After a botched warehouse theft which culminated in the stabbing of a security guard, Matt is placed on the Leaf project(Liberty and Education Achieved through Fostering). He is placed in the care of Jayne Deverill, an old lady living in Lesser Malling, a village in Yorkshire. Taking an immediate disliking to her, Matt tries to escape several times but does not succeed, due to some supernatural power acting in the area. After spending three days in a fever, hearing people talk about him in a sinister fashion, and seeing an odd ritual going on in the remains of an abandoned nuclear power plant, he encounters Richard Cole, a local journalist. Matt attempts to explain but Cole does not believe him and leaves him back on his own. However, Richard and Matt later reunite after Matt was rescued from a bog. After speaking with the nuclear plant's creator and two members from a shadowy organization known as the Nexus, Matt realized that he was one of five Gatekeepers, reincarnated after ten thousand years. In the past, mankind fought a final battle with The Old Ones, extradimensional demons who oppressed, slaughtered and imprisoned civilization. Before Matt could ask further questions, he was captured, dragged inside the power plant and tied upon an altar with a cross of Jesus Christ hanging above him upside down. Matt finds that he is going to be sacrificed with a sacrificial knife as his blood in satanic rituals, and a nuclear explosion will be used to open the gate. Richard Cole is going to be burnt to death. However, before the Old Ones can escape Raven's Gate, Matt managed to trigger his power and stop the knife from going through his heart. The vacuum created by the subsequent nuclear explosion sucks the Old Ones back in along with the villagers. Before the explosion, a furious Mrs. Deverill chases Matt and Richard downstairs into a power plant room with an acid pool. Mrs Deverill manages to knock Richard out, and she and Matt have a fight which ends in Mrs. Deverill attempting to crush Matt's windpipe with an extremely heavy pole. Before this can occur, however, Richard awakes and pushed Mrs. Deverill into the pool of acid. After this incident, Matt begins living with Richard, supported by The Nexus. Several weeks later, Matt was attending a private school, Forest Hill, financed by The Nexus, and was attacked by his apparently possessed aunt Gwenda Davis, who blew up a petrol tanker to try to kill him, after murdering her husband, Brian Conran, with a kitchen knife.