The Loch

Chapter 21

I awoke to an incessant pounding on my door. Fearing I had been screaming again in my sleep, I rolled out of bed with a groan, every muscle in my body raw and aching.

"Who the hell is it?"

"Maxie. Open up!"

I unbolted the door and opened it, then staggered to the bathroom sink, and downed several aspirin.

Max followed me in, carrying a rolled-up newspaper. "Still sleeping? It's two-thirty in the affie."

"I was up late, poisoning my body."

"And behaving like our father, yeah?" He held open the newspaper.

The black-and-white photo captured me standing over David, fists balled, face contorted in a wild leer. The caption read: "Wallace Welcomes Colleague to Loch Ness."

"At least they got my good side."

"Caldwell threatened to press charges. Don't worry, he backed off when I threatened a countersuit of slander."

"Let him sue, I've got nothing to lose." I turned over the paper, my eye catching another article.

"Yeah, I read that article, too. What's it all mean?"

I shook my head in disbelief. "It means they want to capture the creature."

With an extensive boat dock located directly on Loch Ness, the Clansman Hotel has always been the favorite convening spot for Nessie hunters, and the Highland Council wasted no time in securing it for their own proceedings.

Provost Owen Hollifield checked his watch, then knocked again on David Caldwell's suite. "Afternoon, doctor. Ye ready?"

David opened the door, his eyes red from jet lag. "Born ready. I take it Council did everything they were supposed to?"

"Aye. The laws were amended, an' we've a'ready begun talks wi' two construction firms. As for the monster hunters, we've selected the three most qualified captains an' vessels as ye requested, an' if ye don't like these, we've applications from forty tae fifty more. Everyone from local fishermen tae computer geeks tae ex-Royal Navy wants tae be here."

"Three's plenty. Anymore and they start tripping over one another."

"That's already happenin', I'm afraid. Many have dropped sonar buoys, an' the signals are crossin', foulin' one another up."

"I'll handle them. I've dealt with their types before."

Hollifield led him down a carpeted hallway to the adjoining banquet room. "Be fair warned, there're also a few curators here who insisted on bein' at this meetin'. One's from the Smithsonian, the other two work at the British Museum of Natural History. Treat them kindly, they can make waves."

"Understood."

They entered the Observation Lounge, a banquet room offering panoramic views of Loch Ness and the pier where several large research vessels were now docked. A portable corkboard on wheels was positioned near the head of the conference table, a map of Loch Ness pinned to its surface.

Five men and two women milled about the buffet tables, helping themselves to an early dinner.

Hollifield took his place before the head of the table, David on his right. "Gentlemen and ladies, if ye please."

The expedition leaders and museum curators took their seats.

"This is Dr. Caldwell, the gentleman whom Council has appointed tae organize our search. Dr. Caldwell, our Nessie hunters; Michael Hoagland from the German research vessel, Nothosaur, Scott an' Debbie Sloan, American cryptozoologists wi' the Galon, an' Bill Plager, a marine biologist serving aboard the fifty-seven-foot ship, Great White North."

"A pleasure. Now I know you have some grievances you want to discuss, but before we get into that, let's talk about our objective. You, and dozens of Nessie hunters before you have spent several decades and untold thousands of dollars chasing after underwater photos and sonar recordings. Now all that's changed. With the monster's sudden thirst for blood, I think it's safe to say something large inhabits Loch Ness. In other words, we've got the proof, it's lying in the morgue, what we want now is to capture the beast."

Scott Sloan scoffed. "Capture it? Aren't you being rather presumptuous, and more than a bit melodramatic? For one, who said anything about a thirst for blood?" He looked at his wife, who nodded.

"Scott's right. And besides, how do you capture something that's so elusive, we've yet to get a decent photo of it in over seventy years?"

David winked at the provost. "My skeptics said the same thing about the Giant Squid. The game's changed, folks, deal with it. For whatever reason, Nessie's no longer satisfied with feeding in the deep. She's become a real meat eater."

Bill Plager ran a callused palm over his bald spot. "Meat eater or no', ye'll no' capture anythin' until ye get these amateurs tae stop drop- pin' their damn sonar buoys all over the Loch."

"Us?" Hoagland stood. "It's your buoys jamming our grid!"

"Easy, boys," David warned, "there's no unions here. Either you fellas play nice or we'll boot your asses off the Loch."

Dr. Saumil Shah, Associate Curator at the Smithsonian, raised his hand. "A question, please. Assuming you can even locate this water creature, where do you think you're going to keep it?"

"Right here." David stood, then circled Urquhart Bay on the map with his pencil.

Meghan Talley rolled her eyes.

"Okay, I can see a few doubting Thomases, but think about this. The bay provides us with a natural habitat, with three shorelines we can use to pen the creature in. Council's already negotiating with engineers and construction companies who said they can drop steel fencing from a prefab bridge spanning the entire mouth of the bay, in effect, cordoning it off from the rest of the Loch. The fencing'll be secured to the bottom using concrete anchors and supported along the surface by a series of buoys. Naturally, the shoreline surrounding the bay will have to be fenced in as well. It'll be the largest animal pen in the world, and I guarantee, the most popular."

"Plus," added the Provost, "it'd allow us tae study the creature while still protectin' the legend… an' our tourists."

David offered a cocky smile. "Now I'll answer your questions. Yes, ma'am, and you are?"

"Meghan Talley. My husband, Mark, and I are curators at the British Museum of Natural History. We were at your press conference last night when you publicly identified the predator as a plesiosaur. Exactly what did you base your analysis on?"

"Decades of sightings. Photos. The usual stuff."

"I see." Meghan's blue eyes blazed. "And is this the type of scientific protocol we can come to expect?"

"Look, lady, what difference does it make what I say it is? Once we capture it, we'll look under its skirt and know for sure, right?"

"It's ass-backwards, doctor. This is still supposed to be a scientific expedition."

"Says who?" David paced around the table, chest out. "I've been hired to organize a hunt, plain and simple. You want to call it a scientific expedition, knock your socks off. Me? I say we capture the thing, then sort the science out later."

"My wife's right," Mark Talley said. "If you don't know what you're hunting, you can't even be certain it's one creature. You're also basing your assumptions on Nessie lore. Chances are, it's not something anywhere as romantic as a plesiosaur. What if it's just a giant sturgeon?"

"A sturgeon?"

"Yes, Dr. Caldwell, a sturgeon. Look it up. It's an anadromous species, over 200 million years old, that proliferates in Loch Ness. The Baltic sturgeon looks almost like a Thresher shark, and it can grow over twenty feet in length. You think the public's going to pay good money to see a sturgeon?"

David glanced back at the provost. "It's not a sturgeon. Sturgeons don't have teeth big enough, sharp enough to do the kind of damage that happened to that Alaskan kid."

"Our point, doctor, is that you're jumping the gun with all these announcements and expenses. Why not slow down, figure out what it is first, then go after it."

David shook his head. "No. See, all you curators and monster hunters have been doing it the same way for decades. It's high time for a more aggressive approach. Isn't that right, Mr. Provost?"

Hollifield nodded. "Council's puttin' up £50,000 sterlin' for the capture o' the beast, an' National Geographic, who won the bid tae film everythin', jist added another £100,000 tae sweeten the pot. This money… an' credit for the capture, will be split by Dr. Caldwell, the Council, an' only those vessels participating in the search."

David returned to the map. "I'm dividing the Loch into three sections. The Nothosaur will cover the northern end of Loch Ness, from the Abban Water Fishery south to Urquhart Bay. The Sloans and the Galon's crew will patrol Urquhart Bay south to Foyers. Since Bill Plager has the largest and fastest of the three vessels, he'll take Foyers south to Fort Augustus. As a necessary first step, I'm asking each of you to commit to the mission by immediately collecting your own sonar buoys. You'll then redistribute them, following my technician's instructions, in a specified pattern in your assigned areas. In addition to keeping an eye on your own grid, your signals will be uploaded to a master signature management system aboard my boat, which I'll be selecting tomorrow morning from a list of local applicants."

David circled the group again like a young Patton. "In a few days, we'll be supplying your vessels with extra-heavy fishing nets, which should arrive in Inverness later this week. By then, we expect to have most of the mouth of Urquhart Bay cordoned off Once the monster is targeted by our sonar grid, all boats will converge upon its location and we'll net it."

Meghan Talley shook her head. "Simple as that, huh?"

"Look, lady, we're dealing with a big predator living in a big lake, but it's still just a lake. I mean, where else is this thing gonna go? We locate it, we net it, we pen it. It's cut-and-dried."

"What about the museum?" Dr. Shah asked.

"Once we capture the monster, we'll begin fielding applications from curators and other scientists to study Nessie."

"Applications? You expect us to apply?"

"This is business, Mrs. Talley. And let's get a few things clear. When it comes to the press, all interviews go through me. And I don't want to hear any talk about Nessie being a sturgeon, or your application may just find its way to the bottom of our pile. Capiche?"

Meghan Talley started to say something, but her husband grabbed her arm.

"No more questions? Good. Redistribute your sonar buoys, boys and girls, Nessie hunting season just began."

Gray skies cast a pall over the Great Glen. The dark water was as smooth as glass, blemished by occasional wisps of fog that rolled across the surface like tumbleweed.

I hiked north along the eastern bank of Loch Ness, continuing my search for clues, my T-shirt soaked from a late afternoon downpour that had scattered many of the tourists. By five-thirty I found myself along the banks of Aldourie Pier and a galley-stance that had once supplied a British garrison more than a century ago. A battered aluminum canoe was beached in the tall grass, its exposed bottom covered in algae. There was no one else around.

I continued on, approaching the grounds of Aldourie Castle. The ancient baronial mansion was set several hundred yards back from the Loch, surrounded by open acres of land. Four-story spires topped the abandoned estate, its silhouette dwarfed by a backdrop of emerald green forested slopes carpeted in pine and larch.

Aldourie Castle had been reconstructed several times since its main tower had been built in 1626. The most recent work completed a cement pad that separated the foundation from the first floor. At the time, its owner, Colonel William Fraser-Tytler, claimed it was done to fireproof the estate. According to locals, the colonel was more concerned about "finally putting to rest the ghost of the lady in gray," a spirit said to be haunting the castle grounds.

If childhood memories were the spirits that haunted me, then Castle Aldourie was certainly a part of them, for this was the site where Angus had seeded in me his superstitions about devils and dragons.

I moved to the edge of the bank where my father had dangled his young son. Had the drunken bastard been clairvoyant, or was he just playing me as he'd always done?

Perhaps as he was doing now …

Staring below into those dark waters, I seriously began to wonder. And then I looked up and saw the object.

It was a pale figure, bobbing along the surface several hundred yards away. Had the water not been so smooth, I'd have never seen it, but its movement was causing ripples along the Loch's otherwise tranquil surface.

Was it a deer?

With visibility poor and the fog thickening, I couldn't be certain, but it looked to me… like a body!

There was no one else around, no boats in sight.

What to do?

I looked back at the canoe, my heart pounding.

Okay, Wallace, you swore you'd take action when the time came, well, the clock's ticking.

I jogged back to the canoe, my muscles moving like liquid lead, my bladder tingling with fear. Reaching down, I flipped the algae- infested boat over, exposing a rotted wooden paddle and a dozen or so angry bullfrogs.

"Sorry, boys."

The inside of the canoe reeked of standing water. Using the waterlogged paddle, I pushed away curtains of cobwebs, then dragged the vessel over the grass toward the small pier.

Underwater… lungs on fire, the shadow rising with me… get to the light!

"Whoa!" I shook my head, fighting to clear the subliminal image. "Stay calm. Better to face your fear in daylight."

The Great Glen rumbled with thunder, its placid waters challenging me to violate their serenity.

Lowering the canoe into the water, I tried to imagine what William Wallace and his band of followers must have felt while they waited at Stirling to confront Longshanks's army. Outnumbered, they had confronted their fear head-on and, in doing so, won a decisive battle.

"Fear? Maybe the dragon represented fear? Maybe that's what Angus was trying to tell me. Everyone must face their own personal dragon at some point."

Idiot. Since when did Angus Wallace ever speak philosophically?

I checked the canoe, verified there were no leaks, then, leaving my backpack on the dock, climbed down a small wooded ladder and eased myself into the boat. Balancing myself; I gripped the rotted oar and began paddling away from shore in water deeper than the North Sea.

So far so good. You can do this.

With the fog rolling in, it took me a long moment before I could relocate the bobbing object. My shoulder muscles knotted as I paddled, ending each stroke by tracing a J in the water to keep the canoe moving along a straight course.

Two hundred yards away, the ripples increased in intensity.

Within minutes, the chill of Loch Ness began filtering through the bottom of the aluminum boat, numbing my feet. Ignoring the cold, I switched sides and continued paddling, the canoe's bow pushing through the thickening veils of fog.

I was close now, maybe twenty boat lengths away, when I heard splashing noises up ahead.

Something was struggling in the water… whatever was out there was still alive!

"Hello?"

I paddled harder, my imagination racing. Was it a capsized boater? How long could someone stay afloat in these frigid waters?

I thought I saw a head go under then rise again, perhaps arms slapping at the fog-strewn surface. "Hang on, I'm almost there!"

Reaching the body, I executed a wide C stroke, spun the bow around and leaned over.

"Oh, geez."

It wasn't a person and it wasn't alive. It was a massive fish, a sturgeon, seventeen feet long, only it was covered in dozens of gushing bite marks, each bloody divot measuring eight to ten inches around, four inches deep.

As I watched and stared, the carcass was dragged under again and attacked, as if by a school of piranha.

"Christ, what the hell's happening?"

Whomp!

My heart leaped as something heavy struck the bottom of the canoe, its impact reverberating through my bones.

Whomp… whomp-whomp!

More strikes, in staggered succession. I was being attacked!

I regripped the paddle and was about to stroke when the canoe was walloped again from below with such force the aluminum plates by my feet dented upward and separated, releasing a stream of icy water. Jesus, Wallace, haul ass!

I stroked like a madman, driving the sinking boat forward, my heart nearly stopping as the bow skidded atop the remains of the resurfacing sturgeon.

"Dammit!" I veered the canoe to one side, my shattered nerves tingling as my plunging oar struck something solid swimming below.

Whomp… whomp!

The canoe rocked as it was bludgeoned again, the water at my feet three inches deep and rising.

This isn't happening!

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I heard my inner voice remind me, Easy, Wallace. It's just a loch. It can't hurt you if you don't go in.

"Shut up!"

Lowering my shoulder, I paddled like an Olympian, aiming for a distant shoreline now mired in fog. The frigid water in the canoe was now was up to my ankles.

A giant shadow, rising to meet me!

Subliminal images blinded me. "A hundred yards… just keep paddling!"

Mouth opening around my lower torso…

"Eighty yards… come on, Wallace!"

Water up to my calf, the canoe growing noticeably heavier. Something jagged, tearing into my flesh!

"Sixty yards… where's the damn pier?"

Get to the light, Zachary, get to the light!

Whomp!

"Get the hell away from me!"

My blistered hands and forearms burned, my entire body straining now to move the water-laden canoe.

I was getting closer. I could see Aldourie Castle. I could see its green pastures of lawn.

And then the rising water wet my buttocks, and I knew I was going in.

Fifty yards …

The canoe wobbled with every stroke, only it scarcely moved.

Forty yards. Stay in the boat as long as possible!

The bow rose, the stern bobbed, then sank beneath me.

Oh, hell.

Releasing the paddle, I stood, then launched myself into the Loch, its all-too familiar embrace blasting my breath away as my churning legs leveled out into an awkward crawl stroke. My hiking shoes were concrete blocks, my clothing binding me, my fear preventing me from ducking my head underwater as I swam.

Twenty yards, Wallace… twenty damn yards! Two first down markers …

An image flashed in my mind's eye. The body of a man. Naked. Dead.

"Awffff!"

Distracted, my forehead smashed painfully against a wood piling, striking it so hard I actually saw purple stars.

Get out of the damn water!

Reaching out blindly, I groped for the ladder, then dragged myself up its splintering rungs. Dizzy from the cold and exertion, I reached the summit and collapsed to my knees upon the pier, then lay back and closed my eyes, rubbing the aching knot on my head.

Eyes shut, I watched flashes of light skate past my eyelids as I listened to the waves lapping quietly below.

"You're okay. Breathe."

Calming my breaths, I allowed my weight to sink as I forced my mind to return to the subliminal images.

Something seemed different this time… clearer than the images from my previous night terrors. What was it?

Underwater… the light!

This time I had seen the light more clearly. It wasn't the sun's rays penetrating the deep, and it wasn't some heavenly glow, it was a brilliant artificial lance… an underwater lamp, penetrating my watery tomb like a lighthouse beacon.

I opened my eyes, my thoughts racing with the revelation. "That's what saved me seventeen years ago! It was an underwater light! It must have chased the creature into the deep."

I regained my feet, staring at the Loch in defiance. "I know your weakness now, Nessie, whatever the hell you are. Your eyes, they're sensitive to bright light. The next time we meet, I'll be ready."

My thoughts returned to my adventure in the canoe, and now I was confused, for it was not Justin Wagner's killer that had attacked that sturgeon. No, these water creatures, whatever they were, had been smaller, yet quite ferocious.

Was it Nessie's young, or another species?

"There's something bizarre happening here, something that's affecting the entire ecosystem." Remembering the lab, I searched my backpack for my cell phone and Sheriff Holmstrom's number.

"Sheriff, it's Zachary Wallace. What's the story with those blood samples and specimens I asked you to have analyzed? Hello?"

"I'm sorry, Dr. Wallace, I don't know how tae say this… but, well, it seems one o' our technicians misplaced yer samples."

"Misplaced?" My gut twisted in knots. "Exactly what was misplaced?"

"Everythin' ye gave us, I'm afraid. We're still searchin' the lab, an' rest assured, the man responsible's been disciplined, but—"

I hung up, cutting him off.

Angus was right, I was wasting my time.

Cursing aloud, I grabbed my backpack, then found cover beneath a larch. Stripping off my wet clothing, I changed into dry shorts and jeans.

And then another thought hit me. Crabbit MacDonald! He was the one who had the underwater light. How did he know to carry it when he rescued me?

"That old bastard… he knows exactly what's down there."

Returning the pack to my back, I continued hiking, double-timing it north, wondering what scared me more, the creatures inhabiting Loch Ness, or the thought of confronting the old man.