MATT'S STORY

MATT'S STORY

Richard Cole lived in the very centre of York. He had rented a flat above a souvenir shop in one of the city’s most famous medieval streets: a pretty, cobbled passageway called The Shambles. The flat was arranged over three floors, a series of oddly shaped rooms piled on top of each other like children’s building bricks. A kitchen and a living room took up the first floor. Then, above, there was a bedroom and a shower. And finally a narrow flight of steps twisted round to a spare room built into the roof.

The place was in a shambles itself. All the furniture looked as if it had been rescued from a skip– as indeed much of it had. There were old clothes everywhere, unwashed plates piled high in the sink, CDs, books, magazines and half-written articles shuffled together in a way that would surely make it impossible to find anything. The walls were covered with posters, mainly old American films. Richard’s laptop was on the kitchen table, next to a box of Weetabix, a half-eaten can of baked beans with the fork still sticking out, and two pieces of very cold toast.

Matt had felt awkward as they climbed to the first floor and it was worse now that he was in the flat itself. He was very aware that he stank. Richard left him in the kitchen and came back with a large towel.

“We can talk later,” he said. “Right now you need a shower. And we’ll have to get rid of those clothes.”

“Have you got a washing machine?”

“Are you kidding? The washing machine hasn’t been built that could handle all that muck. They can go in the bin and we’ll buy you some more tomorrow. I’ll find you some of mine to wear in the meantime.” Richard pointed upstairs. “You’ll find the shower easily enough. Are you hungry?”

“Starving.”

“Well there’s no food in the house. I’ll go out and get something while you get changed.”

Half an hour later the two of them were sitting in the living room, surrounded by Chinese food from the takeaway at the end of the street. Matt had spent twenty minutes in the shower, only coming out when he had washed away all traces of the bog. He was now wearing an old York University T-shirt with a towel wrapped round his waist and nothing on his feet. He hadn’t been aware how hungry he was until he had begun eating. Now he was feeling stuffed.

“Nice place,” he said, looking around.

“I was lucky to get it,” Richard said. “It’s very cheap. Not that I’m here very much. I normally eat at the pub…”

“Do you live on your own?”

“I had a girlfriend until about a week ago. Unfortunately she took a liking to classical music.”

“What’s so bad about that?”

“Now she’s going out with an opera singer.” Richard went to the fridge and took out a can of beer. “You want anything to drink?”

“I’m all right.” There was a brief silence while Richard sat down again. Matt knew that they both had a lot to explain. “How did you find me tonight?” he asked.

Richard shrugged.“There’s not much to tell. After you left the office, I thought about some of the things you’d said. It all sounded pretty stupid, to tell the truth. But there were parts of your story… Well, I couldn’t get them out of my head. And I had nothing else to do.”

“So you went to look at Omega One?”

“Let’s just say I happened to be passing.”

“You knew where it was?”

Richard nodded.“The man who built it still lives in York. He was a scientific adviser to the government back in the sixties but he’s retired now. Name of Michael Marsh.”

“Did you meet him?”

“About six months ago. He got a knighthood from the Queen and I had to do a story about him. He’s an unbelievably boring man. Lives in a big house near the river. He collects matchbox labels. If the worst comes to the worst, I may give him a call and we can go and see him. He may be able to help.”

“So you decided to visit Omega One in the middle of the night…”

“It was on the way home from the pub. What’s the big deal? I was near by so I thought I’d drive past. And then I heard someone shouting for help and that was how I found you.”

“That’s not possible.” Matt thought back. “I didn’t shout for help.”

“I heard you.”

“I may have yelled once. But I didn’t even hear your car. You were suddenly just there.”

“Maybe you shouted without realizing it, Matt. I mean, you were panicking. You were probably out of your mind. I know I would have been.”

“How fast were you driving?”

“About fifty. I don’t know.”

“Were the car windows open?”

“No.”

“Then even if I had shouted, how could you have heard my voice? It’s not possible.”

“You have a point,” Richard admitted. “But then how do you explain that I swerved off the road in exactly the right place and came straight to you?”

“I can’t,” Matt said, in a quiet voice.

“Look, I heard someone. All right? I pulled over and there you were, up to your neck in-” He broke off. “You’re just lucky I hadn’t decided to stay for another pint. But now you’re here, maybe you should tell me a bit more about yourself.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t even know your full name. You say your parents are dead but you never told me how you ended up living with this woman… Mrs Deverill.” Matt looked away. “You might as well tell me now,” Richard went on. “It might help me work out what we’re going to do.”

“Are you going to put me in the newspaper?”

“That’s the general idea.”

Matt shook his head.“You can forget it. I don’t want anyone writing about me. I don’t want anyone to know about my life.”

“I think you’re forgetting something, Matt. You were the one who came to me. You told me you had a story…”

“I needed your help.”

“Well, maybe we need each other.”

“I don’t want to be in the papers.”

“Then you shouldn’t be in my flat.” Richard put down his can of beer. “All right,” he said. “That’s not fair. I’m not going to throw you out. Not tonight, anyway. But to be honest with you, I don’t really need a fourteen-year-old in my life. So I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Tellme your story and I promise I won’t publish it until you say.

OK?”

“That’ll never happen,” Matt replied. But he nodded. “All right.”

Richard reached for a notebook and a pen, just as he had when they first met at the newspaper office. He sat, waiting.

“I don’t really know where to start,” Matt said. “But since you asked, my full name is Matthew Freeman. I was sent to stay with Mrs Deverill because of something called the LEAF Project.”

“The LEAF Project?” Richard had heard the name before. “Isn’t that one of the government’s big ideas? Some sort of crazy scheme for dealing with juvenile offenders?”

“That’s right. That’s what I am. I was arrested for breaking into a warehouse. A man got stabbed.”

“You stabbed him?”

“No. But I was there when it happened. I was to blame.” Matt paused. “Maybe now you won’t be so keen to help me.”

“Why not? I don’t give a damn what you’ve done. I just want to know why you did it.” Richard sighed. “Why don’t you try starting at the beginning? You may find it easier.”

“All right.” Matt didn’t want to do this. His social worker, Jill Hughes, had always tried to make him talk about himself. “You have to take responsibility for who you are.” That was one of the things she had always said. But the more she had pressed him, the more reluctant he had become,until their relationship had dissolved into a hostile silence. And now this journalist was asking him to do the same. Had he finally found an adult he could really trust? Matt hoped so, but he wasn’t sure.

“I don’t remember very much about my parents,” Matt said. “I thought I would. They only died six years ago, but bit by bit they’ve just sort of… faded away. There’s not much of them left.

“I think we were happy. We lived in a pretty ordinary sort of street in Dulwich. Do you know it? It’s in south London. My dad was a doctor. I don’t think my mum worked. We had a nice house, so I suppose there was a bit of money around. But we weren’t that rich. The last time my parents tookme on holiday we went camping in France. I must have been about seven then.”

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“No. There were just the three of us. And there wasn’t much family. My dad was actually born in New Zealand and most of his family’s still over there. My mum had a half-sister called Gwenda who lived in Ipswich. She visited us a few times but they didn’t get on. Gwenda was nothing like her.When I was small, I used to think she was really boring. I never dreamt…”

Matt drew a breath.

“Anyway, my mum and dad were killed. They were driving to a wedding in Oxford, which was about two hours away. I was meant to go too, but at the last minute I didn’t feel well so I stayed behind with a neighbour.”

Matt stopped. Richard knew that he wasn’t telling the whole truth about the wedding. He could see it. But he didn’t interrupt.

“There was an accident,” Matt continued. “A tyre burst while they were crossing a bridge. My dad lost control of the car and they went over the side and into the river. They were drowned.” Matt paused. “The first thing I knew about it was when the police came to the house. I was only eight years old but I knew straight away.

“After that it’s all quite jumbled. I spent quite a bit of time – it must have been three or four weeks – living in a sort of hostel. Everyone was trying to help but there was nothing anyone could do. The real trouble was that there was nobody to look after me. They tried to get in touch with my dad’s family out in New Zealand but nobody wanted to know.

“And then my mum’s one relation turned up. Gwenda Davis, from Ipswich. She was sort of my aunt. We met and she took me out for lunch. We went to a McDonald’s. I remember that because my dad never let me eat fast food. He used to say it was the worst thing anyone could eat. Anyway, she bought me a burger and chips, and there we were, sitting in the middle of the noise and the plastic tables, with a big clown looking down at us, and she asked me if I wanted to move in with her. I said I didn’t. But in the end what I wanted didn’t make any difference because it had all been decided already. I moved in with her” – he paused – “and Brian.”

Matt looked Richard straight in the eyes.“Promise me you won’t write about this,” he said.

“I’ve already said. I won’t write about anything unless you let me.”

“I won’t let you. I don’t want people to know.”

“Go on, Matt…”

“Gwenda’s house was really gross. It was terraced and it was half falling down and it had a tiny garden that was full of bottles. Brian was a milkman. The whole place smelled. All the pipes leaked, so the walls were damp and half the lights never worked. Gwenda and Brian had no money. At least,they had no money until I came along. But that’s the point, you see. My mum and dad had left everything they owned to me, and Gwenda got control of the money. And of course she spent it. The whole lot.”

Matt stopped. Richard could see him looking back into his own past. The hurt was right there, in his eyes.

“The money ran out pretty fast,” he went on. “The two of them spent it on cars and holidays and that sort of thing. And when it was gone, that was when they turned nasty. Brian especially. He said it would have been better if I’d never come in the first place. He started finding fault with everything I did. He’d yell at me and I’d yell back. And then he started bashing me around a bit too. He was always careful not to leave bruises. Not ones that showed.

“And then I met Kelvin, who lived down the road from me, and he became my mate. Kelvin was always in trouble at school. He had a brother who was in prison and people were scared of him. But at least he was on my side – or that’s what I thought. It felt good having him around.

“But in the end he only made things worse. I started missing a lot of school and even the teachers who’d been trying to help gave up on me. We used to go shoplifting together and of course we got caught, and that was when I had to start seeing a social worker. We used to take things from supermarkets. It wasn’t even things we needed. We just got a buzz out of doing it. Kelvin used to like scratching new cars. He’d run his key ring up the paintwork… just for the hell of it. We did all sorts of stuff together. And then one day we broke into this warehouse to nick some DVDs and we werecaught by a security guard. It was Kelvin who stabbed him, but it was my fault as much as his. I shouldn’t have gone there. I shouldn’t have been there. I just wish I’d tried to talk him out of it.”

Matt rubbed his eyes.

“Anyway, you know the rest. I got arrested and I thought I’d be sent to prison, but in the end I didn’t even have to go to court. They sent me to Lesser Malling as part of this thing called the LEAF Project. Liberty and Education… that was what it’s meant to stand for. But since I arrivedit’s been more like Lunatics and Evil Freaks. I’ve already told you about Mrs Deverill and all the rest of it, and you didn’t believe me. I suppose that’s fair enough. I wouldn’t have believed any of it either. Except I’ve had to live it. And what I told you, at the paper – it’s alltrue.”

“Why do you think she wants you?” Richard asked.

“I don’t know. I haven’t got the faintest idea. But I think I know what she is. I think I know what they all are.”

“And what’s that?”

“You’ll laugh at me.”

“No, I won’t.”

“I think they’re witches.”

Richard laughed.

“You saw the dogs!” Matt protested. “You think they came out of Battersea Dogs’ Home? I saw how she made them. She sprinkled some sort of powder on the flames and they just appeared. It was like… magic!”

“It was an illusion,” Richard said.

“Richard, this wasn’t like something on TV. There wasn’t a girl there in spangly sequins. I saw the dogs. They came out of the fire. And what about this?”

Matt was still wearing the stone talisman. He tore it off and threw it on to the table. The golden key lay face up in the light.

Richard looked at it.“Yeah. All right,” he said. “Witches! Yorkshire used to be full of them, it’s true. But that was five hundred years ago.”

“I know. She’s got a picture in her house… some sort of ancestor. And Mrs Deverill said she got burned. Maybe she was burned as a witch!” Matt thought for a moment. “If there were witches five hundred years ago, why can’t there be witches now?”

“Because we’ve grown up. We don’t believe in witches any more.”

“I don’t believe in witches. But the cat was killed and it came back. Tom Burgess died but I heard his voice on the phone. And there was a detective from Ipswich…”

“What?”

“His name was Mallory. He said he was going to help me. He argued with Mrs Deverill. And the next thing I knew, he was dead too. He was killed on the motorway.”

There was a brief silence. Then Richard spoke again.

“They’re not witches, Matt,” he said. “They may think they’re witches. They may act like witches. They might have made you believe they’re witches. But whatever’s going on at Lesser Malling, it’s real. It’s something to do with the power station. And that’s science, not magic.”

“What about the dogs?”

“Genetically modified. Mutants. I don’t know. Maybe they’d been exposed to some sort of radiation.”

“So you don’t believe in magic?”

“I enjoy Harry Potter, like everyone else. But do I believe in it? No.”

Matt stood up.“I’m tired,” he said. “I want to go to bed.”

Richard nodded.“You can have the spare room upstairs.”

The spare room was built into the roof of the house. It was filled with junk. Richard used it as a dumping ground for anything he no longer needed. Matt was lying on a sofa bed, tucked under a duvet and feeling warm and drowsy. He was gazing up at the ceiling that slanted over his head, when there was a knock at the door and Richard came in.

“I just wanted to check you were all right,” he said.

“I’m fine.” Matt turned on to his side to face him. “What are you going to do?” he asked. “How long can I stay here?”

“I don’t know. A couple of days, maybe.” Matt’s face fell. “I told you, Matt. You can’t stay with me. It’s just not right. I don’t even know you. But I do want to help you.” Richard sighed. “I must be crazy, because the last two people who tried to help seem to have ended up dead – and, personally, I had other plans. But at least we can take a look into Omega One. I mean, forget witches and all that stuff. The old power station seems to be at the heart of whatever it is that’s going on.”

“You said you knew the man who built it.”

“I’ll call him tomorrow. All right?”

Matt nodded.

“Goodnight then.” Richard turned to go.

“Wait!” Matt said. “There was something I didn’t tell you.”

Richard hovered once again in the doorway.

“You said you wanted to know who I am, so you might as well know all of it. My mum always used to say I was strange. All my life, I’ve been involved in a lot of strange things. Mrs Deverill and all the rest of it… I sometimes think it was meant to happen. I’m meant to be here. I don’t know why.

“The night before my mum and dad were killed, I had a bad dream. I often had dreams but this was something else. I saw the bridge. I saw the tyre burst. I even saw the water, flooding in through the windows, filling the car. It was like I was in the car with them and it was horrible. I couldn’tbreathe.” He stopped. He had never told anyone this before. “And when I woke up the next morning, I knew they would never get to the wedding. I knew the accident was going to happen exactly the way it did…”

Matt hesitated. This was the difficult part.

“My dad was like you. He didn’t believe in stuff like witches and magic, and things he couldn’t understand. I suppose it was because he was a doctor. And I knew that if I told him about my dream, he’d just get angry. It had happened before… once or twice, when I was very young. Dad would say I was just being silly, letting my imagination run away with me. And maybe he was right. That’s what I told myself. It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream. Everything’s going to be all right. Don’t get into trouble with Dad…

“So I said nothing.

“But I was too scared to get in the car. I pretended I was ill. I threw a tantrum and made them leave me with Mrs Green, next door. I was only young. I didn’t know what was going on. I still don’t. But I know that I’m different. Sometimes I seem to be able to do things that are impossible. You won’t believe me, Richard. But I can break a jug just by looking at it. I can do it! I have done it! I know when something bad is going to happen before it does. When I was in the warehouse, I knew the guard was there. And tonight! Maybe I managed to call to you – when I was in the bog – without opening my mouth. I don’t know. It’s like I’ve got some sort of power but I can’t control it. It just flickers on and off by itself.”

Matt yawned. Suddenly he was exhausted. He’d had enough.

“I told Mrs Green,” he said. “I told her that my mum and dad weren’t going to come back from the wedding. I told her about the tyre. I even knew about the bridge and the river underneath. She got very angry with me. She didn’t want to hear all this stuff. And what was she meant to do? Shecouldn’t ring my parents and tell them not to go to the wedding. In the end, she told me to go out and play in the garden. She didn’t want to hear any more.

“I was still out in the garden when the police arrived. And I’ll never forget the look on her face. She was horrified. More than that. She was actually sick. And it wasn’t just because of what had happened to my parents. She was horrified and sick because of me.

“And the thing is, Richard, I didn’t believe in magic either. I didn’t believe in myself. And almost every hour of every day since then, I’ve asked myself why I didn’t try to warn my mum and dad. I could have saved their lives. But I said nothing. I just let them drive off by themselves. Every day I’ve woken up knowing that I’m to blame. It’s my fault they’re no longer here.”

Matt turned over and lay still.

Richard looked at the sleeping boy for a long time. Then he turned out the lights and crept quietly downstairs.

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