|
On December 31st, a
muttering man appears and calls Callum "Cal" Ormond by his name. He tells Cal
to keep away from "it" and to run and don't stop for a year. He tells
Cal to hide and lay low but doesn't really explain much more, but does
mention the Ormond Singularity. Cal, who is 16-years old, and who has
just recently lost his father to a wasting disease, doesn't know what to
make of the crazy fellow.
That night, Cal is on his father's boat with
his father's twin brother, Rafe, in Treachery Bay, to watch the
fireworks show for the new year. After the fireworks have ended, Cal
realizes that the weather is turning bad, but Rafe doesn't seem to care.
When the winds pick up and the boat is overturned, Cal is left on his
own to fight the freezing water and the sharks that appear.
After being
rescued, Cal reads the last letter he received from his father, who was
a photo-journalist, and who had gone to Ireland to gather footage for a
story about Australian families with Irish ancestry. Along with the
letter is a picture that his father had drawn of a World War I soldier
holding aloft a flaming sword while having angel-like wings sprouting
from his back. Cal, his mother, and his sister, Gabbi, return from the
coast to their home in Richmond to find that it has been broken into and
thoroughly searched.
Cal tells his best friend, Boges, all that has
happened in the last few days. Rafe, who had washed up on the
shore after the boat turned over, seems to be spending a lot of time at
Cal's house comforting his mother. Rafe is nothing like Cal's father,
and Cal doesn't really want his uncle, who he really doesn't know all
that well, hanging out with his mom. When a large envelope arrives from
the hospice where his father died, Rafe snatches away the envelope
claiming it has something to do with Cal's father's estate. But Cal saw
that the envelope was addressed to him and thinks it might have
something to do with all of the strange occurrences that have been
happening lately.
Cal and Boges sneak over to his uncle's house and Cal
finds the envelope, but the pictures he expected to find are not there.
He does make photocopies of everything else in the envelope so he and
Boges can study it later. He also finds Rafe's gun and picks it up to
look at it, and then places it back in the bedside table. Cal receives a
phone call from Jennifer Smith who wants to meet with him. She claims
that she was his father's nurse at the hospice and has something for
him. While Cal waits to meet with Jennifer, he is kidnapped and
questioned about the Ormond Angel and the Ormond Riddle.
After escaping,
Cal takes the key he stole from his uncle's house and pays a visit his
family's mausoleum in the cemetery. In the mausoleum, he finds the
pictures from Cal's father that Rafe has hidden and takes them. The next
day, after he and Boges have studied the pictures, Cal returns home to
find Rafe laying in a pool of blood in the kitchen and his younger
sister, Gabbi, not breathing. He performs CPR on his sister and flees
his house when he hears someone coming.
On the run, he sees himself on
the television and he is shocked to learn that his uncle, who is not
dead, is blaming him for shooting him and trying to kill Gabbi.
Realizing that this must all have something to do with the Ormond Angle,
Singularity, and Riddle, Cal finds a place to lay low and work on the
mystery that has changed his life.
Conspiracy 365:
January
is a Young Reader Thriller written by Gabrielle Lord.
This book is intended for young readers 10 and up.
|
