And then it was like it breathed. A giant wave of jelly flesh rippled towards us. The tentacles rose, flicked back, their muscular strength readying for attack.

I cut into the jelly holding us to the edge. But even then, I was ready for the hit.

Then . . . there was a dull, distant thud. A boom.

‘Go!’ I screamed.

James started to row, and I scrabbled for my oars.

Behind us, the Jellyfish seemed to inflate, heaving up and getting bigger, and bigger.

We pulled, and pulled, and pulled. The rhythm of our terror was faster than any race you could ever imagine.

We were past the tentacles and near Kate and Lana before the first explosion happened.

Chapter 39

39

I don’t know how we got back exactly. I remember the way the Jellyfish looked, of course, its body huge: stretched thin and bulbous, the tentacles drooping, floating on the waves like ragged plastic bags. But I don’t remember dragging ourselves back through the water again. That part of the story is really fuzzy.

At some point we got into the same boat as Lana and Kate, and I can remember the thudding explosions, each one inflating another side of the Jellyfish so that it bulged out awkwardly, tilting. Then the air would release and the mesoglea would shrink back, shrivelled and sagging.

We were almost at the submerged houses before the big explosion came, the one which ripped through the creature, finally tearing it apart. With a loud boom the Jellyfish ballooned out on all sides, then there was a high squeaking, whistling noise and half of the creature peeled off, as though melting away. It floated at a strange angle for a couple of seconds before dropping beneath the waves.

But Kate was determinedly facing the other way, looking at the shore and not at what was going on behind us, her shoulders hunched and flinching against the noise. ‘Look,’ she said, and she is the first person I definitely remember speaking. She pointed to the wavelets lapping against the shore.

There, on the edge of the water and the land, was a herd of jellyfish, small and delicate, their bodies pulsating gently with the rhythm of the water. Pale, translucent, each one had a whiter starred core, around which a perfect circle of glistening, jellied flesh danced just underneath the surface of the water. Swaying in time with each other, their tentacles flickered out below them like the strands of seaweed growing along the walls of the houses. As we pulled the boat in, one of them was thrown forward by a wave on to the old tarmac of the road; and as the water withdrew, it stayed behind. Harmless. Vulnerable. Along the shore there was a line of others, lying like blisters on the road, whitening and dying in the sunlight while in the water the rest of them waited, floating wherever the current went.