The Creeping Kelp Read Online Free Page B

gathered the girl in her arms, then looked to see what was on the sand.
    A dismembered foot lay there, with white bone showing at the ankle where it had been roughly torn from the body. But that wasn’t the worst thing. The worst thing was the split nail on the big toe... the same split nail she had stopped Zane from worrying at just fifteen minutes before.
    This isn’t happening.
    She heard Dave cry out, heard him splash away into the water, but she couldn’t lift her gaze from the foot.
    Just wait until I get you home, Zane Welsh. You are in big trouble this time.
    Mary started to cry and burrowed her head in Maggie’s neck. She pulled the girl tighter, and that small act of motherhood dragged her back to some semblance of reality.
    Zane? Where are you, lad? Mum’s getting worried.
    Around a dozen parents, Dave included, were frantically searching for the lost boys, splashing around and parting the water with their hands as if they might be able to open it up and reveal what secrets it kept. A black hump, like a breaching whale, rose up out of the water mere feet from the group. The black hump spread and Maggie was reminded of an old horror movie with Count Dracula opening his cape to enfold his victim. The darkness fell on the parents like a black sheet. Where it touched their skin, they started to scream.
    Dave?
    The sea was now a roiling mass of thrashing limbs and white spray that suddenly frothed pink. Maggie’s mothering instincts finally kicked in. She turned and fled, with Mary clasped tight at her breast. The screams of the dying rose ever higher behind her, but she didn’t look back. Her gaze was fixed on the family car, perched near the edge at the top of the cliff.
    Everything will be okay if I get to the car.
    Everything will be okay if I get to the car.
    She repeated it to herself like a mantra as the hot sand sucked at her feet and Mary sobbed uncontrollably at her ear. At some point she became aware that the screaming had stopped and that the beach had once more fallen deathly quiet.
    Is it over?
    She refused to look round to check. The car was closer now. There were mere yards between her and the foot of the steps that led up to the car park.
    She put a foot on the bottom step.
    Should have gone to Lanzarote.
    That was her last thought. By some instinct she turned, knowing something was coming. A shadow sped up the beach, a black wave several feet high. She grabbed Mary tight and threw herself backward towards the steps, towards safety.
    She had time for just one scream.

July 22nd - A Dawning Realization
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    Noble had spent a futile night explaining, and explaining again, the events of the previous day, first to the coastguard, then the police. He could tell by their eyes that they didn’t believe him. They thought both he and Suzie were in shock at the loss of their crewmates in an accident that had sunk the ship. The idea of some kind of creature lurking offshore, one big enough to take down the Earth Rescue , was just too large for them to comprehend.
    Shit. I feel like the sheriff in Jaws.
    When the questioning was finally over they were let out into a glimmering dawn. Pale sunlight shimmered in Weymouth harbour and the terrors were already beginning to fade, taking on the semblance of a nightmare.
    “What can we do now?” Suzie said. “We’ve got to warn somebody. ”
    That’s all we ever do, Noble thought. Warn people. People who don’t want to listen .
    He didn’t say anything. He knew it wasn’t what she wanted to hear. Over the past four years he’d come to know when to speak and when not to.
    He’d signed up with Earth Rescue, initially, not from any great planet-saving idealism but for a need for adventure —a life at sea far from any constraints of office or train timetable. Suzie had taught him, slowly, the importance of their work and he’d seen for himself the damage that was being blithely done to the seas. Western civilization liked to bury its rubbish in shame, and