by Jack Heath
‘Whale?’ someone else said. ‘I thought it was a shipwreck.’
Sarah didn’t hear the rest of their conversation. There had been a shipwreck, but that was six years ago. A cargo ship had crashed into the cliffs and sunk. No-one seemed sure what the cargo had been—Sarah’s favourite theory was that the ship had been transporting dangerous animals—but if anyone from outside Axe Falls had heard of the town, it was usually because they remembered seeing the wreck on TV.
But there had never been a beached whale there—not that Sarah remembered, anyway. That explained the crowd. Some people would want to help, others would just want to have a look. A few would be hoping to get on the news.
The crowd was moving pretty slowly. Most people were taller than Sarah, so she couldn’t see anything. She took the opportunity to send Uncle Claude a text message:
Yvette and I saw a guy carry what looked like a bomb into the caves. He was dressed in construction gear. Thought you should know.
She hoped Uncle Claude would assume that they hadn’t actually gone into the caves. But if the guy did turn out to be doing something bad, the truth would probably come out.
‘What is that stench?’ Yvette asked.
Sarah could smell it too. It was as though someone had opened a garbage bin which had been sitting in the sun for weeks, unemptied.
‘Maybe that’s what a beached whale smells like,’ she guessed. ‘If people knew that, would they be so keen to see them?’
‘It smells like my brother’s room,’ Yvette said.
Sarah snorted loud enough that other people turned to stare. Yvette’s brother, Josh, was notoriously vague. He had once ‘lost track of’ an egg-salad sandwich in his bedroom. It had been found a month later, squished between the mattress and the wall. The smell in his room had been nearly as overwhelming as this.
They walked past the lifesaver hut and the shower block to the sandy path which led to Axe Falls Bay. Sarah sometimes went there to read or swim while her cousin Dale was surfing. But she’d never seen it so crowded. So many people were heading towards the beach that she was forced to the very edge of the path, where spine grass scraped her legs.
Then they reached the top of the hill and she forgot all about the crowds. She could see the flat, dark ocean stretching all the way to the horizon. The two surf lifesaver flags fluttered about twenty metres apart. At the far end of the beach, water from the Axe Falls River plummeted from the cliff top and smashed down into the sea.
But Sarah barely saw any of that. She was looking at the massive creature on the beach.
It wasn’t a whale.
It was a giant squid.
A MYSTERIOUS DEMISE
‘What …’ Yvette began. ‘How …’
Sarah didn’t respond. The monster was an enormous slab of red flesh. Thick tentacles sprawled out around it like spilled guts. The fin atop its head was cracked and speckled with pink blotches where the hot sun had baked it, while the sandy underside of the beast was like a dark bruise. One gold eye, as big as a truck tyre, stared lifelessly out at the shore from within a shrivelled socket.
‘That’s not a whale,’ a man behind Sarah observed. ‘It’s a squid. And I think it’s dead.’
He sounded really disappointed, and a little grossed out.
‘There’s your uncle,’ Yvette said, her voice muffled by the hem of the T-shirt she had pressed over her nose.
Detective Sergeant Claude Sharpe was in front of the giant squid, waving his badge in the air and fighting to keep the crowd at bay. His uniform was stained with sand and muck. His face was spotted with dabs of sunscreen, not yet rubbed in. No wonder he hadn’t responded to Sarah’s text.
‘Stay back,’ he bellowed. ‘This section of the beach is closed!’
Yvette and Sarah pushed through the crowd towards Claude.
‘Sarah!’
She turned to see Dale running up to them. His hair was a frizzy mess, and his rash vest was stuck to his torso.
‘Hey, Dale,’ Yvette said. ‘What’s up?’
‘Oh, you know, not much,’ Dale puffed. ‘Just checking out this gigantic dead monster that totally washed up on the beach right in front of my eyes.’
‘Seriously?’ Sarah said. ‘Was there a big wave, or something?’
Dale shook his head. ‘Nope. No idea what happened. I thought it was red algae under the water at first, and then it got closer and closer to the shore, and then boom! Giant squid.’
The nearer they got, the larger it looked.
‘How big do you think it is?’ Sarah asked. ‘Ten metres long? Eleven?’
‘Fourteen, apparently. Some kind of marine expert has come to examine it. He says it could be the biggest ever recorded.’ Dale looked around. ‘There’s a ton of people here now. I think I’m going to go home and wash the stink off me.’
Sarah opened her mouth to make a mean joke, and then resisted and closed it again.
‘We’ll go say hi to your dad,’ Yvette said.
‘You can try,’ Dale said. ‘But I think he’s pretty busy. See you.’
Dale ran off. Yvette and Sarah slipped through the crowd towards the squid.
‘Can I touch it?’ a little kid was asking.
‘No, you may not!’ Claude shouted. ‘Like any dead animal, this creature is likely to harbour all sorts of harmful bacteria and parasites …’
Sarah believed him. She could almost see the putrid fumes in the shimmering air above the squid. The smell made her want to puke.
‘… not to mention the dangerous chemicals pumped into the water around here,’ Claude finished.
Sarah had heard her mother complaining about the Quirinus Three, a floating factory which occasionally docked at Axe Falls and dumped runoff into the ocean. She and Mum lived on a houseboat so they were particularly conscious of sea pollution. The water was supposedly safe to swim in, but the creatures which lived near the ocean floor where the chemicals settled could be affected. Perhaps the squid hadn’t grown so big naturally.
‘Uncle Claude!’ Sarah pushed through the crowd to get closer to him.
Claude’s head swivelled so fast his police cap nearly fell off. ‘Kids!’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t be here. Dale isn’t with you, is he?’
‘He went home,’ Sarah said. ‘But we have to talk to you.’ If the man in the caves with the bomb was a criminal, they couldn’t wait.
‘I’m a little busy right now.’ Claude edged towards someone who was getting too close to the squid, leaning in to take photos.
‘It’s important,’ Yvette said.
Claude didn’t seem to hear her. ‘Get back!’ he shouted out.
Now she was up close, Sarah couldn’t believe how big the squid was. Its bulbous red and pink head dwarfed everything else on the beach. The fin which crowned its skull looked like a gigantic rubber leaf. The tentacles were as thick as rolled up yoga mats.
A stocky man in a polo shirt with a lanyard around his neck—probably the expert Dale had mentioned—was standing next to a police officer. He was pointing out ragged tooth marks on the squid, where fetid black pus oozed from the peeling skin.
‘Come on,’ Sarah said. ‘We’ll call the station instead.’
But when they turned around, they couldn’t go back. People were still arriving on the beach, looking for a whale to save. It was impossible to move against the flow.
‘Then there are these sucker marks, which are indicative of a fight with another squid,’ the marine expert was saying. ‘But they’re smaller, and it would be unusual for a big squid like this to lose a fight to a smaller creature.’ He moved along the squid’s massive body. ‘And you see here?’
‘Where?’ the police officer asked. ‘What am I looking at?’
‘These bruises, here.’
‘The whole giant squid looks like a bruise.’
‘This isn’t a giant squid.’ The marine expert pushed his baseball cap back and whistled through his teeth. ‘It’s a colossal squid. Completely different species—biggest invertebrate
in the world. You see these nasty hooks on its tentacles? Giant squids don’t have those. Anyway, the bruises.’ He pointed at a discoloured patch of skin. ‘The mantis shrimp can spin its limbs fast enough to shoot air bubbles at its prey, stunning them. It leaves bruises like this, only smaller.’
‘You think a shrimp did this?’ the officer asked.
‘Of course not. That wouldn’t explain these teeth marks here,’ the expert pointed at some more tattered skin around the squid’s eye, ‘which appear to be mako shark bites. Or those scratches on the tentacles, which look more like what you would find on something that had been attacked by a king crab.’
The police officer rubbed her eyes. ‘So your theory is that this squid was killed by a shark, a crab, a squid and a shrimp, all at once?’
‘Of course not,’ the marine expert said. ‘It’s not dead.’
The colossal squid’s massive eye swivelled to face Sarah.
The police officer stumbled back. ‘Get everyone off the beach!’ she roared. ‘Move away!’
An enormous tentacle whipped through the air, spraying sand over the onlookers. Someone screamed. Sarah found herself caught in a crush of panicked would-be whale watchers. She grabbed Yvette’s hand but it was torn from her grip. She felt herself slipping down into the forest of kicking legs and stampeding shoes.
Sarah hit the sand face first. Someone stood on her leg. Someone else stepped on her back. She was getting trampled.
Soon the pummelling stopped. The crowd must have escaped.
But then things got worse.
A tentacle wrapped around her ankles.
ATTACKED
Sarah screamed as she was dragged facedown, backwards across the beach. Wet sand went up her nose and into her mouth. The tentacle crushing her ankles was amazingly strong. When she thrashed her legs, trying to get free, she found that dozens of tiny hooks had snagged her jeans.
The tentacle wound tighter and tighter until Sarah felt like her shins might snap. Suddenly she was hanging in the air upside down. All the blood rushed to her head. She stared woozily down at the screaming people, the choppy sand and the black cave …
Cave? No.
The cave was the squid’s gaping beak, opening wide enough to swallow her.
She shrieked and squirmed in the squid’s grip, but the tentacle was like iron around her legs. The creature’s foul breath washed over her, cold and sour. She covered her face with her arms as the beast hauled her towards its jaws …
And then it stopped.
The tentacle jerked. The squid’s gigantic yellow eye rolled in silent agony.
Sarah looked back to see Yvette standing on the beast, about halfway along a tentacle. She had stabbed it with a surf lifesaver flag, pinning it to the ground. Thin, purple blood—like berry juice—leaked out onto the sand.
The creature couldn’t reach its mouth. Its beak chomped and clicked at the air. Then it gave up and dropped Sarah.
Her face hit the sand with a thump. Sparks exploded in her head. She barely had time to recover before the squid lashed out at her with another tentacle.
Sarah rolled out of the way just in time, but the squid had anticipated her move. Another slimy limb, topped with a vicious three-pointed hook, was waiting. It snaked across the sand towards Sarah’s neck, suckers rippling—
A deafening crack split the air. All the tentacles went limp. Sarah smelled smoke.
She scrambled to her feet to see Uncle Claude holding a gun. A ragged hole had pierced the squid’s head.
‘What is wrong with you?’ the expert screamed. ‘Squids are dying out. Do you know how rare this species is?’
‘It can’t be rarer than my niece.’ Claude holstered the gun. ‘There’s only one of her. You OK, sweetheart?’
Sarah nodded. She kept her lips clamped shut, afraid that if she opened them, she would make an embarrassing squeak.
‘Well,’ the expert grumbled, ‘I suppose it was terminal anyway. Suffocation, the lack of pressure in the atmosphere …’
‘Why didn’t you tell us it was still alive?’ Claude demanded.
‘I thought it was obvious. The pupil contraction, the colour of its skin, the temperature …’
‘Well, consider yourself very lucky no-one was hurt.’ Claude hugged Sarah tightly. ‘You are OK, aren’t you?’
She nodded again.
‘Hey,’ Yvette said, ‘did anyone notice how awesome I was just now?’
Sarah grinned at her. ‘I did, Captain Ahab.’
She held out a hand for a high five. Yvette slapped it.
‘You mean Captain Nemo,’ Yvette said. ‘Ahab fought the whale, not the squid. Also, he didn’t win. He got eaten.’
‘Hey! No spoilers.’ Sarah hadn’t read Moby-Dick or Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea yet.
Yvette rolled her eyes. ‘Those books have been around for, like, a hundred years.’
Claude raised a hand, stopping the argument. ‘If you’re sure you’re OK, I think you should both head home. Believe me, you don’t want to be around when we turn this thing into calamari rings.’
Yvette gasped. ‘You’re not seriously going to let people eat it?’
‘I just meant we’ll have to chop it up and get rid of it. Although …’ A hint of a smile danced at the corner of Claude’s lips.
‘Before we go,’ Sarah said. ‘We, uh, have something really important to tell you.’
‘Do you have a minute?’ Yvette asked.
Claude gestured at the almost-empty beach. Between the flailing squid and the gunshot, everyone but the other police officer and the marine expert had fled.
‘I do now,’ he said. ‘What’s up?’
Sarah thought carefully about how to phrase her reply. She didn’t want to get in trouble, but she also didn’t want to lie to a police officer.
‘We saw a guy with a bomb,’ she said. True. ‘He was outside the caves near Coffin Lookout.’ Also true, although he hadn’t had the bomb with him when he was outside the caves.
Claude looked to Yvette for confirmation. She nodded. His eyebrows shot up. ‘Did you call emergency services?’
‘He looked like maybe he was supposed to be there,’ Yvette said. ‘He had a hard hat and a hi-vis jacket.’
‘What did the bomb look like?’
‘Just like a regular box,’ Sarah said. ‘But with warning signs on the sides.’
Claude nodded. ‘OK. Thanks for telling me. I’ll look into it right away.’
Sarah beamed. It felt good to be useful—and to be believed.
‘Now you kids go home,’ Claude said. ‘It still might not be safe here.’
Sarah doubted that. The squid was dead now, wasn’t it? But she was keen to get away from the rancid smell.
‘No worries,’ she said. ‘See you later, Uncle Claude.’
She and Yvette climbed back up the hill where a few people were still milling around, some taking pictures of the beach, others muttering fearfully. Sarah stole a glance back at the ocean. She had lived on the water for her whole life. It seemed impossible that something as big as the squid had been hiding beneath the waves all this time.
One last thought ran through her head as she crossed the hill. Dale said there hadn’t been a big wave. Therefore the squid, bitten and bruised, had beached itself.
What could be scary enough to chase a colossal squid out of the sea?
THE LAST HOUSEBOAT ON THE LEFT
They passed the marine expert in the car park, sitting on the bonnet of his car sending a text message. When he saw Sarah and Yvette, he looked away. Sarah thought she saw tears in his eyes.
‘I’m sorry the squid had to die,’ she said.
The expert harrumphed. ‘They’re just animals.’ He sounded like he was trying to convince himself. ‘You said the squids are dying out?’
‘Yes. In this area, anyway. We’re spotting fewer and fewer on the underwater cameras. The ones we do see are often scarred, missing tentacles or eyes—or lying dead on the seabed.’
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br /> ‘Why?’ Yvette asked.
‘Why indeed? What is slaying the squids? That’s what I was sent here to figure out.’ He squinted up at the sky, as though the answer might be up there. ‘So far, I have no explanation.’
‘Well,’ Sarah said. ‘Good luck.’
‘Thanks.’ The expert turned back to his phone. Sarah and Yvette walked to the main road.
Sarah invited Yvette to her place, but Yvette excused herself and went home, mumbling something about fixing a bike chain. Sarah told herself that she shouldn’t take offence. Yvette was always working on one thing or another. She enjoyed fiddling with things by herself—it wasn’t that she was sick of Sarah.
Despite these assurances, a tendril of doubt crawled around Sarah’s heart as she walked back to the pier where her houseboat was docked. She often worried that people were bored by her. It was one of the reasons she exaggerated things and went on adventures. But that only made it worse, because now she had an exhausting reputation to protect. What if she started telling the absolute truth all the time and discovered that her friends didn’t like who she really was?
Sarah stood up straighter, shaking off the bad mood. She was just tired. The adrenaline of the ghost and the squid had faded, leaving her feeling empty.
With all the houseboats floating almost wall to wall, the pier looked just like a suburban street. They had normal windows, normal doors, normal roofs. It was only if you looked down and saw the water through the gap between the jetty and the porch that you’d know. Or if a big swell rolled through and made the houses do a Mexican wave.
It was a long jetty, but Sarah could just make out her bright blue houseboat—it was the last one on the left. She jogged towards it.
Her houseboat wasn’t as fancy as some of the others moored at this pier, which had two storeys and tinted glass walls, but she liked it. The sloped tin roof made a soothing racket when it rained, and the small rooms were always cosy and warm in winter. The rear balcony, dotted with plants in small enamel pots, was perfect for catching tiny fish with a net or playing board games with Yvette.
Sarah took a run-up and jumped over the water onto the porch rather than using the gangplank. It was habit now, but when she first started doing it, the leap had given her a thrill. It felt like she was a pirate boarding an enemy vessel.