you should know that. So maybe it’s time you had your first taste of CRR.”
CRR. Corrective Room Restriction. Another way of saying solitary confinement.
Ten minutes later, Koring returned with another supervisor. Neither of them said a word. They simply jerked Jamie out of his cell and dragged him down the corridor. The other boys must have heard what had happened. Suddenly they were all awake and shouting encouragement.
“Good luck, Indian!”
“Don’t let them grind you down!”
“See you soon, Indian. You take care!”
The isolation cells were in a separate area, a pair of heavy steel doors separating them from the main unit. Jamie didn’t even try to resist. He was flung into a cell half the size of the one he had left. This room had no mattress, and although there was a narrow window, the glass was frosted so there was no view.
“Let’s see how you feel after a week in here,” Koring said. “And in future, you call me sir.”
The door slammed shut.
Jamie stayed where he was, curled in a ball on the floor. He had hit his head against the bunk when he fell and his nose was bleeding. He was utterly alone. And his power had let him down. Had it gone, or was there something about the prison that he didn’t know? Maybe it had been built in this part of the desert purposefully. There could be something in the water or even in the soil that was playing with his mind. It made sense. If they were locking up kids with powers, they would have to be certain that those powers were under control.
Eventually, almost reluctantly, he crawled onto the bunk and fell asleep, his knees close to his chin, his arms loosely folded around his legs. And that was when he had the second dream.
He knew where he was immediately, and he was almost grateful for it even though this world – this dream world or whatever it was – was as alien to him as Silent Creek. There was the sea in front of him, the island once again, the sky as empty and as dead as ever. Jamie didn’t know what it all meant or why he should find himself here again, but somehow he understood that it was important. He remembered the two boys in the straw boat and searched for them, hoping they would come into sight. Maybe, at the very least, they could tell him where he could find Scott.
Something moved close to the water’s edge and Jamie’s heart sank. It was the man he had encountered the last time he had been here. He was already straightening up – all seven feet of him – moving across the shingle, the hollow eyes staring out of the grey, putty-like face. The man was holding his bowl. This time there was no sign of the knife.
“He’s gonna kill him,” the man said.
Despite everything, Jamie felt a spurt of anger. “That’s what you said last time,” he called out. “But I can’t stop them killing Scott unless you tell me where he is.”
“No, boy. You don’t understand-”
The man was about to go on but he never got the chance. There was a lightning strike. No – it was more than that. It was as if two giant hands had seized hold of the universe and ripped it apart like paper. The whole world – the sea and the sky – was torn in two. Jamie felt the ground convulse underneath him – an earthquake more powerful than anything the world had ever known. Everything was shuddering. He could feel his teeth rattling in his head. He was thrown off his feet and as he fell he tried to catch sight of the man… but he had already gone. At the same time, an ear-splitting scream echoed all around him. He would have said it was a shout of triumph, except that there was nothing remotely human about it. Jamie was deafened. He was clinging to the ground, which was twisting in turmoil beneath him.
In the next few seconds, a series of shapes suddenly appeared, plummeting through the sky – flying or falling… he couldn’t tell. It was as if a great hole had opened up on the other side of the universe and flames were bursting out. The whole sky was on fire. He thought he saw a gigantic spider, another animal like an ape or a monkey, something that looked like a huge bird… Thousands of tiny specks followed them: a great dark swarm of them, twisting and cartwheeling in the air.
And there was something else. Jamie was aware only of an approaching blackness, a sense of something so terrifying that he could no longer bear to look. He closed his eyes and hugged the ground. The sea had gone, the water rushing away from the coastline. The wind was howling all around him.
It seemed to go on for ever. But there was no real time here and it could have been all over in a minute. As the storm died down and the waves returned, he lay where he was, completely exhausted.
Jamie knew nothing of the Old Ones, the five Gatekeepers, the struggle that had been going on for thousands of years and the part that he had been chosen to play. He knew nothing about a stone circle called Raven’s Gate or the second gate that had been built in the Nazca Desert in Peru. Nor did he know that it was now midnight on 24 June – the day known as Inti Raymi.
The second gate had just opened.
25 JUNE
Nazca, Peru
The jeep seemed to be on fire. As it tore across the plain, it trailed a cloud of dust and sand which, in the moonlight, could have been smoke. The headlights were on but they were almost ineffectual in the great emptiness of the Nazca Desert and the moon itself was a better guide. It was three o’clock in the morning on the twenty-fifth of June, the day after Inti Raymi. The night was unusually cold, even in a desert where the temperature could drop ten degrees with the setting of the sun. And there was something strange about the light. It had a hard, almost unnatural quality – as if there had just been a terrible storm.
A woman was driving. Her name was Joanna Chambers and she was a professor of anthropology, a world expert on the wonder known as the Nazca Lines. She was large and slightly eccentric in appearance. She enjoyed playing the mad professor and she could be outspoken, even rude at times. But right now she was tight-lipped, her hands clutching the steering wheel. She was gazing ahead with a real dread of what she might find.
She was not alone. There was an Englishman in the passenger seat next to her. He was Richard Cole, the journalist who had been with Matt Freeman – the first of the Five – when he had discovered the secret of Raven’s Gate in Yorkshire and who had then chosen to travel with Matt to Peru. He was looking exhausted, more gaunt and bedraggled than ever. Richard had come a long way – in more than one sense – since he and Matt had met in a rundown newspaper office in Greater Malling. At the time, Richard’s work had mainly involved writing about weddings and funerals… and he wasn’t sure which he found more depressing. But Matt had introduced him to a world of impossibilities: dinosaur skeletons that came to life, witches and demons, lost civilizations and cities hidden in the mountains of Peru. And now this. It seemed that their adventures had come to a sudden and sour end. Matt might be dead. This time, they hadn’t won.
“We’re almost there,” Professor Chambers said. She glanced briefly at Richard, who didn’t even seem to have heard her. “I feel this is my fault,” she went on. “If only I’d been able to work it all out sooner, maybe we’d have had more time…”
“It’s not your fault. It’s mine.” Richard took a deep breath. “I should never have let them go into the desert alone. Matt and Pedro. They’re just kids, for heaven’s sake!”
“It was a two-seater helicopter and there were three of them in it anyway. There wasn’t room for anyone else.”
“I shouldn’t have let them go. The Incas warned us. They said that one of them would be killed…”
“They said one of them might be killed. And you know that Matt is no ordinary child. He’s one of the Five. Pedro too. I think you should have more faith in them.”
But as they drove on, it became clear that something terrible had happened. The ground had been torn up, the entire landscape broken apart. An earthquake had already been reported on Peruvian radio, but both Richard Cole and Professor Chambers knew that was only part of the truth. Matt had taken off to intercept Diego Salamanda at his mobile laboratory in the desert, but it seemed that he hadn’t arrived in time. The second gate had opened. Richard would have known it even without looking at the upturned desert floor. He could sense it in the air. There was a sheet of lightning pulsating in the far distance, behind the mountains. It burned into his eyes. He was beginning to feel sick.
