Read Online The Electric Michelangelo by Sarah Hall - Free Book Online

being taken, and nobody would hear the screams and come to help even though it had been promised. Only the cold, disdainful Irish Sea would hear the calls and come up to investigate, that fickle arm of the Atlantic Ocean which had in part set up the trap. In it would rush and smooth over the strange, lumpy, depressed portion of beach with the wet scuffled tracks and the trenched handprints. Smoothing it over like glass, as if complicit in the murder, as if further employed in the conspiracy to get rid of the evidence. And the child would join the company of a few others inside the tightest, sludgiest, densest of bellies. And crack like an egg the child would go, and thick wet sand would seep into his mouth and ears, setting him in the last position his limbs could move into. And out would come the search parties and the guides and the police when little Charlie didn’t come home at teatime. A scarf would eventually be found, or a glove, a shoe, a fishing net, too light to be a decent meal for the hungry sand and so it was left above ground, moved around by the sea, and brought up to the piers by the police sergeant to be recognized by a now hysterical mother. Then the game in the school playground would start up again in earnest and the shrieks of panicking children would echo over to Charlie Jessop’s house on Royal Street, where his mother would be looking at a photograph of her son, whom the wretched Morecambe quicksand had made eternally seven years old.

     
     
    Cyril Parks had been up to his crotch in it before, with Jonty and Morris holding his outstretched arms. The theory was that since he was the tallest of the three there would be more of him to get pulled down, and more of him left sticking out to grab hold of and yank back out. Height was a surprisingly versatile argument for being the first to undertake experimental practices, Cy noticed.
    – Go on, Parksie, those great long legs will hit the bottom before you drown.
    – Aye. We’ll not wander off and leave you.
    It was amusing up over the ankles, sort of tickling and soft. Cy laughed to his friends and said that it was grand. But then the sand began to work faster and after a few seconds his knees were gone and it was not soft any more, it was cold and wet, like a big, pillowy tongue up his trouser legs. It was nasty. There was an unmistakable feeling of being swallowed. Sucked on like a lollipop, like the bigger boys said Lucy Willacy, the headmaster’s daughter, had done to their dickies but not as nice, he assumed.
    – What’s it like now?
    As ever, Morris and Jonty were keen to know the exact details of the experience. Cy didn’t reply. It was like being buried, he thought. Like swimming in Lyle’s Golden Syrup. Like amputation of his legs so that he suddenly felt shorter, a good deal smaller, and he could not say with certainty that he had toes any more. He got to just past his knees and said to his friends enough and to pull him out. So they tried pulling. But he kept going down, he did not start coming up. The sand had opened its monstrous gullet and begun its gurgitation. Mid-thigh now, he lost his balance, swayed, but was unable to adjust the position of his legs and he tipped over to one side. His left hand was caught by the sand and sucked on. He dragged it out, covered in a new, gluey brown skin.

    Then panic, panic, panic was all Cy felt, getting quicker in him and bigger. He was stuck. Too stuck. He was being eaten. Jonty and Morris had him by the shoulders and arms and were jerking at him but he was still going down. He tried to talk and started stumbling over bits of speech, rambling about nothing.
    – Mam’s cutlery … she’ll bust us over the chops … I … I… want to go, come back, Dad … Lu, Lu, Lucy, then if I don’t … of God, oh God … Ah, ah …
    And the ranting was replaced by yelling. He was low enough to feel the compression of sand on the end of his dicky and it was not a marvellous sensation in the slightest. He