Cover

Title

Dedication

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EERIE-ON-SEA

YOU’VE PROBABLY BEEN TO EERIE-ON-SEA, without ever knowing it.

When you came, it would have been summer. There would have been ice cream and deckchairs and a seagull that pinched your chips. You probably poked about in the rock pools with your mum, while your dad found that funny shell. Remember? And I bet that when you got in the car to drive home, you looked up at the words CHEERIE-on-SEA – written in light-bulb letters over the pier – and got ready to forget all about your day at the seaside.

It’s that kind of place.

In the summer.

But you should try being here when the first winter storms blow in, when the letters “C” and “H” blow off the pier, as they always do in November. When sea mist drifts up the streets like vast ghostly tentacles, and saltwater spray rattles the windows of the Grand Nautilus Hotel. Few people visit Eerie-on-Sea then. Even the locals keep off the beach when darkness falls and the wind howls around Maw Rocks and the wreck of the battleship Leviathan, where even now some swear they have seen the unctuous malamander creep.

But you probably don’t believe in the malamander. You maybe think there’s no way a fish-man can be real. And that’s fine. Stick to your ice cream and deckchairs. This story probably isn’t for you anyway. In fact, do yourself a favour and stop reading now. Close this book and lock it in an old tin box. Wrap the box in a heavy chain and throw it off the pier. Forget you ever heard of Eerie-on-Sea. Go back to your normal life – grow up, get married, start a family. And when your children can walk, take them for a day at the seaside too. In the summer, of course. Stroll on the beach, and find a funny shell of your own. Reach down and pick it up. Only, it’s stuck to something…

Stuck to an old tin box.

The lock has been torn off and the chain is gone. Can the sea do that? You open the box, and find …

… that it’s empty.

Nothing but barnacles and seaweed, and something else. Something like … slime?

You hear a sound behind you – a sound like footsteps, coming closer. Like slimy, flippery footsteps coming closer.

You turn around.

What do you see?

Really?

Well, maybe this story is for you, after all.

THE GRAND NAUTILUS HOTEL

MY NAME’S HERBERT LEMON, by the way. But most people call me Herbie. I’m the Lost-and-Founder at the Grand Nautilus Hotel, as you can see from my cap. Someone once told me that most hotels don’t have a Lost-and-Founder, but that can’t be right. What do they do with all the lost stuff then? And how do the people who’ve lost it get it back?