Evil Star

FIRE ALARM

Matt went back to school the next day with a sense of dread.

None of the adults would blame him for what had happened the day before, but the boys might have a different view. He had been there. He was weird. He was involved. It occurred to Matt that he had probably given them yet more rope to hang him with.

And he was right. The moment he stepped onto the school bus, he knew that things – which had always been bad – were now set to get much worse. The bus was just about full but somehow the one empty seat always happened to be next to him. As he walked up the central aisle, the whispers began. Everyone was staring at him, then looking away when he tried to meet their eyes. As the doors hissed shut and they began to move, something hit him on the side of the head. It was only a rubber band, fired from the back, but the message was clear. Matt was tempted to stop the bus, to get off and go home. He could get Richard to phone in and say he was sick. He resisted the idea. That would be giving in. Why should he let these stuck-up kids with their stupid prejudices win?

The dining hall was closed for the day. Lunch would be served on temporary tables set up in the gym while the damage was repaired and electricians tried to work out what had caused it. The rumour was that there had been some sort of massive short circuit in the system. It had caused a power surge and that was what had made the chandelier explode. As for Gavin Taylor (he had needed three stitches and had come to school with his right hand completely bandaged), it seemed that he had broken the glass he was holding himself. It was a perfectly natural reaction to the chaos that had been happening just above his head.

That was what the boys at Forrest Hill were told. The headteacher, a grey-haired man called Mr Simmons, even mentioned it at morning assembly in the chapel. The teachers, sitting in their pews at the very back, nodded wisely. But of course a school has its own knowledge, its own intelligence. Everyone understood that what had happened must have had something to do with Matt, even if nobody knew – or wanted to say – exactly what it was.

They sang another hymn. Mr Simmons was a religious man and liked to think that the rest of the school was too. There were a few announcements. Then the doors were opened and everyone flooded out.

“Hey, weirdo!” Gavin Taylor had been sitting just a few places away from Matt and stopped him on the other side of the door. His blond hair was cleaner than usual. Matt wondered if they had insisted on washing it when he was at the hospital.

“What do you want?” Matt demanded.

“I just want you to know that you might as well get out of this school. Why don’t you go back to your friends in prison? Nobody wants you here.”

“I wasn’t in prison,” Matt said. “And it’s none of your business anyway.”

“I saw your file.” It wasn’t true but Gavin taunted him nevertheless. “You’re weird and you’re a crook and you shouldn’t be here.”

A few other boys had hung back, sensing a fight. There were five minutes until the first lesson but it would be worth being late to see the two of them slugging it out.

Matt wasn’t sure how to react. Part of him wanted to lash out at the other boy but he knew that was exactly what Gavin wanted. One punch and he would go running off to a teacher with his bandaged hand and Matt would be in even more trouble.

“Why don’t you just get lost, Gavin?” he said. And then, before he could stop himself, “Or would you like me to rip open your other hand too?”

It was a stupid thing to say. Matt remembered what he’d been thinking as he walked home only the day before. The idea that he could actually use his powers to hurt someone his own age horrified him. So what was he doing making threats like this? Gavin was right. He was weird. A freak. He didn’t deserve to have any friends.

He tried to backtrack. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said. “And what I said just now, I didn’t mean that either. I know you don’t want me here, but I didn’t ask to come to this school. Why can’t you give me a break?”

“Why don’t you get lost?” Gavin replied.

“I just don’t understand you!” Matt exclaimed. Despite himself, he was beginning to get angry again. “What have I ever…?”

He stopped.

He could smell burning.

He didn’t need to look around. He knew there was nothing on fire. What he could smell was burnt toast…

…and if he closed his eyes he could see a sudden flare of yellow, a teapot shaped like a teddy bear, his mother’s dress on the morning she was killed…

And he knew that it meant something was about to happen. That was what he had learnt at Raven’s Gate. The smell of burning was important. So were the brief flashes of memory. There had been a teapot shaped like a teddy bear in the kitchen that morning, six years ago. The morning his parents had been killed. His mother had burnt the toast. Somehow, the memories acted as a trigger. They were a signal that everything was about to change.

But why was it happening now? Everything was under control. He wasn’t in any danger. There were no chains he needed to smash, no door to be blown open. He forced himself to ignore it and was relieved when the smell faded away.

He looked up and saw that Gavin was staring at him. There were half a dozen other boys grouped around too. How long had he stood there, frozen like some sort of idiot? One or two of them were smirking. Matt struggled to finish his sentence. But he had nothing more to say.

“Loser,” Gavin muttered, and walked away.

The other boys went with him, leaving Matt standing on his own outside the chapel door. It was half past nine. First lessons began.

Thirty miles away, the police had closed an entire street, sealing each end with blue-and-white tape and the usual signs: POLICE – DO NOT CROSS.

The unconscious man had been discovered by a milkman. He had been lying on the pavement about a hundred metres away from a Shell garage. The paramedics had arrived and they had quickly established that he had been hit once with a blunt instrument… possibly a hammer or a crowbar. His skull was fractured but the good news was that he was going to live. He’d sustained other injuries too and the police suspected that he might have been a passenger in some sort of truck. Perhaps he had been pushed out while the vehicle was moving at speed.

It had been easy to identify him. There was a wallet in his back pocket complete with cash and credit cards. The fact that it hadn’t been taken automatically ruled out theft as a motive. His wife in Felixstowe had already been contacted and taken at high speed to the emergency ward of the hospital where he was being treated. From her, the police had learned that Harry Shepherd hadn’t been a passenger. He had been a driver. He worked for the Shell Petroleum Company and should have been delivering ten thousand litres of fuel to the garage close to the spot where he had been found injured.

Almost unbelievably, the police wasted a whole hour before they realized that something was missing. The petrol tanker itself. Perhaps if it had been less obvious, less huge, they might have noticed sooner. But at last they put two and two together and acted with urgency. They had already contacted Shell’s office at Felixstowe and the registration number of the vehicle (there was no need for a description) was being circulated to all units.

The petrol in the tanker was worth many thousands of pounds. Was this why the driver had been knocked out? The police hoped so, because simple theft was something they could handle. It was certainly a lot less worrying than the alternatives.

But the thought was still there. This might, after all, be a quite different sort of crime. Suppose the tanker had been taken by terrorists. The local police put a call through to London and a news blackout was ordered. There was no reason yet to start a panic. As they searched the roads up and down Yorkshire, the police remained tight-lipped. But they all knew. Ten thousand litres of petrol could create a very large bonfire indeed. They didn’t want to admit they were afraid.

The morning only got worse.

Matt arrived five minutes late for his first lesson, stumbling into the classroom while the teacher – Miss Ford – was in full flow.

“I’m sorry I’m late, miss…”

“Why are you late, Matthew?”

How could he explain? How could he tell her that he’d had some sort of premonition outside the school chapel that had left him paralysed, uncertain what to do?

“I forgot my bag,” he said. It was a lie. But it was simpler than the truth.

“Well, I’m afraid I’m going to have to put you in the detention book.” Miss Ford sighed. “Now, will you please take your seat.”

Matt’s desk was right at the back of the classroom and, although he kept his eyes fixed on the floor, he felt everyone watching him as he took his place. Miss Ford was one of the better teachers at Forrest Hill. She was plain and old-fashioned, which somehow suited her as she taught history, but she had been kind to Matt and had tried to help him fill in the gaps in his knowledge. For his part, Matt had done his best to catch up, reading extra books after school. They were studying the Second World War and he found it more interesting than medieval kings or endless lists of dates. It might be history, but it still mattered now.

Even so, he was unable to concentrate today. Miss Ford was telling them about Dunkirk, May 1940. Matt tried to follow what she was saying but he couldn’t make the words link up. She seemed a long way away, and was it his imagination or had it become very warm in the classroom?

“…the army was cut off and it seemed to many people in England that the war was already lost…”

Matt looked out of the window. Once again he became aware of the sharp, acrid smell of burning toast.

And that was when he saw it, floating through the air, making no sound. It was some sort of lorry. There was a figure hunched behind the wheel but the sunlight was reflecting off the windscreen and he couldn’t make it out. Like a great beast, it soared towards the school, plummeting out of the sky. Its headlamps were its eyes. The radiator grille was a gaping mouth. The tanker seemed to stretch into the distance, a huge, gleaming silver cylinder on twelve thick tyres. Closer and closer it came. Now it filled up the whole window and was about to smash through…

“Matthew? What is it?”

Everyone was staring at him. Again. Miss Ford had stopped whatever she was saying and was looking at him with a mixture of impatience and concern.

“Nothing, Miss Ford.”

“Well, stop staring out of the window and try to concentrate. As I was saying, many people thought that Dunkirk was a miracle…”

Matt waited a few moments, then glanced out of the window again. The classroom looked across to the sports centre, a solid, brick building on the other side of a field, separated from the main part of the school by a single road which rose steeply and then continued back towards York. There was no traffic. It was a beautiful day. Matt pressed a hand against his forehead. When he drew it away, there was sweat on his palm. What was wrong with him? What was going on?

Somehow he managed to stumble through history and then physics and PE. But the last lesson of the morning just had to be English with Mr King. They were reading Macbeth and Matt found Shakespeare difficult enough at the best of times. Today it meant nothing to him – and Mr King seemed to have built-in radar that allowed him to home in on anyone who wasn’t paying attention. It only took him a few minutes before he pounced on Matt.

“Am I boring you, Freeman?” he asked with an unpleasant sneer.

“No, sir.”

“Then perhaps you can tell me what I was just saying about the three weird sisters?”

Matt shook his head. He might as well admit it. “I’m sorry, sir. I wasn’t listening.”

“Then come and see me at the end of the lesson.” Mr King brushed a strand of hair out of his eyes. “The weird sisters tell Macbeth his future,” he went on. “And of course he believes them. In Shakespeare’s time, many people still believed in witchcraft and black magic…”

The end of the lesson took for ever to arrive and when it finally came, Matt didn’t hang around to receive whatever punishment Mr King had in mind. It seemed to be getting hotter and hotter in the school. The glass in the windows was magnifying the sun, dazzling him. The walls seemed to be bending and shimmering in the heat. But he knew that he was only imagining it. This was early summer. Looking around him, he could see that none of the other boys were feeling anything.

There was a fifteen-minute break before the entire school would cross over the road and go into the temporary dining room in the sports centre for lunch. Once again he thought about phoning Richard and asking him to help. Mobiles weren’t allowed at Forrest Hill, but there were three public phones on the other side of the quad.

“Matthew…?”

He turned round and saw Miss Ford walking towards him, on her way to the staff room.

“Mr King is looking for you,” she said.

Of course, he would be. Matt had defied him. That would mean more trouble than ever.

“I wanted to tell you that your last essay was a real improvement,” Miss Ford went on. She was looking at Matt a little sadly. Now she frowned. “Are you feeling ill?” she asked. “You don’t look very well.”

“I’m OK.”

“Well, maybe you should go and see matron.” She had said enough. Even the teachers at Forrest Hill didn’t want to be seen spending too much time with Matt. She brushed past him and continued on her way.

And that was when Matt made his decision. He wasn’t going to see the matron, a thin, scowling woman who seemed to treat any suggestion of illness as a personal insult. Nor was he going to call Richard. It was time to leave Forrest Hill. Today. The other boys had made it perfectly clear to him on the day he had arrived that he didn’t belong here. Well, maybe they were right. What was he doing in a private school in the middle of Yorkshire? The only thing that he had in common with the rest of them was the uniform he was forced to wear.

There was a litter bin in the corridor, just outside the staff room. Matt had been holding a pile of books but now, without even thinking about it, he threw them all in. Macbeth. Maths. A GCSE guide to the Second World War. Then he took off his tie and threw that in too. He felt better already.

He turned round and began to walk.

Gwenda Davis had stopped at the top of the hill. She knew what she had to do but she still couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. Gwenda had never liked pain. If she so much as cut her finger, she’d have to sit down for half an hour and smoke several cigarettes before she was ready to move. And she was fairly sure that her death was going to hurt very much indeed.

Could she really do it? The school was spread out in front of her. She could see it through the windscreen. It looked like a very posh place, very different from the comprehensive she had sent Matt to when he lived with her. She couldn’t imagine him going to a place like this. It wasn’t him at all.

There were a whole load of old buildings grouped round a church – but she knew that she wouldn’t find Matt there. He was going to be in the big brick building next to the football pitch. There would be lots and lots of boys in there with him. It was a shame, really, that so many of them would have to die too. The more she thought about it, the more she wondered if this was a good idea. It wasn’t too late. So far she had only killed one person – Brian. At the last minute, she had decided to hit the driver of the petrol tanker with the flat side, rather than the blade, of the axe. He’d seemed a friendly sort of person. She hadn’t even really wanted to fracture his skull.

The police would never catch up with her, anyway. She could just get out of the petrol tanker and walk away. Maybe that’s what she ought to do.

On an impulse, she reached out and turned on the radio. It was one o’clock. The news would be on and she would find out if the driver had been found yet. But strangely enough, nothing came out of the speaker. She knew the radio was on. There was a faint hiss. But nobody was talking.

And then she heard a single word.

“Gwenda…”

It was coming out of the dashboard, from the radio. She knew who it was and she was so glad to hear him. But at the same time she felt ashamed of herself. How could she have had second thoughts?

“What are you doing, just sitting there?” Rex McKenna asked.

“I don’t know…” Gwenda muttered.

“You weren’t thinking of walking away, were you, you naughty girl?” It made Gwenda tingle when he talked like that. She had seen him do it on the television. Sometimes he treated adults like children. It was part of his act.

“I don’t want to die,” she said.

“Of course you don’t, Gwenda. Nor do I. Nor does anybody. But sometimes, you know, it just has to happen. Sometimes you don’t have any choice.”

“Don’t I have any choice?” Gwenda asked. A single tear trickled down her cheek. She caught sight of herself in the driver’s mirror but it only told her what she already knew. She was looking very old and dirty. There was dried blood on her coat. Her skin had no colour at all.

“Not really, my love,” Rex answered. “It’s a bit like the Big Wheel in a way. You spin the wheel and your number comes up. There’s not much you can do about it.” He sighed. “Your whole life was a bit of a waste of time if you want the honest truth. But at least you’ve been given the chance to do something important now. We need this boy killed. Matthew Freeman. And you’re the one who’s been chosen to do it. So off you go! And don’t worry. It’ll all be over very soon.”

Gwenda could imagine Rex McKenna winking at her. She could hear it in his voice.

The radio had gone silent again but there was nothing more to be said. Gwenda turned the engine on, pressed her foot on the accelerator, then slammed the gears into first.

Matt was on his way out. He could see the double doors at the end of the corridor with noticeboards on both sides, lining the way. There were boys everywhere, getting ready to go for lunch, but for once they didn’t notice him. Nor had anyone seen him dump his books. He felt a sense of elation. No matter what happened, he would be glad to leave Forrest Hill behind him.

And then Matt smelled it again. Burnt toast. And at exactly the same moment, the doors burst open and as he stared in horror, a river of flame rushed in towards him, rolling down the corridor, peeling away the walls, scorching everything in its path. There were two boys standing there and suddenly they were black, skeletons, X-rays of themselves as they had been seconds before. It was as if hell had come to Forrest Hill. Matt saw a dozen more boys swallowed up instantly, too quickly even for them to cry out. They were incinerated where they stood. And then the fire reached him and he flinched, waiting for his own death.

But it didn’t come.

There was no flame.

Matt must have closed his eyes. When he opened them again, everything was exactly as it had been before. It was two minutes to one. Morning lessons had ended. Everyone was on their way to lunch. He had simply imagined it.

Except that he knew. It wasn’t his imagination.

He couldn’t just walk out of the school after all. The fire hadn’t happened but it was about to. That was what he had been sensing from the moment he had arrived that day.

He looked around him. A bell sounded. The lunch bell. It told him what he had to do. He took three steps down the corridor and found a fire alarm, set behind a glass panel and mounted on the wall. He used his elbow to smash the glass, then pressed the alarm button with his thumb.

At once, much louder bells sounded throughout the school. Everyone stopped what they were doing and began to look at each other, half-smiling, wondering what was going on. They knew the sound of the fire alarm. There had been fire drills often enough. But it was as if no one wanted to make the first move, afraid of looking foolish.

“There’s a fire!” Matt shouted. “Move!”

One or two boys began to make their way past him, walking away from the double doors and back towards the other side of the school. The main assembly point was a football field next to the chapel. As soon as the first few had started moving, others followed. Matt heard doors opening and slamming. People were asking questions but the alarm was so loud that Matt couldn’t make out any words.

Then Mr O’Shaughnessy appeared. The assistant head-master was looking flustered. His face, never cheerful at the best of times, was thunderous. There were pinpricks of red in his usually pallid cheeks. He saw Matt standing next to the fire alarm. His eyes moved and took in the broken glass.

“Freeman!” he exclaimed. He had to shout to make himself heard. “Did you do that?”

“Yes.”

“You set off the alarm?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s the fire?”

Matt said nothing.

Mr O’Shaughnessy took his silence as an admission of guilt. “If you’ve done this as a prank, you will be in serious trouble!” he boomed. And then, an afterthought that was so bizarre it almost made Matt want to laugh. “Why aren’t you wearing your tie?”

“I think you should get out of the school,” Matt said.

There was nothing to be done. The alarm could only be switched off in the bursar’s office, and only with the approval of the fire brigade. Mr O’Shaughnessy grabbed Matt by the arm and the two of them followed the other boys out of the school. In minutes, all the buildings were empty. On the other side of the main road, the dinner ladies had spilled out of the sports centre. The few boys who had arrived for lunch early were with them. They crossed the road and joined the rest of the pupils, who had congregated on the football pitch. The teachers were with them, trying to get them into some sort of order. Everyone was looking for the flames or at least a little smoke but already it was being whispered that the alarm had been set off as a joke and that Matthew Freeman was to blame. The headmaster had also arrived. He was a short, solid-looking man, built like a rugby player and known as the Bulldog. He saw his assistant, who was standing next to Matt, and came striding over.

“Do you know what’s going on?” he demanded.

“I’m afraid I do, headmaster,” O’Shaughnessy replied. “It’s a false alarm.”

“Well, I’m glad of that!”

“Of course.” O’Shaughnessy nodded. “But this boy set the alarm off on purpose. His name is Freeman and…”

But the headmaster wasn’t listening any more. He was staring past Mr O’Shaughnessy. Slowly, Matt turned round to see what was happening. The assistant headmaster did the same.

They were just in time to see the Shell tanker come careering down the hill. It was clear at once that something was wrong. It was zigzagging across the road, seemingly out of control. Matt could just make out the figure – a woman with wild eyes and straggling hair – sitting in the driving seat. He recognized her, and at the same moment he realized that she knew exactly what she was doing, and that she had come especially for him.

Gwenda Davis had her eyes fixed on the sports centre where, according to Rex McKenna, the entire school would be having lunch. The petrol tanker was now facing away from the football pitch. As Matt watched, it left the road, ploughed through a bush and began to career across the playing fields. Matt saw the tyres cutting up the turf.

Some of the other boys had seen it too. Faces turned. Hands pointed. There could be no doubt what was about to happen.

The tanker smashed into the wall of the sports centre and continued right through it. Its window smashed and Gwenda was killed instantly, thrown into the brickwork even as it disintegrated all around her. With its engine screaming, the tanker continued, disappearing from sight, swallowed up by the building. There was a moment’s pause. Then everything exploded. A fireball erupted into the sky, hurling hundreds of tiles in every direction. It rose higher and higher, carrying with it a huge fist of black smoke that threatened to punch out the very clouds. Matt put a hand up to protect his face. Even at this distance, he could feel the fantastic heat of thousands of litres of petrol as they ignited. Flames poured out of the wrecked building, falling crazily onto the grass, the trees, the road, the edges of the main school, setting everything alight. It was like a battle zone.

Matt knew that he had cheated death by minutes. And if the whole school had been in the sports centre, if they had been queuing up for lunch as they should have been, hundreds of children would have died.

The headmaster was thinking the same thing. “My God!” he croaked. “If we had been in there…!”

“He knew!” Mr O’Shaughnessy let go of Matt and backed away. “He knew before it happened,” he whispered. “Freeman knew.”

The headmaster looked at him, his eyes wide.

Matt hesitated. He didn’t want to stay here a minute longer. In the distance he could already hear sirens.

He walked. Six hundred and fifty boys stepped out of his way, forming a corridor to allow him to pass. Among them, Matt saw Gavin Taylor. For just a brief instant, their eyes met. The other boy was crying. Matt didn’t know why.

Nobody said anything as he passed between them. Matt no longer cared what they thought of him. One thing was certain. He would never see any of them again.