Frank argued the nature of the beast until they decided to put in and have lunch on solid ground. They talked over some ghastly sausages that repeated on them for hours. Despite the digestive setbacks, they decided to take Esperanza in a different direction. They would look for the feeding beast. Frank suggested it would likely feed in the evening or night as it was a private animal and didn’t need light. So dusk found the foursome ready to cast off.
John was surprised to hear a familiar voice behind him.
“Going fishing, doctor?”
John turned to see Aisling standing on the pier with her hands on her hips and an awkward smile. He had rarely found himself so unprepared to speak. Without an alternative, he attempted a greeting.
“Well. I didn’t expect to see you down here.”
“No, I don’t suppose you would. But then where would I be? Teaching? No. I can’t do that. Someone has gone and got all the mums blaming me for their children believing in monsters. Now who would that be?” Her tone gradually turned from forced pleasant to bitter. “Who do you suppose would want to do a thing like that?”
John was completely off guard. “Aisling, I had nothing to do with it. I swear—”
“Didn’t you? Nothing to do with it? So I got fired for no reason other than this monster, and I can think of only one person who would want that.”
“Why would I want to get you fired?”
“So I’d help you with this monster thingy. After all, I have nothing to lose and nothing better to do. Right?”
Mac whispered to John from behind. “Pssst. Now would be a good time to pull out the golden tongue.”
John was far from amused but joking or not, Mac was right. “Can I say one thing, please?”
“No. Let me guess. You’ll tell them all it wasn’t me if I help you with your research. Am I close?”
“Not even a little bit. The fact is I already told the authorities these so-called sightings had nothing to do with me or with you and offered to help them resolve any questions that pop up about the monster.”
“So you told them there was a monster.”
“Actually I told them I had devoted my career to proving all these sightings wrong. That’s what I do.”
Aisling looked at him suspiciously. “So a man who gets paid to look for the monster tells people it doesn’t exist. Why does that sound strange to me?”
“I never said it doesn’t exist. I only said that the sightings most commonly reported are either hysteria or out-and-out lies and I prove it in most cases. I’m hoping to clear up all the myths so that I can look purely on fact. If there’s an animal out there, the rumors and glory hounds are doing nothing but getting in the way. Every time someone claims they found it and it turns out to be a hoax, I lose another piece of credibility. If I clear out all the bull, the only thing left is the truth. See? Seamus What’s-his-name running out on his wife not only got you fired, it screwed up my research.”
Aisling stood and stared at him a long while. “You’re starting to scare me.”
“I am? Why?”
“Because you’re starting to make sense. So you didn’t want me to get fired?”
“Of course not.”
Kyle spoke up from the deck of the boat. “He was actually sad that he had to forget about you!”
John turned and shot Kyle a look of humiliation and rage. He looked at Kyle to avoid looking at Aisling. Finally he turned, slowly and reluctantly, to see her grinning at him.
“Is that a fact, doctor?”
“It truly is. I had given up on getting any detail about your grandfather. We were going on as we had.”
She looked about suspiciously. “Well, it makes sense in a way. But I can’t help feeling you’ve got a bunch of phony photos and bones and stuff in there. I can still see your boys here being publicity-seeking freaks.”
“Freaks, maybe. But we love to be left alone to work. The animal, if it’s out there, doesn’t like company. The more people looking for it, the less likely we are to find it. Any of us. Come on board. I’ll show you what we’re looking for. You see anything that even remotely resembles teacher hoaxes or crap, I give you permission to blow the whistle on us.”
Frank was topside at the helm. “Does that mean we’re not putting out tonight?”
She seemed surprised. “You were going out? I assumed you had just come back.”
“Night fishing,” Mac said with a pleasant smile. “John. Why don’t you ask the lady to join us?”
John’s look to her was invitation enough but she was unsure. “With you? Out there? Are you sure I wouldn’t get in the way?”
“Positive,” John said as he offered her a hand. He led her safely across the rail and onboard Esperanza. Frank needed no encouragement to start the engines. Mac and Kyle cast off the lines and they pulled away from the pier.
“Now hold on,” John warned her. “Esperanza isn’t your typical fishing boat.”
“Oh really? Is she not? And what makes this boat so different?”
“This one can fly.”
On cue, Frank accelerated and the powerful engines sent the slim line craft rocketing across the mile-wide lake. John’s warning that his boat could fly was only a slight exaggeration; Aisling was thrilled at the speed at which Esperanza could skim across the lake.
Frank loved piloting the boat and Kyle was eagerly booting up the search mode equipment. John showed her files and data he’d amassed to date but Aisling was captivated by the professionalism and surgical skill demonstrated by the team she referred to as the ‘Barnacle Brothers.’ It was clear these men knew their job to a level few people ever achieve.
John had shown her enough of his research to justify his assertion that he had no use for the propagation of lies surrounding the legend. He was clearly interested in the truth.
“So am I off the hook?” he risked asking.
She looked about again. Frank was topside at the helm. Kyle was monitoring the ultra-sensitive sonar and Mac was navigating using John’s research. She felt comfortable enough to talk to him as thought they had a private moment. “I suppose. Am I?”
“I never blamed you. I just didn’t want you to think what you were thinking.”
“I mean about the caller thing? Are you still after that or can we just be people?”
“It was a long shot at best. I think it died with your grandfather if it was ever real at all. I’m sorry I brought it up. Truly sorry.”
“And yet I get the feeling you’re not totally through with me.” She let him notice the coy smile.
“Well, I have a hunch there’s more to you than a grandfather.”
“Really? Such as?”
“Oh you want a list?”
“My ego has taken a beating today, doctor. Please list. Lie if you have to.”
“Hmmmm. Okay. In no particular order. I like how you look great in a dress but are clearly a jeans person. I like that you live in a cold climate practically at the North Pole but prefer to be barefoot.”
“Do I?”
“You wish you could kick your shoes off now. I can see you wiggling your toes inside your shoes.”
“Could be a nervous twitch.”
“Take them off if you like.”
She smiled and toed her shoes off one at a time. She slipped her dark green striped socks off and shoved them inside the trainers, then turned back to John. “Okay. Go on.”
“I like how you say ‘em’ when most people say ‘um.’”
“We all do that. I think ‘um’ is an American thing.”
“And I love that you love reading and that you can hold the attention of twenty-two children who collectively have the attention span of a gnat for a whole day. I love the passion I saw when you were telling the story of Perseus. God, I only memorized the text. You knew what was in the heart of each of them. And I love never having to wonder what’s on your mind. I don’t always know what you’re thinking but I know I can trust what you let me know. I like how you balance openness
with honesty. If you’re happy, you smile. If you have a question, you ask it. If you’re angry, you swing a meat tenderizer. Overall, you’re an easy girl to know, Aisling.”
“Am I? That’s all pretty basic stuff, except for the meat tenderizer. Sorry about that, by the way.”
“Are you?”
“Not really. But most of that stuff could be said about half the women in that pub.”
“Okay. Something different. What if I told you that you reminded me of a battleship?”
“Well, that would be different. Not exactly complimentary. But at least original.”
“What I mean is I get the impression you’ve taken a beating or two in your lifetime. It doesn’t show on the outside, at least not at first. And you don’t want it to. You don’t want pity. You want to give the impression you can take whatever life throws at you and a lot more. So the hard front is up and what goes on behind it is nobody’s business.”
“You see all that, do you? I must come off like some kind of cast-iron bitch.”
“No. You just seem like you could be if pushed. If I had to describe your lifestyle, I’d say you were inside out. We all have something burning inside us. It’s that motivation or want that drives us to succeed or depresses us if we don’t. It’s the hidden bar we measure ourselves by. It’s a fire everyone feels. But with you, it’s not on the inside. It burns bright and open and anyone who gets near you feels the passion for life and the warmth that makes those children trust you over their own parents. I don’t see you ever looking back on your life and saying ‘I should have.’ It doesn’t mean your life is perfect. It just means your life is what you made it and I wouldn’t want to be one of the poor souls who tries to stop you along the way.”
She suddenly realized she had been spellbound by his perception of her. She listened as though he was speaking about someone else. Someone she liked. Realizing he was talking about her, she felt a blush take her. “Easy to know. Not so easy to like, I dare say.”
“Oh I don’t know. You’re becoming—”
“Holy shit!” Kyle shouted. “What was that?”
John and Mac went to his station.
“What?” John demanded.
Kyle kept scanning as Mac replayed his scan from seconds before on his monitor. A large signal came across. “What was that?” Mac asked.
“I don’t know. But it was big.”
“How big?” John demanded.
“Big,” Kyle responded. “I only caught it for a tenth of a second. Forty feet. Maybe bigger. Moving at about twenty knots. Come about one fifteen to port and step on it.” Frank turned the craft at his direction.
“He can tell all that from a tenth of a second?” Aisling exclaimed.
“Now you’ll see the beauty of Esperanza. She can catch this thing if you can track it.”
“I can,” Kyle assured them. “Here it is.” He enhanced the image on his monitor and they all gasped at the gradually growing shape of a Plesiosaur. The long neck guided it gracefully though the deep water. The front fins waved gracefully while the rear flippers trailed alongside the blunt tail.
“Look at it!” Mac squealed in exuberance unbridled. “We got it. That’s really it!”
Frank was equally excited as he watched the feed from his auxiliary station at the helm. “The Loch Ness fucking Monster! Look how it pulls itself along with its front fins. Like a turtle.”
Aisling was stunned. “Turtle? You call that great thingy a turtle?”
“Like a turtle,” John explained to her. “People thought it was a brontosaurus or brachiosaur or even something closer to a dragon. But it’s really more like a sea turtle with a long neck and no shell.”
“That’s one big-ass turtle, boss,” Mac commented. The red-blipped image got clearer and sharper but stopped growing.
“How big? Kyle?” John posed.
Kyle clicked his keypad and a grid appeared on the screen. “Nineteen point four meters, according to this UK crap.”
“Jesus,” Frank marveled. “It’s over sixty feet long.”
“Is that including the head?” Mac asked.
“Why wouldn’t it include the head?” Kyle asked.
“Well you know... just... is that all of it?”
“You’re such a dork.”
“How can you see it so clearly?” Aisling gasped, still stunned at the image of the sea monster on the computer screen. “I thought sonar was just dots. Blips on a screen.”
The scientists were too engrossed in the sighting to do more than mutter a response. Kyle kept the intense sonar read on the animal while Mac called navigational readouts to Frank as he frantically maneuvered the craft in pursuit of the beast. John deftly noted the size and speed of the Plesiosaur. During the organized chaos, Mac took time enough to explain to their guest.
“When was the last time you saw an ultra-sound of a fetus?”
“This spring. A teacher went on maternity leave.”
“How’d it look?”
“Not so clear. I could see the wee arms and legs but couldn’t really see the boy bits. It looked a bit like a peanut with arms.”
“Well, when you were born, you couldn’t have seen the arms. Sensitivity and analysis doubles about every eight months. Ultra-sounds can see eyelashes now. Sonar has advanced the same way. We can see so much more and software can do so much more with it now that we can... well look at that.”
The image turned its head and seemed to look around. Even the eye was visible. The glowing image was shockingly clear and lifelike.
“How deep is it?” Mac asked.
John checked the readings. “In American, about two-hundred and twenty three feet.”
Aisling was easily the most impressed with the technology. “About? That’s a pretty accurate ‘about,’ mate. How can you see it so clearly from so deep?”
“The sonar still picks up the blips and turns them into dots on the screen. It can even read the texture of the material it’s sounding. Then the computer connects the dots in a reasonable assumption.”
Mac tapped screen. “So this is actually the computer’s best guess based on what it hears down there.”
“We tried to sell this program to Disney to make CG cartoons. Bastards already had a better one.”
“Wouldn’t let us use it though. We’re stuck with this crap.”
“Keep me on it, guys,” Frank cautioned from the helm.
“Gimme five degrees starboard,” Kyle called out, still hugging the monitor.
John was making notes of his own as he watched the image on the screen. “It’s hunting, guys. Maybe on the attack.”
“You sure?” Frank asked.
“It hasn’t turned once since we picked it up and it’s moving at better than twenty knots. That takes work. It would only do that if it was about to strike.”
To the scientists, almost giddy with excitement as they chased the beast from their safe distance, this was merely an interesting observation. Only Aisling had the clarity to look beyond that of the ples. She looked out across the surface of the loch. Ahead of them, she saw a boat. A small rowboat was plodding along directly in the path of the thing. Only Aisling saw the boat, so only she sensed the significance of the creature’s course.
“It’s coming up, John.” Kyle warned.
“At us?”
“No. But we should slow down. We don’t want to spook it.”
Aisling pointed, though none among them saw her finger. “Could it be going for that?”
Now John looked out farther than he needed to and spotted the tiny craft. A quarter of a mile ahead of Esperanza, Mark McGinty rowed his girlfriend across the loch. They did so whenever they had a few hours with no parents or brothers or obligations to one or the other. Rarely did they go all the way across. They just wanted to get far enough from the shore to get a bit of privacy. At fifteen, privacy for lovers was a rare and valuable commodity.
Lucie lay back in the stern of the small fishing boat and teased her boyfriend, stretching and
posing seductively and giggling in contradiction. Mark rowed harder but was on the verge of giving in to her charms. Nothing else mattered to this teenage hormone factory than the temptress sprawled out before him. Not the hour of night. Not the chores undone on shore. Not the unseen nemesis racing toward them from the depths. He saw only her.
Mark stopped his oars and grinned at Lucie. She smiled back in agreement. He set his oars aside and came toward her. As she reached for him, the boat was struck from beneath with force enough to hurl the young lovers ten feet into the air. They came back into the cold water and found their way to the surface. The overturned boat was not far but they didn’t go for it straight away. Instead, the adolescents reached for each other.
Lucie paddled up to Mark. “What was that? What happened?”
Mark had no answer. The question was taken as a confirmation of their peril. He looked frantically across the choppy surface of the water. Twenty feet away, the water bulged upward unnaturally. It was water, but pushed up by something big and round. Mark never saw the dark green back beneath.
It circled and prepared to take one of them. Two sets of legs kicked in the murky water. The beast was close enough to see them. The bigger set of legs seemed to move slower. It circled around to that side. This would be the easiest and most gratifying kill. It would drag the chosen one down and eat it in privacy. The selection made, the giant curled the snake-like neck in and swam closer. It would come within striking range before lunging. This hunting tactic gave it incredible strike speed from close range.
It was about to claim its prey when a shrill, piercing siren cut through the water. The reptile, an acute listener normally attuned to all sounds, was caught unaware, the loud sound painful to its senses. It was under the water and in the air. The reptile left its prey and dove deep to escape. Sonic emissions in deep water hurt more but were extremely rare; the deep was silent and safe.
Esperanza charged forward, horn and siren blaring. Kyle’s instruments were only slightly less effective for the distortion of the new waves but he still traced and recorded the image of the beast diving away.
Loch Ness Page 17