Secret of the Loch

by Aiden James

  “Help me find an inscription… there’s supposed to be one below these rocks.” She pointed to the slabs that didn’t necessarily look like human beings brought them to this place. The edges could’ve been worn by the environment just as easily as chiseled away by the ancients. “Once we find it, then we’ll really see something amazing from the amulet.”

  Ishi and I moved to opposite ends of where the slabs were strewn, spanning roughly the size of a standard football field. Not wanting to repeat this exercise, I set out to keep my eyes peeled in the infinitesimal chance I came across anything that looked like symbols or some form of writing.

  “I think I found something!” Ishi called out, excitedly.

  Marie ran to where he crouched, beneath one of the lowest points where the boulders clinging to the hillside left a space of less than a couple of feet.

  “Well… maybe not, huh?” he said, when Marie didn’t share his elated reaction.

  “It could be something,” she told him. “But not what we’re looking for. The symbols are said to be Celtic, but are ancient enough to not be easy to decipher…. Still, it’s probably a good idea to let me see what you find first before discarding anything. Okay?”

  I returned to the other edge and was preparing to say something smartass, since it had suddenly become clear to me that Marie would pursue her father’s quest to the very end—even if the reality of a bitter conclusion was all it meant. However, much to my astonishment, when I stepped away from the tent and other supplies I carried into the aforementioned crevice, I happened to look up.

  “Well, I’ll be damned…,” I whispered, amazed by the elegant symbols carved onto a door-sized boulder to my right. Before I could get a closer look, Marie and Ishi rejoined me. The symbols were arranged in a pattern similar to the knots the ancient Celts were known for.

  “So, this is what you were looking for?” Ishi asked Marie, wearing that ‘kid at Christmas’ look of his as she pulled out the amulet from her backpack.

  “Yes,” she said, as a look of incredible joy lit up her face. “Now, let’s see if this thing works like it’s supposed to.”

  The sapphire began to glow again, and this time the pristine blue color was as deep and intense as it was back in England. Marie traced the contours of the knot with the amulet. As she did, the symbols took on the same intense sapphire sheen. The ground beneath our feet began to rumble.

  “What the hell?!” Ishi cried out, when he lost his balance and fell to his knees.

  “Don’t flee!” Marie commanded, struggling to maintain her balance. “Fleeing will get you killed—trust me Ishi—it will be all right in the end!”

  She looked at me, as if I would need the same warning. But despite landing hard on my ass, when I stood back up my attention was drawn to a cavern that had opened up behind the stone slab covered with symbols that were now brightly aglow. The cavern had steps, and a soft golden light emanated toward us from its depths.

  Caution fell by the wayside, as Ishi eagerly followed Marie inside. I knew neither one would heed any pleas from me to be careful. Rather than wait for them to tell me it was safe to join them, I ran after them, aware all too late that the massive door behind me was closing.

  Chapter Seven

  I would’ve thought the gold haze emanating toward us came from a nearby room, or chasm of some sort. I didn’t expect it to be ‘natural’, although I admit to expecting most unusual phenomena to follow laws that closely mimic those governing the natural world. We may not understand the things we deem as supernatural, but throughout history when unexplained events are finally defined in natural terms, the key thing is they follow known universal laws on at least some level.

  The haze carried warmth, and coupled with the cave system’s natural temperature, our new environment was substantially warmer than outside. I felt the urge to remove my coat and Ishi unzipped his parka; which brought to mind our immediate issue of potentially being stranded inside this place indefinitely.

  “You both realize the doorway behind us is closed?”

  I pointed behind us, when Marie looked back at me. We were standing in a room with a length and width of roughly twenty meters, or sixty feet, and a height well over twice that number. At the moment, Marie was on the verge of moving down a tunnel where the haze was brightest.

  “Oh, it did?” she asked in mild surprise. The smile on her face was one I knew well… but had never seen outside of her being inebriated after a drinking binge. Ishi joined her at the tunnel’s edge while also ignoring me.

  “Unless you two have knowledge of a secret exit, this could prove to be a big problem,” I said. “Nobody goes anywhere until we get this figured out. Okay?”

  “Right, Boss,” said Ishi, who was giggling like an adolescent ready for mischief. He and Marie stepped into the tunnel.

  “Hey! Get back in here!” I shouted, when they were on the verge of disappearing from view. The only response I got was the echoes from my voice reverberating throughout the room, along with indifferent glances before the pair moved deeper into the passageway awash in the luminous mist. “Damn it, listen to me! You could be heading into a trap of some kind!”

  Not sure what inspired me to say that, but as if the strange golden haze had some cognitive trait, it immediately withdrew, quickly plunging everything into thick darkness. I grabbed a small flashlight from inside my coat, soon followed by Ishi. Marie also clicked on her flashlight, just before she and Ishi stumbled back into the cavern.

  “Check these out, Nick,” said Ishi, his tone now solemn, as the giddiness from a moment ago had vanished. He and Marie began exploring the room as if noticing it for the very first time. Ishi stepped closer to the wall to my right, slowly shaking his head in awe at what his flashlight’s beam revealed. “Nick, have you ever seen anything like this before? I don’t think I ever have….”

  “Let’s have a look.” I joined them, and soon found myself just as amazed as Ishi. “Well, shit… that’s really unusual.”

  I pointed my flashlight further along the wall in either direction. The entire wall appeared to be covered with painted likenesses of ancient Celtic deities that I remembered seeing on the train, when Ishi allowed me to use his laptop to learn a little about Scotland prior to our arrival. The image directly in front of us was that of a bearded figure holding a scepter with what looked like a mallet on the end. The image of a woman riding a horse adorned the wall to our right, and another female with pointed ears, like some sort of faerie, graced the wall next to the first gal. Did I mention the images were created in vibrant color? The details were impressive enough to believe the skilled artisans were classically trained, though highly unlikely in this remote place.

  “Here’s one that looks like a giant elf,” said Marie, pointing her flashlight’s beam to one not far from where Ishi stood.

  “It looks more like a troll with antlers to me,” I said, after moving over to take a look. All of the figures we had seen so far appeared to be between three and four meters in height.

  “So, why did you ignore me a moment ago?” I asked Marie, while I watched her scrutinize the troll/elf image. She turned to face me, wearing a perplexed expression. The look on Ishi’s face was similar to hers. “It’s a big frigging deal that we’re stuck in here, don’t you think?”

  She frowned and looked toward the entrance now blocked by the enormous boulder that bore the symbols the amulet’s glow had ignited on its other side.

  “Oh, my God!” she gasped, reaching up worriedly with her hands to her face. “When did that happen?!”

  “About ten minutes ago,” I told her, unable to not sound perturbed.

  “No… no, it can’t be possible!”

  “Afraid so, darlin’.”

  “I’m with Marie on this, Nick,” said Ishi, seemingly confused. “We just stepped in here a moment ago…. How is it possible that we never heard a rumble like what happened when it opened?”

  “It did rumble,” I said, starting to get angry with this
nonsense. “You both followed the mist down a tunnel while ignoring it and me calling after you!”

  “What mist?” they asked in near unison.

  What in the hell?!

  “The golden haze…. You’re telling me that neither of you saw it?”

  They nodded.

  “How is that even possible? Hell, it was thicker than the fog we’ve seen hovering above the loch, and you two were completely immersed in it, acting like the damned thing was the Pied Piper leading you down that tunnel over there.” I pointed to the tunnel they practically frolicked into. Both eyed me disbelievingly. Worse, they both looked at it and the other four tunnels as if they had never seen them either.

  “Great… just frigging great,” I said, releasing a sigh as I pictured being stranded in this place forevermore—or most likely, a week or so until we died of either dehydration or starvation. We had enough water to stretch us for a few days, but we’d definitely be in a deep world of shit if we had to live on the few energy bars we had between us. “We should take the tunnels one at a time to see if any of them lead to the outside.”

  “That sounds like a good idea,” Ishi quietly agreed.

  “I don’t think we should leave this area just yet,” said Marie, running her hand over the surface of the wall with the painting of the woman on the horse. “I can’t say for sure, but I believe what we see here are depictions of Celtic deities…. This one looks a lot like Epona, and the one you made fun of Nick could very well be Cernunnos.”

  “How do you know this?” I asked, thinking the names sounded familiar from the website I had accessed. Did she do the same thing?

  “Well, these two are a god and goddess that are worshipped to this day by those who practice paganism and Wicca,” she said. “That’s if I’m right about them being Epona and Cernunnos. The Epona image is the most likely, since this is the ugliest version of Cernunnos I have ever seen. And to answer your question, Nick, I studied the Celtic pantheon in college… maybe you should’ve studied about them, too.”

  Perhaps, but where would that have left time to hone the booze and drug vices which later kept me in a blissful cloud of carefree irresponsibility after my buddy, Mario, was murdered in front of me down in Egypt?…

  “Maybe Marie’s right,” said Ishi. “Maybe we should see what other images are on the wall, since they might be important. We saw how the amulet came to life and this place responded when we first arrived…. Magic lives here, Boss. Don’t you feel it? It feels like it did in Sekhmet’s temple.”

  Marie had moved over to another image previously shrouded in darkness to our right, and Ishi did the same, but to our left. I got a better look at the one he uncovered from its shroud of darkness.

  “Looks like Medusa and her sisters,” I said, shooting a wry look to Marie that she likely couldn’t detect in the dimness. “Maybe it isn’t all hard-up Celtic deities, eh?”

  “Oh, there are no Greco-Roman gods or goddesses in here, or any other pantheon, if that’s what you’re getting at, Nick,” she said, moving on to two more images. “This one is likely Belenus, since I recognize the crown. And, the one you call Medusa and her deadly siblings is likely Dea Matrona.”

  She picked up her pace, moving around the perimeter of the room and lingering briefly while pointing her flashlight at each one as she moved by. When she reached the wall that was furthest from the entrance to the room, her flashlight’s glow revealed a serpent tale that expanded much further than the previous images. And as she backed up and allowed her flashlight’s beam to canvas the entire wall, she and Ishi let out surprised gasps.

  “What in the hell is that…?”

  Honestly, there wasn’t much more I could say. The image was enormous—climbing more than half way up the side of the cave wall. A serpent… at least at the bottom. But the top was the bare torso of a woman. A stunningly beautiful woman with long reddish-blonde tresses that covered her breasts.

  A mermaid? Are you frigging serious?!

  “Meet Morag, guys,” said Marie. “She is the protector of not only Loch Morar, but also is the harbinger of doom and approaching death for one Scottish clan that is now nearly extinct…. I forget the family name”. She suddenly glanced toward the tunnel that she and Ishi had ventured into earlier, as if she heard something. But then she shrugged it off when neither Ishi nor I reacted.

  “A mermaid that is half-serpent instead of half-fish?” I asked, absently, while wondering more about what kind of artisans had created the incredible figures throughout this cavern room. I turned to look at this strange mermaid again, craning my head far back to get the full view of Morag. Despite being a painting with the telltale ‘crazing’ across the surface, a trait attendant to very old painted surfaces, the image somehow seemed so… real.

  “I can tell that you think she’s one hot momma, Nick,” said Ishi, drawing a sheepish chuckle from me.

  “Nah… but she might just be the type of gal you’d someday like to bring home to Honduras, to be introduced to your momma, eh?”

  “Maybe… I do come from a family that loves the ocean, and most of my brothers and cousins will live out their lives as fishermen. Why not bring home a mermaid?” He laughed and I joined him.

  “I believe that’s the funniest damned thing you’ve said in quite while, Ishi,” I said, still chuckling. “I bet Marie thinks so too…. Right darlin’? …Darlin’?”

  “What the…Where’d she go?” Ishi frantically searched the room, his flashlight’s beam dancing across the images that appeared and then faded back into shadow as he nearly ran from one end to the other. “She’s gone!”

  “No, she can’t be,” I said, my voice hushed as I joined him, while panic seized my heart. The prodding from our flashlights into the cavern’s darker pockets revealed nothing. Neither did our preliminary flashlight scans of the tunnels connected to the room. “She was just here a moment ago. It’s not like she vanished into thin air…. It’s not possible… it can’t be possible!”

  But if Marie hadn’t tumbled silently down into one of the five tunnels leading from this room, or hadn’t been gobbled up by some secret passage we had yet to stumble upon, then the impossible did happen.

  One way or another she was gone.

  Chapter Eight

  Where to begin looking for Marie was harder to determine than perhaps searching for a needle in a haystack. Especially since my heart felt like it was being yanked from my chest. That old adage about ‘not knowing what you’ve got until it’s gone’ was never as true for me until the instant I realized she was gone without a trace. Ishi didn’t help matters by talking about the various catastrophes that might’ve happened to her—terrible things, like slipping into an unseen pit, or deep chasm, where she would be far too surprised and terrified to utter so much as a yelp as she fell to her death.

  But I was fairly certain I’d hear something from her, if a sudden fall were to happen. Marie had far too much terrier in her to be snuffed out quietly. My worry was that we had all underestimated the intelligence and treachery of the ancient druids. Maybe the damned place was booby-trapped, and Marie’s broken, lifeless body would turn up in our search; her heart pierced or neck snapped in an instant, before her mind understood what befell her.

  I blocked out those thoughts, focused only on finding her alive. I was unable to picture my life without the woman I loved on every level of my being. Whether that was more than I’d ever love anyone else—or had loved anyone in my past—was beside the point. At that profound moment, she was everything to me.

  “Ishi…Normally I’d suggest splitting up to search for her, to save valuable time,” I told him. “But in a place like this, what’s normally wise might make matters worse. I think we should stick together and move as quickly as we can. Let’s take the tunnel I saw the two of you go down—the one you’ll probably forever swear you’ve never stepped into before.”

  He shook his head, and for a moment I thought he might argue separating in order to locate Marie. But then Ishi
clarified that his response was about him and Marie venturing into the tunnel in question. He still couldn’t recall doing that.

  “Let’s just add it on top of the unexplained pile of shit that makes no sense about this place… okay?”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m ready to go where you want.”

  We headed down into the tunnel where the mysterious golden haze had been at its brightest earlier. As the tunnel narrowed we were forced to walk single file until it emptied into a large room similar to the one….

  “Ah, fuck me runnin’—we’re right back where we started!” I hissed in disbelief.

  Despite my initial frustration, I began noticing little things; things that gave clues about the nonsensical nature of this place. Surely there had to be logic to how things worked here, although not the kind of logic I was previously familiar with. After all, the tunnel we took had no curves or bends in it…. So how in the hell did it dump us back in the cavern we started in?

  “How are we supposed to know if any of these tunnels are different?” asked Ishi, stating the obvious.

  “By trying them all.”

  “The next one might bring worse luck.” He closed his eyes and crossed himself.

  “Yes, it might…. Or it might be better,” I said, waiting for him to give me his full attention. “Let’s change it up a little… instead of taking the very next one in line, we’ll skip it and take the one after it.”

  “Tunnel number three—if they were numbered from the first one going clockwise?”

  “You’ve got it, kiddo.”

  “And why are we doing this?”