Evil Star (5 page)

She paused.

"He'd read the diary," Matt guessed.

"Exactly. He had the diary for the best part of a month and in that time he read it and understood enough of it to comprehend just what it was he had on his hands. Right now he's in London. We don't know where, because he won't tell us. He has a house in Putney —

but he's not there. As a matter of fact, there was a fire a few days ago. We assume it's connected. We don't know for certain. All we know is that William Morton has gone into hiding."

"How do you contact him?" Richard asked.

"We don't. He calls us. He has a cell phone. We've tried to trace the Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star calls, but it's no good. Until yesterday, all we knew was that he was going to sell the diary to the business-man and we weren' t even going to meet. But then, yesterday, he telephoned us again. I happened to take the call." Ashwood turned to Matt. "And I mentioned you."

"Me?" Matt didn't know what to say. "He's never met me. ..."

"No. But he knows about the five. Don't you see? He must have read about them in the diary. The fact that you're one of them, Matt... he couldn't believe it when we told him. But we managed to intrigue him, and he agreed, at last, to meet us. He made one condition."

"He wants me to be there," Matt said.

Ashwood nodded. "He wants to meet with you first, alone. He's given us a place and time. On Thursday, three days from now."

"We're just asking you for one day of your time," Fabian said. "If Morton sees you and believes you are who we say you are, maybe then he'll sell us the diary. Maybe he'll give it away. I honestly believe that he wishes now that he had never found it. He wants to be rid of it. We just have to give him an excuse, a good reason to hand the diary to us." He gestured at Matt. "
You are
the reason. All you have to do is meet him. Nothing more."

There was a long silence. At last, Matt spoke.

"You keep on saying that I'm one of the five. And maybe you're right. I don't really understand any of it, but I know what happened at Raven's Gate." For a moment it all came back to him, and he knew he was saying the right thing. "I don't want to get involved. I had enough the first time. Right now I just want to get on with my life, and I want to be left alone. You say it's just one meeting in London, but I know it won't happen that way. Once I get started, I Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star won't be able to stop. Something else will happen and then something after that. I'm sorry. You can find Morton without me. Why don't you just offer him more money? That seems to be all he wants."

"Matt —" Susan Ashwood began.

"I'm sorry, Miss Ashwood. You can manage without me. You're going to have to. Because I don't want to know."

Richard stood up. "I'm afraid that's it," he said.

"You're only here because of the Nexus," Fabian snapped — and suddenly he was angry. His eyes were darker than ever. "We pay for your school. We have made it possible for you to stay here. Maybe we should think again."

"We can manage without you —" Now Richard was get-ting angry, too.

"It doesn't matter!" Susan Ashwood got stiffly to her feet. "Fabian is wrong to threaten you. We came here with a request, and you have given us your answer. As you say, we must manage without you."

She reached out and Fabian gave her his arm. "But there is one thing I will add." She turned her empty eyes on Matt and for a moment she sounded genuinely sad. "You have made a decision . . . but you may have less choice than you think. You can try to ignore who you are, but you may not be able to for much longer. You are central to what is happening, Matt. You and four others. I think it will find you before too long."

She nudged Fabian, and the two of them left together. Richard waited until he heard the front door close, then he sank back into a chair.

"Well, I'm glad they've gone," he said. "And I think you're absolutely right, by the way. What nerve! Trying to drag you back Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star into all that. Well, it's not going to happen. They can get lost."

Matt said nothing.

“You must be hungry," Richard went on. "I managed to look into a supermarket on the way over. There are three bags of food in the kitchen. What do you fancy for dinner?"

It took Matt a few moments to absorb what he had just heard.

Richard had been shopping? It had to be a first. Now he remembered his surprise when he had arrived at the flat, seeing Richard there at all. "What's happened?" he asked. "How come you're home so early?"

Richard shrugged. "Well, I was thinking about what you said this morning. About you and me. And I realized you were right. I can't look after you when I'm traveling back and forth to Leeds all the time. So I threw the job in. . . ."

"What?" Matt knew how much the job meant to Richard. He wasn't quite sure what to say.

"I just don't want you to go back to the LEAF Project," Richard continued. "I said I'd look after you and that's what I'm going to do. I can always find a job in York." The thought made Richard sigh.

"Anyway, you're lucky I was here tonight. Did you really want to be left alone with Mr. and Mrs. Creepy?"

"Do you really think it was okay to say no?" Matt asked.

"Of course it was. If you didn't want to go, then why should you? It's your choice, Matt. You must do what you want."

"That's not what she said."

"She was wrong. You're safe here. Nothing's going to happen while you're in York except — possibly — food poisoning. I'm cooking Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star tonight!"

************************************

Seventy miles away, on the Ml motorway, a man named Harry Shepherd was just coming out of a service station. He had started earlier in the day at Felixstowe and was on his way to Sheffield. As darkness had fallen, he had stopped for a bite and a cup of tea. He was only allowed to drive a certain distance without a break. And he liked this service station. There was a waitress he always chatted with. He was thinking of asking her out.

It was getting dark as he drove out, and it had begun to rain. He could see the streaks of water lighting up as they slanted across his headlamps. He slammed the engine into second gear, preparing to rejoin the motorway — and that was when he saw her, standing on the slip road, one thumb out. The universal symbol of the hitchhiker.

It wasn't something he saw very often these days. Hitch-hiking was considered too dangerous. Nobody in his right mind would get into a car or a truck with a stranger. Not with so many weirdos around.

And here was something else that was odd. The hitchhiker was a woman. She looked middle-aged, too. She was wrapped up in a coat that wasn't doing much to protect her from the rain. Her hair was dragging over her collar, and he could see the water run-ning down the sides of her cheeks. Harry felt sorry for her. Somehow she reminded him of his mother, who was living on her own in a bed-sit in Dublin. On an impulse, he took his foot off the accelerator and pressed the brake. The woman ran forward.

Henry knew he was breaking every regulation in the book. He wasn't allowed to give lifts. Especially when he was carrying fuel.

But something had persuaded him. An impulse. He couldn't really explain it.

Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star Gwenda Davis saw the petrol tanker as it slowed down. The motorway lights reflected off the great silver cylinder with the word
shell
in bright yellow letters. She should have been farther north by now. It had definitely been a mistake leaving Eastfield Terrace without any money, and she had almost given up trying to hitchhike.

She knew she had let Rex McKenna down. She hoped he wouldn't be angry with her.

But now her luck had changed. She wiped the rain out of her eyes and ran forward to the passenger door. It was a big step up but she managed it, her handbag swinging from her arm. The driver was a man in his thirties. He had fair hair and a silly schoolboy smile. He was wearing overalls with the Shell logo on his chest.

"Where are you going, love?" he asked.

"North," Gwenda said.

"A bit late to be out on your own."

"Where are you heading?"

"Sheffield."

"Thanks for stopping." Gwenda closed the door. "I thought I was going to be there all night."

"Well. . . put your seat belt on." The man smiled at her. "My name's Harry."

"Mine's Gwenda."

Gwenda did as she was told. But she made sure that the seat belt didn't restrict her movements. She had her hand-bag next to her with the ax handle sticking out of it. She'd decided she was going to use it as soon as they slowed down. It would be so easy to swing it into the Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star side of Harry's head. She had never driven a petrol tanker before, but she was sure she would be able to manage it. Rex McKenna would help her.

Over two thousand gallons of petrol might come in handy, too.

Chapter 4 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 hap-pened 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 hap-pened to be next to him. As he walked up the central aisle, the whispers began. Everyone was staring at him, then look-ing away when he tried to meet their eyes. As the doors hissed shut and the bus 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 electricians repaired the Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star damage and tried to work out what had caused it. The rumor 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 (who 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 head teacher, a gray-haired man called Mr. Simmons, even mentioned it at morning assembly in the chapel. The teach-ers, sitting in their pews at the very back, nodded wisely. But of course a school has its own knowledge, its own intel-ligence. 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. It occurred to Matt that they might have 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 Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star anyway."

"I saw your file." Matt could tell this was a bluff, but Gavin taunted him nonetheless. “You're weird and you're a crook and you shouldn't be here."

A few other boys had stopped, 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. 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 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 didn't ask to come to this school."

"Well, now we're asking you to leave," Gavin replied.

Despite himself, Matt was beginning to get angry again.

He stopped.

He could smell burning.

He didn't need to look around. He knew there was nothing on fire ...

Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star

.. . and if he closed his eyes he could see a sudden flare of yellow, a tea pot shaped like a teddy bear, his mother's dress on the morning she was killed. . . .

And he knew it meant something was about to happen. That was what he had learned at Raven's Gate. The smell of burning was important. So were the brief flashes of mem-ory. 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 burned 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 him-self to ignore it and was relieved when the smell faded away.