The Monster of Shiversands Cove (5 page)

I backed away.

But why?
Why
was the monster spyhopping? What was it looking around for? And why was it here, in Shiversands Cove? Why was it so
close
?

I backed further away, further up the beach. I could hear Magnus just behind me, sitting on the sand, chatting to his fairy. By now, my legs were so wobbly that they wouldn't hold me up any more and I collapsed on the sand.

Magnus let out a huge shriek. ‘DON'T SIT ON HARRY!' he shouted.

Which was when I felt small, sharp teeth nip my behind, as, out from underneath me, something zoomed. Something which was wearing sparkly gold shorts. Something which was flapping sparkly gold wings. Something which was chattering furiously and gnashing two very big front teeth, more like fangs, right in my face.

A fairy. It was a small, angry fairy.

 

Chapter Seven

Harry the Horrible

It was like being in the middle of a dream: the weirdest dream of my whole life. This could
not
be happening.

First, there was a sea monster in the bay and now there was a fairy in the garden. And there was no way of talking to Dad about it because, well, what could I say?

‘Dad, there is a sea monster in our cove. Oh, and Harry the fairy is also real. But you can't see either of them because you don't have magic eyes.'

No. I couldn't say that. How could I? There are some things you just
can't
say to a dad.

To make matters worse, Harry the fairy was
horrible
.

He had sparkly fairy shorts and sparkly fairy wings but he also had weird eyes: mean little eyes,
angry eyes, which were a dark reddish colour. He had bushy eyebrows, creepy curved fingernails and low-set ears. His ears were as weird as his eyes. They were long and narrow, and a tiny bit furry, laid flat on his little fairy head.

 

 

And Harry the Horrible did
not
like me, not since I almost sat on him.

He glared at me and chattered his teeth. Then, he started sniffing round my head, sniffing my hair, sniffing in my ears, sniffing wherever he could.

He was behaving like Bagel. That's what Bagel always did, every walk we went on; every time Bagel met another dog, he'd start sniffing it.

Now, Harry started sniffing right in my face. ‘Get OFF me,' I yelled, batting him off. ‘Pest!'

‘Don't be a
horrid
, Stan,' tutted Magnus, wagging his finger. ‘Harry's not a pest. He's a little fairy. And he wants to be your friend.'

‘He does NOT want to be my friend,' I said, batting him off again. ‘And anyway, he's not a proper fairy. Where's his wand? Aren't fairies supposed to have wands and do little bits of fairy magic?'

Although I was quite glad Harry
didn't
have a wand. He might be even worse. Then Harry
swooped down and started sniffing round my knees. ‘STOP that!' I yelled, kicking up with my knee. Harry didn't like that. He flew up and flapped his sparkly wings in my face, hissing and gnashing his teeth.

‘You know what?' I said. ‘I'm not even sure he
is
a fairy. Look at those teeth and the furry ears. He's creepy. More like a flying hobgoblin.'

But I had bigger things to worry about than Harry, like a sea monster, here, in Shiversands Cove.

I left Magnus and Dad in the cove and went back up to the cottage. I had a
lot
of thinking to do. That painting, the one in the sitting room, it was looking likely that it
was
of the monster, so the sea monster was probably
not
passing through. This was probably where the sea monster lived.

I checked the painting. It was old. It had a signature I couldn't read, and a date on it: 1904, a long time ago. Was it a very old sea monster, then? How long did sea monsters live? Hundreds of years? Or was it a
family
of sea monsters? Was this a grandchild of the sea monster in the painting?

I had a scary thought: maybe there was more than one sea monster. Maybe there were lots of
sea monsters, a big family, and they all looked alike.

No. If they were family they would do some swimming together, surely. So it was probably just the one monster I had to worry about.

Still, it couldn't be a ferocious monster because if that sea monster
was
ferocious, people would know about it. There would be gruesome discoveries: fishing boats with jagged holes in them and no sign of their owner; tourists disappearing without trace.

No. There could
not
be a ferocious monster in this bit of the sea without people knowing it because, even if they couldn't see it, even if they didn't have magic eyes, they could see its effects. So the monster was probably harmless, like a basking shark.

Yes, that was it. It was big, it was ugly, but it was harmless. It just swam about, not bothering humans. It wasn't interested in feeding on humans, just on fish. It could even be a vegetarian.

Unlike Harry.

* * *

It turned out that Harry the Horrible liked meat. I was in the kitchen, making myself a ham roll,
and then I went to the fridge to get a glass of milk. In Harry swooped, through the kitchen door. He helped himself to my ham and then shot off.

I was annoyed with Harry for stealing, but also astonished. Ham wasn't a very, well,
fairylike
sort of food. Weren't fairies supposed to like sugary things like little pink cupcakes and sugar lumps? That sort of thing?

Not Harry.

Next, I caught him trying to eat Magnus's hamster. I went upstairs and there he was, licking his lips and trying to squeeze himself through the bars of the hamster cage. I yanked him away, hurled him out of the window, and slammed it shut.

‘Magnus,' I bellowed down the stairs, ‘keep your fairy under control! Put it on a lead or something. It just tried to eat the hamster!'

‘Stan,' said a cross voice behind me.

Dad was standing there, frowning. ‘Don't be mean. Let Magnus enjoy his fairy game.'

I stomped off to look in the rock pools. I was fed up with Harry the Horrible and still fretting about having a sea monster, even a harmless one, in our cove. As I was clambering about on the
rocks, I heard two noises: first, chattering noises and then the sound of small fluttering wings.

I looked up and there was Harry, zooming across the beach, chattering. Zooming towards me.

Oh no! Not again. He didn't
like
me so why did he have to keep bothering me, sniffing around me? I filled a bucket with water. I was ready. One sniff of me and Harry was getting a drenching: time to see if
this
fairy had waterproof wings.

Then, I heard another noise: a much bigger one, a loud slapping noise. I went cold. That noise, it was an angry noise, a warning noise. And it was also in the cove.

I turned and stared.

There it was, the sea monster. It was right there, in the middle of the cove. It was looking straight at me and slapping its huge great tailfin on the surface of the water, smacking it up and down, up and down, so that water sprayed everywhere.

Then, the frilly thing all around its head shot out sideways and stood out, all stiff around its head. I knew what that frill was. It was a threat.

Then, the sea monster started to swim fast, straight towards me.

So I ran. I scrambled round the rocks and back up the beach. Who knew how far a sea monster could rear or how far it could grab?

I ran back to the cottage, straight into the sitting room and threw myself down, on the sofa. I sat there, panicking because, all of a sudden, that sea monster did
not
look harmless. Not harmless at all.

And I remembered something. Morris. Morris the dolphin.

Morris had been on the news a few weeks ago. He was a dolphin that had been swimming with tourists for years and years, playing with them in the bay and letting them tickle him and bounce balls off his nose, everything.

Then, one day, Morris turned. He attacked a tourist, viciously. He dragged them round the bay and tried to drown them. And later, he did it again.

That was it.

Morris was no longer safe to be around tourists. Morris was a danger. Morris had gone rogue, the news reporter said.

Was that what was happening here in Shiversands Cove? Had a harmless sea monster, one which had been swimming here for years and years, now gone rogue?

 

Chapter Eight

Sunset Swim

I sat, quaking, in the sitting room. Then, I noticed a big box with a big label on the front, which read:

SHIVERSANDS COTTAGE
VISITOR INFORMATION

The box had leaflets inside, lots of leaflets, so I started sorting through them. They all showed things to do around here – things that did
not
involve the sea. I made a big pile. We could hire bikes, go on forest trails, visit a working farm, a woollen mill, a chocolate factory, make some pottery, all sorts.

Yes. That's what I could do. Turn this into an activity holiday. I could keep us busy one day at
a time – and nowhere near the sea. I grabbed a leaflet and went to see Dad. ‘Dad,' I said, waving the leaflet in his face, ‘can we go here tomorrow? And take a picnic?'

* * *

Next morning I sat, watching out of the car window, as we drove further and further away from the sea, further and further inland. Then, there it was. Up on a tall hill, towering over the town was a castle, Cleeston Hill Castle.

Cleeston Hill Castle was big and square, with lots of battlements. Some of it was ruins, some of it not.

‘Claudia might be here already,' said Magnus, jiggling in his car seat. ‘Claudia
and
her cousin!'

The castle plan had got bigger over night. Now, Claudia was coming too and Claudia's cousin, who was staying somewhere in Lightsands Bay, and their mums and dads.

‘A cousin,' said Magnus, clasping his hands. ‘Claudia has a
cousin
! And I am going to meet the cousin! Today! At the castle!'

Magnus was jiggling with excitement. Magnus loves cousins. We have five: two toddlers, who
wreck things; two four-year-olds, who hunt fairies; and Ned, who is my age. Ned is the
only
good thing about having cousins.

I just hoped Claudia had a Ned for a cousin.

We parked near the castle, got tickets and then walked through a big stone archway on to a wide green lawn with the castle battlements stretching right around it. There were a group of people in the middle of the lawn, stretching out a picnic rug.

‘There she is!' shrieked Magnus, waving and hurtling towards them. ‘There's Claudia!'

I could see Claudia too. I could see some grown-ups and . . .

Oh no.

I stopped and gaped. That girl standing there, she must be Claudia's cousin. She was also Pearl, Pearl Pankhurst.

* * *

Pearl's grown-ups started shrieking at Dad and Dad started shrieking back, all about being new neighbours back home and now meeting here, about what an astonishing coincidence it was, and about how they could
not
believe it.

Well, nor could I. It just wasn't
fair
.

Dad was beaming at me. ‘Someone your own age at last,' he said, as if being the same age as Pearl made us friends. Which it didn't.

Then, Dad waved his hand. ‘Explore,' he said. ‘Have fun!'

Fun? Where was the fun in being stuck here with Pearl? I stomped off.

Pearl stomped after me. ‘I'm not happy to see you either,' she said, scowling. ‘But if we're going exploring let's call a truce and start again.'

I turned and gaped. ‘A truce? Going exploring?' I said. ‘There is no truce and
we
are not going exploring . . .
I
am.'

I hadn't finished. ‘For your information,' I said, ‘a good neighbour, such as my friend Rory, has a sense of humour. If
Rory
had fallen into my trap he would have found it funny.'

Now, Pearl had her hands on her hips. ‘Well,' she said, ‘for
your
information, a good neighbour, like my friend Ruby who lived four doors down from me, would NOT make traps in stupid places like on the path.'

‘Course she wouldn't,' I said. ‘Girls don't build traps.'