Free SUNK by Fleur Hitchcock

into the store. Cobwebs festoon the vaulted ceiling.
    ‘Not really a cave, so much as a cellar,’ mutters Eric.
    Jacob pushes through the front line of chairs, the ones we hastily stacked inside after he and Eric subdued them. They smell of wet bonfires, and are totally passive. Behind them, something scuttles.
    I stop, listening and watching the nearestcobweb flex under the weight of a particularly heavy spider.
    The scuttling stops.
    I push my way past the scorched chairs and stop by a collection of dusty windbreaks. They aren’t moving, but it feels as if they’re watching me.
    ‘Tom?’ says Eric from my right. ‘Are you there?’
    I stumble between two lobster pots, reaching Eric’s side, and look into the pool of torchlight.
    A beach volleyball set is limboing around itself, over and under, knotting and unknotting. He shines the light higher and reveals a huge dripping crack in the wall. A gash with bright green mossy sides.
    ‘What is it?’ asks Jacob, appearing beside us. ‘Is it an alien?’
    ‘No – I don’t think so,’ says Eric. ‘But it is a cleft in the rock.’
    ‘Through which water is running,’ I say.
    Jacob looks at us, shining his torch from his chin upwards making a ghost pig face. ‘I don’t understand.’
     
    On the way home, Jacob walks backwards.
    It’s annoying, but then practically everything about Jacob is annoying. The only person more annoying than Jacob is Tilly. I remember home and humiliation and forget feeling hungry.
    ‘So why’s the rock important?’ he asks again.
    ‘It’s a meteorite,’ says Eric patiently. ‘The same meteorite that makes everything around here behave so oddly.’
    ‘Oh,’ says Jacob, thumping backwards over a kerb.
    His brain cogs come up with the next question. ‘So what’s the water got to do with it?’
    Eric sighs. ‘I think, and it’s only a theory, that the meteorite dust, all the stuff that was mined last year, is dissolving in the groundwater and then dripping into Mr Fogg’s store.’
    ‘So we could stop it happening then – couldn’t we?’ asks Jacob.
    ‘Possibly, but I’m not sure we want to,’ I say.
    ‘Why?’ says Jacob.
    ‘Because if the beach wins the Best Beach award, they’ll sell it off to someone – it’ll be covered in plastic sofas and takeaways and then it won’t be the same any more.’
    ‘Is that a bad thing?’ asks Jacob.
    ‘Yes,’ we say in chorus.

22
If It’s All Under Control?
    Jacob goes home to a tea of sausage, mash and beans.
    Eric and I walk on in almost total darkness and empty the tin of deckchairs through the letter box into the tiny lock-up. I just hope that Mrs Santos who keeps it doesn’t go in for a few days. I wouldn’t want her to be attacked.
    â€˜Why did they give up?’ says Eric.
    â€˜What – who?’
    â€˜The chairs. I don’t understand why they gave up on the beach like that. It was like afull-scale battle and then suddenly they lay down and surrendered.’
    â€˜Perhaps it was the combination of fire and water – like steam-cleaning.’
    â€˜You’re probably right,’ says Eric. ‘So what shall we do about it? We can’t leave it like it is. Poor Mr Fogg, he wants to win the contest, but he’s having a terrible time and the beach is downright dangerous.’
    â€˜We could move all the chairs, steam-clean them, seal up the hole and solve it …’
    â€˜But that would mean that the mayor could sell it all off and Bywater-by-Sea just wouldn’t be Bywater-by-Sea any more.’
    We stand in the darkness listening to the sand fleas hopping all over the beach in the dark.
    â€˜It’s the mayor – we need a new one – properly elected. I think it’s time we got your dad and my mum to join forces.’
    â€˜Really?’ says Eric. ‘You’d do that?’
    I think of the combined embarrassment factor and then I think about Bywater-by-Sea and the whole town sold to a plastic