Turtle Terror Read online

  “Oh, come on!” Danny retorted, wiping wet sand off his shorts. “Like you didn’t know we were here! You’ve followed us off on holiday before, Petty! Did you just send that parachute off the cliff? Was it you?!”

  Petty glared at him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I did not follow anyone here. I came here to do some more S.W.I.T.C.H. research, and I had no idea I’d find you two! It’s a fantastic coincidence, that’s all. Is the whole family here?”

  “Yes—but not here on the beach,” Danny said, eyeing her suspiciously. There was wet sand and a crab’s claw in her gray hair. “Mom and Dad are up in the cottage on the clifftop, and Jenny’s gone off with her friend Chelsea to some stupid TV show thing in Helston.”

  “Oh, I think I saw that on the way down here,” Petty remarked. “Some gaudy yellow tent in a field and lots of people wearing yellow I *heart* DD T-shirts, whatever that’s supposed to mean.”

  “Yeah—Jenny and Chelsea had them on! It’s some talk show that Mom and Jenny are always watching,” Danny said. “The audience goes nuts. It’s the stupidest thing on TV, isn’t it, Josh?”

  Josh though, was just staring at Petty’s armpits. There was a look of wonder on his face. “Petty!” he whispered. “They’re beautiful!”

  The turtles in Petty’s armpits were dark gray and had tough leathery shells with ridges running along the length of them. Their legs were wide pale flippers, and their heads were oval with dark almond-shaped eyes and a blunt snout, under which curved a mouth that seemed to be set in a sleepy smile. Their shells were hard and scaly but sleek and streamlined for fast swimming.

  “They’re leatherback turtles!” Josh murmured. He was just about to reach out and stroke the head of one when it gave a little shudder and vanished. The one in Petty’s other armpit did the same.

  “Ah—time’s up,” Petty said. Josh and Danny stared. There was now a slightly weary-looking black and white mouse in each of her armpits.

  She scooped them up and held them both in her hands. “Well done, Hector! Well done, Percy!” she said. The mice looked at each other. Having their cells hijacked by Petty’s serum was clearly wearing a bit thin by now. They’d probably been even more S.W.I.T.C.H. creatures than Josh and Danny. Danny could have sworn they both sighed.

  “Wow!” Josh said. “That’s the next REPTOSWITCH, then! Can we have a go? Can we?”

  “Well, I must say, you have changed your tune these days,” Petty said smugly. She put the mice into the pocket of her shiny orange raincoat. “Wasn’t that long ago you were accusing me of attacking you with S.W.I.T.C.H. spray and tricking you into being my helpers!”

  “That’s because you attacked us with S.W.I.T.C.H. spray and tricked us into being your helpers,” pointed out Danny.

  Petty pursed her lips and pushed her spectacles up her nose. “Fair point,” she said. “But you can’t use the turtle S.W.I.T.C.H. spray today. I’m not sure it’s quite ready. We can try it in the lab when you get back home next week.”

  “But—but—” Josh waved at the sea, an inky line in the distance now, at low tide. “It would be perfect here! We live miles from the sea! It won’t be any fun lumbering about on land as a turtle, will it?’”

  “Can’t be helped,” snapped Petty, turning her back on them and gathering up some bits and pieces she’d deposited beside the rock pool. “It’s not all about fun, you know! Run along now.”

  Josh felt angry. He and Danny deserved a treat after all the things they’d done for Petty in the past few weeks. And he loved leatherback turtles! “I might have guessed that if we actually wanted some fun we couldn’t have it!” he snapped.

  “Temper, temper,” called back Petty. She didn’t turn round but just stomped away up the beach.

  “Wait,” called Danny, waving the yellow note. “You need to know about the parachute—about the Mystery Marble Se—”

  “Go and play!” Petty yelled back. “I have work to do!”

  Then Josh noticed something. She’d left something behind. A small white spray bottle lay beside the rock pool—and on it, in marker pen, was the word TURTLE. Petty was heading toward the cliffs. Josh picked up the bottle and was just about to call after her when he bit down on the words and put the bottle into his shorts pocket instead.

  I’ll give it back to her later, he thought.

  “Come on, let’s not bother about Petty!” Danny said. “Let’s get to the fort and find the marble . . . and then when we see her next, we’ll show her we’ve got a top secret code of our own! That should wipe the smug look off her face!”

  Josh grinned at him. “Yes! Let’s go.” And they turned and ran across the wet ripply sand toward the tiny island and its ruined fort.

  Clambering onto the little island was quite difficult. It was covered in great long streamers of red, brown, and green seaweed. Myriads of little blobby olive-colored things squelched and popped when they stepped on them.

  “Sugar kelp! Bladderwrack!” Josh squeaked, rummaging through the assorted clumps as if he were rummaging through bins in a candy shop. “Thongweed! Sea lettuce!”

  “Josh—have you ever thought about collecting football cards instead of bits of seaweed? You freaky, frothy, frondy . . . freak!” muttered Danny. The way seaweed tickled his feet creeped him out.

  “If we ever got stranded on a desert island,” Josh said, “I would know which of these we could live on! And you would eat your football cards.”

  Eventually they managed to scrabble up the rocks above the tide line. The little island was really not much bigger than their garden back at home, and the ruins of the fort filled up most of it. Wiry sea grass and lichen clung to the ground, and a few sea birds were nesting in the dark gray stones. The ruin was a sort of very wide chimney shape, bashed in and tumbled down on the land-facing side. It was as high as their house, but there was only half a roof to it. It had narrow windows and a rough curve of steps against the inside wall.

  “OK,” Danny said, pulling the note out of his pocket. He read aloud, “IN THE LOW, CLIMB HIGH. IN THE HIGH, LIE LOW. AIM HIGH—SHOOT LOW! So, we got here thanks to the low tide . . . now, what about ‘aim high—shoot low’? What does that mean?”

  Josh turned slowly in the middle of the ruin. The sound of the sea was odd and muffly in here. The floor was uneven and scattered with lumps of fallen rock and crunched up shell and bird droppings. It smelled a bit. If someone wanted to hide a marble on the floor, it would be easy. There were loads of chinks and cracks and little holes that would easily swallow a small glass orb—it would take for ever to hunt for it.

  “But . . . ‘aim high,’” murmured Josh. Outside, gulls cried above the thunder and sigh of the waves. Josh’s eyes traveled up the weathered rock steps built into the side of the curving wall. Some of them had crumbled away altogether, but it would still be possible to get up to the next level. “Come on!” he said and began to climb the steps, using his hands as well as his feet to stay steady.

  Danny climbed close behind him, and in a few seconds they were both standing on the small area that must once have been a complete roof and lookout level. A shoulder-high wall protected them from a steep drop to the rocks below. It was like the top of a castle—going up and down in square blocks all round the wall. The lower ledges were wide enough to get your head and shoulders through. Near one of these was a box-shaped block of stone, built right up to the ledge.

  “We’ve aimed high—we’re as high as we can be,” said Josh. “And that . . .” he pointed to the boxy block of rock, “is where we would shoot low—if there were still a cannon fixed there.”

  “What—this is where defenders fired cannons from?” Danny asked, leaping onto the block immediately.

  “Yep,” Josh said. “Out to sea.” He pushed Danny to one side of the stone box, leaned across it on his belly, and put his head and one arm right through the gap over the ledge. “The cannon couldn’t move round much,” he said. “So if you shot low . . . it would be down here.”

  H
e angled his arm as if it was the muzzle of a cannon and pretended to fire a heavy ball of iron out across the waves. And then he saw it. Directly under his elbow, someone had driven a bamboo stick—like the one his shrimping net was attached to—deep into the wall, about three feet down. Hanging on the stick was a small black fabric bag with a drawstring, knotted securely into place and swinging in the breeze.

  “Danny! Look!” Now Danny pulled Josh out of the way and wriggled across the ledge to see his twin’s discovery.

  “Hold my legs!” he yelled over his shoulder. Josh grabbed his brother’s legs as Danny leaned right down off the ledge from his waist and, straining his fingers, caught hold of the stick. A few sharp tugs and it came out of the cleft of crumbly lichen and bird poo that it had been driven into, and a few seconds later Danny and Josh were sitting down on the uneven rock roof and opening the bag.

  Just as they suspected, inside was a marble. A simple glass orb with a ribbon of green running through it. A brother for the red and blue ones back at home, hidden in Danny’s sock drawer. Both of these marbles, under Josh’s microscope, had revealed holograms of mammals and a code just like those in the cubes that Petty used to store her secret S.W.I.T.C.H. formula. This one would undoubtedly be the same.

  The note with it read,

  WELL DONE, BOYS! ONLY THREE MORE TO FIND AND SOON YOU WILL MEET YOUR DESTINY! SOON ALL WILL MEET DESTINY! BWAHA! BWAHA-HAHAAAAAHAHAAAA!

  And under that, in pencil,

  SORRY ABOUT THE CHOCOLATE ON THE LAST CLUE. WAS EATING A KIT KAT.

  “It’s weird. It seems a lot like Petty Potts, just messing with our minds,” Danny said. “But she just made out she had no idea what we were talking about when I asked her about the parachute. But look at the evil cackle! She loves an evil cackle!”

  “Hmmm,” Josh said. “And Kit Kats.” He screwed up his eyes and shook his head. “But . . . why? Why would she mess around with marbles instead of cubes? And if she’s got some new code, why not just tell us about it?”

  “Let’s get back to the beach and find her,” Danny said. “We’ve got to get to the bottom of this.”

  “Yes! Let’s go!” agreed Josh, stuffing the bag with the new marble in it deep into his shorts pocket. They carefully climbed back down the uneven rocky steps. The ground floor of the fort seemed different. Noisier, somehow.

  Danny stood still and frowned. When they’d arrived it was quite quiet—just a muffled sea noise and a few gulls, but now . . . there was a booming noise going on too. As if . . . as if . . .

  “THE SEA IS BACK!” Danny yelled, running outside. “JOSH! THE TIDE HAS COME IN!”

  Josh ran out too and saw what Danny meant. When they had arrived twenty minutes ago, the land between the island and the beach had been a flat stretch of softly rippled sand and scattered rocky mounds. Now . . . it was gone. The tide was rushing inland at breathtaking speed.

  “Oh no . . .” murmured Josh. “In the high . . . lie low. But we can’t lie low here! The tide won’t turn again until the middle of the night. Mom and Dad will be freaking out, wondering where we are!”

  They scanned the distant beach and the sea all around them, but saw nobody.

  “Look!” Danny pointed. “You can still see the rocks poking up through it. I don’t reckon it’s that deep yet. If we run, I think we can make it back.”

  Josh looked doubtful.

  “Look—do you want to stay the night here?” Danny pointed at the dark looming ruin behind them, and Josh shuddered. He did not.

  “OK, then—let’s go!” he said.

  They started running, slithering down across the seaweed-y rocks, and by the time they got onto the sandy seabed the water was up to their knees. Josh felt a stab of anxiety, but Danny just ran ahead, splashing sea water high in the air and soaking his shorts. “Come ON!” he called back. “We haven’t got much time!”

  They were only halfway back when Josh realized their mistake. On a large flat beach like this, they couldn’t outrun the sea. One minute he was splashing along up to his knees—the next he was wading up to his waist, and the next, the water was up to his chest. He glanced across to Danny and saw his brother was swimming.

  “We can do this!” he shouted, but he sounded as scared as Josh felt.

  Although Danny was super sporty, he’d never really gotten into swimming—and Josh wasn’t sporty at all and hadn’t swum even half as much as Danny. Even so, they probably would have been all right . . . except for the undertow.

  The current of water that pulled away from the shore every time the waves receded was incredibly strong. Danny felt as if the sea had grabbed him by the legs and was tugging him backward. And he wasn’t getting any closer to the shore.

  “We’re not going to make it!” spluttered Danny. “We’ll have to go back to the fort!”

  But as he turned his head he realized, with horror, that the fort was no longer behind them. In their struggles with the tide, they had been swept along the beach, and the fort was far, far away. They had no more hope of reaching the fort than they had of reaching the beach.

  Things were looking bad.

  Very bad.

  Josh went under. A big slap of salty water engulfed his head, and his ears immediately filled up with sea, all booming and glugging and weird. But even underwater, he had a brilliant idea. When his head next surfaced, he was holding something up out of the water with his right hand: a small white spray bottle. The first thing he did was spray Danny, whose panicky head was bobbing close by.

  The next thing he did was go under the water again, with a splutter. Then, as soon as he managed to push back up above the waves, gasping for air, he sprayed the bottle at his own head and quickly shoved it back deep into his shorts pocket. Danny had already vanished, and Josh was praying he’d been S.W.I.T.C.H.ed—not drowned.

  Three seconds later he found out.

  The hostile world of the rising tide suddenly changed miraculously to a brand new universe. He was underwater, swimming almost effortlessly with four flippers perfectly designed for the job. His nostrils clamped tightly shut and his eyes opened wide. There was no need to swim up and gasp for air—he had plenty stored inside his lungs. He could dive down a mile deep if he needed to.

  Thanks, Petty! he thought. This time you’ve definitely saved my life! But what about Danny? Suddenly he felt panicked. Had he managed to get the S.W.I.T.C.H. spray onto Danny’s head? What if the sea breeze had blown it away before it could hit? Where was Danny? Where was he?

  “YAAAAAAAAAAAAY!” Suddenly a handsome leatherback turtle shot past him in a plume of bubbles. “WOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!” went on Danny. “How did that happen?”

  Josh turned easily in the water and took in his brother’s sleek reptile form. “Um . . . I kind of . . . stole Petty’s S.W.I.T.C.H. spray,” he admitted.

  In the shafts of summer sun that broke through the greenish-blue water, Danny could see his brother’s guilty grin. “You!” he chortled. “A thief? Never!”

  “Well . . . I more sort of . . . borrowed it,” Josh said. “I was going to give it back to her. She left it behind. In a way.”

  Danny swam across to his brother with two easy pushes of his powerful back flippers and high-fived him with a front flipper. “Well, I don’t mind your new crime habit—not when it’s just saved our lives! And this isfantastic ! I love being a turtle! I can really swim! And breathe underwater! How cool is that?”

  “Well, you’re not actually breathing underwater,” Josh said. “You’re just holding your breath—you haven’t got gills or anything.”

  “It doesn’t feel like I’m holding my breath,” Danny said as they smoothly navigated past a little uprising of rock and wafting seaweed.

  “Well—no, it won’t for a bit,” Josh said. “Leatherback turtles can hold their breath for half an hour. We’ve only been under a couple of minutes. You won’t notice you need more air for ages yet.”

  “And we’re talking too—how’s that working? Vibrations again?”

&
nbsp; “Yep—like when we were frogs. And body language—and maybe a bit of telepathy,” Josh guessed.

  “Right—so—let’s get down to the nitty-gritty,” Danny said. “Can anything eat me?”

  Josh flippered right up and over in a joyful somersault. “Nothing!” he cried. “Not around here! If we were in another part of the world, a crocodile might have a go—and humans, of course. Turtle tastes pretty good. But here we’re protected!”

  Danny did a twisting roll of delight as they traveled on at high speed, barely troubled by the continual push and pull of the tide. “I love conservationists!”

  Josh swam down low to inspect the seabed. The sand between the rocks lay in tiny undulating dunes, forever shifting and sifting with the movement of the water. On the rocks, seaweed waved back and forth in a multitude of colors—much more vivid than when it was slumped and still at low tide. Pink and blue sea anemones thrust out their pointed tentacles and joined in the dance. Delicate, semitransparent shrimps foraged among them. Crabs traveled sideways along the sand, moving like astronauts in zero gravity and busily flicking their little mouth parts. They didn’t seem to be scared of the huge leatherback turtles. And Josh and Danny were huge! About three feet long from snout to tail, Josh reckoned—much bigger than the turtles the mice had S.W.I.T.C.H.ed into. Maybe it was because he and Danny had been bigger to start with . . . or maybe the bottle he had “borrowed” had a slightly different S.W.I.T.C.H. in it. Josh didn’t really care. The water felt cool, silky, and comfortable—and it was amazing to be able to power through whenever he felt the urge. “Look at this, Danny!” he called over his leathery shoulder. “Look!” And he shot across the seabed at great speed.

  Seconds later Danny had caught up with him, his flippers working brilliantly, driving him through the water. He was very competitive and couldn’t bear to be left behind. “This is the best S.W.I.T.C.H. we’ve ever had!” he said. “I can’t believe Petty didn’t want us to do this. It’s brilliant!”