The Creeping Kelp (6 page)

He hoped they had all seen the movie. Time was—a few years back, you could count on it, but the very same time was not kind to once-popular culture. The fact that the group was older helped; when they were younger, they tended to reply to his next question with blank, uncomprehending stares.

“Okay,” he said. “Who wants to be Meryl Streep?”

The sudden smiles told him all he needed to know.  It turned out they all not only knew what he meant, but they all intended to get the appropriate pictures taken. Jim had to organise them into an orderly queue so that they could step up, right out on the edge of the Cobb, pretending to be pale and interesting.

A pair of American pensioners went first. The lady took her place on the edge. She started out giggling skittishly, but as soon as she reached the edge of the Cobb she went quiet and pale, looking apprehensively down at the water below.

“Don’t worry, dear,” Jim said, stepping up beside her and steadying her with a hand on her arm. “I’ve been doing this for years and haven’t lost anybody yet.”

Even as he said it, something came over the Cobb and snaked around the old woman’s ankle. Jim got an impression of a long snake, but far quicker than anything he’d ever seen. It tightened around her leg with an audible
sucking
and
tugged, once.

The elderly tourist squealed and made a grab for Jim. Instinctively, he backed away.  Then, disgusted at his cowardice, he stepped forward again, reaching for her outstretched hand.

He was too late. She fell forward, her chin
cracking
on the edge of the Cobb. Blood flew. Jim tasted copper as it splashed against his face. The fallen woman stretched out a hand towards him again. He bent to take it. Their fingers touched... but that was as close as he got. The tentacle
tugged
again and with a final, despairing wail, she was gone.

Her husband rushed forward, shouting her name.

“Ellen!”

Jim didn’t have time to hold him back. The old man leaned over the edge. “Ellen!” he called again. There was no reply. He turned to Jim.

“What have you done with her? Get her back, right now, or I’ll have you arrested.”

Jim had no idea how to reply to that. His own mind was still full of the image of the black snake and he could still taste the woman’s blood in his mouth.

I need to get them out of here right now.

He reached over to the old man.

“Come on sir. I need to call the authorities.”

The old man turned, snarling.  Once again, Jim stepped back, fearful of an impending punch. The blow never came. The old man’s look changed from anger to surprise as an inch-thick black tendril wrapped tight around his neck and
pulled
. The sound of the man’s neck breaking echoed along the pier. He still had the surprised look in his eyes as he was dragged away out of sight.

That was the signal for Jim’s well-organised party to turn into a running rout along the Cobb.

“Form an orderly line,” Jim shouted before realising
just
how stupid that sounded. He was at the end of the group as they started to run, but was soon overtaking the oldest without stopping to check on them. The group fled down an avenue of terror. High tentacles rose above them, swaying on either side like grass in the wind. One
slapped
on the Cobb and Jim was dismayed to see the old stone crumble beneath it. It didn’t stop there. The tentacle seemed to writhe and curl and as it moved, it dug a deep groove in the Cobb.

It’s as if it’s eating the stone.

Jim saw that he’d have to jump over the prone tentacle. He didn’t think twice and leapt, feeling his left-foot touch something soft and yielding. He heard a cry. An elderly lady had stopped on the other side of the tentacle, unwilling, or unable, to jump over.

 “Come on,” Jim shouted, barely slowing in his flight.

She just stood, shaking her head from side to side. The tentacle started to
slide
across the Cobb towards her.

Come on!

He stopped in his run, but before he could even start to make his way to her rescue, the old lady was engulfed in black coils. Something squirted
redly
and Jim turned away, once again tasting blood in his mouth.

As he turned, he saw that his group was now twenty yards ahead. One was faster than the rest. He sped yards ahead, but lost his footing on the uneven rock of the upper Cobb and fell to one side. Even before he hit the ground, two tentacles had him, one at the leg and the other at the arm. A tug of war ensued over the screaming man, until, almost mercifully, one of the tendrils proved stronger and
tore
the body from the other. It left an arm behind, which dangled above the tourists, dripping blood on them as they fled under it.

The avenue was narrowing all the time as more tentacles rose to join the forest.

We’re not going to make it.

From the corner of his eye he saw that the whole expanse of the bay to his left seethed, a black carpet of fronds and tendrils, creeping up the beach and approaching the promenade.

An elderly tourist stumbled just ahead of Jim, but he never even slowed. Somewhere behind him he heard a pitiful scream, but he steeled himself against it, keeping his gaze on the end of the pier and the open streets of the town beyond.

More screams rent the air. A woman was
plucked
from the path just ahead of him and he had to swerve, like a football player avoiding a tackle, as she was lifted away out of sight. As he neared the end of the pier, the knot of people packed tighter together and started to
dance
and pick their way past the swaying fronds. More screams could be heard all along the promenade. A police siren started up a
nee-naw
wail that echoed around them. Jim pushed himself through the other people. One stockily built man refused to budge. Without a moment’s hesitation, Jim kicked him behind the right knee. As the man buckled, Jim pushed him away... straight into a nest of writhing tentacles that took him away with a
crack
like a whip. Finally, Jim reached the end of the pier and ran out onto the promenade, screaming with joy. 

His relief turned to despair as soon as he looked round.

The whole seafront was a crawling carpet of greenish black weed, with tentacles, some as thick as tree trunks, rising up out of it. At the leading edge of the mass, round pustules developed and rolled away like self-propelled beach balls, heading deeper into the streets. All along the promenade, the kelp attached itself to cars, lampposts, and bus stops, and crawled over and through anything in its path. One bus-stop, the long, large shelter nearest the shore, was pulled apart with no apparent effort and the sheets of Perspex were carried aloft on the tendrils, taken rapidly away out to sea and out of sight. A thick black plastic bumper was similarly torn from a car and carried off.

More screams came from the Main Street, from the direction where some of the
beach balls
had travelled.

Jim turned and ran, heading for the main car park where he had left his car.

He nearly made it. He reached the car, shoved a hand frantically in his pocket to look for his keys... and heard a
squelch
from behind him. The air was suddenly full of the taste of iodine. He turned to see one of the dark balls open out, like a cape opening.

There are eyes inside.

He turned back to the car, scrambling for the keyhole. He got as far as starting to open the door when it was torn from his hands and thrown aside like a Frisbee. Something grabbed him round the waist and
squeezed
.

Blood filled his throat and pain flared like a lightning strike.

He was dead a second later.

July 22nd - Weymouth

Noble woke to a grey haze that took long seconds to clear. He soon wished it hadn’t, as a dull throb from his leg reminded him of what had happened.

He looked around, realising that he was in some kind of medical facility.... not a hospital, it was too basic for that, but the fact that he was hooked up to several monitors and machines that went
ping
gave the game away, somewhat.

He called out, but no one came. He made to swing a leg out of bed and realised he was tied up tight. His left leg was bandaged from foot to knee and suspended from the ceiling by what, at first glance, looked like a medieval torture rack. He leaned forward, intent on freeing himself, but a wave of nausea washed through him. He was forced to sit back and keep still until his body returned to an even keel and no longer felt like floating towards the ceiling.

He called out again.

“Anybody there?”

His voice echoed, as if there was a larger, empty area outside the room where he was lying. He waited. Still, no one responded. He looked around, hoping to find a bell or buzzer he could use to attract attention. Instead, he found a pile of papers on the bedside table. He recognised them straight away—it was the material Suzie had been reading on the chopper. There was a note on the top.

“There’s a bit of a flap on. I’ll be back when I can. In the meantime, you need to read the rest of this. I think we’re in trouble.”

Noble laughed, but with little humour.

Tell me something I don’t know.

But it seemed he had nothing better to be getting on with. He picked up the papers and once more lost himself in the words of Ballantine, in a Nissen Hut, on the shores of Loch Long.

On the night before his big demonstration, Rankin sought me out in the mess. At first, I did not even know he had entered. I was intent on getting as much ale inside me as possible, in a search for oblivion – but I wasn’t to be allowed that small comfort. The mess fell quiet as he entered.

“Come with me, Ballantine,” he said. “You are the only one who will understand the import.”

I put my beer down, reluctantly. I was on my fifth and already looking forward to the sixth. But I could not refuse him. Technically, he was my Commanding Officer. And, despite my civilian status, I had, in effect, been drafted and as such, I was not exempt from military justice. With a heavy heart I followed him down to the lab.

The place had changed since my last visit. The heavy glass tank had been removed. But the network of piping was still in place overhead and the metal box still sat in the middle of the floor, its walls etched and pitted by the acid.

He saw me looking.

“I have another small demonstration for you, Ballantine,” he said. “And I hope this one will finally convince you of the import of our experiments.”

“If you’re going to be slaughtering some poor animal, I want nothing to do with it,” I said.

He smiled grimly.

“Not this time. Come. You need to see this.”

He led me to the long trestle. A thick forest of kelp and tentacles completely filled a glass jar some three feet high and over a foot in diameter. The whole column vibrated as the thing inside thrashed angrily.

“For pity’s sake, Rankin… how much of this thing did you make?” I asked.

“Enough,” he whispered. “But that is not why I brought you here. Watch.”

He walked away to our left. The kelp seemed to follow him, the thrashing fronds and tentacles now concentrated on that side of the glass. Rankin turned and came back towards me. The kelp tracked his movement, the thrashing becoming ever more insistent as Rankin got ever closer to the glass jar.

“For pity’s sake, Rankin—what kind of thing is this?”

“It knows me,” Rankin whispered in reply. “And I think I’ve made it angry.”

“That’s not possible,” I started.

“Neither is this,” he said and walked forward until his nose was almost pressed against the glass. The kelp thrashed, slapping moist tentacles against the surface, leaving streaks of yellow viscous fluid behind.

“Be careful, man,” I said. I had seen what those tentacles had done to a pony—I had no wish to see what they could do to a man.

Rankin waved at me to be quiet. He stared at the kelp and spoke in a loud voice, as if ordering a disobedient dog to heel.

“Quiet!”

The kelp stilled and the big jar stopped vibrating. Now it just looked like a glass filled with regular seaweed. Rankin motioned me forward. He had to do it twice before my legs would obey my order to move and even then, I sidled up to the trestle cautiously, ready to flee at any sign of trouble.

“Come closer,” Rankin said. “This is what I brought you to see.”

“I can see all I need to from here,” I replied, maintaining a distance of three feet between me and the thin sheet of glass that separated me from the kelp.

“Just look,” he said. There was wonder and awe in his voice. I saw why, seconds later.

I looked at the kelp.

And the kelp looked back. A single, lidless eye, pale green and milky, stared out from the fronds. Even as I watched, it changed, being sucked back into a new fold. A wet gash opened, like a thin-lipped mouth. It stretched wide and a high ululation filled the Nissen Hut, like a seagull on a storm wind.

Tekeli Li. Tekeli Li.

“What the hell is this shite?” I said softly.

Rankin laughed. The kelp squirmed, almost as if it was enjoying the experience.

“It knows me,” he said again. “It is as if our minds have become attuned.”

“Our minds? You are crediting this…thing, with intelligence? With rational thought?”

“Why not?” Rankin said. “After all, if it looks like a duck…”

It was my turn to laugh. When I did so, the kelp stayed still.

“Okay,” I said. “So, now that you’ve made it, would you care to tell me exactly what it is we have done here?”