The Squid Slayer

by Jack Heath

  For Katie Taylor—queen of the monsters.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  GHOST HUNTERS

  SHAFTED

  THE BEACHED COLOSSUS

  A MYSTERIOUS DEMISE

  ATTACKED

  THE LAST HOUSEBOAT ON THE LEFT

  STRANGE LIGHTS BENEATH

  ASLEEP FOR CENTURIES

  EXAGGERATIONS

  OFF KILTER

  DEEP BREATH

  SHIPWRECK

  LIVING IN THE DARK

  KOOKY KARLA

  TEETH

  THE OCTOPUS’S GARDEN

  CREAK!

  OUT OF THE WATER

  THE HORDE OF NIGHTMARE THINGS

  SLITHERING, SLAVERING SOUNDS

  THE FALL

  THE UNEXPLAINED

  Copyright

  GHOST HUNTERS

  ‘I really don’t think we’re supposed to be here,’ Yvette said.

  Sarah sighed. When had her best friend become so obsessed with rules? Didn’t she know how to have fun?

  ‘Relax,’ she said. ‘If we get caught, I can talk our way out of it. “Oh, I’m so sorry, we got totally lost. We’re just kids, we don’t know our way around.”’

  ‘I’m not so worried about getting caught. No-one ever comes down here,’ Yvette said. ‘I’m more concerned about that.’

  She pointed at the bright yellow sign bolted to the rock wall. Even in the darkness, Sarah could make out the words beneath a picture which looked like a firework:

  DANGER. NO ENTRY.

  ‘I’m pretty sure that wasn’t here last time we came up,’ Yvette said.

  In Sarah’s experience, ninety per cent of warning signs were meaningless. ‘Seatbelt must be worn.’ Well, duh. ‘Road is slippery when wet.’ Wasn’t everything? And her mother bought containers of microwave soup with ‘Caution: becomes hot when heated’ printed on the side.

  ‘Someone probably hurt themselves doing something stupid,’ Sarah said. ‘We’re not stupid, so we’ll be fine.’

  Yvette stared into the darkness of the cave, her feet rooted to the dirt.

  Sarah could feel it too—the tension in the air, the silent energy crackling around them. It wasn’t just the sign. She could sense the danger. But this made her want to go in even more.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Do you want to see a ghost, or not?’

  ‘There is no ghost.’

  ‘Prove it. Come in.’

  Grumbling, Yvette followed her into the cave. Sarah clicked on her torch and shone it on the reddish-brown rocks. The tunnel smelled like a wet dog. It was amazing how quickly it got cold when she was only a few steps away from the entrance.

  Throughout her entire life Sarah had wanted to see a ghost. Not on a screen, not in a photograph. She wanted to see one with her own two eyes.

  It was unclear where this craving came from. One of her earliest memories was of opening all the cupboards at her day care centre because she was convinced that rogue spirits were inside.

  A framed drawing she made at age five hung from the wall at home—a clumsily scrawled ghost, the old fashioned man-in-a-sheet kind, standing beneath a crayon rainbow like a pot of gold.

  Every Halloween she went trick-or-treating, but she had no interest in the lollies. She was busy staring at the other kids, looking for signs that their ghoulish costumes were not pretend.

  In all these years of searching, she had never found a ghost. Rats that glowed in the dark, yes. Two-headed ants, sure. The school yard was full of them. But even though Axe Falls was the weird-and-creepy animal capital of the world, it had no ghosts. Each heart-stopping glimpse of an apparition—a faceless girl floating outside a second-storey window, a man in a hoodie lying under her bed—turned out to be a blurred reflection in a pane of glass or some discarded clothes in her peripheral vision. She had even stayed in a supposedly haunted house with her cousin Dale and seen nothing.

  Sarah figured these caves were her best chance of finding a real spirit. According to Kooky Karla, her rather eccentric neighbour, rumours of gold had lured hundreds of men there when the town was first settled. They had gone deeper and deeper into the caves with their pans and pickaxes. Some became hopelessly lost, crawling through narrower and narrower tunnels until they got trapped and had to wait for rescue. Many died of thirst before anyone came for them. Others were never found—dead or alive.

  That was the story, anyway. Sarah didn’t know how much of it was true. But she did know that many years before she was born one of the deepest tunnels had collapsed, unleashing the full force of the river above. Eleven gold miners had died, smashed against the walls or drowned in the darkness.

  The old folk said strange noises still echoed through these caves. Sometimes it was the shuffling of boots. Sometimes it was screams of terror, or the off-key whistling of old mining tunes. Perhaps it was just the wind. Perhaps not.

  Sarah half-believed the stories. She liked half-believing things. It meant she could disagree with almost anyone.

  ‘Five confirmed sightings,’ she said as they crept deeper into the tunnel. ‘And some of those were people who’d never heard about the miners, so they can’t have been imagining it.’

  ‘One of them was a tour guide who makes a living convincing people that ghosts are real,’ Yvette said. Sarah had told her this story before. ‘And another sighting was by someone who had escaped from a psychiatric hospital.’

  The cold seeped through the soles of Sarah’s shoes. Spatters of black dirt stained the stone floor like dried blood.

  ‘If you see a ghost,’ she said, ‘people always say you’re crazy.’

  ‘No-one saw anything,’ Yvette muttered. ‘So one guy heard some clattering noises …’

  ‘The wheels of a cursed mine cart.’

  ‘… and a woman’s bag went missing,’ Yvette finished.

  ‘Thieving ghosts.’

  ‘Or animals, or she forgot where she put it down, or any of a million other—’

  Sarah shushed her. ‘Did you hear that?’ she whispered.

  ‘Nice try, Sarah.’

  ‘I’m serious! Listen.’

  They fell silent. The wind moaned at the cave entrance. The plip plop of trickling water echoed through the darkness.

  ‘See? Nothing,’ Yvette said, though she didn’t sound sure.

  Sarah couldn’t hear anything either, but she had a moment ago. Panting, gasping. Like a gold miner trapped underground. A ghost, doomed to hiss and wheeze in the blackness for all eternity.

  Her heart fluttered with excitement. ‘Come on,’ she whispered.

  They crept through into a broader cavern. The walls were too far away for the dim light of Sarah’s torch to reach.

  The ceiling was flesh-coloured and so low that she had to stoop. It was as though they had been climbing down the throat of a giant beast and had just reached the stomach.

  Something lay on the ground up ahead. A black hoop—no, a coil.

  ‘Is that a snake?’ Yvette whispered.

  Sarah squinted at the dark shape. It sure looked like a snake. She wasn’t scared of ghosts, but snakes …

  ‘It can’t be,’ she said. ‘Snakes are cold-blooded. They need the sun—they couldn’t survive down here.’

  ‘What about sea snakes?’

  Axe Falls was a coastal town, so Sarah’s science teacher had given the class a gruesome lecture about sea snakes. Their bites were often painless but more toxic than those of many land snakes. The venom rotted away skeletal muscle tissue until the victim couldn’t move or even breathe. But Sarah wasn’t sure how much sun sea snakes needed.

  ‘We’re not in the sea,’ she whispered.

  ‘But some of the lower
caves are filled with water. Right?’

  They both stared at the snake for a minute.

  ‘Maybe it’s dead,’ Yvette said finally.

  Sarah edged closer, her heart pounding.

  ‘What are you doing?!’ Yvette whispered.

  Sarah didn’t reply. They couldn’t stay there. She didn’t want to go back. The only option left was to go towards the snake.

  ‘Sarah!’ Yvette hissed. ‘Get back here!’

  Sarah was almost close enough to kick the snake. She was ready to run at a moment’s notice, but it still hadn’t moved.

  She shone the torch on it.

  And laughed.

  ‘What is it?’ Yvette demanded.

  ‘Just a rope,’ Sarah said, feeling her muscles go soft again.

  ‘What kind of rope?’

  ‘A climbing rope, like—’ Sarah fell silent. A chill ran through her veins.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like the kind a gold miner would have.’

  And suddenly she could hear it again. Heavy breathing. Rough and desperate.

  A ghost was there.

  SHAFTED

  Sarah fumbled with the torch until the light went out. She didn’t want to scare the ghost away, at least not until she’d had a chance to take some pictures. She was so excited that her stomach hurt.

  In the faint light trickling in from the cave entrance above, Sarah could just make out Yvette’s eyes, wide with terror. Sarah put a finger to her lips, wordlessly begging Yvette not to make a sound.

  They scampered over to the wall and pressed their backs against it.

  Very slowly Sarah reached into her pocket for her phone.

  She hadn’t seen anything so far, but the heavy breaths were getting louder. Whatever was coming, it was closing in on them.

  An eerie light leaked in from somewhere. At first Sarah assumed the distant sun had emerged from behind a cloud, sending a little more illumination down through the entrance. But no, it was coming from the other direction, deeper in the caves. The spectral glow bobbed and swayed, getting brighter and brighter.

  Suddenly Sarah found herself looking into a brilliant light. It was like being in a dentist’s chair. The ghost rose right up through the solid stone floor, impossibly bright. When Sarah’s eyes adjusted, she realised the spirit was wearing a miner’s headlamp.

  Sarah held her breath as the thing lurched into the cavern. She couldn’t see a face, or clothes. A hulking silhouette hunched below the lamp, which blotted everything else out.

  Fortunately, the ghost wasn’t looking directly at them. In fact, it didn’t seem to see them at all. It went past, hissing and rattling, without ever shining its light on the two cowering girls—

  Then it stopped.

  Sarah willed her heart not to beat so loudly.

  The thing stooped to pick up the coiled rope, turned around and began to come back towards the far end of the cavern.

  Yvette shook her head vigorously. Sarah took no notice of her.

  The ghost was muttering. Sarah couldn’t follow the thread of its sentences. She only heard a few soft words, bouncing all over the cavern: ‘pressure’, ‘weight’ and ‘force’. And, eventually: ‘So the river doesn’t come through.’

  Sarah wasn’t sure why, but those words left a shudder in her bones.

  The spirit stopped at the other end of the cavern. The ghostly light fell on a box she hadn’t seen before. It was about as big as a party-sized pack of soft drink cans and was striped yellow and black, like a bee. Printed on the side was a warning:

  DANGER. EXPLOSIVE MATERIALS.

  Sarah gulped. This was the other half of the story. In a bid to rescue the trapped miners, rescue teams had planted explosive charges to open up the tunnels. But the debris from the explosions had killed even more people.

  Is it possible to be killed by a ghost bomb?

  The spirit rummaged and fiddled within the box, muttering all the while.

  Sarah snapped two pictures with her phone. No flash, no sound. That would have to do. What was the point of seeing a ghost if she didn’t survive long enough to tell anyone about it?

  She grabbed Yvette’s trembling, sweaty hand and led her away from the wall. Together they crept back towards the entrance, behind the ghost’s back.

  They were almost out when it happened.

  Sarah’s foot came down to the ground—and then kept going. There was no floor there. Just a long, narrow hole in the ground, like a grave. She tried to recover her balance, and couldn’t. She was falling.

  Yvette grabbed the back of Sarah’s shirt, but not quickly enough. Sarah slipped free and tumbled forwards into the blackness. She flailed about, desperate for a handhold.

  One of her hands struck the rung of a ladder with a clang.

  ‘Ow!’ she shrieked.

  The ghostly light whipped across the cavern, silhouetting Yvette bent over the grave.

  ‘Hey!’ The voice seemed to come from all around, like a choir in a cathedral.

  It was deep, masculine and filled with terrible rage.

  Sarah launched herself up the ladder and grabbed Yvette’s outstretched hand. They both jumped over the hole and sprinted up the tunnel towards the exit.

  Before, the ghost had seemed to shuffle along the ground. But now Sarah could hear its heavy, deliberate footfalls behind them, getting closer and closer.

  If it could hit the dirt so hard, it could hit them even harder.

  ‘Keep running!’ she yelled.

  Yvette didn’t reply. Her puffing breaths echoed around the tunnel.

  They were nearly there. Sarah could see the broadening edges of daylight ahead. Would that make the ghost evaporate?

  ‘Get back here!’ it boomed, like a hundred voices instead of one. The girls ran even faster.

  They burst out of the cave and kept running. After the darkness, the sunshine was blinding. The leaves and flowers looked fluorescent. They scrambled over the bushes and slipped between the trees. Sarah barely noticed the thorns scraping her arms.

  ‘Down!’ Yvette hissed.

  They both flopped onto the dirt and lay perfectly still. Sarah held her breath and hoped the ghost wouldn’t hear her pulse.

  Between the leaves, she saw him stumble out of the entrance to the caves. He didn’t evaporate. In fact, he looked more real than ever—a chubby man in a high-visibility vest and heavy-duty gloves. His mouth was obscured by a thick beard and his brow glistened with sweat after the chase. Could this really be a restless spirit?

  The man stared into the forest with icy blue eyes.

  Sarah and Yvette stayed silent, crouched beneath the foliage.

  ‘You can’t come in here!’ the man shouted, turning his head left and right. ‘It’s dangerous!’

  A spindly ant crawled onto the back of Sarah’s hand. She didn’t dare try to brush it off. Its mandibles quivered and then snapped shut, pinching her skin. Pain flared up her arm. She bit her lip, suppressing a yelp.

  After a tense minute, the man turned around and walked back into the mine.

  Sarah let out a shaky breath.

  ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ Yvette joked.

  ‘We did!’ Sarah flicked the ant off her hand and rubbed the sting. ‘I can’t believe it!’

  ‘No, we didn’t. That was just a regular guy, just doing his job.’

  ‘He rose up out of the floor!’

  ‘He came out of a hole in the floor.’ Yvette stood up and patted the dust off her jeans. ‘A hole just like the one you fell in.’

  ‘He was gasping for breath, like—’

  ‘Like he had just climbed a ladder.’

  ‘He was setting up a bomb,’ Sarah said.

  ‘That doesn’t make him a ghost.’

  ‘Maybe not. But don’t you think it’s scary?’

  ‘A little,’ Yvette admitted. ‘It sure explains the danger signs.’

  ‘You should tell somebody.’

  ‘What? Why me?’

  ‘Bec
ause no-one ever believes me,’ Sarah said.

  ‘That’s because you’re always making stuff up.’

  Sarah shrugged.

  ‘He looked like he was supposed to be there,’ Yvette said thoughtfully.

  ‘Anyone can buy a hi-vis vest,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Your uncle’s a cop. Tell him about it. He’ll check that it’s all OK.’

  ‘Fine,’ Sarah said. ‘But you have to back me up, all right?’

  ‘Sure.’

  She dug out her phone to call Uncle Claude. There were two text messages from Dale, her cousin.

  Can you get to the beach?

  Several minutes later, he’d sent the other. Just as vague but definitely more intruiging.

  You have to see this for yourself!

  A picture was attached to the message, but it wouldn’t download. Mobile data was pretty unreliable in Axe Falls.

  Sarah held up her phone so Yvette could see the message.

  ‘Up for a trip to the beach?’ she asked.

  ‘We might as well go,’ Yvette said. ‘We may need to establish our alibis.’

  THE BEACHED COLOSSUS

  It should have been a ten-minute walk to the beach but it took half an hour. The footpath was clogged with people, young and old, some in groups, others walking alone. On the road, news vans were bumper-to-bumper with four-wheel drives covered in Greenpeace stickers, kayaks strapped to the roof racks. The smell of rumbling engines filled the air.

  Sarah and Yvette overtook all the cars with ease even though they weren’t walking all that quickly. The ambling crowd teemed with excited voices.

  ‘I hope it’s still there,’ a young girl said, waving a stick in the air.

  An old man shielded his eyes from the sun and leaned closer to the woman beside him. ‘Do you think we’ll be able to save it?’ he asked.

  ‘I want to be able to touch it,’ a little boy shouted.

  ‘What do you think they’re talking about?’ Sarah whispered.

  Yvette shrugged and cupped her hands around her lips. ‘What are you guys talking about?’ she yelled. She had always been more direct than Sarah.

  ‘The beached whale,’ a young man with pierced eyebrows said. He turned away without providing any more details.