Secret of the Loch

by Aiden James

  Marie stopped running, and since we were going nowhere without her or the amulet’s glow to guide us, Ishi and I also stopped. Meanwhile, the slithering and a loud clumping sound like heavy horse hooves gained valuable ground. By then, we had traveled a few hundred meters… maybe more.

  Marie nodded as if listening to what her invisible buddy had to say, but suddenly fell into a catatonic state. No movements, just a glassy-eyed stare, and seemingly without any awareness that danger approached. Our pursuers were likely to catch up with us in the next minute—two tops.

  “Darlin’,” I said, gently, while lightly tugging on her coat sleeve. “We’ve got to go!”

  “Yes we do!” she shouted, turning to sprint into a side passage I hadn’t even noticed until then. Neither had Ishi, based on his surprised reaction that overrode his nervousness about the ‘things’ coming up fast in the darkness.

  Ishi and I ran after Marie, and it was all I could do to bite my tongue since I didn’t dare give our latest adversaries an extra heads up where they could easily find us. I expected this latest passageway to continue downward, like the last one had, but it was level… and as we followed Marie, this tunnel steadily widened and grew taller. Soon we could run upright, and the sound of rushing water grew loud.

  “He says it’s up here!” she shouted above the din, her voice carrying a little girl’s giddiness. She stopped running, as did Ishi and me. “We should be able to see it on our left…. I see something—look!”

  Though we couldn’t see the source yet, the rushing water obscured the sound of nearly everything else around us. I assumed we were still being pursued. Hell, Morag and the others had to know where we were—regardless of whether they saw us, heard us, or sensed our presence by any other means. They were immortal gods and goddesses for Christ’s sake, and surely carried more supernatural abilities than a pantheon of comic book super heroes. That’s what seemed most plausible at this point, in a world that had ceased to make sense hours ago.

  Marie slowly stepped away from us, the amulet’s glow revealing what appeared to be a cliff and a very deep chasm ahead. At the same time, Ishi drew my attention to softer darkness to our right. I took a few steps to get a better view, and couldn’t believe my eyes.

  “Shit—there’s our escape!” I whispered excitedly.

  “I know, Boss… it’s the night sky, and it looks like we can climb those rocks to reach it!” Ishi enthused.

  Something about the rocks’ jagged edges looked recent—definitely not the kind of weathered contours one might find in a place like this. The likely reason dawned on me….

  “Marie…. We can leave now, darlin’,” I said, hoping we could follow our new exit immediately. “We just found the place where Yassir Ali’s men blasted their way into this place! We can get out of here, and you can even keep the Ambrosius Amulet. We can go back to the States, and… and.”

  When Marie turned to look at me, she wore the most enraptured smile I had ever seen. My heart sunk. For in that moment, I knew I had lost her… or she had lost herself… her mind, and quite possibly her very soul. No matter how one would define it, the woman I had first fallen in love with in the Honduran jungles and had gone to hell and back with in the Maldives, Egypt, and through countless cities in Europe before coming to England and finally here to Scotland was no longer there.

  But I wasn’t about to give her up without a fight. Yes, it was dicey… yet I had to try. Try to save her from herself… all the while my gut told me that she was about to do something more insane than anything else we had witnessed so far.

  “Nick… I love you,” she said, and my heart quickened with hope. Maybe it wasn’t too late, after all. “But Papa needs me. Papa needs me here…. I must stay!”

  Tears formed in her eyes, and she looked over the edge. I crept up carefully, not wanting to do anything that might hasten a rash and regrettable move on her part. The soft blue glow from the sapphire illuminated the waterfall across from us, but not the depth to where it crashed, far, far below.

  Another glow—almost as golden as the first one we had witnessed—emanated from what looked like a cavern roughly fifty meters below us, and behind the waterfall.

  Another treasure room? So, it’s true?

  It certainly could be, although this one looked impossible to reach. At least from our current vantage point, without any obvious path or other means to get there. Not unless one had wings to fly.

  “Marie, please come with me,” I said, sweetly and with as much feigned confidence as I could muster. I was terrified to the core of my being. “I need you more than anything. I’m begging you—don’t stay!”

  “I know, Nick… But Papa needs me, too,” she said, her lips quivering. Matching streams fell from her eyes, and she reached up to wipe them away. At the same time she scooted dangerously close to the edge. “Papa is alone here, and he always will be. I promised him I wouldn’t fail him. He’s pleading for me to stay!”

  Suddenly, Ishi gasped, and pointed to the golden haze seeping toward us. I thought that was what he pointed to, but then realized it was something else.

  “I’m coming, Papa!” Marie called down to the mist.

  Before I could stop her, she plunged from the ledge.

  I didn’t care who or what could hear my desperate shrieks for her, and I almost leapt over the edge. I tried to pursue her, but Ishi grabbed hold of my ankles and brought me down, refusing to let go as I pummeled him in my grief.

  For the third time in my life, someone I cherished above all else died before my eyes. My parents, gunned down in Africa; Mario murdered in Egypt and taking his final breaths in my arms; and, now Marie, plunging to her death in this forlorn cave system next to Loch Morar.

  Left in shock, what happened next was largely a blur of Ishi frantically dragging me up the jagged rock path to freedom from this hellish place. I received a multitude of cuts and bruises, and I seem to remember glimpsing a serpent with a mermaid’s face eyeing me sorrowfully before slithering over the edge where Marie had taken her life. No doubt Morag believed the Ambrosius Amulet still belonged to her.

  The only other thing I recalled as I sat outside the blast entrance on the hill was the moon and stars looking down coldly upon us while Ishi wrapped his arms around me to keep my body warm, and to prevent me from trying to go back inside the hill to find Marie’s body. If not for seeing the same thing as he did, I might’ve overpowered him and sought to join her in the afterlife.

  But seeing the same image he did, right before she swan-dived into the chasm, was what kept me among the living. If the ghostly man we saw waving to her from inside the golden haze was in fact Marie’s Papa, then at least there was a smidgen of a chance she would find the peace I sensed she always had lacked, and not be stuck in the deep dark chasm alone.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Picking up the pieces of my shattered heart won’t be easy. But as the old adage says… life goes on. It simply has to.

  “It’s not your fault, Nick,” Ishi tried to assure me, on the way back to Glasgow that Friday morning. “Marie’s quest was never aligned with yours… not really.”

  To my little buddy’s credit, he allowed me to remain at Loch Morar for as long as it took for it to sink in that Marie was never coming back. He even stayed with me at the hillside Thursday afternoon, where I tortured myself in the hope she would miraculously emerge from the immense doorway that was now forever sealed. But the only miracle Ishi and I witnessed was this: Sometime between Wednesday night and Thursday afternoon, the blast wound from Yassir Ali’s men had been mysteriously repaired. A casual observer might never suspect an opening ever existed. Even the moss and grass had been restored, like some botanical surgeon had been called in to forever wipe away the memory of Yassir Ali and his team of trespassing assassins.

  It figured.

  And to Ishi’s point, now that I began to really look at how things had gone since first accepting the job of finding Honduras’ “Lost City of Gold”, Marie’s and my pr
eferred paths were as different as the treasures we sought to find and exploit. Most often, I could be happy with finding a simple relic from a forgotten Mayan tomb. The thrill for me was finding something of value from ancient and largely forgotten civilizations. A single relic from a tomb was a turn-on for me. But a thrill for Marie? Well… as Ishi astutely noted earlier that morning, she wouldn’t be satisfied unless she owned the entire tomb, and the ancient village connected to it. Simple versus complicated…. And, yes… for those who recall how things started out, it was ‘Miss Elegant’ versus a guy who’s never been afraid of sticking his hands in the muck.

  But none of this helped with the painful state of my heart. As I’ve also heard it said before, emotional wounds due to losing someone dearly cherished can be especially difficult to heal from when it’s a love that never should’ve happened in the first place….

  So I’ll leave it at that, and try to move on.

  We booked an early evening flight to New York Friday night, and depending upon the weather, my Tawankan pal and I would stay a week in New York City. Then we planned to head down to the Florida Keys until it was time for Ishi to return to Honduras at Christmas. I figured I could use the time he was away from the States to check in with some old college buddies and my dad’s sister in Bakersfield, California.

  Seemed like a plan to restart our lives. We had plenty of money to live comfortably for a year or two from our prior career in dealing artifacts through our Honduran connections—long before Marie came into the picture. Since, then, Ishi’s and my expanding net worth meant that neither of us would ever have to work for an honest day’s wages for the rest of our lives. Although, it would be a while before I could bring myself to return to Honduras or Switzerland to finalize the transfer of our gold shares to currency. I intended to look further into this after we arrived in New York… maybe a bank with international ties, or an investment firm could help me take care of things without me having to face unwanted memories by being present in the flesh.

  In the meantime, Ishi’s suggestion to ditch our latest rental car near the outskirts of Glasgow was a good one. I could make a clean break with this particular alias I was presently using as soon as we reached American soil. We picked an area that was fairly nice, so the car could sit unnoticed for a few days, if not longer.

  “Should we call a taxi? Or, maybe it would be better to try to find a bus to get us to the airport…. What do you think, Boss?”

  “I think… is that a taxi by the corner over there?”

  I pointed to a light blue sedan with a bright neon advertising light above the car’s roof.

  “It looks like one to me,” Ishi agreed.

  Even though it was doubtful that anyone noticed us, and we no longer feared being accosted by Yassir Ali’s men, we approached the sedan cautiously. I fully expected the car to drive away before we reached it, and was resigned to the fact we might have to actually call for a taxi if it wasn’t one.

  But the car remained where it was parked, with the engine idling.

  “Can you take us to the airport?” I asked, after the driver reached behind him and opened the back passenger door. He motioned for us to get inside. “We’ve got traveler’s cheques to pay you with, if that’s okay….”

  My words trailed off as the driver regarded us through his rearview mirror. Quite familiar, and though I hadn’t had a chance to look for his nameplate yet, I made a point to find it now.

  Brodie MacFarlane? Are you frigging serious?!

  “Well hello Mr. Caine and Mr. Cyamel!” he greeted us, warmly. His rich mellow voice seemed to fill the cab. “I fancy you lads weren’t expecting the likes of me to be here, eh?”

  His deep blue eyes that spoke of keen intuition and intelligence sparkled with mirth. Same cropped white beard, but his thinning hairline was concealed that afternoon with a driving cap.

  “I thought you only worked in Edinburgh?” I said, not immediately realizing my rudeness for not first returning his greeting. Ishi covered for me.

  “Since when did I say I only worked in Edinburgh?” said Brodie, merrily, eyeing me impishly as if he carried a naughty secret… about me. “I can tell from your tired faces that you have quite an adventure to share. I’d be delighted to hear it, and I can have you dropped off at the terminal in less than half an hour. It just depends if you would like to take the scenic route or not.”

  “The most direct would be best,” I said, not caring to see anything that made me think of Marie, even though we hadn’t spent much time in the confines of Glasgow. “We’re not in a rush, but I’d like to have a little chill time before our flight this evening.”

  It was shortly after three o’clock in the afternoon, and our flight’s departure was scheduled for 6:45 p.m. Ishi had purchased a new backpack to replace the one he lost, and my only carry-on was my laptop. We shared one suitcase for the rest of our clothes and toiletries, which wasn’t much.

  Admittedly, I enjoyed the scenery of Edinburgh a bit more than Glasgow, but both cities pulled on my heart more than any other place in Europe had. It didn’t make logical sense to me, but brought to mind something Mario had said back in our UCLA days, about familiarity or sudden fondness being a byproduct of reincarnation. Sounded like bullshit back then, but after all that I had experienced in the past seven months, I gave it serious consideration now….

  “So, whatever happened to Ms. Da Vinci? Marie was her name, right?” Brodie asked, as we crossed over a very old stone bridge. I assumed he was taking a shortcut to Glasgow’s international airport.

  Ishi shifted his gaze warily from me to our driver, and then back to me again.

  “She’s not with us anymore,” I said. It was like twin daggers stabbing me in the chest and the back at the same time.

  “Oh? So she decided to extend her stay in Scotland?”

  Not exactly, but in a sense this was the truth—albeit, taking a swan dive into a cave chasm for most folks wouldn’t be perceived in the traditional ‘extended stay’ meaning. I was about to tell him that was exactly the case, until Ishi spoke.

  “She disappeared in a cave, and we believe she’s dead,” he said, drawing a sharp look from me.

  “Dead? Oh dear….”

  Brodie glanced at us in the rearview mirror, and his eyes gleamed with humor. Completely inappropriate, and I started to get angry. From that moment until we reached the airport we rode in silence. Ishi mouthed, “I’m sorry”, when I finally pulled my gaze from the passing view of Glasgow’s urban sprawl and looked his way.

  “You said your flight was on Delta?”

  “Yep.”

  “Aye… I will have you there in the next minute or two, Mr. Caine,” said Brodie. “I hate to ask this, but did either of you actually see Ms. Da Vinci die?”

  “Meaning what?” I replied, testily.

  He chuckled. “I take it that neither one of you saw her actually slam into the rocks…. Where was this place, you say?”

  A chill slithered down my spine. Not sure why, but I was fairly certain neither Ishi nor I hadn’t mentioned how Marie died. Strange that he would’ve guessed what had happened… and it was about to get stranger still.

  “Did she ever find the loch she was looking for?” our driver asked.

  Ishi and I looked at each other in surprise—mine muted. My little buddy’s response? Not as much, if bulging eyes and hands pulled up to cover his mouth meant anything.

  “Aye, so she did…. Which loch, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Loch Morar,” said Ishi, as if he had just found a sidewalk fortune-teller who got the first three questions right. I wanted to clamp my hands over his mouth to keep him from spilling everything he knew. However, my own morbid curiosity won out. “It was in a cave in one of the coastal hillsides.”

  “You don’t say?” Brodie paused to take us up the drive to the terminal. “It wouldn’t be the first time that a lassie burdened with a quest got lost in the Highlands—cave or no cave.”

  “She’s d
ead,” I said sullenly, anxious to end this bullshit conversation. “She killed herself by diving into an underground chasm… might’ve been a river. She chased after a phantom calling to her from a waterfall.”

  I couldn’t believe I blurted out the summarized truth of the situation. I was really starting to hate this taxi driver named Brodie MacFarlane. He eyed me thoughtfully as he pulled over to the curb to let us out, our destination thankfully reached.

  “You’ve heard of Nessie and Morag, no doubt,” he said. “There are others throughout this great country and as far away as Europe and America—even to the golden land of California, Mr. Caine. All are connected and can travel using passageways beneath the earth’s surface that don’t operate like the ones you’re familiar with.”

  A heifer-sized pile of bullshit, pure and simple.

  “Well thank you for the ride and the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle entertainment, Mr. MacFarlane,” I said, opening my door as I prepared to step out of the taxi. “Just the same… Marie’s gone, and I’m devastated.”

  Hard to keep the raw emotions at bay, I fought back tears, forcing a smile as we exited the cab. Our driver grabbed my arm, and the sensation of incredible strength oozing through his older grip kept me at bay for another moment.

  “Aye, so it appears,” he said, the smile gone although an ember of laughter remained in his deep blue eyes. “But just as Nessie and Morag continue to be seen from time to time, so might your beloved reenter your life when you least expect it—perhaps traveling along the same sacred pathways to wherever you are in the world, Mr. Caine.”

  He eyed me earnestly, and I wanted to scream in his face, to extinguish the taunting laughter and destroy the dirty little secret he seemed to have over me. What was it? I had no idea, as it was something sensed without any physical proof.

  “Very good, sir,” he said, releasing my arm, and then nodding to Ishi and me. “May you both find peace…. And, lastly my lads, keep this in mind: Just because you can’t see a thing, doesn’t mean it isn’t there…. Think on this often and one day it will make perfect sense.”