December

by Gabrielle Lord

  Winter’s voice interrupted my thoughts. ‘It’s worrying me,’ she said, her face half lit by torchlight. ‘This misspelling of “ape”. I mean, I’d expect “aype” just like in “jaype”, not this “apye” with the “p” before the “y”. Scribal errors happened in copied texts, but you wouldn’t think it would happen in this Riddle. It’s so obvious that it should be spelled the other way.’

  I caught a glimpse of Winter’s face. She was smiling.

  ‘What are you getting at?’ asked Boges, pausing over his oar.

  ‘What if it’s not a scribal error?’ I began, picking up Winter’s excitement. ‘What if it was deliberate? Is that what you’re saying? That the misspelling of “apye” is the “jaype” of the Riddle? Black Tom’s trick is that word itself?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I mean!’ Winter nodded vigorously. ‘That the error was made intentionally, so that the code would work! I’m going to check it right now!’

  With the piece of vellum on her knees, Winter continued her decoding, focusing on the word ‘apye’, starting as she’d begun with the first words, with just one shift along the alphabet.

  ‘Don’t forget,’ began Boges, breathlessly heaving on the oars, ‘to look for “apye” in both lines of the alphabet. Apply it to the top line as well as the bottom line.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Winter. ‘It could go either way. I’ll check both and see what they give us.’

  ‘From the top line, “apye” becomes “zoxd”,’ said Winter, shaking her head. ‘From the bottom line it becomes “bqzf”. No good. I’ll try two shifts along.’

  ‘OK, so with two shifts, from the top line, “apye” becomes “ynwc”,’ she sighed. ‘From the bottom line it becomes—’

  ‘It’s “crag”!’ I yelled. ‘It’s Cragkill Keep! Winter, you’re brilliant! Maybe the “double-key” code also hinted at the double shift needed to decipher “apye”!’

  ‘Careful,’ warned Winter, ‘you’re going to tip over the boat!’

  Winter wrote out the last of the letters and now it was clear to see:

  ‘Bridge coming up! Six arches!’ yelled Boges, triumphantly. ‘The St Mullins Bridge! We’re almost there!’

  Louder now, I could hear the clock chiming seven o’clock. We had five hours left to make it to Inisrue Marsh, find Cragkill Keep and search it. Winter’s map showed that Cragkill was on the right of the stone landing.

  Ignoring my stinging hands, I hauled on the paddles as Boges and I swung back and forward in long pulls, sending the light cot scudding up the river. Ahead, a low stone wall rose from the river bank, leading to a stone wharf.

  ‘We’re here,’ I said, swinging the skiff towards the banks. ‘This must be the landing Ashling told us about.’

  We worked hard, cutting across the tidal surge, then jumped out, dragging the cot up onto the stones, running it aground.

  Boges swore at the cold but I was too excited to even notice it myself.

  We hauled ourselves up the bank and onto the landing. A small, sinking stone house with darkened windows was the only intact building I could see, but just past it, blocking out the night sky ahead, was the looming mass of a great ruin.

  ‘OK, we have to make our way along the bank to Cragkill Keep,’ said Boges, ‘which is further up on the right. Quick, follow me!’

  Boges led the way with the sharp light from his torch.

  Stay on the track, Ashling had warned. None of us wanted to end up sinking helplessly into the bog, like Rathbone had, but we dared to walk quickly along the narrow strip of firm, slightly raised ground that formed what we hoped was the safest path. On both sides of us, the quicksand of the marsh endlessly oozed into the dark, with only the occasional bare and struggling tree jutting out of its surface.

  The chiming clock, louder still, rang out eight o’clock—it must have been in a nearby town. We’d been struggling along the muddy track through the marsh for over half an hour, and now we only had four hours left.

  I paused. I’d heard something. I put up a hand to stop the others behind me.

  Boges immediately doused his light. ‘What is it, dude?’

  ‘Listen.’

  The darkness and silence of Inisrue Marsh surrounded us.

  ‘What are we listening to?’ whispered Winter.

  ‘I don’t know. But I get the feeling we’re not the only people on this track.’

  I steadied myself and strained to listen again. ‘I swear I can hear footsteps,’ I whispered, as quietly as possible. ‘Ahead of us, coming this way. Can you hear it?’

  This time, the others heard it too.

  Flickers of light from torches in the distance became visible ahead of us. Low voices drifted along the chilly air.

  We crouched low, unsure of what to do and where to go. I didn’t want to backtrack and lose ground, but I was worried we didn’t have any other option. Winter suddenly gasped beside me—now footsteps seemed to be coming from behind us as well! We were stuck in the middle!

  Not knowing who was closing in on us was the worst part. I couldn’t even imagine who it could be; all I knew was that the intruders would be hostile. Hostile and desperate to stop us from uncovering the DMO first.

  Then I recognised the loud voice ahead.

  ‘Sligo!’ Winter hissed, before I could.

  What was he doing here? Wasn’t he supposed to be in the hands of the Garda? If Sligo found us this time, we could kiss our lives and the Ormond Singularity goodbye forever.

  ‘We have to get off the track!’ I told my friends. ‘We can’t let anyone see us!’

  ‘Where should we go?’ asked Boges. ‘We can’t go into the bog—we’ll be sucked down in seconds!’

  Desperate, I swung round, trying to find a hiding place. Against the night sky, I spotted a gnarled and witchy-looking tree half-submerged in the marsh near the edge of the track a few metres ahead of us.

  ‘That tree,’ I whispered to the others. ‘Let’s climb in there and hide. Grab a branch and hang onto it for your lives. Whatever you do, don’t let go—we have to stay above the surface.’

  The footsteps behind us crept closer.

  I ran and leaped off the pathway, seizing the low branches of the witchy tree, throwing myself behind it, while gripping it tightly with my raw hands.

  Whack! Winter slammed into me as she did the same, almost making me lose my hold and my balance. Seconds later, Boges banged into us, almost sending both of us sprawling into the surrounding marshy mess.

  I could already feel the mud closing over my feet. I hated to think what might happen if any of the branches snapped. I hung onto the bough even tighter than the day I was hanging from a tree with those dogs, Skull and Crossbones, snapping at my heels.

  Boges and Winter were also straining to keep themselves up in the tree, the pained effort obvious in their shadowy faces.

  ‘They haven’t arrived yet,’ I heard Sligo say as he wandered along the path nearby. ‘We can grab them and force that Psycho Kid into giving us the last piece of information. He won’t be able to keep quiet if he has to watch you use your “special techniques” on his stout friend and that repulsive little traitor! I know he’ll talk if we grab them. And then we’ll finally get rid of Ormond. For good, this time!’

  Sligo must have returned to the empty oubliette, and realised I’d escaped.

  Tension choked the air as we huddled in the branches, trying to keep our nerves and chattering teeth under control.

  The figures of Zombie Two and Sligo finally emerged from the murky air, mere metres away from where the three of us were clinging. They both stopped and stared into the darkness of the path leading back to the river.

  ‘Vermin coming now, boss,’ Zombie Two growled. ‘I hear them coming.’

  Zombie Two clearly thought that it was me and my friends making our way down the track towards them. I held my breath.

  The heavy pounding of whoever it really was who had been trailing behind us came closer.

  A single
silhouette, black and round, grew larger with every footstep. I knew that silhouette all too well.

  I waited for him to step into the soft beam of moonlight that shone between him and the unsuspecting pair ahead on the path.

  I heard a wheezing roar as Sumo suddenly became visible, head down on his massive chest, powerful arms raised in a fighter’s stance. His torchlight pointed at Sligo and Zombie Two, standing side-by-side, who’d been expecting the three of us to appear, not Oriana’s loyal sidekick.

  Before Zombie Two and Sligo could react, Sumo doubled over and powerfully barrelled into them both, knocking the wind out of them, and sending them flying out over the marsh in a big black blur of tangled bodies!

  The three wrestling bodies splashed into the treacherous swamp just metres from our unstable hiding place.

  For a few seconds, they didn’t realise the serious danger they were in, and we heard them, swearing, shouting, struggling, swinging and kicking. Every twist, every turn, every defensive move was condemning them to a suffocating fate.

  I should have known that Oriana’s jail sentence wouldn’t have meant the end of her pursuit of the Ormond Singularity. She must have sent Sumo to Ireland to finish what she’d started.

  ‘C’mon,’ I said, trying to refocus. ‘Now’s our chance to get out of here!’

  I carefully swung myself out of the tree and planted my feet on firm ground. I held my arms out to help Winter and Boges to safety.

  The shouts and curses of the battling trio in the mud changed to cries of fear as they realised their threats were useless. They’d encountered an enemy that they couldn’t beat—finally they were facing a force that was greater than all three of them combined.

  ‘Help!’ came Sligo’s terrified voice. ‘Somebody help me! Please! Get me out of here!’

  For a moment, Winter moved towards the bog, but both Boges and I stopped her. We weren’t about to let the marsh take her, too, for the sake of a man who’d tried to destroy her life. It was out of our hands now.

  ‘Get off me!’ shouted Sumo, from the darkness.

  ‘Get off me!’ shouted Zombie Two.

  ‘Stop it, you fools!’ cried Sligo. ‘You’re both pushing me under!’

  We could hardly see anything as they all sunk lower and lower in the swamp, their struggles and violence only making it worse for them, quickening their relentless descent.

  ‘There’s nothing for us to see here. Let’s go,’ I whispered to my friends. I took Winter’s hand and led her away, as the desperate cries from out of the unforgiving mud were slowly muffled …

  And then even they were gone. There was nothing but silence behind us.

  We hurried along the final stretch and my chest pounded harder with every step. Sligo had boasted about ridding himself of Rathbone in the mud, and now he had suffered the same demise. Maybe there was some kind of justice in the world.

  I gripped Winter’s hand firmly.

  The silhouette of Cragkill Keep finally emerged from the dark, wet mass of Inisrue Marsh. At one time, I guessed, the river would have flowed close to the Keep, but now it was a hundred metres or so away.

  The clock sounded over Cragkill Keep, reminding us that we had only three hours to go. The Keep stood alone in a field, its fragmented shape etched against the rising half-moon sky. Even by moonlight, and despite the whorls of mist around its crumbling towers, I recognised the ruin from the photos on my dad’s memory stick.

  We flashed our torches over the stone ruin. Only the central section of the building remained partly intact, with crumbling towers at each end like a giant’s four-poster bed.

  ‘No!’ said Boges as our torchlight also revealed that Cragkill Keep was completely surrounded by a tall security fence and locked double gates. Inside this compound I could see earthmoving equipment—a huge bulldozer and two cranes sitting idle. We were locked out. ‘Man, what’s all this about?’ asked Boges. ‘Why is it fenced off like this?’

  The huge bulldozer with its immense jaw-like scoop squatted on a rise a little way from the massive ruin, next to what looked like flood lights. Piles of numbered stones were stacked nearby, awaiting transportation.

  I turned to Boges and Winter. ‘Mrs Fitzgerald said that one of the ruins here was being boxed up and shipped back to the USA.’

  ‘It would have to be this one,’ said Winter in frustration. ‘What if somebody has already stumbled on the Ormond Singularity? What if they’ve already been in there and taken it?’

  ‘Don’t panic. We should know by now that the Ormond Singularity isn’t something that people can just “stumble on”,’ said Boges. ‘I don’t think it’d just be sitting in there waiting for someone to walk in and find it.’

  ‘I know that,’ Winter said. ‘But they might have been digging around. They might have accidentally lucked onto it.’

  ‘Come on guys,’ I said, mentally measuring up the height of the wire mesh. ‘What’s a little fence between us and the Ormond Singularity? We’re going over.’

  I threw my backpack over the fence, and bit down on my torch, ready to scramble up and over the security fence.

  ‘What about this?’ asked Winter, pointing to a small sign.

  ‘I can’t see any cameras anywhere, can you?’ I said, jumping the fence and landing on the other side.

  Winter followed me, throwing her bag over the tall wire netting and throwing herself up on it.

  Finally, Boges took a running jump and threw himself up and over the fence too. He dropped to the ground on the other side, puffing.

  The three of us stood inside the grounds, examining the decaying ruin. Weeds grew wildly through cracks in the rubble and over large blocks of stone. We navigated around them, stepping cautiously through the wet grass, avoiding tripping on the uneven ground.

  Starry sky peered eerily through the empty window arches of a collapsed tower. Dead grass and plants speared out of the broken walls. The second, less damaged tower stood opposite the first and I could just make out some kind of statue standing on a perch within it.

  ‘What is that?’ Winter asked.

  Eroded and hidden by the jut of a stone corner, the figure was impossible to make out.

  ‘Not sure,’ I said, flashing my torch through an archway to the interior.

  Some of the original roofing remained at the furthest end, and this had protected a section of the stone flooring of what I guessed would have once been the Keep’s great hall.

  A tremor of fear and apprehension filled me. I couldn’t shake the feeling that even though Oriana, Rathbone, Sligo, Zombie Two and Sumo were out of the picture, trouble was very close. We were right where we were supposed to be, I reminded myself. Cragkill Keep. The worst thing that could happen was that we’d run out of time.

  Winter guided her light along the mossy stone walls of the interior and up to the sections of the first-floor roof that still remained. Remnants of the plaster patterns that had once decorated the ceiling were now stained and broken, with dead vines drooping from them.

  I lowered my torch, moving it over the uneven floor of the long room. Under the debris and dead leaves, I could see the remains of mosaic tiling.

  ‘What are we even looking for?’ Boges asked the question we were all thinking.

  ‘We won’t know what we’re looking for until we find it,’ I said.

  I started panicking as the distant chimes rang out again. We had two hours to midnight.

  ‘Spread out,’ I urged, ‘and look for anything that might give us a clue. Anything familiar.’

  After a lot of frantic searching, we all stopped and stared back at each other hopelessly. Was this the end of the road? Had we reached another dead end?

  ‘Come over here!’ Winter suddenly shouted. ‘Look at this!’

  Boges and I hurried over to her. She was shining her torch down to where the corners of a huge fireplace met the broken stone of the floor. There was something carved on the stone. It was small and worn by the weather.

  ‘It’s a rose!
’ I said, squatting beside it. ‘Like that one in the drawing of the little kid!’ My heart beat a little faster. ‘And look! Just above it!’

  ‘The pattern on Gabbi’s ring,’ said Winter, pointing to the silver ring on my finger. ‘The Carrick bend design!’

  Just above the rose, the Carrick bend had been carved along the stone wall. It too, was eroded and almost invisible.

  ‘Maybe the rose means something like “X marks the spot”,’ I said, hopefully. I shone my torch up and around, searching the darkness in the corner under the collapsing roof.

  You were here, Dad, I thought to myself. You knew something was here. You noticed something—why can’t I see it? What were you trying to tell me?

  As I strained to make out more of the rotting designs in the crumbling plaster, brilliant lights suddenly came on, flooding the interior of the ruined Keep.

  Boges and Winter blinked in astonishment, quickly turning around, bracing themselves.

  I freaked out. It was now as bright as day. Who was here?

  ‘Get out of sight!’ I ordered, ducking into the narrow corridor we’d first come through, and peering around the corner of the wide archway.

  Someone had switched on the flood lights. I could hear the generator humming outside.

  As I crouched out of the light, I nearly jumped out of my skin as outside some huge piece of machinery revved into life. I craned my neck further around the corner. Some distance away, near the fenceline, the massive bulldozer we’d seen earlier had come to life! A hunched figure sat at the controls.

  I raced back to the others. ‘We have to hurry. If we stay out of sight, the guy in the bulldozer might not even realise we’re in here. Looks like he’s loading stones onto a pallet or something.’

  ‘At this hour?’ Winter asked. ‘Nearly midnight? On New Year’s Eve?’