by Rhys Jones
The Obsidian Pebble
Book 1 of the Artefact Series
Rhys A. Jones
SPENCER HILL PRESS
Copyright © 2013 by Rhys A. Jones
Sale of the paperback edition of this book without its cover is unauthorized.
Spencer Hill Press
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
Contact: Spencer Hill Press, PO Box 247, Contoocook, NH 03229, USA
Please visit our website at www.spencerhillpress.com
First Edition: October 2013.
Rhys A. Jones The Obsidian Pebble: a novel / by Rhys A. Jones – 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary:
A young boy discovers a secret about the house he and his mother inherited from his father, and must work against a ruthless businessman to protect it.
The author acknowledges the copyrighted or trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this fiction: Ask, Bakelite, Bing, Coke, Costa, eBay, Google, iPod, Jaguar, Klingon, National Geographic, Post-it, Rolls Royce, Scrabble, Skype, Spider-man, Taser, Toy Story, Ugg boots, Xbox, Yahoo!
Cover design by Lisa Amowitz
Edited by Vikki Ciaffone
Interior layout by Marie Romero
ISBN 978-1-937053-74-1 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-937053-75-8 (e-book)
Printed in the United States of America
To Rhys Albert,
who taught me how to see the funny side of life.
Obsidian Pebble Lexicon
Maths — math
Phial — vial
Pants — trousers/underwear, or a derogatory term: not good, rubbish, bad.
Bed and Breakfast — Sleeping accommodations for a night and a meal in the morning, provided in guest houses and small hotels, or an establishment that provides these facilities.
Multi-storey car park — a parking garage on several levels.
Hoovering — vacuuming
Artefacts — an object made by a human being, typically one of cultural or historical interest. Also spelled artifact
Chemist shops — drug stores.
Paper round — the route taken when delivering newspapers. The job of delivering newspapers.
Jewellery — jewelery
Pelmet — A narrow border of cloth or wood, fitted across the top of a door or window to conceal the curtain fittings· British informal a very short skirt.
To Twig — to understand or notice or figure out.
In two minds — to have doubts
Goalposts — the posts of a goal.
999 — UK version of 911
Invigilating —to monitor examination candidates.
A doddle — something easily accomplished.
Juddering — to shake rapidly or spasmodically; vibrate conspicuously
Blancmange — a usually sweetened and flavored dessert made from gelatinous or starchy ingredients and milk.
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis.
You will not understand unless you will have first believed.
— St Augustine
Chapter 1
The Halloween Feast
Oz Chambers sat in his bedroom, desperately trying to concentrate on his algebra homework and ignore the tempting bottle of blood on his desk. He dragged his eyes away from the crimson phial and struggled with two maths questions, before trying to get to grips with the essay on “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” he’d been dabbling with all week. He liked English, and especially reading, but that didn’t make the essay any easier.
Oz sighed heavily. It was no good. Today was proving to be a particularly hopeless homework day because he just couldn’t settle. He was simply too excited by the prospect of what was in store that evening.
So instead of writing about chivalry and other knightly stuff, he found himself wondering what it would have been like to go to Cornwall with Ruff, or to Centre Parks with Ellie. Maybe, unlike him, they’d had a rip-roaring half term full of thrills and spills.
Yeah, right.
Oz smiled. He knew exactly what they’d say if he confessed to feeling hard done by and could just imagine their scornful expressions.
Ellie Messenger was Oz’s oldest friend. But unlike Oz, who was an only child, she was always complaining that she never had any time to herself, being the middle one of five. Ruff, too, had an older brother called Gareth (Gassy Gazzer) who was always hogging the Xbox, much to Ruff’s disgust. Oz knew that, given the choice, Ruff and Ellie would much rather have spent the half term holidays at Penwurt with him. They’d think him completely mad to want to be anywhere else. Not that it mattered anymore, because today was Saturday and they were both back from their family breaks and due over at Oz’s in just a few hours’ time. Even better, the three of them were going to be spending the whole night together on this, the last Saturday of half term.
But today was not just the last weekend of the holidays, it was also the thirty-first of October and he, Ellie and Ruff had big plans. Just thinking about it sent a ripple of eager anticipation coursing through his veins. After all, he did happen to live in the oldest house in Seabourne and rumour had it that it was well and truly haunted. And, in a moment of daredevil defiance after watching a very bad episode of Voodoo Mansions on TV, they’d challenged themselves to spend Halloween night sleeping in the spookiest part of Oz’s old house.
He got up, opened a window and inhaled a lungful of the damp autumn air. Instantly, another goose-pimply tingle flowed over him and he smiled as he recalled the pact the three of them had made together. Because on a night like Halloween, in a house like Penwurt, he was certain of only one thing—absolutely anything could happen.
* * *
A quarter of an hour later, Oz gave up completely on the essay, grabbed the bloody phial off the table and went to the bathroom. He had a quick shower, towelled himself dry and positioned himself in front of the steamy bathroom mirror. His uncombed dark hair lay flat and damp on his head and his pale blue eyes narrowed in concentration as he opened the phial and tipped it gingerly towards his lips, letting a few droplets trickle under the corner of his mouth. The blood looked thin and watery and altogether not worth the money he’d paid for it.
Sighing, he wiped it off in disgust and opted instead for a scar under his left eye. He stuck a yellow-headed boil on the side of his nose for luck and went back to his bedroom. He dressed, tidied away his schoolbooks and then went downstairs and tried to watch some TV. By the time Ruff finally pitched up, complete with paint-flecked hair and a battered backpack, it was late afternoon.
“Good week?” Oz asked as Ruff threw himself down on the bed in the spare room.
“Terrific,” Ruff said in a flat tone that implied it had been anything but. As usual, a curtain of curly brown hair hung in spirals in front of Ruff’s long face and partly hid a strong nose, which was, at this moment, wrinkling in disgust. “Wasn’t much of a holiday, to be honest. Dad got the job of painting the chalets at this place on the edge of a moor and it was fuh-freezing. Bet you didn’t know Cornwall was in the Arctic Circle, did you?”
“It isn’t,” Oz said.
“Felt like it. It was buzzard cold, I tell you.”
Oz grinned. Ruff was the only person he knew who used the same word to describe something as brilliant or awful. In fact, Ruff used “buzzard” to describe just about everything.
“Mum’s gone bananas over the food as usual,” Oz explained as they shared a piece of the c
hocolate Ruff had brought for emergencies. “She’s made mini pizzas in the shape of witch’s hats, freaky finger biscuits with almonds for nails and strawberry jam filling so they look like they’ve been chopped off at the knuckle, and Dracula knows what else. I think she’s looking forward to it more than I am.”
“Buzzard,” Ruff said, grinning and showing Oz his chocolate-covered teeth.
“By the way, you haven’t said anything about my massive boil.” Oz stuck his nose out at Ruff.
“Can’t see anything different,” Ruff said, and ducked as an Oz-launched cushion sailed just past his left ear.
“Come on, let’s go outside and grab some atmosphere.”
When they went down to the kitchen to announce that they were going out to watch the little kids trick-or-treating while they waited for Ellie, the table was already laden with platters covered by a motley selection of tea towels.
“Oz, is that you?” A disembodied voice floated out from a mudroom off the kitchen, followed a moment later by a slightly flushed face. Gwen Chambers was the prettiest woman Oz knew, even if he was very biased, and even if there were a few more lines around her eyes than there used to be. Sometimes there’d be dark smudges there, as well. But even though Oz noticed, no one else seemed to and they were appearing much less often these days. A stray blond wisp had escaped the scrunch holding her hair away from her face. It hung fetchingly over one eye. She blew it away with the corner of her mouth and smiled.
“Mum, who is going to eat all this stuff?” Oz asked, laughing.
“Oh, it’ll get used up, you’ll see. I’ve seen Ruff eat, don’t forget,” Mrs. Chambers said before adding, in a voice just loud enough to be heard, “And that’s a sight one does not forget very easily.”
“Mu-um,” Oz chided her.
“Just a little joke.” She beamed at Ruff. “Let’s just say that I’ll be surprised if there’s a lot left over by this time tomorrow.” She fetched a spoon and started stirring a pot on the stove. “If you survive the night, that is.”
Oz gave a wry little shake of his head and they left her to it and went outside to check out the trick-or-treaters. They played “spot the vampire,” but gave up after counting twenty in three minutes. There was a mixture of monsters and ghouls, a couple of Frankensteins, three Spider-Men and a whole coven of witches. They saw only one house that had been egged and floured and passed two with signs on the gates that said, “No Trick or Treating here. Gone OUT.”
After an hour of being pestered by three-foot-high Draculas, they got fed up and headed back to Penwurt. As they stood waiting to cross the street, Ruff frowned.
“How come none of the kids visit your place to ask for treats?”
Grinnning, Oz said, “Three guesses.”
“Don’t tell me they’re scared?”
“Fifty points to Ruffendor,” Oz replied, looking pleased with himself.
“Really?” Ruff looked up at Oz’s house and cooed admiringly. “I’ve got to say it, your place does look buzzard wicked.”
Oz followed his gaze. Much bigger than the Chambers either needed or could really afford, it was like something out of a medieval storybook, with high turrets jutting out of the walls on all four corners. His dad had called these turrets “bartizans”, but despite their weird name Oz thought they were brilliant; the slits in their walls made it look like there might be archers up there on watch, guarding the place from attack.
Oz even liked its colour—red, brown and yellow sandstone blocks, some stained dark from years of car fumes and dirt, others—sheltered from the elements—a deep russet, or a mellow ochre. A low stone wall topped by black wrought-iron fencing marked the border between the house and the pavement. It added to the feeling Oz quite often had that somehow Penwurt was a fortification, a place where, once inside, you were shielded from the outside world and all its dangers.
An iron gate led to a path that crossed the drive to a huge, oak-studded front door. This was set back between two forward-jutting wings in which five large mullioned windows faced the street. Behind the U-shaped front was the oldest part of the house, a long, three-story block with crenellated parapets, three tall, spindly chimneys, and high windows. A tarmac drive ran up one side, whilst the other hid a slightly overgrown, but quite secluded, walled garden.
His dad had talked of plans to renovate the old block and maybe let it as flats, but those plans had long been shelved. Instead, his mother double-locked the inside doors to the old part of the house and checked them every night, both downstairs and up. She made a point of never going through those doors if she could help it. Unlike Oz’s dad, who took every chance he had to explore and for whom the oldest part of the house was a treasure trove of secrets and delights, all it did for his mother was give her the heebie-jeebies. And although post would get to it if the letters had a simple “No 2 Magnus Street” on the envelope, everyone knew the old property by the name written in black iron letters over the front door—Penwurt.
Oz nodded and smiled at last in reply to Ruff’s statement.
“Yeah,” he said, “that’s because it is buzzard wicked.”
* * *
Ellie finally arrived just before eight, much to Oz’s relief, and as soon as she had dumped her stuff in a room next to Mrs. Chambers’, announced that she was “well starving.” In the kitchen, there seemed to be even more food than two hours before.
“I thought you should have the pumpkin soup here, since it’s hot,” Mrs. Chambers said. “Then you can take the rest through.”
“Thanks, Mum,” Oz said as his mother ladled out the steaming broth. He watched her fussing and smiled. She was almost back to her normal, over-the-top self, and he wasn’t going to complain about that.
“This is amazing,” Ellie said, shutting her eyes ecstatically and breathing in the aroma.
“Buzzard,” was Ruff’s contribution, but it emerged through a mouthful of crusty bread and came out as “buhdduh,” which made Oz giggle, but Ellie merely scowled.
Oz had never invited Ellie and Ruff over to stay at Penwurt at the same time. They had, of course, both stayed on separate occasions. Ruff two or three times, and Ellie dozens over the years, but tonight was the first time for them all to be there together, and Oz was hoping that it would work out. But if that little frown of irritation on Ellie’s lips was anything to go by, it did not look all that promising.
“You know that any time you’ve had enough tonight, just call me and I’ll come and get you,” Mrs. Chambers said with feeling as she cut more bread.
“Mum, we’re going to be twenty yards away.” Oz had been through all this with her a hundred times. It had taken ages to convince her to let them stay the night in the old block and now was not the time for her to start having cold feet.
“I know that, but all I’m saying is…”
“We’ll be fine.”
“Oh-kay,” Mrs. Chambers said, making her eyes wide in an “I’ve-got-the-message” kind of way and starting to pull the tea towels off the things she’d made. The reveal immediately triggered a series of astonished oohs and aahs from everyone.
“Is that really brain pâté?” asked Ellie, goggling at a pink mass which looked exactly like it had just come out of someone’s skull. Her honey-coloured hair was tied back and her large, deep blue eyes were currently twice as big as usual from staring at the food.
“Cream cheese, mushroom soup and prawns. Bit garish looking, but it tastes fantastic, even if I say so myself,” Mrs. Chambers explained.
Ruff pointed to a tray covered in golfball-sized objects. “And are those…”
“Marshmallow eyeballs.” Mrs. Chambers nodded and popped one into her mouth. “Delicious.”
Ruff grinned and devoured one, too. Oz watched his face dissolve in rapture.
“Mmmm, see just what you mean.”
“That’s awful,” Ellie said, groaning.
“Eyeful, more like,” Oz said, pushing away his empty soup bowl. “Come on, grab a sleeping bag and let’s
go through.”
Oz went to a door to the left of the stone stairwell, one that was usually kept locked.
But not tonight.
They crossed a passageway to another door, which opened out into a large, shabby-looking entrance hall with a massive double staircase leading up to the floor above. The place smelled musty and unused and their voices echoed into the chilly emptiness when they spoke.
“This atrium used to be the orphanage dining room,” Oz announced.
“Is this where we’re having the feast?” Ellie asked, sounding impressed.
“No. I thought we’d use the old dorm. It’s really spooky in there.”
“I’ve always wanted to spend a Halloween night in a real haunted house,” Ruff said, rubbing his hands together. “It’s going to be so spooky.”
“Don’t build your hopes up,” Ellie said. “Nine times out of ten these things end up being rubbish.”
“Nothing like a bit of enthusiasm, is there?” Ruff tutted. “And anyway, the place is a legend. It was even in Hidden Haunted Houses of Great Britain.”
“I didn’t know that,” Oz said.
“Ye-ah, it was in the reference section in Waterstone’s the other day. It said something like… ‘an old orphanage on Magnus Street in Seabourne now occupies the site of the Bunthorpe Encounter. One of the most famous supernatural occurrences in the country.’”
“Cool,” Oz said, pleased. “I’ll Google it later.”
“Looks more real in a book, though, somehow, don’t you think?” Ellie said.
Oz knew what she meant. He made a mental note to look it up next time he was in the bookshop. They walked up the stairs and passed a peculiar-looking, wrought-iron chandelier bearing a huge bird of prey with wings unfurled at its centre.
“That is so weirdly mingin’,” Ruff said. He kept glancing at it uneasily as he climbed and Oz resisted the urge to say “buzzard” with the utmost difficulty.
On the first floor the doors had all been boarded up except for one, which, though not boarded, was padlocked. Oz took them up one more flight to the second floor, where another stairway ran up to their left to another door.