December (19 page)

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.