by John Moralee
They were not.
They were standing on the rocks, staring at me. The girl was muttering something into the older boy’s ear. They were planning something – but what? I was in the middle of the bay treading water – too far away to hit. I wondered why they had not pursued me into the water to finish me off. Did they not know how to swim? If they couldn’t swim, I could just touch the ground with my feet and keep my head above the water – making me safe for now - but I was bleeding from my scalp. I couldn’t stay in the sea forever.
The children hunted around for something among the rocks, picking up some nasty-looking rocks with razor edges. The girl raised hers over her head and pointed at it with her other hand as if showing it off to me. I thought they would dive into the water then – but they darted off in the direction of Steve.
He was their new target – not me.
“STEVE!” I screamed. “STEVE!”
It was useless. He couldn’t hear me. I watched in helpless horror as the three children crept towards him across the dunes, sneaking up on him like hunters. I screamed warning after warning – but my husband didn’t react. He was sunbathing, unaware his life was in danger. The children were sneaking up on my husband from the dunes – but what could I do?
I started swimming back to the shore. Maybe if I could run across the beach fast enough I could get to Steve before they did. He was a big, strong bloke. They clearly had to be careful not to let him see them. They were being stealthy. I didn’t have to be. I could run and yell and get him to notice me. I could save him – if I was fast enough.
I swam until I was in shallow water. Then I crawled onto the shore and stood up, gasping, my head aching. I picked up a jagged stone as a weapon and ran along the shore. I had lost sight of the children for a minute and prayed they would leave my husband alone – but then they appeared suddenly right there next to Steve. Creeping up. Their stones raised over their heads. They were going to kill Steve, but there was nothing I could do except yell another warning so loud my throat hurt.
“STEEEEEEEVE!”
My husband must have noticed something or heard me because he removed his earphone. Now he could hear me!
“BEHIND YOU!”
He turned his head towards the children. The children reacted instantly. They attacked with sickening ferocity. They slammed their rocks into Steve’s skull, bashing his head until his face was unrecognisable. It was all over in a few horrible seconds of violence and blood.
I let out a sob of grief and collapsed on my knees, staring towards Steve and the three little killers. The girl stood over his body and turned to me and waved in a bizarre mockery of a friendly gesture – then she and the older boy ran towards me. I wanted to kill them – but I was in not fit state to fight them. I forced myself to stand on weak legs and run back into the sea. The boy and girl chased me in the shallow water – but they stopped when I got into the deeper colder water in the middle of the bay. The little boy joined the older ones on the shore. The girl grabbed the little boy’s hand and hopped and skipped further down the beach until they vanished into the dunes. After another minute, the second boy hurled a stone across the water in my direction. It fell short. Then he ran after the others. The three children disappeared into the dunes.
The children seemed no longer interested in me – but I suspected it was a trick to lure me out of the water. They had just murdered my husband. I didn’t think they wanted to leave me alive as a witness.
There were only two ways off the beach – heading out to sea or back up the narrow footpath that led down from the cliffs. I was a strong swimmer – but I doubted I could swim to a safer beach up or down the coast. That left only the footpath, which was roughly in the middle of the cliff with a large open area in front of it. I could not get to it without being seen. In my weakened condition, I definitely would not be able to get up it without the children catching me. Not unless I did it after dark when they would not be able to see me. I would have to wait for them to get bored and leave. I was safe where I was – but I could not stay in the sea all day. Though the sun was hot on my head, the water was cold on my body. It was gradually sapping my strength just to stay treading water. Before I exhausted myself, I would have to sneak back onto the beach and hide somewhere for a few hours, then make a break for it up the cliff’s narrow path. The children were some distance away right now – even if they were sneaking back through the dunes towards me – so I had to move quickly.
I swam back to the rocks and dragged myself up onto one, feeling the heaviness of my body increase dramatically as I left the water. I felt like someone had tied weights to my limbs. My body was sluggish out of the water – but I dragged myself behind a rock and lay there panting for breath. My head injury was leaving drops of blood on the ground. I had to stop that quickly. I needed something on it. I tore a strip off my T-shirt and wrapped it around my wound. It stopped the bleeding, but the white strip of cotton was too bright. Someone would see it from a long distance. I reached into a rock pool and pulled out a string of bluish-green seaweed. I covered my head with it to disguise myself. I probably looked like a mermaid on a Bad Hair Day – but I didn’t care about that. I just had to survive on the beach long enough for it to get dark. I tossed the rest of my T-shirt back into the sea. Hopefully it would wash out to sea and the children would see it out there and assume I’d drowned.
The sun was high above – so it would be several hours before I could sneak away. The children were probably rushing back to kill me – but I could not leave them a trail of wet footprints to follow. I rubbed my feet until they were dry and no longer left marks. Then I headed away from the water into the shadows under the cliff. I found a dark narrow crevice. It looked too small for me, a grown woman, to hide in – which made it a good place to hide if I could somehow squeeze my body between the rocks. I scraped my skin pushing my body into the dark gap – but I managed it so I was lying like the meat in a sandwich under the lip of a rock. I disguised my head in slimy seaweed and hoped they would not find me. I hid and listened for the children, but all I could hear were the sounds of waves striking the shore and the distant cries of gulls. Time passed slowly. I expected them to discover my hiding place at any moment. My hiding place was a bad one because it had no escape route. If they found me, I would be trapped. I was thinking about sneaking out when I heard a low voice.
“Woman drown?” somebody said very close to my hiding place. It had to be the older boy. He was standing on the rock above me. “She dead, sis?”
“Don’t know,” the girl said. “We look for body in water. Come!”
I was sure they would hear my breathing as they jumped down the rock and passed my hiding place. Their bodies blocked out the light for a second. I was certain one looked under the rock right at me – but I was in the darkness. I held my breath. My hear pounded. It sounded incredibly loud. Any second now they would hear me. Please go away. Go away you evil little monsters. You’ve already killed Steve. Don’t kill me too.
As if in answer from God, I heard their soft footfalls receding in the direction of the sea. I stayed motionless, fearing a trick. Then, a minute later, somebody else sighed like they were bored. The older kids had left the little boy up there, looking out for me. If I’d moved from my position, he would have given away my location to the others. Devious. They thought I was hiding near here – but could not find me. They had only spoken to let me know they were searching somewhere else to make me reveal myself. But if I stayed hidden in the darkness, looking like a mass if seaweed in the crevice, maybe I could fool them. Maybe they would eventually really believe I had drowned. After an achingly long time, the older children returned.
“See woman?” the girl asked the little boy.
“No,” he said sullenly.
“You stay. We hunt. We kill.”
For hours I didn’t dare move an inch, not even when my nose itched and my legs ached and I was trembling with cold. I hated the wet seaweed touching my skin. After a long, long ti
me, the other children called to the boy and he left his position.
I waited. I didn’t emerge from the crevice until the sun was down and the beach was only lit by moonlight. All of my muscles ached from being squeezed into the tight space. Pins-and-needles stabbed my feet as the circulation returned. I peered over the rock, looking for signs of the children.
The three of them were dragging something up the beach on a blanket. I felt sick. It was Stephen’s dead body. They were dragging him towards the dark entrance of a cave. They dragged him into the darkness. He was almost out of sight when I noticed Stephen’s foot twitch.
I could not believe it.
Stephen was in a bad way – but he was still alive. I sucked in a deep breath as tears of joy ran down my cheeks. It was a miracle. They had beaten him and tried to kill him, but he wasn’t dead. Not yet.
I had to save him – but how?
I wondered if the children knew he was alive. I hoped not. They might finish him off if they did. I was fairly sure they had only moved him to remove evidence of their crime from public view. They were all inside the cave for the moment, giving me an opportunity to make a mad dash across the beach to the cliff where the path started, but I hesitated. I could not abandon Stephen now there was a chance of saving him. I had to lure the little monsters out of the cave – without alerting them to my location.
I picked up a rock and hurled it at the cliff. There was a loud crack when it struck. Pieces of limestone crumbled and fell in a mini-avalanche. The noise brought the children out of the cave. They raced over to the source of the noise – while I crept up the beach, keeping low, erasing my footprints behind me as I sneaked closer and closer to the mouth of the cave. Taking no chances, I ducked when the children looked back at the cave. The girl shrugged. She pointed at something in the dunes. The three set off in that direction. They stopped where Stephen and I had been having our picnic. The little girl raised our champagne bottle to her lips and drank it until it spilled down her chest. The older boy grabbed it off her then and he swigged a large mouthful. The girl grabbed it back and pushed him backwards. He fell on his bottom in the sand. The little boy laughed. The bigger one did not. He grunted and tackled the little boy. They rolled in the sand, fighting. The bigger boy lifted the younger one over his shoulder and ran to the sea, tossing the little boy into the water, where he was drenched. The little boy cried. The older one laughed and hurried back to the girl, who was drinking more of the champagne and eating our food from the hamper.
They were not looking in my direction so I dashed over to the cave and stepped into the cold darkness, whispering Stephen’s name. He did not reply – but listening carefully I heard him breathing somewhere further in. I followed his breathing until I felt his body in the dark. I touched his chest. His heart was beating strongly. Good.
“I’m going to get help,” I told him. There was a slight change to his breathing that I believed meant he had heard and understood. “I won’t let you die.”
“Own,” he said weakly, the word little more than a croak from his lips. “Own.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Own,” he repeated, more urgently, like whatever he meant to say what vitally important. “Own.”
It sounded like “own” - but what other word sounded like -
I got it! “Your phone? It’s here?”
“... esssss.”
Yes.
“Where?”
“Shrrrtts.”
It was in his shorts. They had a pocket. I had left my phone in our car – but Stephen had brought his to the beach. I felt around in the dark until I found it. I switched it on. The screen illuminated the cave like a weak torch. I used it to check out Stephen’s injuries. His body was not badly beaten – but his face was a bloody mass of purple, black and red bruises. His eyelids were so swollen his eyes were not even visible because of the swelling of the surrounding tissue. “Stephen, don’t try to move. I’m going to call the police, okay?”
He moaned something.
I was waiting for the phone to connect to the network – but there was no signal inside the cave. I couldn’t even get one bar on the screen. The thick layers of rock were blocking the signal. I swore. I would have to go outside – but when I approached the entrance I saw the children heading this way. Quickly, I retreated back into the cave, shining the phone’s light around to get an idea of its size and shape. The cave entrance was narrow – but the cave widened into a bulb-shaped area going about twenty feet before ending at a wall. Stephen was roughly in the middle of the chamber surrounded by a load of things the children had brought into the cave. Near the entrance, there were the remnants of a fire. There were gristly bones among the ash, the remains of their last meal, some kind of animal, possibly a dog, judging by the length of the leg bones. My gorge rose, but I fought my disgust. There was no time for that. I needed a safe hiding place.
At the back of the cave there was a narrow sloping tunnel going further down into the cliff. I headed for it, pausing just a second to tell my husband to stay still and act dead when the children returned. I hated leaving him – but I had to hurry into the tunnel, where there was a meaty unpleasant smell that reminded me of wet dogs and sick animals.
There were a lot of small animal bones on the rocky floor. They crunched under my feet. In under a minute the children would reach the cave – so I moved deeper into the tunnel, where there were more and more bones. Not all were tiny. Some were as long as my arm.
The tunnel ended after just seven or eight feet at a niche filled with old skulls. The skulls were too big to belong to cats or dogs. They belonged to humans – just like every other bone in the tunnel. Each skull had cracks in it caused by head injuries. Some of the skulls were very old and bare – but some had flesh still on them. Recent kills. I counted over a dozen piled up like a shrine to an insane god. I nearly screamed when I stood on a leathery hand sticking up in the sand – but I stifled it by remembering I had to stay quiet and undetected because the children were coming back into the cave, their chattering voices echoing off the walls. My phone! They’d see the light! I had to turn it off NOW. The phone would make a little musical sound if I switched it off, so I pressed it against my flesh instead, plunging myself into total darkness. I couldn’t see a thing in front of my face – but I sensed the children were very close and scrambling around. There was a click and an orange flickering light illuminated the cave accompanied by the smell of smoke. They’d lit a fire at the entrance to keep them warm. Maybe I would have tried to hide there all night – but I could not leave Stephen out there with the children. He could not act dead for long before they realised he was faking.
I had to fight them – but with what?
That bone I’d seen – the one as long as my arm – would make a great weapon. I slowly angled the phone so its screen just lit the ground under me in a weak light, not noticeable now the children had started a fire.
I relocated the bone. It was a femur. I extracted it from the bones around it while listening to the children fighting over the picnic things they had pillaged. Armed with the femur, holding it like a club, I crept up the tunnel until I could see where the children were near the entrance. My plan was to attack them with surprise on my side – but my feet made a crunching noise that they heard.
“Kill!” the girl shouted.
There was no time to think. I reacted by screaming and charging at them, swinging the bone down on the older boy’s head. There was a wet crack and he collapsed unconscious. One down – two to go! The little boy bared his teeth and snarled and bit my forearm like an attack dog. He was trying to distract me while the girl slashed at me with a knife. I battered it out of her hand and pushed her backwards. She tumbled out of the cave. The little boy was still gnawing on my flesh, but he released me when I twisted my body around. I swung the club at him a couple of times – but I only caught him with glancing blows. He ran away, following his sister outside.
The boy on the ground moaned –
so I hit him again. He stopped moving.
“Stephen!”
“Uhh?” he said.
“I got one of them.”
“Guh,” he said. Good.
I sneaked a look out of the entrance, seeing the girl and the boy about twenty feet away – but a stone hurled at my face forced me back. More stones followed it – hitting the walls near the entrance. I couldn’t leave – but the cave was mine now. I could defend this territory as long as I stayed alert and armed – but I couldn’t escape with my husband. I needed help. I tried getting a better phone signal, but it was useless and I swore I’d change networks if I ever got out of this situation.
I was warm by the fire – but Stephen was shivering. I dragged him nearer and wrapped a blanket around him. He fell asleep instantly.
The boy was still breathing – so I tied him up in a corner before he woke up.
I stayed in the cave until dawn. By then the fire had died out. I shook Stephen to wake him – but he didn’t move.
Sometime during the night he had died.
The boy was awake, staring at me, smiling.
“Sister kill you,” he said.
I was tempted to kill him – but I wasn’t like them. I didn’t murder in cold blood.
Daylight shone into the cave, revealing the revolting squalid home of the children in greater detail. Now I could see the scattered belongings of their previous victims collected like treasures. I recognised a pink plastic bracelet among a pile of cheap jewellery. It had once belonged to my sister before she disappeared.
“Hey – you – how did you get this?”
The boy glared. “Mother.”
“It was your mother’s?”
“Yes.”
My missing sister was his mother? “Where is she now? Where is your mother?”
His eyes turned to the tunnel filled with bones.
