December

by Gabrielle Lord

  ‘The line came right down to you,’ said Winter. ‘It would have all belonged to your dad if he’d lived—he was the older twin. But now it falls to you. You’re the older twin. It’s been here for centuries, just waiting for whoever could decipher the Ormond Riddle and read the Ormond Jewel.’

  I wanted to say something but it was hard to talk. Thoughts of Dad and Rafe were making me simultaneously overjoyed and sad.

  A shower of stones reminded me that the situation here was pretty dicey. We needed to get this gear secured somehow and then get out.

  ‘How much do you think all this is worth?’ wondered Boges, his eyebrows almost jumping off his forehead with excitement.

  ‘Millions,’ answered Sharkey, who had reappeared, carrying some big canvas bags. ‘At least. Something like this,’ he said, coming closer to look at the book, ‘is worth a fortune in itself. The Queen embroidered it with her very own initial.’

  ‘What about all these parchments written in Latin?’ asked Winter. ‘The titles and deeds to different properties?’

  ‘Millions more,’ said Sharkey. ‘Enough talk. Start loading everything into these bags.’

  I straightened up, puzzled at the change in tone of his voice.

  ‘Shouldn’t we call the authorities?’ I said. ‘I want to do this properly. I’ve discovered the Ormond Singularity before the deadline and I want this acknowledged. All legal and above board.’

  Boges and Winter nodded in support.

  ‘We can do all that in the morning,’ said Sharkey. ‘As soon as the banks open, you should lodge all this. You won’t be able to take it out of the country without Customs clearance. In the meantime, we really just need to secure it all.’

  ‘I guess you’re right,’ I said, but deep down inside me, I couldn’t help thinking something was wrong. Danger was close.

  Nelson gave each of us one of the bags and we started loading them up with the contents of the treasure chest. I filled my bag with the heaviest stuff first—gold coins and chains. On top of that I placed ropes of pearls and shining rings, and then finally I added the book and the embroidered leather satchel with the Ormond Singularity inside.

  ‘OK,’ said Sharkey, nursing his canvas bag, into which he’d just squeezed one huge ruby ring before securing the flaps. By the time our four bags were filled and sealed, there wasn’t much left at the bottom of the crumbling wooden chest. ‘OK,’ repeated Sharkey, ‘let’s load up my vehicle.’

  With the walls still shaking around us, and stones crashing down, we staggered with the weight of the treasure in our bags and, finally, the four of us emerged from the ruins of Cragkill Keep. We continued across the uneven ground to where Sharkey had parked his hired ute—he’d driven right over a section of the wire fencing.

  I noticed that the bulldozer was sitting quietly nearby.

  ‘What was that?’ asked Winter, pointing into the distance, in the direction of the bog that had taken Sligo, Zombie Two and Sumo. ‘I swear I just saw someone over there!’

  ‘I think I saw it, too,’ added Boges. ‘Movement over by that tree. You don’t think one of them could possibly have—’

  ‘Come on, let’s get this stuff onto the ute already,’ said Sharkey, swinging his own bag into the tray.

  We heaved our bags into the tray and Sharkey quickly roped them down. Once everything was loaded up, the three of us climbed inside the cabin, and squashed up together, waiting for Sharkey to take his place behind the wheel.

  I sat back, exhausted and happy.

  Winter sat between Boges and me and gripped our hands tightly. We couldn’t believe it. We had cracked the mystery of the Ormond Singularity.

  All that remained now was bringing it home safely and getting our lives back.

  The driver’s door swung open and we waited for Sharkey to climb in. I looked back at the ruin, grateful for everything it had given us. Then I turned around and realised I was facing the snub of an automatic pistol.

  It was pointed at me.

  ‘Nelson, what are you doing?’ I asked, thinking this was some sort of sick joke.

  ‘Get out. All of you,’ he ordered, gesturing with the pistol. ‘Right now.’

  ‘What?’ came Boges’s shocked cry.

  ‘Nelson?’ Winter demanded. ‘What are you doing? What’s going on?’

  He didn’t answer, just menaced us again with the business end of the pistol.

  ‘Do as I say. Get out. Now!’

  I was too stunned to move immediately.

  ‘Do as I say or I’ll fire.’

  Fire? At us?

  ‘But, Sharkey—’ I began, completely shocked and confused.

  Slowly my brain registered what was going on. I cursed myself for not having seen it sooner. It had been there all along and I hadn’t seen it!

  Rathbone’s list.

  Deep Water. Sharkey. Sharks swim in deep water!

  Nelson Sharkey was ‘Deep Water’!

  ‘You pretended to be on our side!’ I shouted at him, pushing my friends out of the ute and standing in front of them. ‘All this time you were lying to us! Pretended to help and now you are completely betraying us!’

  Rage was gushing up through my spine, shooting down into my arms and fingers. My fists were ready to strike out.

  Another vicious movement from the gun stopped me in my tracks.

  ‘Don’t do anything stupid, Cal. Just do what I say. You too,’ he said, gesturing the gun in Winter and Boges’s direction. ‘It’s turned out just as I hoped it would. All I had to do was tag along, lend a hand so I’d earn your trust, and ride your coat-tails until you tracked down the secret of the Ormond Singularity for me.’

  ‘But Sligo? You said you had proof!’

  Sharkey laughed. ‘Proof? How could I have proof? Just add it to the list of lies you fell for,’ he scoffed. ‘And Sligo didn’t shoot your uncle, I did!’

  Anger surged through me. He killed my uncle! I picked up a rock and pelted it at him.

  He deftly ducked it, standing upright again with a crooked smile.

  ‘But your kids? Your old job? Was none of it true?’ pleaded Winter.

  ‘I hate kids! I don’t have any offspring skipping around. I don’t have an ex-wife, either!’

  ‘But what about the reunion?’ Winter continued, tears streaming down her face.

  Sharkey laughed again. ‘I’ve been here following you three this whole time—I don’t have family in Dublin! I haven’t been at a reunion! I’m not even Irish!’ He shook his head and grinned. He was enjoying this. ‘I was a detective, I didn’t lie about that. Had quite an undercover money ring going until my partner in crime—that she-devil Oriana de la Force—hung me out to dry. We could have been an incredible pair.’

  ‘What about the clover?’ Winter pleaded. We thought you cared about us …’

  ‘Nice touch, eh,’ scoffed Sharkey. ‘Had a tracking device in it! I was particularly proud of that one.’

  ‘Brinsley?’ I asked, tentatively.

  ‘Old fool wouldn’t give me what I needed.’

  ‘You killed him? But I—’

  ‘But, but, but,’ mocked Sharkey.

  Every lie, every reveal, every betrayal hit me in the gut, hard. Desperately I looked at my friends. Winter looked heartbroken; Boges looked ready to attack.

  ‘The passports,’ whimpered Winter, ‘the clover … It was all just to fool us. How could you?’ she asked him. ‘We trusted you.’

  ‘That was the idea,’ Sharkey scoffed, before forcing us at gunpoint back to the Keep, back through the archway and into the central gallery.

  From the corner of my eye, I noticed that the light in the bulldozer had come on again.

  ‘How many lives does that guy have?’ Sharkey muttered to himself, looking back and noticing it too. ‘I should have hit him harder. He thinks he can pay me to do all his dirty work, and then he can take all the glory! Not a chance!’

  Who was Sharkey talking about?

  I had discovered the truth o
f the Ormond Singularity before midnight 31 December, and I had the proof of this on Boges’s mobile, but none of that mattered if Nelson Sharkey was about to get away with my colossal inheritance.

  It was just the three of us now. Mum, Gab, me. I needed all of the treasure so I could get my family back to where we were before. Buy back our house, buy back our old lives.

  With a last flourish of the pistol, Sharkey cornered us, then ran back to his ute. We glared at him in disbelief as he climbed into the cabin in the distance and revved up the car. Mud skidded out from underneath the tyres.

  The three of us slumped with desolation. We felt destroyed.

  All of a sudden the bulldozer thundered and charged into view, scoop raised high.

  Stunned, we watched as the bulldozer drove right up to Sharkey’s ute, blade hovering directly above the driver’s seat.

  ‘What’s going on?’ screeched Boges, breaking the spell of silence. ‘Sharkey’s about to get flattened!’

  We heard Sharkey’s horrendous howling before the bulldozer shifted gears, sending the menacing, heavy scoop pounding down on top of him, crushing the entire front end of the ute, like a half-squashed bug.

  ‘He’s dead for sure,’ said Boges, in a daze. ‘Sharkey’s dead.’

  ‘Who’s driving that thing?’ asked Winter, completely bewildered.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. I couldn’t believe what we’d just witnessed. ‘It must have been someone who knew Sharkey was a bad guy. Let’s go find out.’

  But as we ran towards the bulldozer, the driver revved it up, lowered its huge blade, and came straight at us, lights blazing.

  ‘Hey!’ yelled Boges, as we scrambled backwards. ‘Stop! What do you think you’re doing?’

  Winter ran over to the cabin, reaching up to bang on the glass, but the crazy driver took no notice and continued powering straight towards the archway—and me and Boges!

  If he took the archway out, I knew that the teetering tower nearby would come tumbling down in an avalanche, with all of us under it!

  ‘Hey! Stop!’ I yelled, waving my arms madly in the headlights.

  I knew he couldn’t hear me over the noise of the big earthmover, but I was right in his line of sight. Surely he could see me. I came closer, waving my arms. Boges and Winter joined me, flapping and shouting.

  ‘He’s not going to stop!’ I shouted. ‘He’s trying to kill us, too! We’ll have to run!’

  It was then that the driver put his head out of the cabin, revealing his identity …

  But it couldn’t be!

  He was dead!

  I’d seen him slumped, lying half out of the car. I’d seen the bullet wound.

  Then I saw his grin.

  Him!

  Had it all been staged?

  It was as if the world stood still and a whole lot of loose strands that had been twisting and turning in my mind suddenly fused together. The bulldozer revved up again, and despite the falling shower of stones, I had a moment of diamond clarity.

  As I focused on his determined face, the smell that I’d been trying to remember came clearly into my mind.

  It wasn’t one of Mum’s perfumes.

  It was the pungent smell of cigars.

  I realised who had been behind almost every bad thing that had happened since the crazy guy, Eric Blair, had tried to warn me last year.

  I now knew the identity of my archenemy.

  He was coming at me, deliberately targeting the wall, intending to push the whole ruin down on top of us. With the speed of light, the missing pieces in my mind slotted into place.

  My enemy was an ex-botanist whose special area of interest was the toxins found in bracken ferns. I recalled skimming through the boxes of botanical textbooks and notes in his office.

  Mrs Fitzgerald thought Dad had been acting strange the night she’d interrupted him at the Clonmel Way Guest House, unexpectedly cooking up some rotten-smelling herbal stew.

  Except it hadn’t been Dad at all. Someone else had opened that door. Someone else who looked exactly like my father.

  Was he preparing the nerve toxin to give to my dad and his friend Eric Blair? Either secretly placed in food they would eat, or more brazenly, at a friendly meal for the three of them?

  Rafe.

  Rafe had flown to Ireland while telling us he was on holidays interstate. He’d impersonated my Dad at the guesthouse, brewing up a toxin to poison his brother.

  A poison that destroyed Dad’s brain, mimicking a virus. That was what Dad had been trying to tell me all the time—he’d been trying to warn me against his own brother. Rafe.

  My uncle. My dad’s twin. Double Trouble. The last of the nicknames.

  Rafe’s head disappeared back into the cabin and the bulldozer accelerated towards us.

  ‘Sharkey,’ I shouted to my friends. ‘He was the private detective Rafe hired to track me down! Rafe and Sharkey were in this together! But then Sharkey must have doublecrossed my uncle!’

  As the bulldozer came crashing through the archway, I pushed Boges and Winter out of the way.

  Now the wall was bulging inwards—stones buckling in, sandy mortar pouring out. It would only be a matter of seconds before the entire western wall of Cragkill Keep fell, bringing the towers down.

  I looked around for a way out. The exit at the end of the long gallery was too far away for us to make a run for it.

  Somehow, I had to stop him. I had to stop the bulldozer.

  I charged for it. I ran, ducking the stones that were falling from the archway. I was forced to leap to one side to avoid the bulldozer’s scoop, raised and ready to bash me down.

  I was faster than ever. I picked up a heavy stone and jumped on top of the housing of the caterpillar tracks. I smashed the window with the stone, wrenched open the door then hurled myself at Rafe, knocking him into the corner away from the controls.

  ‘You murderer!’ I yelled. ‘You killed my dad! How could you murder your own brother? Your own twin! You’ve tried to destroy my whole family! And I thought you’d come to save me from the oubliette! I thought you were the Ormond Angel coming to the aid of the heir! But you just wanted me alive a bit longer so I could lead you here to the treasure!’

  My assault took him by surprise: it was the last thing he was expecting—he winced in pain and I saw that his shirt was bloodstained—he had been shot. I threw myself on top of him, pinning him down. The rage that I’d felt earlier, simmering up through my body, exploded into homicidal fury. I wondered where the terrifying growling I could hear was coming from, until I realised it was in me. I crashed Rafe as hard as I could against the side of the cabin.

  Rafe was fighting back, enraged by the pain I’d inflicted on him. Blood trickled from his nose as he managed to free his arms and grasp me round the throat, trying to strangle me!

  Instinctively, I lashed out and his hold around my neck relaxed. It was just loose enough for me to twist sideways and, with all my strength, pull myself away from him. I launched out of the cabin, hit the ground hard and rolled over, getting to my feet again with intense speed. I ran back towards the Keep.

  Rafe came after me, jumping out of the bulldozer, snarling. His lips were pulled back to show his teeth, deadly, like a werewolf in a horror movie. Behind us, the un-piloted bulldozer rose up against a pile of stones, crashing down again closer and closer.

  Boges and Winter raced towards us.

  Rafe charged, falling on top of me, trying to hurl me back into the bulldozer’s path, barely centimetres from the crushing tracks. I thumped the ground, winded. Getting my breath back, I fought as hard as I could, but I couldn’t get any momentum behind my punches.

  Again he had his hands around my throat. I rolled over the rough terrain, away from the tracks, twisting his hands, wrestling and gouging. Boges tried to help, trying to land a blow, but whenever he went to hit Rafe, somehow I was in the line of fire.

  I could hear Winter yelling in the background, trying to wrench Rafe off me. Then I felt something thud
hard on my legs. I looked down and saw what Winter had been trying to warn me about. A huge beam of timber had fallen across my ankles, trapping me. I couldn’t move.

  Through my dazed vision, I saw Rafe jump up and pick up a huge rock. Winter tried to tackle him down, but he shoved her away, hard, sending her flying. I spotted Boges starting to charge him, but Rafe shoved him away, too, with unbelieveable strength.

  My uncle stood above me, the crushing rock held high above him, the evil grin twisted into a snarl of demonic fury.

  I tried to get up, but my legs were jammed under the timber. I was stuck.

  Rafe was about to smash the rock down on my head.

  Any second now, I’d be dead.

  Goodbye Ormond Singularity. Goodbye everything. It would all be over in seconds.

  A roaring sound caused Rafe to hesitate. He turned to look up as the massive second tower of Cragkill Keep finally caved and came crashing down in a thunderous avalanche. The huge stone carving we’d noticed earlier, broke free from the crumbling tower, falling and swooping down towards us. All I could do was flinch as it bore down … then landed … right on top of Rafe. The rock he was wielding flew out of his hands and skittered away as the oddly-shaped stone from the sky obliterated him and saved my life.

  Winter and Boges rushed over to free me, lifting the beam from my ankles. As they helped me up, Rafe lay motionless under the massive stone formation that had fallen on him, missing me by just centimetres. Beyond him, the bulldozer churned away, uselessly turning in a slow circle, jammed up against the pile of stones that once had been part of the walls of Cragkill Keep.