Previous instalments: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 He followed it with the flashlight and found himself looking at a cuttlefish. It hovered about two meters away, its crown of tentacles aimed at the flashlight, ready to…

Previous instalments: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 This was the right time to return to the surface. And explain to Jakki that he hadn’t found the brooch. He could see her face as he told her, a…

Previous instalments: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Ian kicked his fins and tried to twist his body toward the door he’d come in through. The door itself appeared in the flashlight beam, and he heard as much as…

Previous instalments: 1 2 3 4 5 6 He noticed that the door wasn’t shut as he had first thought, but slightly ajar. Strange, he could have sworn…but he hadn’t looked that closely. He could just swim round in circles…

Previous instalments: 1 2 3 4 5 Ian stared back at the door, shut as it so often had been while a fire burned inside and rain fell outside. “You’re not coming in until you’ve chopped that wood!” The unshaven…

Previous instalments: 1 2 3 4 He’d seen plenty of ballan wrasses before. Every one of them had thrashed their tails to put as much distance as they could between themselves and him, which was a prudent reaction from a…

Previous instalments: 1 2 3 The ripples solidified into bare boulders as he dropped closer to them. In a year they’d be covered in weed. Darting fish would be hunting weed-eating snails and dodging larger fish, but now the debris…

Previous instalments: 1 2 He glanced at his dive computer. Six meters. The boat had already disappeared. The vermilion sleeve of his drysuit faded to grey as the sea drained the red from the light reaching him. He could be…

Previous instalments: 1 “You know what to do when I come up?” “If you do nothing, I do nothing. If you wave, I turn the clutch,” she fingered the lever on the outboard, “and drive over to you.” Ian heard…

Welcome to the promised new serialisation from the Eclectics, which will post at the same time every Monday for the next few weeks. I have fond memories of outlining Coldwater Cottage in a bar in Dahab, in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula,…