Anthony Horowitz - Necropolis

“It’s got to be her,” Matt said.

Richard nodded. “She was in St Meredith’s. She must have gone through the same door that you went through. God knows what happened to her. She was missing for eighteen hours.”

“Her name is Scarlett.”

“Scar.” Richard nodded again.

Matt thought for a moment, still clutching the article. He had spent the past four months searching for Scarlett in the only way that he could – through his dreams. Night after night he had visited the strange dream world that had become so familiar to him. It had helped him in the past. He was certain that she had to be there somewhere. Perhaps it would lead him to her, helping him again.

And now, quite unexpectedly, she had turned up in the real world. There could be no doubt that this was her, the fifth of the Five. And she was in England, in London! A student at an expensive private school.

“We have to go to her,” Matt said. “We must leave at once.”

“I’m checking out tickets now.”

Matt turned the photograph round in the light, tilting it towards himself. “Scar,” he muttered. “Now we know where she is.”

“That’s right,” Richard said. He looked grave. “But the Old Ones will know it too.”

I never asked for any of this. I never wanted to be part of it. And even now, I don’t understand exactly what is happening or why it had to be me.

I hoped that writing this diary might help. It was Richard’s idea, to put it all down on paper. But it hasn’t worked out the way I hoped. The more I think about my life, the more I write about it, the more confused it all becomes.

Sometimes I try to go back to where it all began but I’m not sure any more where that was. Was it the day my parents died? Or did it start in Ipswich, the evening I decided to break into a warehouse with my best friend… who was actually anything but? Maybe the decision had already been made the day I was born. Matthew Freeman. You will not go to school like other kids. You won’t play football and take your A-levels and have a career. You are here for another reason. You can argue if you like, but that’s just the way it’s got to be.

I think a lot about my parents even though sometimes it’s hard to see their faces, and their voices have long since faded out. My dad was a doctor, a GP with a practice round the corner from the house. I can just about remember a man with a beard and gold-rimmed glasses. He was very political. We were recycling stuff long before it was fashionable and he used to get annoyed about the National Health Service – too many managers, too much red tape. At the same time, he used to laugh a lot. He read to me at night… Roald Dahl… The Twits was one of his favourites. And there was a comedy show on TV that he never missed. It was on Sunday night but I’ve forgotten its name.

My mum was a lot smaller than him. She was always on a diet, although I don’t think she really needed to lose weight. I suppose it didn’t help that she was a great cook. She used to make her own bread and cakes and around September she’d set up a production line for Christmas puddings which she’d flog off for charity. Sometimes she talked about going back to work, but she liked to be there when I got back from school. That was one of her rules. She wouldn’t let me come home to an empty house.

I was only eight years old when they died and there’s so much about them I never knew. I guess they were happy together. Whenever I think back, the sun always seems to be shining which must mean something. I can still see our house and our garden with a big rose bush sprawling over the lawn. Sometimes I can even smell the flowers.

Mark and Kate Freeman. Those were their names. They died in a car accident on their way to a wedding and the thing is, I knew it was going to happen. I dreamed that their car was going to come off a bridge and into a river and I woke up knowing that they were both going to die. But I didn’t tell them. I knew my dad would never have believed me. So I pretended I was sick. I cried and kicked my heels. I let them go but I made them leave me behind.

I could have saved them. I tell myself that over and over again. Maybe my dad wouldn’t have believed me. Maybe he would have insisted on going, no matter what I said. But I could have poured paint over the car or something. I could even have set fire to it. There were all sorts of ways that I could have made it impossible for them to leave the house.

But I was too scared. I had a power and I knew that it made me different from everyone else and that was the last thing I wanted to be. Freakshow Matt… not me, thanks. So I said nothing. I stayed back and watched them go and since then I’ve seen the car pull away a thousand times and I’ve yelled at my eight-year-old self to do something and I’ve hated myself for being so stupid. If I could go back in time, that’s where I would start because that’s where it all went wrong.

After that, things happened very quickly. I was fostered by a woman called Gwenda Davis who was related in some way to my mother – her half-sister or something. For the next six years, I lived with her and her partner, Brian, in a terraced house in Ipswich. I hated both of them. Gwenda was shallow and self-centred but Brian was worse. They had what I think is called an abusive relationship which means that he used to beat her around. He hit me too. I was scared of him – I admit it. Sometimes I would see him looking at me in the same way and I would make sure my bedroom door was locked at night.

And yet, here’s something strange. I might as well admit it. In a way, I was almost happy in Ipswich. Sometimes I thought of it as a punishment for what I’d done – or hadn’t done – and part of me figured that I deserved it. I was resigned to my life there. I knew it was never going to get any better and at least I was able to create an identity for myself. I could be anyone I wanted to be.

I bunked off school. I was never going to pass any exams so what did I care? I stole stuff from local shops. I started smoking when I was twelve. My friend, Kelvin, bought me my first packet of Marlboro Lights – although of course he made me pay him back twice what they’d cost. I never took drugs. But if I’d stayed with him much longer I probably would have. I’d have ended up like one of those kids you read about in the newspapers, dead from an overdose, a body next to a railway line. Nobody would have cared, not even me. That was just the way it would have been.

But then along came Jayne Deverill and suddenly everything changed because it turned out she was a witch. I know how crazy that sounds. I can’t believe I just wrote it. But she wasn’t a witch like in a pantomime. I mean, she didn’t have a long nose and a pointy hat or anything like that. She was the real thing: evil, cruel and just a little bit mad. She and her friends had been watching me, waiting for me to fall into their hands because they needed me to help them unlock a mysterious gate hidden in a wood in Yorkshire. And it seemed that, after all, I wasn’t just some loser with a criminal record who’d got his parents killed. I was one of the Five. A Gatekeeper. The hero of a story that had begun ten thousand years before I was born.

How did I feel about that? How do I feel about it now?

I have no choice. I am trapped in this and will have to stick with it until the bitter end. And I do think the end will be a hard one. The forces we’re up against – the Old Ones and their allies around the world – are too huge. They are like a nightmare plague, spreading everywhere, killing everything they touch. I have powers. I’ve accepted that now and recently I’ve learned how to use them. But I am still only fifteen years old – I had my birthday out here in Nazca – and when I think about the things that are being asked of me, I am scared.