Slime (8 page)

‘Mrs Wakeham,
please
,’ Sue repeated. ‘Hold yourself still and I’ll be able to get it off.’

‘What… what is it?’ She was whimpering like a child, her lip quivering. She gazed, stupefied, at her wrist. ‘Take it away. Oh, I don’t like it.’

‘Steady now,’ Sue instructed. ‘Steady…’

Despite her rubber gloves, Sue was quaking as she grasped the jellyfish in both hands and slowly peeled it off. Skin and flesh came with it, although the poor woman didn’t seem to feel anything; probably her arm was paralysed by now, just as Tim’s had been. Keeping the jellyfish at arm’s length, Sue backed away from the counter, uncertain what she should do with it.

The tentacles wrapped themselves around her fingers… probing… seeking a way through the thin rubber. At any moment they might succeed in piercing it, and in that case…

Sue threw the jellyfish down on the worn floorboards and began to stamp on it furiously with the heel of her
boot, knowing that somehow she
had
to destroy it. She’d no choice: that glistening pink-and-red creature was evil and must not be allowed to live. Yet her foot merely slid over the tough gristle without making any impression on it.

Desperately, she searched around in the shop for some sort of weapon. The best she could find was a long knife, but to use it would mean she’d have to crouch down within reach of those tentacles. She hesitated, but the sight of poor Mrs Wakeham helped her make up her mind. Such a nice woman she was, never doing any harm to anyone, yet now she lay in a dead faint on the floor behind the counter, her wrist bleeding profusely.

Sue gripped the knife. The jellyfish hadn’t moved. Its ruby star seemed to mock her, challenging her to do her worst. She aimed for it with her first blows, stabbing into it with all her strength. The point of the blade went straight through, sticking into the old wooden floorboards, but she tugged it out in order to drive it once more into the centre of that jelly-gristle.

‘Don’t like that, do you?’ she demanded through clenched teeth, her heart full of mixed hatred and fear. ‘Can see you don’t.’

The outer fringes of the jellyfish began to twist and curl, sending shivers of apprehension right through her. She drew the knife across the whole width of that speckled pink medallion; but the more she attacked it, the more violent became its convulsions.

‘Sue, love! What on earth are you doing?’

Tim’s voice behind her. She dropped the knife and turned to bury her face against his jacket. ‘It won’t die!’ she sobbed in sheer relief that he’d come back. ‘Oh, Tim, I can’t get it to die.’

He put his arm around her, holding her tight. ‘But what’s been going on?’

‘Mrs Wakeham…’ She struggled to regain control of
herself. ‘It’s… killed… Mrs Wake… ham…’

At first Tim seemed unbearably slow in understanding what she was trying to say. Then he saw Mrs Wakeham’s body and stooped to feel for a pulse. She was still alive, he said, but before anything else they should try to stop the bleeding. Miraculously, he knew exactly what to do; under his instruction, she tied his handkerchief around Mrs Wakeham’s arm to make a tourniquet, pushed the stick of a washing-up mop through the knot, and twisted it.

‘I’ll phone for an ambulance,’ he said, standing up. ‘I imagine there’s a phone in the back?’

She nodded, remaining on her knees beside the poor woman and attempting to make her comfortable, though she was still unconscious, her face deathly pale. On the other side of the counter – Sue couldn’t keep the thought out of her mind – lay the fragments of the jellyfish she’d cut up, the largest of them pinned to the floorboards by the knife she had dropped, and all of them still pulsating the last time she had looked.

On whatever the jellyfish had touched it had left a smear of slime which at first, in the heat of the moment, she hadn’t noticed. Now, while waiting for Tim to finish phoning, Sue became very much aware of it: on her own rubber gloves, over the top of the counter, on Mrs Wakeham’s hands and jumper. And it seemed to glow, with a pale, green-tinged light.

It was not until a few hours later when they were back in the flat that she became aware of the bitter irony of it all. Tim had succeeded in getting through to Jane, only to be told that the specimen was no longer needed. A coastguard had brought three to the laboratory that very morning, having fished them out of the Bristol Channel.

Which meant, Sue realised dully, that Mrs Wakeham need not have died.

10

During the next few days, jellyfish attacks were reported from several different parts of the country. A freak of nature, most commentators said. The victims had merely been unlucky.

Others had died too in the storms which had been battering the coasts of Britain, proving the weather forecasters wrong. A Greek cargo ship had broken up on the rocks off Land’s End with the loss of all hands. Two amateur yachtsmen had drowned in the Solent, caught out by the sudden deterioration in the weather. In the North Sea, a helicopter about to touch down on an oil rig had been swept to disaster by an unexpectedly fierce gust of wind. No survivors.

The jellyfish incidents were seen as no more than a few tragic stories among many; hardly noticeable, in fact, among the statistics for accidental death.

Yet they were real enough to those who suffered.

In Colwyn Bay, North Wales, high waves reared up over the sea wall and smashed across the roadway. Some reached the crown of the road before subsiding and draining back, but the truly powerful ones broke over its entire width. No one caught by that force would have a chance, and Pete Kelly knew it.

‘Right then – me first!’

Jock, the mad bastard, gunned his engine while his girl friend Meg, riding pillion, adjusted the goggles over her eyes. They had come down from Liverpool for the day, the four of them on just the two bikes – Jock and Meg,
with himself and Marilyn. It had been great up in the mountains, opening up along those narrow, twisting lanes with the feel of 500cc under him and Marilyn’s knees rubbing against him, her hands on his waist. Both girls had their own bikes, but he was glad they’d decided to come this way. It was more intimate, like.

Then Jock had to dream up this mad caper. They’d gone into Colwyn Bay for fish and chips and discovered the warning notices diverting traffic away from the coast road. He could get through on the bike, Jock had boasted – and Marilyn had egged him on, which meant there was no way Pete could back out of it.

One at a time, they decided.

A giant wave shot over the road in a great arch. As it broke and the water began to run back, Jock roared off. A few seconds later he’d reached the other end. He skidded to a stop and Meg, on the pillion, waved.

‘Choose your moment, you’ll be all right,’ Marilyn judged, pulling down her goggles. ‘That’s all there is to it, really.’

Pete chose his moment. A couple of big waves swept over the roadway, then he was off! A third wave broke unexpectedly near him, drenching him with its spray. His wheels slipped a little but he managed to correct it and rode triumphantly through to join Jock and Meg.

‘I thought you’d had it then,’ Jock sniggered.

Marilyn was furious. ‘What d’you mean, thought we’d had it?’

‘When that wave hit you –
wow!
’

‘You’d have come off.’

‘Who would?’

‘You!’

‘Try it again?’ Meg challenged. She could be as crazy as Jock when the mood took her. ‘Bet you don’t dare. Bet your Pete peed himself, he was so scared.’

‘You’ll pee yourself this time!’ Marilyn sneered back,
giving as good as she got. ‘Right, Pete? This time we go first.’

She hadn’t asked him, yet he couldn’t refuse. Worried, he glanced at the sea. It was rougher than ever, charging up against the road as though it bore a personal grudge. No one in his right senses would want to go along there.

Meg spotted his hesitation. ‘Told you!’ she crowed triumphantly with a look at Jock. ‘He’s peeing himself now!’

Pete didn’t bother to answer. He revved up a couple of times, checked to make sure Marilyn was OK, and then waited for the right gap in those raging waves. Within a couple of seconds he thought he saw one – near enough, anyhow – and opened up.

As he moved off, a smaller wave broke almost in front of him, but he’d reckoned on that and swerved to avoid it. The next – he was almost half-way along by now – took him by surprise. Luckily he saw it coming and was able to brace himself, but the force of water which hit him sent the bike careering over the road, the wheels refusing to grip, the steering all haywire. Behind him, he heard Marilyn gasping and spluttering; her arms tightened around his waist.

Go into the skid, don’t fight it, he told himself. It seemed against all reason, yet he knew he had to do it.

But before he had a chance to do anything, a large jellyfish slapped across his face, blinding him. The 500cc bucked like an angry horse and threw him off, sending him sprawling across the roadway. Above the rush of the sea came Marilyn’s voice screaming at him.

‘Pete! Oh, Pete, what is it? Pete!’

Marilyn… bloody Marilyn who’d got him into this… didn’t even like her that much…

Long, thin needles probed his cheeks, pushing in behind his eyes, inserting themselves agonisingly into his gums until he moaned and squealed in muffled terror. His
lungs were bursting, but with that thing across his mouth, closing up his nostrils…
oh, Jesus
!’

It cut into his lips. It burned his eyes, etching the sight out of them, and he would never see again.

That was Marilyn screaming – oh yes, he could still hear. But she’d no need to have done that to him. Why had she done it?

A wave drove him reeling across the roadway once more, then sucked him back. Marilyn was holding on to his leg: it had to be Marilyn, silly cow. Dazzling lights shot through his blind eyes; his head was a bundle of tiny pins all pressing into him. But the sea would put everything right. It gathered him in. Soothing. Taking it all away.

‘Bloody hell, the poor sod!’

‘What we gonna do, Jock?’ Meg had looked on, terrified, as both Marilyn and Pete were swept out to sea. ‘Ought we to tell somebody, d’you think?’

‘Like who? Did you see that thing on his face, like seaweed or something?’

‘We should tell a copper.’

‘S’ppose so. It was his own fault, after all. I mean, I said it was too dangerous. You heard me say that.’

‘Yeah, we warned him.’

‘Yeah.’

Over on the east coast not far from Clacton heavy seas had broken through, flooding several houses. In one, an eighty-year-old widow lived alone. She was an independent soul, said neighbours, always ready with a cheerful word when they met her, although none of them had ever been invited inside.

The morning after the storm, while everyone was mopping up, the local postman mentioned that she still had her curtains drawn and had anyone checked if she
was all right? One of the neighbours – a Mr Williams, according to the newspaper – went over to investigate.

He rang the bell, but heard nothing, so then he knocked at the door.

No reply.

The windows, both back and front, were firmly closed. So were the curtains downstairs, and in one room upstairs. It was obvious from the filth in the garden and around the doorstep that this house had suffered from flooding as much as the others, although the water had gone down again.

Mr Williams phoned the police himself, but the whole district had been affected by the storm and it was likely to be some time before they got there. Meanwhile, what if the old lady was lying there injured? Or sick? He talked it over with a Mrs Harrison who lived in the next house along, and they decided the only sensible course would be to break in without waiting for the police.

He fetched his tool-kit and eased open one of the downstairs windows. Once inside, he opened the front door for Mrs Harrison and together they searched the house. It smelled musty and very damp, he reported afterwards. The carpets were soaked, but on the whole the house gave the impression of having been well cared for. The bed had been used, the blankets thrown back, and there were clothes draped over the back of a chair.

It was not until they were downstairs again that he realised what he had taken to be a broom cupboard door in fact led down to a cellar. Probably this was the only house in the whole of that road which had a cellar, but then it was also the oldest.

The electricity was off over the whole area, but he had a torch in his tool-kit. He went down the steps to take a look. Almost immediately he was back, his face ashen.

‘We’d best wait for the police, I think.’

‘She’s dead,’ Mrs Harrison guessed. She had thought as
much all along. They didn’t last for ever, these old folk.

It was not until later that he felt up to describing what he had seen. In the cellar he had found a foot or more of water, some of which had obviously come through a broken skylight: they discovered afterwards it opened just above ground level at the side of the house, next to the lean-to coal bunker. The old lady was lying in the water in her nightdress, spreadeagled. Two large jellyfish were feeding on her, one covering her throat and chest, the other over a leg. The side of her face had already been eaten.

Newspapers differed in their reports concerning the size of the killer jellyfish: a foot to eighteen inches in diameter was the general view, although a couple said the larger ones were at least two feet. One paper gave some space to a rumour that Fleetwood fishermen had spotted half a dozen which were at least a yard and a half across. They were speckled pink and red, and swimming just below the surface.

The story which really caught the headlines came from the Isle of Wight, and the jellyfish in that case was no bigger than a small frisbee. About eight inches, the police said.

The victim was seven-year-old Andrew who had slipped out of the house early one morning and gone down to the paddling pool to meet his friends. His mother was not too sure how long he’d been out: she’d been busy with the baby and hadn’t noticed him leaving. When she did discover he was no longer in the house, she sent his older sister to look for him.

No, she’d not been too worried. Everyone knew him in the neighbourhood and it wasn’t likely he’d gone far.

The storm the previous night had been particularly severe and caused a great deal of damage. Deckchairs had
broken loose from the rope holding them stacked against a wall; windows had smashed; tiles had crashed down from the rooftops; shop blinds were ripped; and the whole length of the promenade was covered in debris which the sea had thrown up – plastic containers, polythene wrappings, fragments of timber, dabs of tar, ice cream tubs, and seaweed.

In the paddling pool, too.

Andrew must have wondered why it was so filthy that morning, although it did not stop him going in. He wore his wellingtons – his mother said she’d warned him several times about broken glass – although he must have stooped down to splash the water, or perhaps to play with the wooden deckchair spar which was still floating there after he was discovered.

His friends, twin brothers who were in his class at school, found him already dead, drifting on his back in the shallow water. They were still gazing at him nervously when his sister arrived.

‘I knew he was dead ’cos o’ the way his eyes stared at me,’ she explained afterwards. ‘I mean, they were really dead eyes like you see on the horror videos, an’ this jellyfish was on his neck, an’ it was just like the videos.’

The jellyfish remained cosily attached to the boy’s neck even after police had rescued his body from the paddling pool and laid it out on the paving stones of the promenade. One of the beach refuse collectors eventually took it off and put it in the incinerator.

‘Well, why not?’ he said defensively when they questioned him about it afterwards. ‘Once these things get a taste for human blood, what else can you do with ’em? You wouldn’t throw ’em back in the sea – or would you?’