The Power of Five Oblivion

to interfere and because of this I found myself operating outside the law. I was a criminal. I am not ashamed of this. To be honest with you, I would rather be a criminal than a politician. Certainly, I have done less harm.”
    “Why are you helping me? Why did you help Scarlett?”
    “I had no choice. My father saw very quickly that the Old Ones were our enemies. They killed thousands of people in Hong Kong, threatening first our livelihoods and later our lives. I have never thought of myself as evil, Matt. I am in my own way a businessman. But what you saw tonight in that compound, that was evil. And you and I must fight it together.”
    “I have to find the others,” Matt said. “I need to know why the doors have stopped working.”
    “I thought you were looking for your friends while you were asleep.”
    “I am. There’s no sign of them. Maybe it’s because we’re all in different time zones now. We’re never asleep at the same time. But I’ve had another idea. There’s someone else I know.”
    “In your dreamworld?”
    “Yes.”
    Lohan nodded. His eyes were still fixed on Matt. “We are in the middle of Brazil with a few litres of fuel, six hundred dollars and limited supplies of food. The Old Ones will be looking for you already, I expect. So I suggest you stop asking me foolish questions and close your eyes and sleep. Go back to the dreamworld, Matt. Find what you are looking for. Right now we need all the help we can get.”

TWENTY-FIVE
    Matt hadn’t wanted to go back to the library. The truth was that it frightened him. It was like walking into a cemetery in the certain knowledge that he would find his name on one of the graves.
    What was it doing there anyway?
    Matt had been visiting the dreamworld just about all his life. As far as he was concerned, it was a grim, empty place that had been created as much to keep him prisoner as to help him. It was a world without colour. The sea, the sky and the dust that made up much of the land were all different shades of grey. Nothing grew there. Even the wind had no life to it. To begin with, he had been trapped on an island surrounded by waves that crashed onto the beach, warning him to keep back. But he had seen the other Gatekeepers – Pedro, Scarlett, Scott and Jamie – on the shore and eventually he had reached them. The dreamworld had brought them together and seemed to want to help them with strange warnings, signs and symbols of what would take place.
    It had come as a shock to stumble upon a building – and one so large that it was actually the size of a city. The library must have been there for thousands of years, growing all the time, so that there were parts of it that looked ancient – massive stone towers and battlements – and parts of it that were positively futuristic, with titanium-clad walls bending like waves, solar panels, and triple-height windows. Every country and culture in the world had been drawn into its design so that when Matt had looked at it for the first time, it was as if a hundred famous buildings had somehow got jumbled up together, with the onion domes of the Kremlin, the pure white minarets of the Taj Mahal, the pillars of the Parthenon, the metalwork of the Eiffel Tower and even the clock face of Big Ben. They were all tied together by arches, staircases, bridges and passageways, like the dream of a mad architect.
    Not only was there a library – there was a librarian. Matt had met him; a man with vaguely Arab looks, long grey hair, a hooked nose and the sort of eyes that might contain all the knowledge in the universe but did their best to keep it hidden. Was he even a man at all? The trouble with the dreamworld was that it was hard to tell what was real and what was not and certainly the Librarian looked as if he had dressed up for the part, with his loose-fitting jacket – pastel shades of mauve, orange and green – his baggy trousers and sandals instead of shoes. He hadn’t been unfriendly but he spoke in riddles. He seemed to know Matt from the past. He knew all the Gatekeepers. But how? He had refused to say.
    Why didn’t Matt want to go back? Almost every night, while he had been in Brazil, he had returned to the dreamworld but had spent his time there searching for the others, retracing his footsteps all the way to the sea and the island where they had first met. He had persuaded himself that he would find them there again and had felt a crushing sense of disappointment to see the black rock