There was just one room left.
He went back upstairs and into Mrs Deverill’s bedroom. Surely he would find money here. He opened the wardrobe. Mrs Deverill’s clothes hovered in the darkness, suspended from wire hangers with her shoes underneath. Matt was about to close the door when he noticed a cardboard box in the back corner. He leant down and opened it. There was something inside. Not money. Photographs.
He took one of them out and found himself looking at a cemetery. The photograph was black and white, taken with a telephoto lens. There was a crowd of people, dressed in the usual sombre clothes, and in the middle of them, a boy who was eight years old. Matt recognized him instantly and felt a surge of horror and sickness. He was looking at a picture of himself.
This was his parents’ funeral.
Six years ago.
But it was impossible. Nobody had taken any photographs. And even if they had, even if a journalist or someone had been there, what was this picture doing here? How had Mrs Deverill got hold of it?
There were two sheets of paper attached to the photograph by a clip. Matt slipped them loose, then turned them round so he could read them. An official police report. Each page was marked CONFIDENTIAL in red letters. In the half-light Matt tried to concentrate on the words:
AND THE WITNESS STATEMENT OF MRS ROSEMARY GREEN IN RELATION TO THIS CASE IS NOT TO BE RELEASED AND WE RECOMMEND A COMPLETE MEDIA BLACKOUT. THE CHILD, MATTHEW FREEMAN, IS ONLY EIGHT YEARS OLD AND HAS DEMONSTRATED PRECOGNITIVE ABILITIES WHICH WOULD SEEM TO BE BEYOND…
Precognitive abilities. Matt didn’t want to put the words into simple English. Nor did he want to read any more of the report. In that second, he made his decision. He thrust the box back into the corner, closed the wardrobe doors and left. In the living room, the portrait watched silently. Asmodeus slammed itself again and again against the sides of the basket, trying to escape. Matt didn’t notice either of them. He threw open the door and ran across the yard.
He hadn’t found any money but he would just have to do without it.
It was definitely time to leave.
It took Matt just a few minutes to cycle up to the crossroads. The night had grown colder and his breath frosted as he paused by the broken sign, taking his bearings. He had a choice of five country lanes, each one cutting through the wood in a different direction. He had just taken one from the farm, and he knew that one of them led to Lesser Malling. That left only three. He chose the middle path and set off, grateful for the moon showing him the way. There was no sound coming from the wood. The electric lights had been turned off. His greatest fear was that he could run into Mrs Deverill, returning from wherever she had been. He listened out for the sound of her Land Rover but there was nothing. He was utterly alone.
Matt tried to concentrate on what he was doing. He didn’t want to look at the woodland but he couldn’t help being aware of it as it pressed in on him on all sides. The trunks of the trees, in their long lines, were silhouetted against the moon. They were like the solid bars of a huge open-air jail. The branches, swaying slightly, cast a thousand shadows over the ground. The pine needles rustled together and almost seemed to be whispering to themselves as he pedalled past.
Matt kept his eyes fixed on the road in front of him. He intended to cycle all night. The discovery of the photograph had made him determined. He was just going to have to chance it in London. Without money. Without anywhere to live. The police would probably find him in the end, but that didn’t matter. They could put him in a secure training centre for as long as they liked… Anything, so long as it didn’t involve Mrs Deverill or Lesser Malling.
Why did she have a photograph of him in her wardrobe? How had she got her hands on a secret police report? And what did the death of his parents mean to her? It was a horrible thought but he wondered if Mrs Deverill had known about him before he had been introduced to her by the LEAF Project. In which case, could she have in some way chosen him? But that would suggest that she had been planning whatever was going on in Lesser Malling for years and years, and that he had always somehow been part of it.
Well, to hell with the whole lot of them, Matt thought. His aunt, his social worker, Mallory, Mrs Deverill… He had been pushed around for too long. It was time to start looking after himself. He might be able to get a job in a kitchen or a bed and breakfast. He looked old for his age. Grimly, he pushed down on the pedals, urging the old bike forward. He checked his watch again. Two o’clock in the morning! He was surprised so much time had passed since he left the farm.
There was a crossroads coming up ahead of him. Matt slowed down, free-wheeling the last few metres. He looked around him. There was a choice of five directions and a broken signpost without any names. It took him half a minute to work out where he was. Somehow, the lane he had chosen had brought him round in a big circle. He was back exactly where he had begun.
Matt was annoyed with himself. He had wasted time and precious energy. Mrs Deverill might have got back to Hive Hall. She would have found the cat under the basket and checked Matt’s room. Perhaps she had already called the police.
Gritting his teeth, Matt chose one of the other lanes and pedalled forward again. He was beginning to wish he had waited until the morning. No. He would have been set to work on the farm and, between them, Noah and Mrs Deverill always had him in their sight. He concentrated on his rhythm, left foot then right foot, listening to the bicycle chain as it groaned and creaked underneath him. The trees rolled by endlessly. About another twenty minutes passed. Matt was strong and he was fit again after his illness. There was a dull ache in his legs but otherwise he was fine. The road turned a corner.
He stopped.
He was back at the crossroads. It was impossible. The lane he had been following had run straight and he must have covered at least two miles. He gazed at the broken signpost with disbelief. It was the same signpost. There could be no doubt of it.
Now he was angry. For this to happen once was unfortunate. But twice! It was stupid. He jerked the bike round and set off down the fifth lane, the one furthest away. He cycled more quickly this time, using his anger to lend himself strength. The night breeze rushed over his shoulders, cooling the sweat on the side of his head. A cloud covered the moon and suddenly everything was very dark. But Matt didn’t slow down. The cloud separated and he lurched to a halt, unable to believe what was happening.
The fifth lane had somehow become the first lane. They had looped him back to the start. The broken signpost stood there, mocking him.
Very well. He set off back the way he had come, passing Hive Hall. This lane had to go somewhere different. He cycled past the gate as quickly as he could. There were no lights visible at the end of the drive, so maybe Mrs Deverill wasn’t back yet after all. The lane climbed steeply uphill – but that was good. A hill was something different. None of the other lanes had gone up or down. Matt no longer really cared where he was going, he just wanted to find a main road. He was fed up with the wood, fed up with country lanes.
He reached the top of the hill and stopped. For the first time he was really afraid. He had been cycling for the best part of an hour yet he still hadn’t found a way out.
He was back at the crossroads where he had begun.
Matt was breathing heavily. His hands were clutching the handlebars so hard that the blood couldn’t reach his fingers. He stopped there for a moment, considering his options. He didn’t really have any. Either the night was playing tricks on him or something was happening that he didn’t understand. But now he knew that he wouldn’t get anywhere, even if he cycled all night.
He would just have to take his chances with Mrs Deverill. He turned the bike round and pedalled slowly back to the farm.
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 mis
take 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 h
ad 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.
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