Silverstone Part One: Through Dark Waters

SILVERSTONE

Part One:
Through Dark Waters

J.J.Moody

All rights reserved; no part of
this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or
other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written
permission of the publisher

The author asserts the moral right
to be identified as the author of this work

First published
July
2016 by James
Moody

Copyright © James Moody
2016

ISBN 978-0-9946112-0-8
(EPUB)

www.silverstonestory.com

Chapter
One

The Strange Swimming
Pool

Chapter
Two

A Perilous
Welcome

Chapter
Three

The Birthday
Party

From the
author

Q&A

That day was not a happy one
for Ben Silverstone.

For his parents Jackie and
Steven, buying an old, crumbling little cottage on the edge of
Hulstead Village, in South East London, was a dream they had been
talking about for years, and for which he knew they had worked
extremely hard in their jobs as accountants for a company whose
name was a collection of four letters he could never remember. Not
only that, but moving from their small flat in Fulham would save
them lots of money as it had been far more expensive. He had
watched them at the dining table sometimes, while he quietly
pretended to watch television nearby, as they talked with worried
frowns about the bills, and was at least pleased that they seemed
to be in a safer financial position now. He could see a weight had
lifted from their shoulders, and hadn’t seen them stop smiling
since they had bought the house four months ago, even in spite of
all the mountain of paperwork he had seen them working through.

For his little brother Toby,
the house would be a treasure trove to explore and play in,
especially the little patch of garden at the back of the property,
sandwiched between the enormous castle-like properties on either
side of them. Once it had some grass in it that was. Right now it
needed all the rubbish cleaned away, and probably also to have an
exterminator come to get rid of any rats likely to be hiding in it,
Ben thought. But Toby was more amused by all the brown cardboard
packing boxes than anything else at the moment anyway.

As for Paddy, Ben’s grey and
white whippet, he sat directly in front of Ben, head tilting to one
side, and then to the other, as if looking at Ben from a different
angle would enable him to find a smile somewhere within his gloomy
expression. That was his default pose for trying to cheer Ben up,
and usually worked wonders. They had found Paddy in Battersea Dogs
Home when Ben had been about Toby’s age, and Paddy had been
attached to Ben ever since. The staff had said he’d been found in
the river at night by a police boat, somehow managing to keep his
head above water long enough for them to drag him out and dry him
off. Ben could understand his dislike of being washed in water. He
obliged him with a scratch behind the ear and watched the skinny
little dog tremble with delight.

For Ben though, there was a lot
of change happening all at the same time. Not only had he just
moved from where he’d spent almost all of his eleven years of life
so far in to a dilapidated old house, he was starting at the even
older secondary school in the village in a few weeks time. His
parents had reassured him things would be absolutely fine once he
had settled in, but he was used to the way things had been back in
Fulham, and quite comfortable there, and also much preferred modern
things anyway. He liked things that were clean, and worked reliably
and easily. He didn’t know very much about oddly shaped,
disintegrating things with dark holes and strange smells, and they
made him a bit uncomfortable. As he stared blankly at Paddy he felt
a dull ache in his chest forming, which he thought must have been
all of the feelings he had about these changes compressed tightly
into one spot. Maybe he was just hungry.

His mother called him for
dinner. They ate fish fingers and peas from the local supermarket
that Ben’s mother had cooked on a camping stove, on a table of
boxes, by candlelight.

“We’ll get the electricity and
gas turned on tomorrow hopefully,” his father said, as he walked in
from what was going to be their bedroom, putting his phone down on
another of the boxes. The truck his parents had hired to move was
still half full outside, and Ben wondered if there was enough room
in the tiny house for all their contents or whether they might end
up having to just pile up all of the things they didn’t have space
for into one of the rooms all the way to the ceiling, and squeeze
the door closed behind.

“That’s good Dad. But I
actually quite like the candlelight,” Ben lied, trying to put on a
brave face. His father patted him on the back.

That night his parents stayed
up very late unpacking in the candlelight, while Ben sat in his new
bedroom, wrapped in his own thoughts, with Paddy dosing on his lap,
and Toby sleeping next to them on a makeshift bed of boxes and what
his mother had managed to find of the bedding. Toby would have
happily slept inside a box that first night, surrounded in a nest
of neatly packed towels and sheets, Ben mused, with a smile.
Unwilling to make a start on his unpacking, he lay down, and
finally drifted off.

The next morning was a rush.
Ben’s parents had fallen asleep underneath an old photo album they
had uncovered, and had slept through several alarms. The tour of
Ben’s new school was scheduled to begin at 9am sharp, and Ben’s
parents did not want to be tardy and upset Ms Villeneuve, the
school headmistress. There was a whirlwind of bread and peanut
butter for breakfast, and Toby and Paddy were hastily handed over
to Ben’s Auntie Maggie to look after, before Ben and his parents
jumped into their rusty VW Polo and raced over the speed bumps
towards the school.

As soon as they had found a
parking spot in the school car park, Ben and his parents joined a
small group of other parents and children lined up in a neat row
before the steps to the main school building, waiting for Ms
Villeneuve, who was to escort them on the tour herself. The main
building was an enormous old structure three times the size of
Ben’s primary school, and he imagined that it and the other
buildings in the grounds could probably hold thousands of children
like him, in classes of hundreds, sitting at rows and rows of old
wooden desks like little learning machines, in front of scary white
haired men who probably still dressed like the teachers used to a
hundred years ago and taught them nothing but ancient Latin. This
was not going to be a fun place to go to school, he decided, as he
looked around. Still, he did his best to look enthusiastic as his
parents grinned at him excitedly.

He glanced up at the clock
tower that rose above the left side of the main building. The tower
had been one of the most ancient parts of the school, his parents
had said after they had done the first school tour a few months
ago, and it looked like it was leaning dangerously to one side,
ready to collapse on top of some unfortunate students at any
minute. To the right of the clock tower above what looked like the
main doors, there were the remains of a crest containing a book and
some kind of winged animal, and below them something written in a
language Ben didn’t understand.

There were several large stone
arched windows along the front of the building, with odd diamond
shaped pieces of glass that shimmered in the morning sun like the
scales of an enormous snake that had squeezed its way inside to lie
in wait for them. Around the top just before the roof began there
perched the ruins of a row of gargoyles, which were probably more
likely to squash anyone walking below who had managed to get past
the treacherous clock tower than scare off any evil spirits in
their crumbling condition, Ben thought.

On the sharply pointed
slate-tiled rooftop directly above the main doors he caught sight
of a man painting one of the chimneys, while sitting very
precariously on the pinnacle of the roof. For a moment the man
paused to look down at the tour group, and Ben wondered how on
earth he had got up there, with no scaffolding or ladders in sight,
and nowhere near a window. Then the man turned his attention back
to the painting, and Ben turned his attention to the other families
joining the Silverstones on the tour.

There were now three other
families in the tour with them. The first was dressed so
immaculately it appeared as though their clothes had been sewed and
ironed while they stood there. They must have arrived first, and
were waiting patiently for Ms Villeneuve without saying a word, and
keeping very still at the far right of the line. Their boy was
about the same size as Ben, and seemed very experienced at keeping
still and quiet.

The next family was dressed in
very bright colours that reminded Ben of the colourful birds in the
Amazon rainforest that he had seen on David Attenborough wildlife
documentaries. The father jangled his keys in the air as he paced
up and down talking loudly into his gold mobile phone, while the
mother carefully styled her son’s blond hair.

“Keep still Jordan lovely,” she
said to him as she licked her fingers and styled his hair into a
sharp, gravity-defying point.

Jordan tapped on his matching
gold phone with a blank expression, ignoring everything else.

The Silverstones had arrived
next and stood beside Jordan and his family, and to their left had
just arrived a very tall, skinny family with twin girls, who talked
to each other much too fast for Ben to interpret, while their
parents did the same. He thought they might have been foreign.

After a few moments further
waiting as more families arrived, the clock struck 9am, and the
enormous doors at the top of the steps to the main building made a
groaning noise as they creaked open, precisely on cue. Ms
Villeneuve stepped out.

Ben had been half expecting a
headmistress like old Mrs Bumblebottom at his little primary school
in Parsons Green. But Ms Villeneuve was very different. She wore a
pensive expression as if she was constantly considering a problem
she hadn’t yet been able to solve, and actually looked no older
than his parents. Her clothes were similar to those worn by the
first family in the line, but a touch sharper and more modern, and
helped reinforce the air of superiority she exuded as she calmly
glided along toward them. Her glasses were rimless, and magnified
her sharp green eyes to at least twice their normal size as she
observed them. Her light brown hair was contained in a perfect bun,
positioned very carefully in the very centre of her head.

She paused at the top of the
stairs for a moment to survey the group, measured out a small
smile, and then descended and introduced the tour.

“Welcome back to Hulstead
College and thank you for coming. Parents, your previous tour
covered most of the grounds and buildings, so today is simply a
formality to make your children more comfortable prior to the
commencement of the school term in three weeks time.”

Ms Villeneuve talked in perfect
English, but with a subtle French accent. Jordan’s father was
clearly impressed.

“Great. Yeah. Fantastic,” he
commented, as his wife concluded a final flourish to Jordan’s
quiff.

“We will begin with the Great
Hall behind me,” she said with a dramatic gesture, without removing
her gaze from the group. The parents and children looked up at the
grand features of the building. Ben’s parents seemed to love it,
and he heard them oohing and ahhing a great deal as they pointed
towards different parts of it.

The crisp morning sun gradually
gave way to a few grey wisps of cloud, and a cool breeze rustled
the early autumn leaves from the trees behind them as Ms Villeneuve
recited a perfectly rehearsed history of the school, and in
particular the Great Hall. The boy from the smartly dressed family
posed a question, and she dealt with it swiftly before returning
effortlessly to the narration. To Ben, the building was just
old.

Finally she reached a precise
pause. “Now, let us go inside.”

Ben’s chest ached again. He
drifted back behind the parents like the other children, and
exchanged a few pleasantries with his fellow students. Ilse and
Lotte were from Holland, and had moved over to London so that they
could grow up speaking more English. George didn’t say much at all
besides his name, and was eager to pay attention to everything that
Ms Villeneuve had to say. Jordan showed Ben an amusing picture of a
cat on his phone while Ms Villeneuve talked about the stained glass
windows.