turned on the engine. The entire bus began to rattle and shake.

The driver slammed the engine into gear and the bus lurched forward and began to cross the yard. Looking out of the window, Matt saw the policeman walking away.

“That was close,” Sebastian growled. He went on in a low voice, “I had to hurt you because the policeman was becoming suspicious. I told him you were my nephew and that you were an idiot. I said you had brain damage which is why you hadn’t shown him more respect.”

“Was he looking for me?”

“Yes. He told me just now. They’re offering a huge reward – many hundreds of dollars – for your discovery. They’re still saying that you’re involved with terrorists.”

“But why? They’re the police! Why are they doing this?”

“Because someone has paid them. Why do you think? Maybe Ayacucho won’t be so welcoming for you. You’ll never be safe so long as you’re in Peru, and without a passport there’s no way you’re going to get out.”

The bus rattled along a track and joined the main road. As it turned the corner, the passengers swayed in their seats and the various animals cried out. Then the driver hit the accelerator and the engine roared. They had begun the long journey south.