The Creeping Kelp Read Online Free

splashing diesel over his ankles. The air shimmered as the fuel evaporated in the heat.
    Suzie stretched down a hand and helped him haul himself up beside her. He stood, turned… and gasped. The view from the bridge hadn’t really imposed itself on him. At the time, he’d been too preoccupied with merely staying alive for a few minutes longer. But from here on the upper deck, he couldn’t ignore it.
    Black tendrils rose into the sky from horizon to horizon, waving slowly in unison like an audience at a concert moving in time to a ballad. Nowhere could the ocean be seen. All that was visible was a thick mat of black protoplasm anchoring the tendrils.
    And the eyes were everywhere—pale, green, and unblinking. As Noble noticed them, so they noticed him. Tens of thousands of eyes swivelled and fixed their stare on the boat.
    The chant rose, filling the air with noise.
    Tekeli Li. Tekeli Li.
    Tendrils surged forward, crawling over the bow, dragging the protoplasm behind in a dense carpet that started to smother the lower deck.
    “Do it now,” Suzie shouted. “Before it’s too late.”
    Noble waited for several seconds more, until the tendrils had almost reached the fuel canisters.
    “Burn, you bastards,” he shouted and fired the last flare down into the pool of diesel. They had to stand back as the fire took. Tendrils thrashed in frenzy, trying to escape the flames that were suddenly everywhere. Noble threw Suzie to the ground and lay atop her, covering her with his body. The fuel canisters went up, one after the other, the explosions drumming in his ears, the heat singeing his hair. Then all was silence.
    Noble heard his heart pounding in his ears. He stood, carefully lifting the axe from where it lay by Suzie’s right hand. Fires burned across the lower deck.  The boat listed sharply to starboard. The Shoggothsbacked off, leaving a twenty-meter moat of sea all the way around the hull. Tendrils still swayed lazily in the air, but there was no longer any sign of watching eyes.
    Noble lifted Suzie up.
    “We’re safe. For now.”
    “Maybe for a bit longer than that,” she said. She pointed out to the port side. At the same time, he heard it, the chug-chug of a chopper’s rotor blades. They stood on the deck, waving and grinning like excited school kids as the rescue chopper got closer and hovered overhead. Even as they were lifted upward, the tendrils started to creep back towards the boat, slowly at first, and then faster as there was no sign of further fire.
    When the chopper banked to turn away, Noble got a clear view of the boat, completely covered now, sinking under the weight of the thick black carpet.  It went under with scarcely a splash.
    But that wasn’t quite the end of it.
    By now, the sun was setting. Beneath them, the black carpet shone, a shimmering green that looked almost peaceful. Even above the sound of the rotors, he thought he could hear them, would always hear them, a chorus, stronger than any choir, singing in perfect unison.
    Tekeli Li. Tekeli Li.  
    A sea of eyes watched as the chopper headed away over the horizon.

July 22nd - At the Beach
----
    Maggie Welsh was in a foul mood and wasn’t slow in letting everybody know about it.
    “Kimmeridge bloody Bay,” she said in disgust, for maybe the fourth time since her husband had brought their car onto the car park on the cliffs above. “It’s not exactly Lanzarote, is it?”
    Dave Welsh looked at her over the top of his newspaper. His nose and cheeks were liberally splattered with thick suntan lotion, only serving to accentuate the deepening redness of the sunburn on his balding pate.
    “What’s not to like?” he said softly. “It’s a beach, it’s the hottest summer in years, and the kids are loving it.”
    Maggie was too deeply entrenched in her annoyance to let logic get in her way.
    “There’s bugger all to do except sit here and fry,” she said. She was aware that, if they had gone to Lanzarote, they’d just be sitting