The Power of Five Oblivion

gravestones with a gravel path running through the middle, and I often used it as a short cut home. On the other side there was an even older church, or the remains of one that had originally stood on the site. Not much of it was left; just a couple of crumbling archways and a wall with two gaping holes that might once have been magnificent windows, stained glass and all the rest of it, and beneath them a wooden door.
    There had always been something strange about the door because, first of all, it didn’t go anywhere. There were a couple of tombstones in front of it and a small gravel yard behind, but it didn’t lead into a sacristy or a cloister or any other part of the building. And there was a sort of question mark over the door itself. That is to say, who made it and when? The ruins were literally hundreds of years old (“pre-medieval,” Miss Keyland said) and yet the door didn’t look ancient at all. I mean, if it had been there for centuries, how come the wood hadn’t rotted? Obviously, someone must have replaced it, but Rita, who had been born in the village, told me it hadn’t happened in her lifetime and that must have been almost a century in itself. It was all very weird.
    And one evening at the end of August, it suddenly opened and a boy fell out.
    I was on my way home from the orchards, where I had been apple picking, one of my least favourite jobs, although to be honest anything to do with the growing and storing of food is hard work – boring and repetitive. The worst things about apple picking? Realizing that the overripe Golden Delicious you’ve just spent half an hour shaking off the branch is actually going to be neither golden nor delicious. Finding that a wasp has burrowed into its rotten core and getting a nasty sting on your palm as a result. Spiking yourself for the fiftieth time on a bramble that’s been waiting a whole year to gouge into your flesh. Lugging the basket back to the collection point in the full heat of the afternoon, with blisters on your shoulders and worse ones on your fingers. And the endlessness of it. Mr Bantoft – farm manager, fruit division – had said there were fewer apples that year. He said the entire orchard was beginning to fail. But it didn’t seem that way to me.
    Anyway, I was tired and I was grubby and I wasn’t thinking of very much when the door in the old wall opened and this boy staggered forward and crumpled onto the grass. He was quite skinny with long, very black hair cut straight across his forehead, and I was puzzled because I didn’t recognize him at once. But then, one side of his face was streaked with blood. In fact, there were pints of the stuff pouring down the side of his cheek. It was dripping onto his shoulder and his shirt was soaked. I ran over to him and stopped with my heart pounding, biting on my knuckles, which is what I always do when I’m shocked by something. And here was the thing. I had never seen this boy. Impossible though it was, I knew at once.
    He wasn’t from the village.
    He saw me and his eyes widened, reminding me of a rabbit just before you put an arrow through its throat. He wasn’t as badly hurt as I had first thought. Something had whacked into the side of his head just above the temple and he had a nasty cut, but I didn’t think his skull was fractured. He was wearing a shirt, jeans and trainers and they looked new. He was about as strange as a stranger could be. He didn’t even look English. His eyes were as dark as his hair. And there was something about his nose and his cheekbones … it was as if they’d been carved out of wood.
    “Where am I?” he asked.
    “You’re at the church,” I said. It was such an odd question. I wasn’t sure how to answer.
    “What church? Where is it?”
    “The church is called St Botolph’s. It’s in the village.”
    The boy looked at me as if I didn’t know what I was talking about. Then he gave up on me. “This isn’t right,” he said. “I have to go back.”
    “Back where?”
    But he wasn’t listening to me. He had already got up and gone back to the door. He closed it, then opened it again. I don’t know what he was expecting to find on the other side but, like I’ve already explained, it opened into this little yard with just a few tufts of grass sprouting out of the gravel. The boy went through the door, shutting it behind him. I walked round so I could see him on the other side. He was standing there, breathing heavily. He seemed to have