Then there’s a slap! from behind us – muffled by the mist, but quite definitely a slap. It sounds like something large and flippery hitting the wet sand. Then it comes again. We all turn, even the Boathook Man.

Something is in the mist, in the direction of the sea, too far to be clear. It’s a crouching figure, hunched low near the water as if poised, waiting to spring. But there’s something funny about it, something odd about the length of its arms, something fish-like and spiny that stops this being a someone at all, and makes it more like a something.

Where its eyes should be, there are two enormous, pale reflectors. They blink, twice. Then it moves off – darting from its crouch and springing along the murky foreshore at great speed, its feet slap-slap-slapp-ing as it vanishes in a swirl of mist.

The Boathook Man drops Violet, his eyes wide in his face, his mouth drawn back to bare his teeth. He sets off at a lumbering run, vanishing into the mist after the strange figure.

“Are you OK?” I ask Violet, struggling to my feet and reaching out my hand to pull her up. Mrs Fossil is sprawled at our feet, out cold.

“I think so,” Violet croaks, clutching her throat.

More figures emerge from the mist now, this time from the direction of the pier, and the town.

“She’s here! Over here!”

It’s Seegol. He reaches our side with several of the other customers from the diner.

With a heave, four of them manage to lift Mrs Fossil, and they set off up the beach.

“I will telephone the doctor,” Seegol calls back to us, jogging off towards the pier steps. “You should follow the others.”

“Yeah,” I say, fishing my Lost-and-Founder’s cap out of a pool of seawater and wringing it out. “We need to get out of here.”

“Wait a moment,” says Violet. “What just happened? Herbie, what was that we saw by the water?”

“You wanted to know about the malamander, didn’t you?” I reply. “Well, I’d say Eerie-on-Sea has just obliged you with your very own sighting.”

“But it can’t be real.” Violet shakes her head. “How can it be real?”

“Do you see that?” I say, pointing into the mist.

“What?”

“Exactly. Violet, in this fog, anything could be standing ten paces away right now and we wouldn’t know. We need to get off the beach. It’s dangerous here.”

“OK, maybe you’re right. But there’s something we need to find first,” she says. And she heads off into the mist where Mrs Fossil’s footprints are still faintly visible in the waterlogged sand.

“What are you doing?” I say, trying to catch up. “This is madness. What do we need to find?”

“That!” Violet cries, pointing ahead.