The Devil's Triangle (17 page)

Sam was on edge as they followed the path to the beach. He kept one hand on the hilt of the knife he now wore on his left hip until they were out on the open sand. The rocky outcrop that Nipper had scaled while carrying them the previous night proved a tricky climb. Although the sun was rapidly drying the surfaces, many rocks were still slick with slippery green weed and treacherous footing was not the only danger. Molluscs with razor-sharp shells waited patiently on open rock surfaces, poised to slice exposed skin at the slightest contact, and rubbery curtains of seaweed hid thousands more. Every crevice appeared to hold a pool, many teeming with creatures both familiar and strange.

Where Sam might have spent hours nosing through the pools collecting shrimp, crabs and little fish in a bucket when he was younger, this was nothing like his visits to the rock pools of Amroth and Saundersfoot in Wales. His curiosity was tinged with wariness. If Brad and Leah were telling the truth, this was not his world and there was no telling what dangers these pools might harbour. Callum showed no such caution as he scrambled up the rocks to the top. He was a surprisingly agile climber.

‘Hey! Wait up, Cal!’ Sam called, as his friend vanished from his view over the top lip. ‘Don’t get too far ahead.’

‘What’s the matter, Sam? Can’t hack the pace?’ Callum taunted, looking down from above.

Sam had to smile as Callum enjoyed his rare moment of triumph.

‘It’s not a race, Cal,’ he said casually. ‘If it was, trust me, I’d have whupped you.’

‘Oh, yeah? And my Aunt Aggie drives a McLaren F1!’

‘Did you never wonder why she has her hair cut short?’

‘What?’ Callum asked, reaching down and giving Sam a hand up to the final tier of rock.

‘Your Aunt Aggie – has her hair cut short, doesn’t she?’

‘Well, yes actually. But you haven’t met my . . .’

‘It’s cut short to make the racing helmet more comfortable,’ Sam interrupted, keeping his face straight.

Callum looked at him for a moment and then they both erupted into fits of laughter.

‘The only racing my Aunt Aggie’s likely to do is on a broomstick,’ Callum said, shaking his head. ‘Harry Potter has nothing on her!’

They stood on the top of the promontory for a moment, gazing along the broad crescent of sand that stretched ahead. The tide was further out than it had been last night, but there was no sign of the boat.

‘We must have beached it in the next cove,’ Sam observed, though looking at how far it was to the headland at the far end of the beach, he was not so sure. ‘Come on. Let’s climb down and get going.’

Getting down was more treacherous than climbing up, but both boys managed the descent without injury and within a few minutes they were hiking along the sand at a fast pace. The surf was still pounding the beach with a constant booming roar that filled their ears and quelled their conversation. Where the waves had been an ominous grey the previous evening, now they were an idyllic blue-green, tipped with pure white foam that fizzed as it rushed towards the sand.

Sam scanned the sand for any sign of footprints, but the tide had clearly been in and washed all evidence of the raptors’ presence away overnight. The sand was smooth and soft underfoot. To begin with, this was pleasant, but the boys soon felt their legs aching as the extra effort required to walk began to take its toll. They stayed well away from the tree line, but even above the constant roar of the surf, strange cries could sometimes be heard coming from the jungle. Sam kept a nervous eye on the trees for any signs of the huge creature that had made its charging run the previous evening, but there were none.

‘Hey, look at that!’ Callum exclaimed as they reached the very heart of the bay. He pointed at the surf and ran off at a sprint towards the water.

Sam followed. It took a few seconds for him to realise what Callum was so excited about. The shallows were literally boiling with fish: not small fry, but a mass of medium- and large-sized fish thrashing around, apparently throwing themselves at the beach. Sam had never seen anything like it before.

‘Come on! There’s so many, we should be able to grab them with our hands,’ Callum yelled. ‘I’m sure Brad and Leah would appreciate an easy meal.’

‘I’m not sure, Cal,’ Sam replied, stopping short of the water. ‘I’ve never seen fish behave like that before.’

Callum ran on into the shallows, heedless of the spray he was kicking up. Suddenly, he turned back towards Sam, plunged his hands into the water and attempted to scoop a fish into the air. His first effort failed as the fish he tried to lift slipped from his fingers and barely broke the surface, but on his second attempt Callum succeeded in sending a good-sized fish sailing through the air towards Sam. It landed with a wet slap and instantly began to flap and flip around on the sand.

Drawing his knife, Sam reversed the blade and crouched down with the intention of clubbing the fish on the head with the handle. As he did so, a shadow in the surf caught his eye and his heart leapt. A dark shape was racing along the wave and into the shallows faster than Sam would have believed possible.

‘CALLUM! LOOK OUT!’

Callum looked up and then around at the sea. For an instant, he couldn’t see what Sam was yelling for, but then a monstrous head erupted through the waves and he screamed in terror. It was a thing of nightmares and it was coming straight for him at speed. His first fleeting impression before he ran was of a huge gaping maw filled with a mass of teeth, bulging green eyes and a long, sinuous black body. Then he was flying from the water, bounding through the shallows with long, high steps.

‘Holy crap!’ he shouted as he reached Sam’s side, breathless and eyes wide with shock. He turned and looked in horror as the enormous eel-like creature thrashed and writhed through the shallows eating fish after fish. ‘What the hell is that?’

‘Who knows?’ Sam replied. ‘But I’ve gone right off the idea of an afternoon swim.’

‘It’s got to be at least ten metres long!’ Callum panted.

‘And it’s not alone,’ Sam observed.

Three more of the monsters appeared, angling through the surf at high speed. They also ploughed into the stranded shoal of fish and began to feed.

‘I’m glad I didn’t know about those things when we were on the boat yesterday. They’re even scarier than that Nessie creature that came and took a look at us. I’d have been bricking myself if I’d realised there were a whole bunch of monsters hiding beneath the waves.’

‘Um, Cal,’ Sam said, backing slowly away from the sea.

‘Yes?’

‘Have you ever seen a conger eel move on sand?’

‘No, why?’

‘Trust me, they move pretty quick and I think that big fella over there fancies more than just fish for lunch. RUN!’

Callum did not need telling twice. The creature’s body hissed through the shallows and across the sand as it began to chase them up the beach. Sam ran as fast as he could, a surge of adrenalin racing through him as he tore up the beach. He could hear Callum just behind him. His friend was not a natural runner, but it appeared that he could run faster than most when motivated.

Sam glanced over his shoulder. The beast had not given up. Its green eyes held a deadly focus and it was slithering across the sand at frightening speed. By chance, in that instant of looking back, Sam’s right foot landed in a particularly soft patch of sand. Before he could react his ankle turned and he was down. He cursed as he hit the sand and rolled to a stop. Sam flinched as Callum hurdled him and kept running.

The creature was closing fast, its mouth opening wide in preparation to strike. In a flash, Sam had scrambled to his feet. He suddenly became aware of the survival knife that he was gripping hard in his right hand, but one more look at the creature was enough to dispel any thought of heroics. There was no hope of stopping something that size with a knife. He turned and ran again with the creature literally snapping at his heels. His right ankle felt as though it was on fire as he ran, but Sam closed his mind to the pain and he concentrated on trying to catch up with Callum.

He dared not look back again until he was nearly at the trees. Callum had stopped there. He was red-faced, panting and speechless, but the fact that he had stopped told Sam what he needed to know. The creature had given up the chase. Putting his hands on his knees, he turned and spat, raising his eyes to look at the retreating monster. The horror from the sea had turned back only when it reached the flotsam line where the sand turned from wet and relatively hard to the dry, fine and soft stuff at the top of the beach.

‘That’s one . . . for the blog,’ Callum gasped. ‘Shame I didn’t have . . . my camera with me. That beastie had . . . a wicked smile.’

Sam nearly choked as he laughed and panted simultaneously. He put a hand on his friend’s shoulder and shook his head, unable to speak.

They both watched as the monster snaked its way back down to the water and slipped into the surf. By the time it finally disappeared, Sam had recovered his breath.

‘Come on,’ he urged. ‘Let’s get away from here. I don’t think it will come back, but I’d rather not wait around to find out. I can’t help thinking that I know now why we haven’t seen any sign of the guy Brad mentioned.’

‘You think he’s been . . .’

‘Either that or he read the signs and made himself scarce,’ Sam suggested. ‘Who knows?’

The two boys set out along the beach again, this time staying just below the high tide line. Callum was very quiet. Sam got the impression his friend had not really believed all the stuff about evolved dinosaurs and parallel worlds, but then he hadn’t seen the raptors and heard the roar of whatever had been in the trees last night. Given the number of nervous looks he was affording the nearby jungle, Sam could see he believed it now.

The sand was softer here than it was near the water, but they laboured on in unspoken agreement. This line kept them a comfortable distance from the monsters in the surf, while also affording a margin from the jungle, which suddenly looked all the more menacing.

It took about another half-hour to reach the headland, by which time it had become obvious that the tide was on its way in. As they rounded the end of the bay and looked along the next, Sam was disappointed to see no obvious sign of the boat.

‘Look, Sam!’ Callum exclaimed suddenly, pointing. ‘Up there by the trees. Is that the boat? I think it is!’

The two boys began to run, the soft sand making it difficult to get up any speed. As they approached, they slowed further as they realised the prow of the boat had been dragged under the trees. It was way up above the flotsam line and a trail through the sand showed clearly where it had been dragged up the final part of the beach to the edge of the trees. It would take a dozen strong men, or more, to drag a ten-metre boat that far up the beach. Whoever, or
whatever
, had done this would have to be immensely strong.

‘The engines have gone,’ Sam noted, stopping a dozen paces short of the boat.

‘Maybe whoever dragged it up here took them off to reduce the weight,’ Callum suggested.

‘I don’t know,’ Sam said softly as he began to circle the back of the boat in a wide arc, taking care to keep his distance. ‘I don’t see them anywhere on the beach. No. Something tells me that’s not it.’

With muscles tensed, ready to run at the first sign of danger, step by careful step Sam moved in closer. Callum held back, watching with breathless anticipation. The boat was resting at an angle, the deck tipped away from them. Closer and closer he crept to the stern. He reached it and looked in from where the engines should have been.

‘What the . . .?’

There was a loud scream from above his head and Sam dived away from the boat, rolling like an acrobat across the sand and up onto his feet. Heart racing and poised to run again, Sam was embarrassed to witness a whirr of wings and a flash of colour through the trees as a startled parakeet beat a hasty retreat.

Callum laughed, though he looked as nervous as Sam felt. ‘Oh, my blog entry for today just keeps getting better and better,’ he said. ‘First the sea monsters and now seeing Sam Cutler scared by a parrot! All I need is a computer to write it on.’

‘Well, you’re not going to find one in the boat,’ Sam said, his shoulders relaxing as he recovered from the fright. His voice was serious now – serious laced with a touch of anger. ‘In fact, you’re not going to find anything at all in it. It’s been gutted.’

‘Gutted?’

‘Absolutely stripped clean. Look’s like there’s nothing left but a fibreglass shell. This boat isn’t going to get us home any time soon.’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Even as Niamh watched the droplet of sweat plummet towards the policeman, his weight shifted forward again. Although he did not move quickly enough for the drop to miss, instead of impacting his head square on, it struck the hair at the back of his head and ran straight down to end as a tiny trickle at the back of his neck. The man’s right hand automatically rose and reached around to smooth the back of his hair.

It’s over
, Niamh thought, closing her eyes again and waiting for the order to climb down. To her amazement, it didn’t come. She opened her eyes again. The man had failed to look up and was moving away, stepping lightly in an obvious effort to conceal his movement. It looked as though he was hoping to catch Niamh out with his stealth. Perhaps he was thinking that if he moved more slowly than she expected, Niamh would make another move and betray herself.