BOATHOOK MAN IS THE FIRST TO HIS FEET, standing so abruptly that his table crashes over. Then he crosses the diner, flings the door open and lumbers out.
The scream comes again.
“Come on!” Violet cries, pulling me out of my chair.
Everyone else gets up too, and we’re able to hide in the small crowd that rushes out onto the deck of the pier to see what’s happened. We lean over the side, our eyes straining in the swirling mist.
“What’s that?” someone shouts. “Look, there!”
Down below, where the beach is barely visible, a human shape moves into view, stumbling out of the mist.
Boathook Man lets out a strange sound, like the moan of a distant wind, and turns, heading straight for the hidden spiral staircase down to the beach. As he goes, he lets his right arm drop by his side, his long, hooked spike dangling like a weapon.
“What’s he going to do?” Violet whispers in my ear, but I don’t know, do I? I look back down at the figure below, and the figure looks up. I recognize the face immediately.
“Mrs Fossil!” I shout, waving. “Helloooo! What happened?”
But Mrs Fossil seems unable to speak. Her face is contorted with fear or pain, or both. One of her hats has fallen off.
“We need to get down there,” Violet says, and she sets off at a run in the same direction as Boathook Man, who has vanished now into the mist.
I follow, and find myself rattling down the spiral staircase faster than is wise, but I’m more concerned about getting down quickly than I am about not slipping. We jump the last few steps, and run back down the beach beneath the dripping pier.
“Mrs Fossil!”
“Oh! Oh, Herbie!” comes her voice. “Help me!”
The sea mist is so thick now that if we didn’t have the struts of the pier to follow, we’d struggle to know which way was which.
Mrs Fossil is on her knees in the sand, clutching one arm and sobbing with pain.
“It hurts! Stings!”
“What happened?” Violet crouches down beside her. “Did you cut yourself?”
The sleeve of Mrs Fossil’s wax coat is torn to shreds, as are the many layers of clothing below that. There are angry red marks on her skin.
“It bit me!” she cries. “I saw it! Oh, Herbie, I saw it. Teeth like needles!”
“It’s OK, Mrs F,” I say. “We’ll get you back to the town. And call the doctor.”
I place my shoulder under her arm, and Violet does the same. We manage to raise her to her feet.
“But I saw it!” Mrs Fossil wails. “I saw it!”
“What did you see?” Violet says through a grunt of effort. “What bit you?”
“The mala… The mal…” Mrs Fossil tries to say, but her teeth seem to be locking together. Then her legs give way, and suddenly we’re the only things holding her up.
“We need,” I gasp, “to get her off the beach…”
But I trail off, because something is moving ahead, between us and the town. Something dark and immense. Something that is getting closer.
The Boathook Man steps out of the mist. His eyes lock onto Violet. He raises his hook-for-a-hand and points it at her. His mouth opens – a black cavern in his scraggy beard – and he bellows in a voice like a distant gale, “I find you!”
“Please,” says Violet. “We need help. We have to get this lady to a doctor.”
Boathook Man doesn’t seem to hear. He stomps forward and, with his one good hand, grabs Violet by her collar, lifting her in the air.
“You … cannot stop us!” he gusts. “I will … be free!”
“Oi!” I shout, staggering now under the unshared weight of Mrs Fossil. “Leave her alone!”
But there’s nothing I can do. Mrs Fossil is passing out, taking me with her.
Then there’s a slap! from behind us – muffled by the mist, but quite definitely a slap. It sounds like something large and flippery hitting the wet sand. Then it comes again. We all turn, even the Boathook Man.
Something is in the mist, in the direction of the sea, too far to be clear. It’s a crouching figure, hunched low near the water as if poised, waiting to spring. But there’s something funny about it, something odd about the length of its arms, something fish-like and spiny that stops this being a someone at all, and makes it more like a something.
Where its eyes should be, there are two enormous, pale reflectors. They blink, twice. Then it moves off – darting from its crouch and springing along the murky foreshore at great speed, its feet slap-slap-slapp-ing as it vanishes in a swirl of mist.
The Boathook Man drops Violet, his eyes wide in his face, his mouth drawn back to bare his teeth. He sets off at a lumbering run, vanishing into the mist after the strange figure.
“Are you OK?” I ask Violet, struggling to my feet and reaching out my hand to pull her up. Mrs Fossil is sprawled at our feet, out cold.
“I think so,” Violet croaks, clutching her throat.
More figures emerge from the mist now, this time from the direction of the pier, and the town.
“She’s here! Over here!”
It’s Seegol. He reaches our side with several of the other customers from the diner.
With a heave, four of them manage to lift Mrs Fossil, and they set off up the beach.
“I will telephone the doctor,” Seegol calls back to us, jogging off towards the pier steps. “You should follow the others.”
“Yeah,” I say, fishing my Lost-and-Founder’s cap out of a pool of seawater and wringing it out. “We need to get out of here.”
“Wait a moment,” says Violet. “What just happened? Herbie, what was that we saw by the water?”
“You wanted to know about the malamander, didn’t you?” I reply. “Well, I’d say Eerie-on-Sea has just obliged you with your very own sighting.”
“But it can’t be real.” Violet shakes her head. “How can it be real?”
“Do you see that?” I say, pointing into the mist.
“What?”
“Exactly. Violet, in this fog, anything could be standing ten paces away right now and we wouldn’t know. We need to get off the beach. It’s dangerous here.”
“OK, maybe you’re right. But there’s something we need to find first,” she says. And she heads off into the mist where Mrs Fossil’s footprints are still faintly visible in the waterlogged sand.
“What are you doing?” I say, trying to catch up. “This is madness. What do we need to find?”
“That!” Violet cries, pointing ahead.
Something is lying on the beach, on the edge of visibility. Violet jogs over to it and picks it up. It’s Mrs Fossil’s bucket, her beachcombing treasures spread out around it.
From where I’m standing, Violet is half vanished in the mist. I see her silhouette as she stoops to scoop the spilled things back into the bucket.
And then I see something else.
A shape. No, the shape. The strange, crouching, spiny shape from a moment ago, faint but massive in the mist beyond Violet. And it’s getting closer, making a throaty, clicking, burbling sound as it comes.
“Violet, behind you!”
This time she doesn’t hesitate. It must be the panicky high-pitched squeak in my voice, which, for once, is actually quite useful.
Then we are both running up the beach, not looking back – running and running until we reach the top of the steps in the sea wall, and we can see the town and the cheery lights and the door of the Grand Nautilus Hotel.
