Chapter One
The Beginning

Jack Martin lived with his father, an inventor, and his younger sister Phoebe in a large Victorian house in south London. Mr. Henry Martin, the children’s father, had recently acquired the house, and it was still in a rather neglected, dilapidated state.

The house, which had once been elegant, and refined, now looked tired and sad. The outside of the building had been painted white, but now the color appeared mostly grey, and the paint was peeling off in places. The rear garden was like a small jungle. Tall weeds had all but taken over. The inside of the house was little better. Although the house dated back to about 1850, it retained very few original Victorian period features. Instead it was a haphazard, and chaotic mixture of nearly every other decorative style. The 1930s left their mark on the house, as did the 1950s, but by far the most damage was done in the 1960s and 70s, when the house had been converted to flats. Beautiful fireplaces were ripped out, and replaced with ghastly gas and electric ones. The attractive Art Deco tiles, which adorned the bathroom were replaced by horrid cheap, plain white tiles. Mr. Martin promised that he would begin to tackle the job of renovating the house, but for now that would have to wait. He was just too busy working on his latest, and most wonderful invention

By now Jack and Phoebe were used to seeing their father disappear into the cellar for whole days at a time. Henry Martin would gulp down a bowl of breakfast cereal, mumble something about being very busy, and dash off down to what he called his lab, and not reappear again until very late evening, or sometimes not even until the following day.

Henry would leave ready made meals for his children to heat up. He thought his son, Jack, was old enough, at fourteen to handle preparing a simple meal for himself and his sister. It was lucky for Henry that his son was both practical, and down to earth, and was perfectly capable of cooking for himself and Phoebe. Not only that, but he also washed up, made sure that their uniforms were ironed for school the next day, and saw to it that their homework was ready, and completed on time.

Jack and Phoebe had never seen their father so totally engrossed in a project before. They knew that their father was an inventor, and they had seen him busy on previous inventions, but this time somehow it was different. On previous occasions he had had time for meals, he had stopped work at a reasonable hour, he had not seemed to forget about their existence. This time it was as if their father had been possessed by some all consuming passion, and when the children questioned him about his new invention, he became secretive and bad tempered.

“Honestly Phoebe, I don’t know what you think, but I really don’t like what’s happening to Dad!” Jack exclaimed one day on the way to school.

“Yeah, I know what you mean. He’s acting so weird lately,” Phoebe nodded.

“I know it’s got something to do with this latest invention of his! Whatever the invention is, it’s having a really bad effect on him,” Jack continued.

“If only we could find out what he’s up to,” Phoebe replied.

“Yes, but he totally refuses to discuss his invention, and the cellar door is always locked tight these days. It’s as if what he’s got down there is just too important for anyone else to see,” Jack sighed.

“That’s why we must find out what he’s up to, Jack,” Phoebe concluded.

“Yes, I know, but I don’t know how,” Jack said.

“Perhaps we’ll think of something.” Phoebe smiled.

Jack lapsed into silence. He was genuinely extremely worried about his father, and despite Phoebe’s words of encouragement, he was by no means sure that he knew how to resolve the situation.

It was several days after this conversation with his sister, Phoebe, that Jack was woken up in the middle of the night by a strange sound. The loudness of the noise awoke him with a start. In his sleep drenched mind, the still sleepy boy thought that the high pitched wailing sounded rather like an air raid siren of some sort. Then as Jack’s mind became more alert, and more awake, he stumbled out of bed in panic. It did sound just like an air raid siren. Jack ran out of his room onto the hallway landing, only to find Phoebe standing there already, looking deucedly shaken.

“What’s that noise, Jack?” Phoebe asked, her voice trembling slightly.

“It sounds like some sort of air raid siren to me,” Jack replied in an almost matter of fact way that made him sound a lot braver than he actually felt.

“An air raid siren! But how can that be—? I’m scared, Jack. W-where’s Dad? I can’t see him anywhere!” Phoebe said. There was real panic in her voice now.

“Come on! Let’s see if we can find him!” Jack exclaimed bravely.

In reality, Jack was far more afraid than he was letting on to his sister. And it was thanks to Phoebe that he was managing to appear so courageous, for he knew that it was important that one of them should keep calm and rational.

Jack, and Phoebe ran from room to room, their father was in none of the upstairs bedrooms. They descended the stairs. The kitchen was dark, and empty, their father was not there. Jack opened the back door, and they stared out into the garden. Still no sign of him. Although, in the gloom of the night, Jack thought that the garden looked somehow different. Towards the far end of the garden, he thought he could just make out a faint, and unclearly defined bulge in the ground, like a little hill. And yet in the darkness, it was so poorly defined that it could almost be an hallucination, or his mind playing tricks on him. Jack nearly turned and said something to Phoebe about it, but then he changed his mind. He did not want her confirming that she had seen it too.

In silence they left the kitchen, and walked towards the living room. Jack noticed that the door was closed, and a faint orange yellow light could be seen shining from under it.

“I think we’ve found him. He must be in here!” Jack exclaimed, turning to Phoebe.

Jack turned the door knob. The door creaked open. Jack and Phoebe froze, their faces filled with surprise, shock and fear. For there in front of their eyes was their living room, but superimposed on their one was a shadowy, ghostly impression of another room, their room, but older, belonging to another time. Everything looked darker in the room. The walls were painted a darkish green, and in places there were touches of a dark, mustard yellow color. The armchairs had a pattern of flowers set against a brownish background. The windows had some strange black material covering them. The fireplace was made up of small 10 x 10 mm light brown ceramic tiles. In the far corner, on a small, plain wooden table sat an old wireless set. But then to Jack and Phoebe’s horror, they noticed a boy of about twelve staring straight at them, and he looked terrified too.

“Y-you’re ghosts!” the boy shuddered.

“No, no…you’re the ghost! We live here now!” Phoebe managed to reply.

The boy stared at them, he looked quite indignant.

“What a cheek, I’m not a ghost. You’re the odd looking ones, so you must be ghosts!” the boy sounded less afraid now.

Jack stared hard at the boy. He was slightly transparent, just like the rest of the room, and he wore a short sleeved off-white shirt, with a sleeveless grey and red woollen top over it, grey almost knee length shorts, long grey socks that came up to just below the knees, and plain black lace up shoes. His hair was cut extremely short in a sort of pudding basin haircut, which made his ears stick out.

“If you’re not ghosts, maybe you’re some sort of Nazi trick That’s it! You’re German spies—! I’m going to get my mum!” the boy said. His face now wore an expression of deep hatred and resentment.

“What do you mean by all this stuff about Nazi spies? The war ended sixty years ago!” Jack exclaimed.

“You’ll be telling me next that you come from Mars. You can drop all this science fiction nonsense, and tell me the truth. You’re German spies, aren’t you?” the boy sneered.

Just then the whole room seemed to sway. The room and all its contents appeared to become noticeably fainter, as did the young boy standing before them.

“Hey! What’s happening! You’re fading away!” the boy said. His voice now sounded distant and muffled.

Within seconds, the boy and the room had disappeared. Jack and Phoebe were standing in their own familiar living room. Jack switched on the light just to reassure himself that the other room had finally gone. He glanced around and sighed with relief. It was their living room, and it looked as it had always looked.

“We—we just saw a ghost,” Phoebe stuttered.

“I-I’m not so sure. It was odd how he thought we were the ghosts, and then when he began to accept that we might not be ghosts after all, he began to come out with all that stuff about German spies. And the house. The house was different too,” Jack replied quietly. He was deep in thought.

“What do you think we saw then, Jack?” Phoebe asked.

“I don’t know, Phoebe. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened again,” Jack replied.

Jack hoped that this strange occurrence might just be a one-off incident, never to be repeated, however deep in his heart, he knew that this was not true. Tonight was the beginning of something. This knowledge, plus the feeling that his father might somehow be involved in it, filled Jack with trepidation and foreboding.

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