The Perfectly imperfect Mr Matterson

Chapter 1- Mr Matterson

Everyone in Willow Lane knew the stories about the crooked house at the end of the road, where a mysterious old man lived. The roof sagged slightly in the middle as though it had grown tired of holding itself up after years of battling wind, rain and neglect. Ivy crawled across the brickwork like giant green fingers, wrapping itself around cracked drainpipes and stretched towards the upstairs windows. Beyond the rusting gate, the garden had long since surrendered itself to nature. Weeds towered over forgotten flowerbeds, wildflowers grew wherever they pleased, and tangled rose bushes twisted around broken trellises like something from an old fairy tale. Some children claimed the house was haunted. Others whispered that the old man that lived there was a wizard, practising dark magic behind the dusty windows long after the rest of the village had gone to sleep. Most people hurried past without looking. Parents warned their children never to go near the place or the old man, and in a place as small as Willow Lane, rumours had a habit of growing larger with every retelling.

Nobody seemed to know exactly where the stories had started. Some swore they had seen strange lights glowing behind the upstairs curtains late at night. Others claimed they had heard mysterious bangs, crashes and thuds coming from inside the house. There were even children who insisted they had seen rabbits appearing and disappearing amongst the overgrown hedges. Whether any of it was true hardly mattered anymore. The crooked house had become one of those places that belonged more to stories than to reality, and over the years the villagers had added so many tales to its history that nobody could quite separate fact from fiction.

On a warm afternoon in late summer, twelve-year-old Oliver Finch was cycling slowly along Willow Lane on his battered red bicycle when something unusual caught his eye beside the rusted gate. Lying amongst the long grass, half-hidden beneath a patch of weeds, was a faded black top hat with a ragged hole chewed through the crown. It looked old, forgotten and strangely out of place, as though it had simply fallen from the sky and landed there. Oliver squeezed the brakes and rolled to a stop. For a moment he sat perfectly still, staring first at the hat and then at the crooked house beyond it, unaware that this small discovery was about to change his life in ways he could never have imagined.

For a moment, Oliver considered simply cycling past and pretending he had never seen the hat at all. That was what most sensible people would have done. After all, everyone in Willow Lane knew the stories about the crooked house, and everybody knew it was best not to go poking around places that were surrounded by rumours. His mother had certainly told him often enough. Whenever he rode his bicycle near the end of the lane, she always reminded him to keep moving and not to linger. Yet as he sat there with one foot resting on the ground and the other balanced on a pedal, he found himself staring at the hat instead of riding away.

The more he looked at it, the stranger it seemed. Why would anybody throw away such a magnificent hat? Even with the ragged hole chewed through the crown and the layer of dust gathered around the brim, there was still something rather grand about it. Oliver had seen enough old films and television programmes to know that top hats belonged to important people. Magicians wore top hats. Gentlemen wore top hats. People who stood on stages beneath bright lights wore top hats. They were not the sort of thing that simply ended up forgotten amongst weeds beside a rusting gate.

His imagination immediately began filling in the gaps. Perhaps somebody had dropped it by mistake and never realised where it had fallen. Perhaps it had blown from a passing car window. Perhaps it belonged to the mysterious old wizard people were always whispering about. Did wizard's wear top hats? Oliver glanced down at the hat again and pondered for a moment. It certainly looked like the sort of thing a wizard might wear if they weren't wearing a cliché pointy hat that is. If it did belong to the old man in the crooked house, then surely, he would want it back.