Anthony Horowitz - Raven_s Gate

He made up his mind, stepped off the road and took twenty paces forward, following a single path. The pine needles crunched underneath his feet. Provided he didn’t turn left or right, he would be fine. He would let the trees guide him. And if he thought he was getting lost, he would simply follow the same path back to the road.

And yet… He stopped to catch his breath. It really was extraordinary. He felt as if he had stepped through a mirror between two dimensions. On the road it had been a cool, bright spring morning. The atmosphere in the wood was strangely warm and sluggish. Shafts of sunlight, a deep, intense green, slanted in different directions. On the road, he had heard the twitter of birds and the lowing of a cow. In the wood, everything was silent… as if sound were forbidden to enter.

Already he saw that he should have brought a compass with him. At the very least he could have brought something: a knife or a tin of paint to help him find his way back. He remembered a story he’d been told at school. Some Greek guy – Theseus or someone – had gone into a maze to fight a creature that was half-man and half-bull. The Minotaur. He’d been given a ball of wool, which he’d unravelled, and that was how he’d found his way out. Matt should have done the same.

He turned round and, counting out loud, retraced the twenty paces he had taken.

The road wasn’t there.

It was impossible. He looked back at the wood. The trees stretched on endlessly. He checked left and right. The same. He took another five steps. More trees, all of them identical, running as far as the eye could see… and further. The road had disappeared as if it had never been there. Either that, or somehow the trees had grown. That was what it felt like. The artificial wood encircled him. It had captured him and would never let him go.

Matt took a deep breath, counted twenty paces forward, then turned left and walked another ten. Still no road. No matter where he looked, he saw the same thing: tall, narrow trunks and a million needles. Gloomy corridors between them. A hundred different directions but no real choice. Matt stood still, hoping that he would hear a car on its way to Lesser Malling. That would help him find the road. But no car passed. A single crow cawed, somewhere high above. Otherwise, the silence was as thick as fog.

“Great!”

He shouted out the single word because he wanted to hear the sound of his own voice. But it didn’t even sound like him: it was small and weak, muffled by the unmoving trees.

He walked on. What else could he do? His footfall was soft on the bed of needles, measuring out his progress into nowhere. Looking up, he could barely see the sky through the dark green canopy. He was getting sick and tired of all this. The roads had played exactly the same trick on him the night before. But at least they were roads. This was much, much worse.

A glimmer of silver caught his eye, quite unexpected in the middle of so much green. The sun was reflecting off something behind a wall of trees a short distance away. With a surge of relief Matt turned towards it, leaving one path and following another. But if he thought he had discovered the way out, he was mistaken. There was no way forward. He found himself up against a tall fence, rusting in places but still intact. The silver he had seen was the wire. The fence was at least six metres high and the top was barbed with steel spikes. It ran to the left and to the right, curving in what must be a huge circle.

Behind the fence was a clearing, in the centre of which stood a large building that was at once out of date and yet futuristic. It was divided into two parts. The main part was a rectangular, grey brick structure, two storeys high, with windows – half of them broken – running the full length. Some of the brickwork was cracked, with weeds and ivy eating their way in. It had obviously been there for a long time. Matt reckoned it must be thirty or forty metres long. It would have fitted neatly on to a football pitch.

But it was the second part of the building that drew his attention. Painted white and reaching at least thirty metres high, it looked just like a giant golf ball, sitting on the ground as if it had rolled there. Was it an observatory? No. There was no slit in the dome for a telescope. In fact it didn’t have any windows at all. The ball had also been stained by time and the weather. The white paint was discoloured, and in places it looked as if it had caught some sort of disease. But it was still impressive. It was the last thing Matt would have expected to find in the middle of a wood.

A brick passageway with a central door but no windows connected the two parts. Could this be the main entrance? Matt wondered if he could get closer. He had no idea what he was looking at. It would be good to find out.

He turned right and followed the fence for about fifty metres. After a while the wood fell back and he came to a pair of gates, firmly locked together with a heavy padlock on a thick, discoloured chain. On one of the gates was a sign, the words painted in faded red paint on a peeling wooden board:

OMEGA ONE PROPERTY OF HM GOVERNMENT TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED

Omega One. Now Matt wondered if the building might have some military use. The sign said that it was government property. The Ministry of Defence? Briefly he examined the gates. They were old but the padlock was new, meaning someone had been here recently. There was no way he was going to get it open. He looked up and saw razor wire twisted round the top. So much for that.

With growing curiosity Matt continued round, following the fence, hoping to find a tree he could use to climb over. Instead he found something better. There was a hole in the wire, where several strands had rusted loose, and it was just about big enough to allow him to squeeze through. He glanced at his watch. The morning was wearing on but he still had plenty of time.

He was about to squeeze through when someone grabbed hold of him and spun him round.

“What are you doing?” a voice demanded.

Matt’s heart lurched. After his time alone in the wood he hadn’t dreamt for a minute that there would be anyone else here. His fist was already curled in self-defence, but then he recognized the fair hair and red face of the man who had approached him in Lesser Malling – the one who had warned him to leave.

“I got lost,” Matt said, relaxing slightly. “What is this place?” He gestured at the building on the other side of the fence.

“It’s a power station.”

Matt studied the man more closely, noticing that he was carrying a shotgun, the two barrels broken over his arm.

“You shouldn’t be here,” the man said.

“I told you. I got lost. I was looking for…”

“What were you looking for?”

“I saw lights in the forest. Last night. I wondered what they were.”

“Lights?”

“And I heard something. Strange noises – a sort of humming. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on around here? You warned me to go away.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I tried.” Matt left it at that. He was in no mood to explain what had happened to him on the moonlit roads. “What were you warning me about?” he demanded. “Why is everyone in Lesser Malling so weird? Who are you?”

The man seemed to relax a little – but his eyes remained watchful. He rested a hand on the barrel of his gun. “My name is Burgess,” he said. “Tom Burgess. I’m a farmer. I own Glendale Farm, down the Greater Malling road.”

“And what are you doing here? Are you guarding this place?”

“No. I’m hunting. These woods are full of foxes. They come for my chickens in the night. I’m out to get a few of them.” He patted the gun.

“I didn’t hear any shots.”