Raven's Gate

OMEGA ONE

“He was in my room last night,” Mrs Deverill said. She was talking on the telephone. The receiver was old-fashioned and heavy, made of black Bakelite. A thick wire coiled out of her hand. “I think he found the photographs.”

“It was a mistake keeping them there.”

“Perhaps. But there’s something else I’m worried about. Matthew is stronger than he was when he first came here. I think he may be starting to work things out. I don’t like having him here. If you ask me, we’ve got a tiger by the tail. We should deal with him before it’s too late.”

It was a man’s voice at the other end of the phone. He spoke in a way that was very cold and deliberate. He had an educated voice. Perhaps he was a headmaster in an expensive private school. “What do you mean?” he demanded.

“Lock him up. There’s a crypt in the church. We could put him in there, underground, somewhere nobody would find him. It’s only for a few more weeks. And then we’ll be done with him.”

“No.” The single word was final. “Right now the boy thinks he’s ordinary. He has no idea of who or what he is. Bury him alive and you could actually help him discover himself. And what happens if the police or his social worker come calling? How will you explain where he is?”

“Suppose he escapes…”

“You know he can’t escape. We have him contained. There’s nothing he can do. And very soon we’ll be ready for him. All you have to do is watch him. Where is he now?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere in the yard.”

“Watch him, Mrs Deverill. Don’t let him out of your sight.”

There was a click and the line went dead. Mrs Deverill weighed the phone in one hand, then lowered it. “Asmodeus!” she called.

The cat, sitting on the arm of a chair on the other side of the room, opened one eye and looked at her.

“You heard what he said,” she snapped. “The boy…”

The cat leapt off the chair. With no effort, it sprang up on to a windowsill and then out of the window. Outside, Noah walked past, pushing a wheelbarrow piled high with manure. The cat ran past him and continued up the lane. A moment later it had disappeared from sight.

Matt stood at the edge of the wood, looking down a tunnel of trees. The bicycle lay on its side on a grassy verge beside the road. Five minutes had passed since he had slipped past Noah and made his way out of Hive Hall. But he still couldn’t make up his mind.

Once again he was tempted to find his way to London. He must have been confused the night before. He had been unable to see where he was going and had somehow missed his way. But an inner voice warned not to try navigating the lanes again. He didn’t want to waste any more time going round in circles, and anyway, there was another way out of this. The LEAF Project was supposed to be voluntary. A single phone call to Detective Superintendent Mallory was all it would take to get him out of this nightmare.

But before he did that, he wanted to know more. What were the sounds he had heard the night before? What was going on in the wood? There was only one way to find out.

Matt had pinpointed the spot from which he thought he saw the light coming. It had to be somewhere in front of him now. And yet he was unwilling to step off the road. It wasn’t because of the story Mrs Deverill had told him – he doubted there was any chance of his wandering into a bog. It was the wood itself that scared him: its unnaturalness, the uncompromising lines. Nature wasn’t meant to grow like this. How could he possibly find his way when every pine tree looked the same, when there were no hillocks, plants or streams to act as landmarks? And there was something else. The corridors between the trees seemed to go on for ever, stretching into a shadowy universe of their own. The darkness was waiting for him. He was like a fly on the edge of a huge web.

He made up his mind, stepped off the road and took twenty paces forward, following a single path. The pine needles crunched underneath his feet. Provided he didn’t turn left or right, he would be fine. He would let the trees guide him. And if he thought he was getting lost, he would simply follow the same path back to the road.

And yet… He stopped to catch his breath. It really was extraordinary. He felt as if he had stepped through a mirror between two dimensions. On the road it had been a cool, bright spring morning. The atmosphere in the wood was strangely warm and sluggish. Shafts of sunlight, a deep, intense green, slanted in different directions. On the road, he had heard the twitter of birds and the lowing of a cow. In the wood, everything was silent… as if sound were forbidden to enter.

Already he saw that he should have brought a compass with him. At the very least he could have brought something: a knife or a tin of paint to help him find his way back. He remembered a story he’d been told at school. Some Greek guy – Theseus or someone – had gone into a maze to fight a creature that was half-man and half-bull. The Minotaur. He’d been given a ball of wool, which he’d unravelled, and that was how he’d found his way out. Matt should have done the same.

He turned round and, counting out loud, retraced the twenty paces he had taken.

The road wasn’t there.

It was impossible. He looked back at the wood. The trees stretched on endlessly. He checked left and right. The same. He took another five steps. More trees, all of them identical, running as far as the eye could see… and further. The road had disappeared as if it had never been there. Either that, or somehow the trees had grown. That was what it felt like. The artificial wood encircled him. It had captured him and would never let him go.

Matt took a deep breath, counted twenty paces forward, then turned left and walked another ten. Still no road. No matter where he looked, he saw the same thing: tall, narrow trunks and a million needles. Gloomy corridors between them. A hundred different directions but no real choice. Matt stood still, hoping that he would hear a car on its way to Lesser Malling. That would help him find the road. But no car passed. A single crow cawed, somewhere high above. Otherwise, the silence was as thick as fog.

“Great!”

He shouted out the single word because he wanted to hear the sound of his own voice. But it didn’t even sound like him: it was small and weak, muffled by the unmoving trees.

He walked on. What else could he do? His footfall was soft on the bed of needles, measuring out his progress into nowhere. Looking up, he could barely see the sky through the dark green canopy. He was getting sick and tired of all this. The roads had played exactly the same trick on him the night before. But at least they were roads. This was much, much worse.

A glimmer of silver caught his eye, quite unexpected in the middle of so much green. The sun was reflecting off something behind a wall of trees a short distance away. With a surge of relief Matt turned towards it, leaving one path and following another. But if he thought he had discovered the way out, he was mistaken. There was no way forward. He found himself up against a tall fence, rusting in places but still intact. The silver he had seen was the wire. The fence was at least six metres high and the top was barbed with steel spikes. It ran to the left and to the right, curving in what must be a huge circle.

Behind the fence was a clearing, in the centre of which stood a large building that was at once out of date and yet futuristic. It was divided into two parts. The main part was a rectangular, grey brick structure, two storeys high, with windows – half of them broken – running the full length. Some of the brickwork was cracked, with weeds and ivy eating their way in. It had obviously been there for a long time. Matt reckoned it must be thirty or forty metres long. It would have fitted neatly on to a football pitch.

But it was the second part of the building that drew his attention. Painted white and reaching at least thirty metres high, it looked just like a giant golf ball, sitting on the ground as if it had rolled there. Was it an observatory? No. There was no slit in the dome for a telescope. In fact it didn’t have any windows at all. The ball had also been stained by time and the weather. The white paint was discoloured, and in places it looked as if it had caught some sort of disease. But it was still impressive. It was the last thing Matt would have expected to find in the middle of a wood.

A brick passageway with a central door but no windows connected the two parts. Could this be the main entrance? Matt wondered if he could get closer. He had no idea what he was looking at. It would be good to find out.

He turned right and followed the fence for about fifty metres. After a while the wood fell back and he came to a pair of gates, firmly locked together with a heavy padlock on a thick, discoloured chain. On one of the gates was a sign, the words painted in faded red paint on a peeling wooden board:

OMEGA ONE PROPERTY OF HM GOVERNMENT TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED

Omega One. Now Matt wondered if the building might have some military use. The sign said that it was government property. The Ministry of Defence? Briefly he examined the gates. They were old but the padlock was new, meaning someone had been here recently. There was no way he was going to get it open. He looked up and saw razor wire twisted round the top. So much for that.

With growing curiosity Matt continued round, following the fence, hoping to find a tree he could use to climb over. Instead he found something better. There was a hole in the wire, where several strands had rusted loose, and it was just about big enough to allow him to squeeze through. He glanced at his watch. The morning was wearing on but he still had plenty of time.

He was about to squeeze through when someone grabbed hold of him and spun him round.

“What are you doing?” a voice demanded.

Matt’s heart lurched. After his time alone in the wood he hadn’t dreamt for a minute that there would be anyone else here. His fist was already curled in self-defence, but then he recognized the fair hair and red face of the man who had approached him in Lesser Malling – the one who had warned him to leave.

“I got lost,” Matt said, relaxing slightly. “What is this place?” He gestured at the building on the other side of the fence.

“It’s a power station.”

Matt studied the man more closely, noticing that he was carrying a shotgun, the two barrels broken over his arm.

“You shouldn’t be here,” the man said.

“I told you. I got lost. I was looking for…”

“What were you looking for?”

“I saw lights in the forest. Last night. I wondered what they were.”

“Lights?”

“And I heard something. Strange noises – a sort of humming. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on around here? You warned me to go away.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I tried.” Matt left it at that. He was in no mood to explain what had happened to him on the moonlit roads. “What were you warning me about?” he demanded. “Why is everyone in Lesser Malling so weird? Who are you?”

The man seemed to relax a little – but his eyes remained watchful. He rested a hand on the barrel of his gun. “My name is Burgess,” he said. “Tom Burgess. I’m a farmer. I own Glendale Farm, down the Greater Malling road.”

“And what are you doing here? Are you guarding this place?”

“No. I’m hunting. These woods are full of foxes. They come for my chickens in the night. I’m out to get a few of them.” He patted the gun.

“I didn’t hear any shots.”

“I didn’t see any foxes.”

Matt looked back at the building. “You said this place was a power station,” he began. Suddenly the shape seemed more familiar. He had seen pictures at school. “Is it a nuclear power station?”

Burgess nodded.

“What the hell is it doing here?”

“It’s nothing.” The farmer shrugged. “It was experimental. The government put it here a long time ago. It was before they started building the real things. They were looking into alternative sources of energy so they built Omega One, and when they’d finished all their experiments they shut it down again. It’s empty now. There’s nothing there. Nobody’s been anywhere near it for years.”

“They were here last night,” Matt said. “I heard them. And I saw lights.”

“Maybe you were imagining things.”

“I don’t have that much imagination.” Matt was angry. “Why won’t you tell me the truth?” he went on. “You warned me I was in some sort of danger. You told me to run away. But I can’t run away unless I know what it is I’m running from. Why don’t you tell me what you know? We’re safe here. Nobody can overhear us.”

The farmer was clearly struggling with himself. On the one hand, Matt could see that he wanted to talk. But strong though he was, and armed as well, he was still afraid. “How could you begin to understand?” he said at last. “How old are you?”

“Fourteen.”

“You shouldn’t be here. Listen to me. I only came to this place a year ago. I was left money. I always wanted to have my own place. If I’d known… If I’d even had the faintest idea…”

“If you’d only known what?”

“Mrs Deverill and the rest of them…”

“What about them? What are they doing?”

There was a rustle in the undergrowth, followed by an angry snarl. Matt turned and saw an animal appear, stepping out of a patch of fern a couple of metres away. It was a cat, its eyes ablaze, its mouth wide open to reveal its fangs. But it wasn’t just any cat. He recognized the yellow eyes, the mangy fur…

He relaxed. “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s only the cat. It must have followed me here.”

But the farmer’s face had turned white. All at once he had snapped the barrel of his gun shut and raised the whole thing to his shoulder. Before Matt could stop him, he pulled the trigger. There was an explosion. The cat had no chance. Tom Burgess had emptied both barrels, and lead pellets tore into its fur, spinning it in a horrible somersault over the grass, a ball of black that spat red.

“What did you do that for?” Matt exclaimed. “It wasn’t a fox. It was just a farm cat.”

“Just a cat?” The farmer shook his head. “It was Asmodeus, Mrs Deverill’s cat.”

“But-”

“We can’t talk. Not here. Not now.”

“Why not?”

“There are things happening… things you wouldn’t believe.” The colour hadn’t returned to the farmer’s face. His hands were trembling. “Listen!” he whispered. “Come to my farm. Tomorrow morning – at ten o’clock. Glendale Farm. It’s on the Greater Malling road. Turn left when you come out of Hive Hall. Will you be able to find it?”

“Yes.” Then Matt remembered. “No. I’ve tried finding my way round these lanes but they don’t seem to lead anywhere. I just end up where I began.”

“That’s right. You can only go where they want you to go.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s too difficult to explain.” Burgess thought for a moment. Then he grabbed hold of a leather cord around his neck. Matt watched as he drew it over his head and held it out. He saw there was a small, round stone – a talisman – dangling from it, and on the stone was a symbol engraved in gold. The outline of a key.

“Wear this,” Burgess said. “Don’t ask me to explain it, but you won’t get lost if you’re wearing it. Come to my house tomorrow. I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

“Why not now?” Matt demanded.

“Because it’s not safe – not for either of us. I have a car. You come to my house and we’ll leave together.”

Tom Burgess strode away, heading for the line of trees.

“Wait a minute!” Matt called after him. “I don’t know how to get out of the wood!”

Burgess stopped, turned round and pointed. “Look under your feet,” he shouted. “You’re standing on the road.” Then he was gone.

Matt examined the ground around him. There was a line of black tarmac, barely visible beneath the weeds and the pine needles. He would have to follow it carefully, but at least it would lead him out. The stone talisman was still in his hand. He ran a finger along the key, wondering if it was real gold. Then he slipped it around his neck, making sure it was hidden under his shirt.

A few minutes later, Matt found himself back on the main road. He examined the entrance to Omega One carefully. It was nothing more than a gap between two trees in a line of several hundred. He had pedalled past without even knowing it was there and it would be almost impossible to find again. He took off his jacket, tore a strip of material from his T-shirt, and tied it in a knot around a branch. Then he stepped back and examined his handiwork. The tiny, pale blue flag he had created would show him the way back if he ever needed it. Satisfied, he put his jacket back on and set off to retrieve his bike.

About forty minutes later Matt arrived back at Hive Hall. It was almost midday. Noah was working on the side of the barn, painting it with creosote. Matt could smell the chemical in the air. Mrs Deverill would be in the farmhouse, making lunch.

Brushing a few needles off his jacket, Matt walked up to the front door. He was just reaching for the handle when he stopped and stepped back with a shiver of disbelief.

Asmodeus was there, sitting on the windowsill, licking one of its paws. The cat wasn’t dead. It wasn’t even hurt. Seeing Matt, it purred menacingly then suddenly leapt away, disappearing into the house.