Slime (11 page)

‘No, that’s not necessary – ’

She placed her fingers over his lips, stopping him. ‘Like – going to bed with you?’

‘I’d like that.’

‘But I’m not going to. Goodnight, Tim. See you in the morning!’

And with a swift kiss which landed on the side of his mouth, she’d left him.

Had she guessed he’d be relieved, he’d wondered as he went into his room. With Sue on his mind, it couldn’t possibly have been successful. Yet he’d not told her about Sue, not so far, though no doubt she’d regard it as a big scoop for that article she still claimed to be writing. No, probably the truth was she’d not been thinking of him at all, but of some hang-up in her own mind. And that, he’d told himself firmly, was her problem, not his.

Or maybe she was no more than a tease. Plenty of those around.

The sky that morning was a pale, unbroken white, and the sea was silvery, glistening like polished metal. That silver sheen also touched the long stretches of sand on which the surface water lay thinly, unable to drain away. Yet there were no jellyfish visible. However carefully they searched, all three of them spread out in a line, they found nothing.

‘Not even the ordinary kind,’ Jane grumbled. ‘It’s a dead loss.’

She and Tim carried a shovel apiece, plus one of the containers. Earlier that morning she’d spoken once more to her sister Jocelyn, who’d said they were welcome to
film at her laboratory if they liked. So far she had two jellyfish sliced up into segments and preserved in formaldehyde; the other she was keeping alive in a tank. It fed voraciously on anything she gave it.

‘We’ll wait and see,’ Jacqui had said. ‘We don’t know yet if it’s worth filming.’

Tim stared around him over the wide expanses of flat sand. Again he was intrigued by those children’s footsteps. They led so purposefully towards the headland to the north of the bay. ‘Wonder what could be over there to attract them?’ he thought aloud. ‘Those kids must have been aiming for something.’

‘Take a look, d’you think?’ Jacqui suggested. ‘There’s nothing doing here on the beach.’

‘What about the harbour?’ Jane objected. ‘I said before we should look in the harbour.’

She turned to Tim for support, but he merely shrugged.

This morning it was her turn to be in a foul mood. With an irritated exclamation, she threw her shovel down and pulled off her glove to try and do something about her tangle of windblown hair which was getting in her eyes.

Jacqui pointedly ignored her. ‘Tim, I think I saw those kids when we came down here,’ she was saying. ‘They can’t be all that far ahead of us.’

‘We’re half-way there already,’ he agreed.

Within ten minutes they had reached the headland and could observe how the sandy beach gave way to a tumble of sharp rocks. As they explored them, Tim noticed how some were thickly encrusted with barnacles; centuries of sea-life had found a home there. No jellyfish, though – not even in the numerous rock pools. They went from one to the next, finding nothing.

In one pool Jane spotted an unusual shell. She squatted down and plunged her hand into the water to retrieve it, only to pull back with a sudden snort of disgust, her fingers covered with tar. Overhead the seagulls wheeled,
screaming their mockery at her.

‘Thought I heard someone calling,’ Jacqui remarked. Her lips twitched as she watched Jane trying to clean her hand.

‘Birds,’ Tim said.

‘No. Be quiet a minute.’ She listened again, frowning. ‘It’s coming from over by the cliff.’

‘You’re imagining it,’ Jane told her. She swore under her breath as the tissue she was using stuck to her fingers and began to tear. ‘Oh, this stuff’s impossible!’

Jacqui began to clamber over the rocks towards the cliff. Tim followed, unsure whether he’d heard anything or not. What puzzled him was the complete absence of jellyfish, both here and on the beach. After the press stories of the past few days he’d expected to find the coast littered with them. But perhaps Alan Brewer had been right after all; perhaps it
was
all over, bar the weeping.

‘Oh, please – somebody!’

‘Hear that?’

Tim nodded. A child’s voice, almost drowned by the cries of the seagulls, coming, it seemed, from inside the cliff. He turned to urge Jane to follow. ‘Over here!’

‘Please!’ came the voice again, fearfully.

Jacqui was ahead of him, making for a fissure in the cliffside. Tim disencumbered himself of the shovel and specimen container and went after her. Maybe the children were hurt. Or trapped. His feet slipped on the rocks as he scrambled over them in his haste to get there.

‘Please come!’ A different child this time. Younger. The voice rose to a scream.
‘Please!’

The fissure was a sideways opening where the rock face had begun to split away from the cliff leaving a gap wide enough for them to walk through. Jacqui reached it first and was already half-way in when he arrived.

‘It’s all right – we’re coming!’ she called out encouragingly.

‘Oh, hurry…’ the child whimpered.

Jacqui half-turned and grabbed Tim’s arm, pointing to something ahead of her. The narrow passage through the rock curved sufficiently to block their view of what lay before them, but there was no mistaking that glow of pale green light. Tim felt sick as he realised what must be causing it.

‘Let me go first,’ he said quietly, almost whispering.

She looked at him contemptuously, shaking her head.

Two more steps forward… slowly… To produce that amount of light there must be at least two or three of them. Big ones, perhaps. He kept close behind Jacqui, ready to pull her clear the moment he spotted them.

One more step…

With a sudden gasp, she stopped and he collided with her, catching hold of her to steady himself. She pressed back against him and he could feel her body shaking.

‘In there!’

Directly in front of her was the mouth of the cave. He had to stoop a little to see inside; as he took it all in, his stomach churned. That cave looked like some hideous temple in a science fiction nightmare. At the far end, on an exposed ledge of rock resembling a primitive altar, stood a boy and a girl with their arms around each other, their faces betraying how frightened they were. And little wonder, for below them in the body of the cave were more jellyfish than he’d even seen gathered together before.

‘Must be twenty or thirty of them,’ he muttered to himself.

‘Thirty-two,’ Jacqui stated clearly.

She was no longer shivering. Suddenly he understood that she’d been forcing herself to count them in order to keep a hold on herself, determined not to give way to hysteria this time. That uncontrolled look in her eyes died even as she spoke.

‘I’m going to get them out,’ he said.

‘How?’

‘Carry them.’

He stared through the opening into the cave once again, trying to work out a route through those menacing jellyfish. It would be like walking across a minefield, but he couldn’t leave the kids there.

‘I’m coming with you,’ Jacqui announced. ‘One each. You can take the big one.’

Tim hesitated. ‘I don’t like it.’

‘D’you think I do?’ Her gaze met his challengingly. ‘Isn’t it better if there are two of us?’

At that moment Jane arrived. ‘So what goes on?’ she demanded pushing between them for a clearer view into the cave. Then she gasped and her voice dropped to a chill whisper. ‘Bloody hell! Oh – those poor kids…’

Tim interrupted her. ‘Jane, love, I’m going in with Jacqui to get them.’

‘But I can–’

‘No, listen!’ He spoke urgently. ‘I need you to stay here just in case something goes wrong. If it does – well, please, no heroics. Promise? Just run like hell to fetch help.’

‘OK, if you think… Oh, I don’t know.’ She looked at him, troubled. ‘Be careful, Tim.’

He nodded.

He went in first, stooping for the first few feet at the cave entrance. Once inside he was able to stand upright. The rough, uneven walls rose to a height of some twenty or thirty feet, he estimated. A shaft of daylight illuminated one side of the cave roof, but it was pale and diffuse compared with the more intense illumination from the jellyfish.

Jacqui joined him, an expression of pure determination on her face. She was shit-scared, he guessed, and using all her will-power to suppress it. That greenish light added
to the impression, giving her a pale, sickly hue. But she managed a smile.

‘So far so good,’ she said.

‘Keep close behind me,’ he advised. Then he raised his voice, calling out to the children. ‘Listen, you two. We’re coming to get you out of here, but I want you to stay absolutely still. Don’t try to run or anything. Wait till we reach you. All right?’

He thought he saw the girl nodding.

The pink speckled jellyfish lay in a sweeping half-circle around the plateau of rock on which the two children stood, as if deliberately barring their way out. Of course, his reason told him – not for the first time – such invertebrates can only move in water. They must have been left there by the tide, which meant the children would be in no danger so long as they remained where they were.

And yet – in that case, how did the children get there in the first place? Had they walked between the jellyfish – for a dare, perhaps – and then found they hadn’t the courage to make the return trip? It didn’t seem likely.

He turned to Jacqui. ‘Come on. But avoid treading on them.’

‘Yes.’

Between the first two jellyfish was a gap of a couple of feet, which gave him no problem, but then came two close together and he was forced to skirt around them to reach the next opening. As he went on, stepping from one clear space to the next, he felt Jacqui’s hand from time to time touching his back; it reassured him. However much he tried to convince himself that the jellyfish were stranded where they lay, he could not quite believe it.

One wasn’t so flat as the others, but had a slight hump in the centre. A hump-backed jellyfish, misshapen from birth perhaps… It wasn’t impossible – but when he glanced back the hump had disappeared and the creature seemed just as level as its neighbours: but was it in exactly
the same position?

He could have sworn it was not.

A sudden gasp from Jacqui. Tim half-turned to see what was wrong, but she shook her head and motioned him on.

‘Don’t stop!’ Her voice was urgent; she was whispering, as though scared the jellyfish could overhear. ‘Let’s grab the kids and get out of here!’

They reached the rock plateau. With a sob the girl threw her arms around Tim’s waist and buried her face against his anorak. ‘It’s all right,’ he murmured, holding her. ‘It’s going to be all right.’ He glanced towards Jacqui who was looking after the boy. ‘Can you manage him?’

‘Of course we can manage, can’t we?’ She hugged him quickly. ‘What’s your name?’

‘P-Paul.’

‘And is that your sister?’

‘Cousin.’ Gaining more confidence, he added: ‘She’s Barbara and I’m Paul.’

Both children were barefooted, Tim noticed. That made it all the more remarkable that they had been able to get this far into the cave without being attacked. It also meant he and Jacqui had no choice about carrying them; it was too much of a risk to let them walk. He explained this to them, and then crouched down to allow her to sit on the crook of his right arm.

‘You’re that actor, aren’t you?’ the girl said. ‘In Gulliver – you’re Jon.’

‘That’s right. Now hold on tight.’

‘
You’re
not in Gulliver,’ Paul informed Jacqui pityingly. ‘You his girl friend or what?’

‘Jacqui’s the director,’ Tim told him. ‘The film director.’

Paul looked her up and down. ‘That’s a boy’s name.’

Jacqui seized the boy with both hands; before he could say anything else, she’d swung him on to her shoulders
with his legs either side of her neck. ‘Just you sit still up there or I’ll drop you in the middle of those jellyfish. Boy’s name! What do you know about it?’

The boy turned pale and clung on to her.

Tim indicated that Jacqui should go first. Now she was carrying the boy he wanted to be able to keep an eye on her. As for Barbara, she sat comfortably on his arm with her head against his shoulder. His bandaged hand tingled as he surveyed the army of jellyfish.

‘They’ve moved closer,’ Jacqui said.

But she did not wait for an answer. She stepped down from the rock plateau and began to make her way between those little glowing pink islands, choosing each step carefully. Tim followed a yard or so behind, and felt Barbara’s arm tightening slightly around his neck in apprehension.

‘It’s going to be all right,’ he said without conviction.

A sharp intake of breath from Jacqui. She hesitated about the next step, then stopped. Looking down, Tim saw a large jellyfish – eighteen inches across at least – was exploring her foot. A ripple passed like a minute wave through the rash of pink and red spots on its jelly-like back.

‘Tim…’

‘Go on!’ he urged her. ‘It can’t harm you. I’ll hold it while you go on.’

Only half the jellyfish covered her boot. Deliberately, Tim trod on the other half to help her pull her foot clear. Its tentacles fastened around her ankle, but he pressed down more firmly, digging his heel into that writhing, disgusting muscle. He felt it go slack as it allowed her to escape, but it was only a second before those tentacles were wrapping themselves hungrily around his own boot.

He tried stamping on it, then kicking his foot against the rock, but still it held on. It was then he noticed a
sudden worm-like shifting among the other jellyfish as they slowly surrounded him. It was an obscene slithering motion, leaving phosphorescent trails of slime marking their paths. Once again he attempted to rid himself of the jellyfish, this time scraping his boot against the sharp spurs of hard rock, but it had no effect.

Barbara turned her face away. Her little body was quivering.

Determinedly, he began to walk through the jellyfish towards the cave mouth, though with each step he felt that hard, slippery muscle beneath his foot. Its tentacles were probing, he knew, but his boots should be tough enough to keep them out. They were solid flying boots which zipped up the side, and the legs of his jeans were tucked firmly inside them. The biggest danger was that he might lose his balance and fall; he found himself sliding forward whenever he put his weight on that foot.