Anthony Horowitz - Raven_s Gate

They jumped.

The reactor chamber of Omega One was breaking up. The flames had burst through almost everywhere. The heat was so intense that the heavy pipes and platforms were melting. The ground was buckling and breaking. A crack had appeared in one of the walls and the night air was feeding the flames, fanning the smoke.

Sir Michael Marsh stood alone beside the altar, the wind and smoke curling around him. The villagers, mad with fear, had attempted to flee. But outside the protection of the magic circle they had been incinerated instantly, swallowed up by the inferno. Now the observation box exploded, shards of glass and metal splinters cascading into the chamber, a rain of death.

The metal tower at the far end of the ring wavered as a new spasm seized the floor. With a sickening screech and an eruption of sparks it keeled over, tearing through a wall. Another window burst, a fireball shooting through it like a bullet from a gun.

Sir Michael leant against the sacrificial slab. Beneath him, underneath the smoke and fire, the black hand of the creature that he had summoned hammered one last time against the gate. The ancient stones had almost gone. They were crumbling away, dust pouring out of the gashes that had formed in them. Omega One was in the grip of an earthquake of its own making, the walls vibrating, the metal ladders and platforms shaking loose and crashing down.

Then with one last cry, a cry such as the world had not heard for a million years, the creature, king of the Old Ones, broke loose. The gate shattered. A single drop of Matt’s blood had been enough to weaken it. The hand stretched out.

“We’ve done it!” Sir Michael cried, his eyes widening. “You’re here! You’re free!”

The huge hand unfolded. All the light in the chamber was blotted out as the giant fingers stretched.

The hand was all around the scientist. He let out a thin scream of delight, which in an instant turned to terror as he realized what was about to happen. The hand closed on him and crushed him. Sir Michael Marsh died horribly, in the grip of the creature he had served all his life.

And then the reactor, pushed beyond its limits, disintegrated. A blinding, searing, fantastic light burst out, as bright as the sun itself: the light of an atomic explosion.

A huge mushroom cloud sprouted out of the ground. Man’s most dreadful creation ran wild. Spiralling upwards, it rushed towards the night sky, carrying with it enough deadly radiation to destroy half of England.

But the gate was open.

The vacuum had to be filled.

The atomic energy recoiled, drawn back into the gate that it had itself helped to open. The mushroom had risen far above the ground but now it was pulled down again, while at the same time the smoke and deadly gases were dragged back into the chasm that had been broken between the two worlds.

The creature itself was engulfed, flailing helplessly as it was sucked down like a spider into a gigantic plughole. It was trapped in a torrent of pure light that swirled round and round it, forming a whirlpool from which there could be no escape. A curtain of molten red flooded across, then dimmed and died away. Slowly the black and white squares of the reactor floor shimmered and began to reappear. The creature was gone. The gate had been resealed.

Two miles away, Richard and Matt, coughing and shivering, were spat out of an underground cavern and, reaching the bank, pulled themselves on to dry land. On the horizon, a ripple of pink spread across the night sky as the sun began its climb over the edge of the world.

At last, it was over.

“ The Times?”

“Nothing.”

“The Daily Telegraph?”

“Nothing.”

“The Daily Mail?”

“Nothing.”

“The Independent?”

“Nothing.”

“ Le Monde?”

“I don’t know. It’s in French.”

“There has to be something, somewhere.”

Matt and Richard were sitting at the kitchen table in the journalist’s York flat. Each had a pair of scissors and a mug of tea. More than a week had passed since their escape from Omega One, and both of them had changed. Matt carried a scar on the side of his face, a souvenir of the National History Museum, but he was looking a little less pinched and tired. Staying with Richard, sleeping late, watching TV and generally doing very little had obviously been good for him. As for Richard, he was more optimistic, more organized. He still found it hard to believe that he had actually survived. And he was certain he was about to sell the greatest story ever written. It wouldn’t just be a case of “hold the front page”. His story would run on every page.

They were surrounded by newspapers and magazines that they had checked through, from first page to last. They had done this every day. And always it was the same.

“How many more do we have to read?” Matt asked.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” Richard said. “I mean, there must be a mention of it somewhere. You can’t have a nuclear explosion in the middle of Yorkshire without somebody noticing.”

“You’ve got that clipping from the Yorkshire Post.”

“Oh sure!” Richard plucked a scrap of newspaper off the fridge door, where it had been held in place with a magnet. “Two column inches about a bright light seen over the woods near Lesser Malling. A bright light – that’s what they call it! And they stick it on page three next to the weather reports.”

For the past seven days Richard had been monitoring the news in the press, on the radio and on the television. He was completely bewildered. It was as if nothing out of the ordinary had ever taken place. Structural engineers were still investigating the damage done to the Natural History Museum. Millions of pounds’ worth of dinosaur fossils had been destroyed – but nobody had mentioned Professor Sanjay Dravid, who must surely have been found dead in the middle of it. Likewise, the death or disappearance of Sir Michael Marsh. Here was a man who had once been an influential government scientist, who had received a knighthood. Yet there were no obituaries, no comment, nothing. He might as well have never existed.

And what of Richard’s story?

He had written it in the space of twenty-four hours. To start with he had kept it simple, confining it to ten pages, outlining very broadly what had happened. Matt had insisted that his name be left out. He knew what he had done but he still wasn’t quite sure how he had done it… And the truth was, he didn’t want to know. He had finally managed to find the power to stop the knife and to break out. But he remembered very little of it. One moment he was lying on the slab. The next he was fighting Mrs Deverill over the acid bath. What had happened was like a hideous dream. It was as if he had been taken over.

As far as Matt was concerned, he never wanted to mention Jayne Deverill or Raven’s Gate again. And he certainly didn’t want to end up on the front page of the world’s newspapers. Some sort of superhero. Some sort of freak.

In the end Richard had agreed to give him a false name. It was the easiest way. He hadn’t mentioned the LEAF Project either. It would have made it too easy to identify Matt – and anyway, it was something else Matt didn’t want to see in print.

The ten-page story had been sent to every newspaper in London. That had been three days ago. Since then, half of them had written back.

Dear Mr Cole,

The editor wishes to thank you for your submission, received on 4 May. We regret, however, that we do not feel it is suitable for publication.

Yours sincerely…

All of them were more or less the same. Short and to the point. They didn’t give any reason for turning him down. They simply didn’t want to know.