February
Authors: Gabrielle Lord
To Hélène, Jessica and Sam
I'm chased by a madman, who tells me my dad was murdered, and that I will be too if I don't hide out until midnight, next December 31st.
365 days
â¦
I somehow survive a boating accident during a violent storm in shark-infested waters.
Our house gets broken-into and trashed.Â
Some woman called me claiming to have information on my dad, but before we meet I'm kidnapped and interrogated by a group of criminals.
After narrowly escaping my captors, my uncle and little sister are brutally attacked. Rafe is recovering in hospital and Gabbi's on life support.
My
face is on the news as the attacker! The police are after me now, too! I have no choice but to run.
I'm hiding out in a St Johns Street dump, trying to make sense of the crazy drawings Dad did just before he died, and trying to figure out a way to clear my name.Â
I'm grabbed off the street by another criminal gang, this time led by the infamous Vulkan Sligo. When he realises I have no information to give him, he traps me in a fast-filling underground oil tank ⦠and leaves me there to drown â¦
The stinking sump oil gushed out of the cable on my right, relentlessly filling the underground tank I was trapped in. I struggled to hold my mouth above the rising tide as I bashed my slippery fists on the manhole cover at my head. It was useless. It wouldn’t budge.
Car wheels screeched and sped away in the distance, reminding me that I was completely alone. Left to die.
No matter how hard I tried to move around in the thick, glue-like oil, I couldn’t stop it from climbing my face. My mouth was almost completely covered. I shut it tight. I desperately pushed my head back and forced my nostrils—my
last chance at life—up and away from the surface that was swallowing me whole.
You’ve got to slow down your breathing, I told myself. I knew it would be certain death if my nose started sucking up the oil. The powerful, caustic fumes burned through my insides like acid. My head spun, and fear made me breathe faster and harder.
My own voice, from moments ago, played back in my mind …
Red hair
.
Purple sun glasses
. But I’d never even seen the woman who’d abducted me, so what in the world had made me say that to Sligo?!
And, even more puzzling, he seemed to know who I was talking about—he knew someone from the conference that fitted that exact description! What was going on?
I had escaped death at sea, just a month ago, only to find myself facing it again. But there was no possible escape from this.
The oil reached the bottom of my nose. Any moment now and it would block my nostrils entirely … I strained my muscles harder, trying to lift my body even just a millimetre higher, but it was impossible; there was nowhere to
go
.
I started inhaling droplets of oil.
365 days
…
the crazy guy’s deranged warning from New Year’s Eve screamed through my mind, taunting me. I’d only made it through one month—whatever lethal force had cursed my family had finally got to me. A few more seconds and I wouldn’t be able to breathe … I closed my eyes and hoped it would be quick.
I was so intensely focused on letting myself die calmly that I didn’t hear the exact moment the gushing stopped. But, for some reason, it
had
stopped. Somehow, the flow had been turned off!
Some sort of miracle had put an end to the process. What had happened? I was shaking all over. I was almost completely submerged in oil, but I was alive …
I opened my eyes, still straining to keep my nostrils higher than the level of the oil, and listened …
Nothing.
I slowly pulled up my arm, trying to avoid making a wave that would swamp my face, and thumped on the cover above me.
I pushed myself closer into the corner, hoping to exert more pressure. But it was a waste of energy. Yeah, the oil may have stopped, but I was just as trapped as I was before.
The relief I’d felt a moment ago started turning into horror. I was stupid to think that the end of the gushing oil meant I’d survived, and that someone had come to my rescue; I was no closer to making it unless I got out.
My mind raced. Maybe it would have been better for the tank to fill completely, so that I could have at least drowned quickly. Now I was going to be stuck in the darkness of the tank and die of asphyxiation or, worse, slowly and painfully from thirst!
I strained to listen for a sign of hope outside of my oil-filled tomb, but all I could hear in the silence was the beating of my blood against my eardrums—the thumping of my fighting heart.
How was I going to get out of this?
‘Hey!’
A
voice
?
‘You in the tank,’ it continued. ‘You OK?’
OK
? Someone was asking me if I was OK? Was I hearing things? I was so light-headed from fumes and adrenaline that I wasn’t sure of anything. I wanted to yell out but there was no way I could open my mouth. I had to make
some
noise, somehow, to let whoever was out
there know I was still alive. I was terrified I’d miss my chance—if it even was a chance—and be left there for dead when I was so close to making it.
I took a slow, careful breath through my nose, shut my eyes tight, and thumped at the manhole cover with my fists. Oil splashed all over my face.
I stopped and waited.
I knew I couldn’t hold my breath much longer.
Just as I was giving up on hope of air, there was a creaking, grinding noise. Someone was twisting open the cover!
It lifted and soft light fell on the sea of black surrounding me. I hauled myself up the ladder and out the opening, spitting and gasping. I’d freed my mouth and nostrils from the deadly tide and re-emerged into life.
I coughed and wheezed uncontrollably, madly shaking my oil-soaked head. I clung to the ground above me while my lower half hung exhausted below me, still in the tank and submerged in oil.
‘Who’s there?’ I finally managed to croak, spitting oil from my lips.
No answer.
‘Hello?’ I asked again, cautiously looking around.
Was I imagining things? Was this some trick or some sort of mental torture that Vulkan Sligo was playing with?
‘Why don’t you pull yourself out already? Or do you like hanging out in there?’
There was no mistake, it was a voice. The voice of a girl. I struggled to climb a little higher. My clothes and shoes were heavy and saturated, and my feet skidded, banging my shins hard into the ladder.
Eventually I crawled all the way out of the tank and rolled over onto my back, exhausted.
Something loomed in my vision. I blinked and tried to focus.
Above me stood the girl I’d seen earlier in the office with Sligo; the one with the strange eye make-up and wild hair. She stared down at me with her shadowed, almond-shaped eyes.
‘Who are you?’ I asked, groggily. ‘Did you turn the oil off?’
‘Look at you,’ she said pointing down at me. ‘You look like a swamp monster!’
What
?
‘Actually, your eyes and forehead are still human. Kind of!’ she laughed.
After all I’d been through, this girl was cracking jokes? I started lifting myself to my feet, trying to think of something clever to throw
back at her, but instead I slipped and fell, landing heavily on my side.