Anthony Horowitz - Evil Star

Matt Freeman knows now that he is no ordinary fourteen-year-old. He has inner powers: the ability to move objects or to wreak havoc simply by using his mind. But these powers are still latent, beyond his control.

They were tested once in Raven’s Gate. Matt found himself chosen as a blood sacrifice to open a magic portal between two dimensions. Ancient creatures of unimaginable evil, the Old Ones, were attempting to re-enter the world… to destroy it. At the very last minute, Matt was able to stop them.

But the fight is not over. Five teenagers stand between humanity and chaos. They are the Gatekeepers – and Matt is one of them. Only when they have found each other will the world be safe.

And a second gate is about to open…

The old man’s eyes burned red, reflecting the last flames of the fire. The sun had already begun to set and the shadows were closing in. Far away a huge bird – a condor – wheeled around in a lazy circle before plunging back down to earth. Then everything was still. The night was just a breath away.

“He will come,” the old man said. He spoke in a strange language, and one known to very few people in the world. “We have no need to send for him. He will come anyway.”

He got to his feet, supporting himself on a walking-stick carved from the branch of a tree, and made his way to the edge of the stone terrace where he had been sitting. From here he could look down into a canyon that seemed to fall away for ever, a fault line in the planet that had occurred perhaps a million years ago. For a time he was silent. There were a dozen men behind him, waiting for him to speak. None of them moved. Not one of them dared interrupt him while he stood there deep in thought.

At last he turned back.

“The boy is on the other side of the world,” he said. “He lives in England.”

One of the men stirred uneasily. He knew it was wrong to ask questions but he couldn’t stop himself. “Are we just going to wait for him?” he demanded. “We have so little time. And even if he does come, how can he help us? A child!”

“You don’t understand, Atoc,” the old man replied. If he was angry, he didn’t show it. He knew that Atoc was only twenty years old, barely more than a child himself, at least in his old mind. “The boy has power. He still has no idea who he is or how strong he has become. He will come here and he will arrive in time. His power will bring him to us.”

“Who is this boy?” someone else asked.

The old man looked again at the sun. It seemed to be sitting, perfectly balanced, on the highest mountain peak. The mountain was called Mandango… the Sleeping God.

“His name is Matthew Freeman,” he said. “He is the first of the Five.”

Anthony Horowitz

Evil Star

There was something wrong about the house in Eastfield Terrace. Something unpleasant.

All the houses in the street were more or less identical: redbrick, Victorian, with two bedrooms on the first floor and a bay window on either the left or the right of the front door. Some had satellite dishes. Some had window boxes filled with brightly coloured flowers. But looking down from the top of the hill at the terrace curving round St Patrick’s church on its way to the Esso garage and All-Nite store, one house stood out immediately. Number twenty-seven no longer belonged there. It was as if it had caught some sort of disease and needed to be taken away.

The front garden was full of junk, and as usual the wheelie bin beside the gate was overflowing, surrounded by black garbage bags that the owners had been unable to stuff inside. This wasn’t uncommon in Eastfield Terrace. Nor was it particularly strange that the curtains were permanently drawn across the front windows and, as far as anyone could tell, the lights were never turned on. But the house smelled. For weeks now there had been a rotten, sewagey smell that had seemed at first to be coming from a blocked pipe but that had rapidly got worse until people had begun to cross the street to avoid it. And whatever was causing it seemed to be affecting the entire place. The grass on the front lawn was beginning to die. The flowers had wilted and then been choked up by weeds. The colour seemed to be draining out of the very bricks.

The neighbours had tried to complain. They had knocked on the front door, but nobody had come. They had telephoned, but nobody had answered. Finally, they had called the borough council at the Ipswich Civic Centre but of course it would be weeks before any action was taken. The house wasn’t empty. That much they knew. They had occasionally seen the owner, Gwenda Davis, pacing back and forth behind the net curtains. Once – more than a week ago – she had been seen scurrying home from the shops. And there was one other piece of evidence that there was still life at number twenty-seven: every evening the television was turned on.

Gwenda Davis was well known in the street.

She had lived there for much of her adult life, first on her own and then with her partner, Brian Conran, who worked occasionally as a milkman. But what had really set the neighbours talking was the time, six years ago, when she had inexplicably adopted an eight-year-old boy and brought him home to live with her. Everyone agreed that she and Brian were not exactly the ideal parents. He drank. The two of them argued. And according to local gossip, they hardly knew the boy, whose own parents had died in a car accident.

So nobody was very surprised when the whole thing went wrong. It wasn’t really the boy’s fault. Matthew Freeman had been a nice enough child – everyone agreed – but almost from the moment he arrived he had been in trouble. He had started missing school. He’d been hanging out with the wrong company. He became known for a whole range of petty crimes, and inevitably the police had been involved. And finally there had been that robbery at a local warehouse, just round the corner from Ipswich station. A security guard had nearly died and Matthew had been dragged out with blood on his hands. After that, he’d been sent away on some sort of fostering programme. He had a new mother, somewhere in Yorkshire. And good riddance to bad rubbish. That was the general view.

All this had happened about three months ago. Since then, Gwenda had gradually disappeared from sight. And as for Brian, no one had seen him for weeks. The house had become more and more neglected. Everyone agreed that soon something would have to be done.

Now it was half past seven one evening in the first week of June. The days were stretching out, holding on for as long as they could. The people of Eastfield Terrace were hot and tired. Tempers were getting short. And the smell was as bad as ever.

Gwenda was in the kitchen, making supper for herself. She had never been a very attractive woman, small and dowdy with dull eyes and pinched lips that never smiled. But in the weeks since Matt’s departure, she had rapidly declined. Her hair was unbrushed and wild. She was wearing a flowery dress and a cardigan which, like her, hadn’t been washed for some time and hung off her, almost shapeless. She had developed a nervous twitch, constantly rubbing her arms as if she was cold or perhaps afraid of something.

“Do you want anything?” she called out in a thin, high-pitched voice.

Brian was waiting for her in the sitting room but she knew he wouldn’t eat anything. She had preferred it when he’d had his job down at the milk depot, but he’d been sacked after getting into a fight with one of the managers. That had happened just after Matt had been sent away. Now Brian had lost his appetite too.

Gwenda looked at her watch. It was almost time for Big Wheel, her favourite television programme of the week. In fact, thanks to satellite, she could see Big Wheel every night. But Thursdays were special. On Thursday there was a brand new programme – not a repeat.