DARK COUNTY by Kit Tinsley Page B

substance. It felt strange. It clung to his hand, and yet was not sticky to the touch. He saw the flashes within the substance, dim at first, but when he touched it they grew brighter. He rubbed his hand on his trousers, wiping the mysterious goo off his skin.
    He had no idea what these things were, he guessed that maybe it was some kind of jellyfish spawn, but then he did not ever remember hearing of such a thing. All of a sudden he felt very vulnerable out there on the beach alone at night. It was something he had done a million times, and it had never bothered him before. The worst you were likely to encounter was Mad Mike, who lived in a tent on the beach with his equally mad mother. Mike was harmless, though, he just talked to himself. Tonight, though, after all that had occurred with Baz and the tramp and now this strange illuminating slime, he felt that he needed to be away from here. He headed home.
     
    5
     
    His sleep that night was restless, and filled with awful dreams. He dreamt of Baz chasing him down the street with an axe. Crowds of people just stood and watched, almost complicit in their inaction.
    Then he dreamt of his mother, they were on a boat together in the dream, and she fell overboard. As much as Paul fought to save her, something was fighting against him, dragging her down into the depths.
    Then he dreamt of a cold dark place under the sea, ruled by unspeakable beings, cruel beings. He knew he shouldn’t be there. If they were to find him, he would be turned just like the tramp, yet he could not find his way home.
    He woke to the sound of his alarm bleeping. He leant over and switched it off. It was seven in the morning, he had two hours to get some money off his mother, pack, and get the hell out of Skegness before Baz caught up with him, demanding either the money, the drugs or Paul’s blood.
    He quickly got up, washed and dressed. He walked to the kitchen, expecting his mother to be reading the paper and drinking coffee. His mother had always been a creature of habit. She was always up at six-thirty and then she would read the papers and drink coffee. It was a ritual he had never known to be broken in his whole life. It was as certain as the seasons, or the tide of the sea.
    Thinking of the sea scared him. Images from his nightmares flooded his mind. He worried for his mother’s safety. It was because of the dream of the boat trip. He brushed the feeling aside, assuming that there must be a logical explanation for his mother’s absence. He walked to her bedroom and gently knocked on the door.
    ‘Mum?’ he said. ‘Mum, are you okay?’
    He waited, but no reply came.
    He tried knocking once more, a little louder, but still there was silence from the other side of the door. Gently he pushed the door open, expecting to see the room dark and his mother asleep. The room, however, was light, and the bed was made. She had got up as normal, then where was she?
    The papers, he thought, perhaps they hadn’t been delivered and she had gone down to the newsagents to get them. This was plausible, his mother was so set in her ways that if the papers weren’t there she would have to go and fetch them before she could get on with her day.
    He looked at his watch. It was quarter past seven. How long would she be? He really didn’t have the time to wait for her, not today, he decided it was best that he headed to the newsagents with the hope of catching her on her way home. He took the bag he had packed with him, so he could be on the first train out of town.
    The first thing that struck him when he got outside was the stillness of the air. Skegness had a slogan, ‘It’s so bracing,’ this was because it was always windy there. Even in the height of summer, there was a breeze that crept in from the sea. That was why they’d built that wind farm just off the coast a few years back. Today, though, the air didn’t move at all.
    The second thing was the sound, or more importantly the lack of it. The road