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
BIG WHEEL
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.