The Cornerstone

The Cornerstone

Nick Spalding

Racket Publishing

Copyright © Nick Spalding 2011

First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Racket Publishing

This Kindle edition published 2011 by Racket Publishing

The rights of Nick Spalding to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Contents

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Author’s Note

Part One

- 1 -

It was, for all intents and purposes, the perfect day to visit the library.

A sullen, overcast October afternoon, it was the kind of day the word listless seemed invented to describe – until you remembered somebody had also thought up charmless, which was even more appropriate.

It was drizzling.

The constant,
sticky
kind that’s good at getting under the collar and giving anyone foolish enough to venture outside a wet neck for their trouble.

You’d think all hope and joy had been banished from the world on a grey afternoon like this – if you were in a melodramatic frame of mind, that is.

Max Bloom was just plain bored as he reached the town centre, having been forced out of the house by his irate mother.

The town was Farefield, which nestled on the south coast of England between two major cities - and suffered from something of an inferiority complex because of it.

Oh, and it was a Thursday.

This doesn’t have any bearing on the events about to unfold, but the devil is always in the details if you look hard enough.

Max trudged along, a boy with less sense of purpose than an ambivalent sloth. He meandered through the shopping precinct like a miniature rain cloud. The shoppers all gave him a wide berth, trying to avoid the aura of teenage misery he emanated from every pore.

On this overcast day, Max had turned moping about into an art form. If it was an Olympic event he’d win – or rather he wouldn’t, as the effort of taking part would be too much of a bother.

You could tell how morose he was just from his body language.

His hands were plunged into the pockets of the black hoodie he wore, the hood up to protect his sandy hair from the incessant drizzle. His shoulders were slumped, and his feet scuffed along the ground in a slow, hypnotic rhythm. There was a mournful expression on his face, like a puppy chucked out in the rain for leaving a present on the new Persian rug.

Max hadn’t wanted to leave the house.

He would’ve been more than content to stay indoors, spending his time in the valuable pursuit of lying on the bed staring at the ceiling, or engaged in the thrilling pastime of looking out the window at the rain and clouds until his brain imploded.

It  wasn’t like he was bereft of things to keep him occupied. He had an X Box 360, an iPod and a selection of DVDs from all genres under the sun - but none of them seemed worth the effort of plugging in, turning on, or sticking in the DVD player.

Therefore Max had decided to spend the afternoon sighing… leaving enough time for some tuneless whistling before tea.

His mother had put up with this for precisely twenty three minutes before ordering him out of the house, citing the need to carry out rigorous vacuuming in his bedroom. So he’d ridden his bike into town, where his sole purpose in life had become to get in the way of people trying to spend their money.

He had no plans, other than to hang around WH Smiths and flick through magazines until the spotty shop girl told him to go away.

Going into the local library was the furthest thing from Max Bloom’s mind as he strolled past Boots.

…actually, the furthest thing from Max Bloom’s mind was being transported to another dimension and becoming embroiled in a conflict that would decide the fate of millions – but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Max certainly wasn’t much of a reader. He might flick through a Batman comic or movie magazine now and again, but that was about it, and he’d reached the grand old age of seventeen having read precisely
three
books.

The first was Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, as he’d heard it had dirty stuff in it. It did, but not the kind he was looking for – treating the whole thing far too seriously in his opinion.

The second book had been Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, which he’d read under duress. About halfway through he’d decided the whole thing was a bit silly and abandoned it for a four hour session of Grand Theft Auto.

And the third?

Ah, now the third was something
different
.

For the first and only time in his life, Max Bloom had been captivated by a story.

His grandfather had given him this book at Christmas three years ago. On one crisp day in the lull between the Christmas festivities and New Year, Max had devoured the entire novel in one sitting.

It was Jack London’s Call of the Wild – about a dog called Buck, ripped from his comfortable domestic existence and plunged into a life of hardship as a sled dog in the Canadian Yukon.

Max loved dogs – especially his grandfather’s massive black Labrador Nugget. The dog in London’s novel may have been a Saint Bernard / German Shepard cross, but he still looked like Nugget in Max’s imagination, making the story feel more personal and real to him.

No other tale had ever captured him like it, before or since.

Nobody knew how much he loved that book… and he meant to keep it that way. Being a seventeen year old boy was hard enough on the self-esteem without people knowing you cried every time you read a story about a stupid dog.

If Max was being completely honest about it, he had read
one
more book. But it had been the Haynes Manual for the Austin Montego, so really didn’t count, all things considered.

Regardless, not being any kind of bookworm, the notion of spending time in a library would usually be met with a sneer, a groan and a two fingered salute.

However, Max was
astronomically
bored today and the same devil that likes all those details also makes work for idle hands…

- 2 -

Farefield library was stuck at the back of the shopping centre, tucked out of the way as if the town was embarrassed by it.

A monument to the folly of seventies architecture, it was built of grey concrete and had about as much personality as… well, anything made of grey concrete, really.

On a dismal day like this, it was hard to tell where the library stopped and the sky began. Birds had to be careful flying over it, if they didn’t want to end up getting their beaks bent.

Most of the library’s ground floor was visible through large plate-glass windows. Behind these were a collection of sad looking displays, staring out at the passers-by through the curtain of persistent rain.

A majority promoted books, of course.

Popular authors like J.K Rowling and Stephen King dwarfed the displays of lesser known writers, but a few managed to poke through here and there.

There was also a window full of cardboard stands advertising movies, because the library also prided itself as a purveyor of fine quality DVDs. Spider-man vied for centre stage with Transformers, and Buzz Lightyear tried to outshine Harry Potter – who was getting more than his fair share of window space.

All the displays were getting limp, having been subjected to the library’s antiquated air conditioning system for far too long. It wasn’t quite as humid as a rain forest in there, but an Amazon tree frog would have felt quite comfortable. Potter’s wand had flopped, Optimus Prime’s head had fallen off and Spider-man looked like he was nursing a nasty case of rickets.

Another window featured hand-made pictures by local school children, celebrating the upcoming Halloween festivities. Pumpkins, witchy-woos and bandy legged skellingtons were pinned with care to a series of rickety display boards, giving the locals a good eyeful as they sauntered past.

It was only when Max noticed the entrance that he realised where his bored feet had taken him. He looked at the building with one slightly raised eyebrow, amazed he’d happened upon this strange and alien place.

Libraries were the domain of the socially inadequate. Certainly not the type of place a cool, rebellious seventeen year old should consider frequenting.

A brief internal conflict took place in his head:

‘Hi Max. It’s your brain here. I’m bored and in need of stimulation. Yonder library offers the best chance of this, so I suggest we go in and have a look.’

‘Really? I was thinking of going into Game and watching the Call of Duty trailer eight times in a row.’

‘No Max! That isn’t good enough. I have to suffer with you destroying my cells when you play those games all the time. I’m asking that just once we do something I like!’