Anthony Horowitz: Necropolis

What is it?” she asked.

“St Meredith’s,” Amanda said. “What about it?”

It took Amanda a few moments to remember. “There was a murder there. About six months ago.”

“You’re not being serious.”

“I am.”

If it had been anyone else, Scarlett might not have believed them. But she knew that Amanda had a special interest in murder. She loved reading Agatha Christie and she was always watching whodunnits on TV. “So who got murdered?” she asked.

“I can’t remember,” Amanda said. “It was some guy. A librarian, I think. He was stabbed.”

Scarlett wasn’t sure it sounded very likely and when the coach stopped off at St Paul’s, she went over to Miss Chaplin. To her surprise, the teacher didn’t even hesitate. “Oh yes,” she said cheerfully. “There was an incident there this summer. A man was attacked by a down-and-out. I’m not sure the police ever caught anyone, but it all happened a long time ago. It doesn’t bother you, does it, Scarlett?”

“No,” Scarlett said. “Of course not.”

But that wasn’t quite true. It did secretly worry her, even if she wasn’t sure why. She had a sense of foreboding which only grew worse the closer they got to the church.

The art teacher had chosen this part of London for a reason. It was a patchwork of old and new, with great gaps where whole buildings and perhaps even streets had been taken out by the Germans. Most of the shops were shabby and depressing, with plastic signs and dirty windows full of products which people might need but which they couldn’t possibly want: vacuum cleaners, dog food, one hundred items at less than a pound. There was an ugly car park towering high over the buildings, but it was hard to imagine anyone stopping here. The traffic rumbled past in four lanes, anxious to be on its way.

But even so there were a few clues as to what the area might once have been like. A cobbled alleyway, a gas lamp, a red telephone box, a house with pillars and iron railings. The London of seventy years ago. That was what Miss Chaplin had brought them all to find.

They turned into Moore Street. It was a dead end, narrow and full of puddles and pot-holes. A pub stood on one side, opposite a launderette that had shut down. St Meredith’s was at the bottom, a solid, red-brick church that looked far too big to have been built in this part of town. The war damage was obvious at once. The steeple had been added quite recently. It wasn’t even the same colour as the rest of the building and didn’t quite match the huge oak doors or the windows with their heavy stone frames.

Scarlett felt even more uneasy once they were inside. She jumped as the door boomed shut behind her, cutting out the London traffic, much of the light – indeed, any sense that they were in a modern city at all. The interior of the church stretched into the distance to the silver cross, high up on the altar, caught in a single shaft of dusty light. Otherwise, the stained glass windows held the sun back, the different colours blurring together. Hundreds of candles flickered uselessly in iron holders. She could make out little side-chapels, built into the walls. Even without remembering the murder that had happened there, St Meredith’s didn’t strike her as a particularly holy place. It was simply creepy.

But nobody else seemed to share her feelings. The other girls had taken out their sketch books and were sitting in the pews, chatting to each other and drawing what they had seen outside. Miss Chaplin was examining the pulpit – a carving of an eagle. Presumably, most Londoners chose not to pray at two o’clock in the afternoon. They had the place to themselves.

Scarlett looked for Amanda, but her friend was talking to another girl on the other side of the transept so she sat down on her own and opened her pad. She needed to put the murder out of her mind. Instead, she thought about the men and women who had sheltered here during the Blitz. Had they really believed that St Meredith’s had some sort of magical power to avoid being hit, that they would be safer here than in a cellar or a Tube station? She thought about them sitting there with their fingers crossed while the Luftwaffe roared overhead. Maybe that was what she would draw.

She shivered. She was wearing a coat but it was very cold inside the church. In fact it felt colder inside than out. A movement caught her eye. A line of candles had flickered, all the flames bending together, caught in a sudden breeze. Had someone just come in? No. The door was still shut. Nobody could have opened or closed it without being heard.

A boy walked past. At first, Scarlett barely registered him. He was in the shadows at the side of the church, between the columns and the side-chapels, moving towards the altar. He made absolutely no sound. Even his feet against the marble floor were silent. He could have been floating. She turned to follow him as he went and just for a second his face was illuminated by a naked bulb, hanging on a wire.

She knew him.

For a moment, she was confused as she tried to think where she had seen him before. And then suddenly she remembered. It was crazy. It couldn’t be possible. But at the same time there could be no doubt.

It was the boy from her dreams, one of the four she had seen walking together in that grey desert. She even knew his name.

It was Matt.

In a normal dream, Scarlett wouldn’t see people’s faces – or if she did, she would forget them when she woke up. But she had experienced this dream again and again over a period of two years. She’d learned to recognize Matt and the others almost as soon as she was asleep and that was why she knew him now. Short, dark hair. Broad shoulders. Pale skin and eyes that were an intense blue. He was about her age although there was something about him that seemed older. Maybe it was just the way he walked, the sense of purpose. He walked like someone in trouble.

What was he doing here? How had he even got in? Scarlett turned to a girl who was sitting close to her, drawing a major explosion from the look of the scribble on her pad.

“Did you see him?” she asked.

“Who?”

“That boy who just went past.”

The other girl looked around her. “What boy?”

Scarlett turned back. The boy had disappeared from sight. For a moment, she was thrown. Had she imagined him? But then she saw him again, some distance away. He had stopped in front of a door. He seemed to hesitate, then turned the handle and went through. The door closed behind him.

She followed him. She had made the decision without even thinking about it. She just put down her sketch book, got up and went after him. It was when she reached the door that she asked herself what she was doing, chasing after someone she had never met, someone who might not even exist. Suppose she ran into him? What was she going to say? “Hi, I’m Scarlett and I’ve been dreaming about you. Fancy a Big Mac?” He’d think she was mad.

The door he had passed through was in the outer wall underneath a stained glass window that was so dark and grimy that the picture was lost. Scarlett guessed it must lead out into the street, perhaps into the cemetery if the church had one. There was something strange about it. The door was very small, out of proportion with the rest of St Meredith’s. There was a symbol carved into the wooden surface: a five-pointed star.

She hesitated. The girls weren’t supposed to leave the church. On the other hand, she wouldn’t exactly be going far. If there was no sign of the boy on the other side, she could simply come back in again. The door had an iron ring for a handle. She turned it and went through.

To her surprise, she didn’t find herself outside in the street. Instead, she was standing in a wide, brightly lit corridor. There were flaming torches slanting out of iron brackets set in the walls, the fire leaping up towards the ceiling which was high and vaulted. The corridor had no decoration of any kind and it seemed both old and new at the same time, the plasterwork crumbling to reveal the brickwork underneath. It had to be some sort of cloister – somewhere the priests went to be on their own. But the corridor was nothing like the rest of St Meredith’s. It was a different colour. It was the wrong size and shape.