Nessie Quest

by Melissa Savage

  Which I haven’t seen her do yet.

  “Hello, Ms. Begbie,” Mom says. “We are the Fitzhugh family.”

  Euna Begbie nods once, eyeing each of us and then staring hard at me. And I just know it’s because she’s scoping out a nice juicy neck vein to feast on when I’m sleeping.

  That’s how the undead are.

  “Welcome,” Ms. Begbie says. “The university-owned flats are all located on the fourth floor. Ye have been assigned to flat 402.” She pulls a skinny old iron key out of the pocket of her dusty dress and hands it to Mom.

  “I’m Libby, and this is my husband, Zuma,” Mom says. “He will be starting next week as a visiting professor of photography at the University of the Highlands and Islands in Inverness.”

  “Just for the summer,” I add. “We aren’t staying. And…people are expecting us…you know, to return.”

  Euna Begbie looks down her nose at me.

  “Cheers, Ms. Begbie!” Dad calls out with a hearty wave from the trunk, completely oblivious that this woman most likely possesses a membership card for Club Undead.

  I shake my head and roll my eyes.

  Such a Muggle.

  “We’re so excited to be here!” he goes on. “I’m from the Highlands originally. My brother, Clive, and his wife, Isla, own Leakey’s Bookshop in Inverness.”

  “Lovely.” Euna Begbie gives Dad another slow nod.

  I’ve learned from Dad and from Nan and Granddad Fitzhugh that cheers has a lot of meanings all at once. It can mean hello or thanks or enjoy your food or even goodbye sometimes. Kind of like Aloha in Hawaii. We went there three years ago and we didn’t stay in any haunted fortress either.

  It was the Hilton Waikoloa.

  When we checked in there, we got flower necklaces called leis and fancy blended drinks in tall, curvy glasses with long straws and a pineapple flower on top.

  “Please.” Euna Begbie motions toward the open door. “Follow me and I will show ye to yer quarters.”

  I peek inside the double arched doors and then stare up at Mom with Mickey Mouse in my eyes and a desperate and silent final plea for Epcot in my soul. But right this minute, she doesn’t give two hoots about what feeling word I’m thinking of.

  And then in a flash a small boy with white-blond hair under a gigantic captain’s hat comes flying out from the abbey so fast, the wooden doors don’t even have time to belch another creak. He taps a glossy, twisted wooden cane in one hand and holds the leash of a curly red dog in the other as he darts past us. He’s wearing a traditional Scottish plaid kilt, knee-high socks, and a dark green Windbreaker with two words written in white letters down one sleeve.

  NESSIE QUEST.

  “Ms. Begbie. That sticky toffee pudding was brilliant. It was well tidy scran indeed,” he calls with a wave.

  The woman’s orange lips crack a smile for the very first time. “Cheers, Hammy Bean,” she says, waving after the boy.

  “Tatty bye,” the boy calls, hustling off toward the drive.

  I lean in close to Mom. “Did he say tater fries?” I ask. “Because I’m starving.”

  Euna Begbie snorts. “He said tatty bye,” she informs me. “It’s a less-formal way of sayin’ goodbye in Scotland.”

  “Oh,” I mumble.

  “You’ll learn more Scottish verbiage soon enough, lass,” she informs me.

  I want to tell her big, fat, hairy chance of that one.

  My plans include staying holed up in my room watching funny animal videos on YouTube and texting with Britney B for Tennyson updates until September.

  If…we make it out of Scotland alive. And that’s a big if.

  “Please follow me,” Euna Begbie says, turning back toward the abbey.

  Mom heads in after her, yakking it up about what ingredients go in sticky toffee pudding, while my eyes stay fixed on the curious boy as he scrambles off.

  His feet skip instead of step and his arms swing wide while he talks and laughs back and forth with the red dog, which barks back at the boy as if they’re having a real conversation.

  “Excuse me, Ms. Begbie,” I call after them. “What’s a Nessie Quest?”

  She chortles a laugh at the back of her throat and calls over her shoulder at me without even stopping. “Nessie Quest is one o’ the Loch Ness tours at the pier run by the Tibby family,” she says. “And Nessie, o’ course, refers to our resident lake monster.”

  I stop dead in my tracks and clutch the duffel bag to my chest.

  “I’m sorry, y-your resident what?” I stutter.

  This time she turns back to look at me over her shoulder. “Lake monster,” she says again. “Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster.”

  I knew we should have gone to Disney World.

  Inside the conjuror’s castle, the Elmer’s glue—skinned Euna Begbie leads us down a long stone corridor.

  Her in front, then me, and then Mom.

  Leading us deeper and deeper into the belly of the beast.

  “Do you live on the fourth floor too?” I call to the woman, crossing all four sets of fingers in hopes that she doesn’t.

  “I live in the west tower,” she tells us. “Flat one six six.”

  I swallow and turn to give Mom a look. “Did you say…six six six?”

  “One sixty-six,” she corrects me.

  “Mmm,” I say, eyeing her from behind.

  I know I heard her right the first time. And everyone who’s anyone knows what 666 stands for.

  It’s only the call sign of pure evil.

  And if Scooby-Doo taught us anything, it’s that the caretaker is always the villain.

  “If ye need anything, that’s where ye can find me,” she calls back to us. “I’m available until five o’clock each day.”

  It’s hard to keep up with Ms. Begbie because her legs are so long that for every one of her steps, Mom has to take three and I have to practically run. Lucky for me I wore my Nikes with the pink swoosh, but Mom chose her knee-high boots. The ones with the solid wood heels. She clacks with each step, the sound of those dumb heels echoing all the way up to the tall ceilings, which are striped with thick, ancient wooden beams. The tall, arched stained-glass windows are filled with see-through staring faces within multicolored panes…watching.

  Their eyes following us with each step we take.

  Ghostly eyes with evil intent.

  The cold, drafty halls are silent except for faint sounds of guitar music coming from somewhere and Mom’s stupid heels against the hard stone floor.

  Clack. Clack. Clack.

  Past a door marked POOL AND SPA.

  Clack. Clack. Clack.

  Past a door marked BILLIARDS.

  Clack. Clack. Clack.

  Even past a door that has the word TOILET on it.

  I hide a giggle behind my hand at that one. Britney B is going to die when I tell her this. Who puts TOILET on a sign instead of RESTROOM?

  Gross.

  Euna Begbie hangs a louie at the TOILET, finally stopping at the bottom of a wide, squared-off spiral staircase that looks like it goes on forever. She probably doesn’t want to hear Mom clack all the way up to our apartment.

  I don’t blame her.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” she tells Mom. “If you have any questions, please ring or come and find me in the west tower. Good day.”

  She turns to leave.

  “Excuse me, Ms. Begbie,” I call after her.

  She stops and faces me.

  “So yeah…um, so you were saying something about a monster in that lake out there? You were kidding, right?”

  “Nae,” she says. “The story of our monster is quite real. It’s a legend rooted in the past, when the great explorer St. Columba sighted it in the waters of Loch Ness in AD 565. Do ye know that our Loch Ness is so deep, it can fit t
he whole world’s population many times over?”

  Loch is one of those horking words, and when she says it, she sounds just like Mr. Mews with his hairballs.

  “Have you actually seen the thing? I mean, with your own eyes?” I ask Ms. Begbie.

  Ms. Begbie nods slowly. “Only once,” she tells me. “When I was just a wee lass about your age. If ye listen verra closely, ye might hear her coming.”

  I swallow. “Hear her?”

  “That’s right,” she says, and then bends down until she’s eye to eye with me. “Ye always hear her coming first. The bubbles. The bubbles always come first.”

  She turns then and we watch her slide her man shoes down the hall until she turns another corner and is gone.

  “Great,” I say to Mom. “A haunted fortress and a monster that resides in the waters that surround it? We may be bordering on questionable parenting at this point.”

  “I think you’ll be just fine,” Mom says, hoisting her luggage and starting up the steps. “Come on, let’s tackle this staircase.”

  I point toward the top of the squared-off spiral. “That’s probably the portal,” I tell her.

  “The what?”

  “Where the poltergeist gets in.”

  She just blows air out of her mouth, shakes her head and keeps on clacking.

  Right above the second landing, on about the fourth or fifth step, is some kid strumming on a guitar. He seems older than me, but not by much. He’s legit cute. Like so cute, I suddenly can’t feel my legs.

  I stare at the boy while he plays, oblivious to our presence. He has longish, dark, wavy hair with long bangs that hang in his eyes. He’s wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt over a long-sleeved one, with a beaded necklace around his neck and rope bracelets on his wrists.

  “Hey there,” I say to him.

  He ignores me.

  I try again. “That’s real nice,” I say as we step past.

  His flat palm hits the strings with a slap, bringing the music to an abrupt halt. He swings his hair to the side and looks up at me with seaweed-colored eyes.

  “Yeah?” he says.

  I only nod this time because suddenly I can’t feel my tongue either.

  He goes back to strumming and I go back to climbing.

  Mom is already five steps ahead of me, and after making it to the third landing, I’m breathing heavy and have to stop and change hands.

  I sigh and keep on. With each step, I name all the things I’m missing right this second.

  Riding my bike down Tennyson.

  Playing flashlight tag with neighborhood kids at César Chávez Park on the corner of Utica.

  Mr. Gomez’s homemade papas fritas y guacamole at El Chingon.

  The warm feel of Mr. Mews’s belly when I stick my face in his fur while he naps in the sun.

  And last, but certainly not least, a monster-free neighborhood where I can sleep without worrying about something coming to eat me in the dead of night.

  I miss home.

  The smells. The feels. The places. The people.

  This isn’t home and it never will be.

  Not even for a summer.

  “Mom?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Scotland bites.”

  She’s already clacked ahead ten steps. “Sounds like a good thing to write in your journal.”

  “Oh, I plan to,” I call from behind. “Along with homesick.”

  “Are you sure you’ve been here long enough to be homesick?” she asks me.

  “I don’t think there’s an official time assigned to measure the volume of homesickness,” I tell her. “You either are or you aren’t and I am. I definitely am.”

  “Well, then I guess that would be a good word to add to your journal too.”

  I follow her all the way up to the fourth floor, which is so high that I bet you any money if there were a fifth floor, we’d be knocking on actual pearly gates.

  “Here it is,” she says, putting down the suitcase in her hand and slipping the key into the lock.

  I lean my cheek on the arm of her tan raincoat. “That’s a weird-looking key,” I tell her. “It’s so long and skinny.”

  “These are called skeleton keys,” she explains.

  I raise my eyebrows at her. “Skeleton keys?” I say. “Want to guess my feeling word for that?”

  “Nope,” she says, turning the key until the lock clicks.

  She steps over the threshold of doom. “Ooooh. It’s nice and toasty warm in here. This is adorable,” she coos, making her way down the hall to check out the bedrooms.

  I sigh, set my duffel bag down and step into the living room. It doesn’t look anything like ours. There are two long red velvet couches that face each other, with an extra-wide square wooden table in the middle.

  On one wall are floor-to-ceiling arched windows, and on the other is a fireplace with a fire burning inside it. Dad said that even though it’s summertime, the mountains in the Highlands have moody weather and it’s cold and rainy a lot of days. Which is also why Mom made me take all my flip-flops out of the suitcase and put in my tall rain boots instead. The hearth is stacked with extra firewood and the mantel is full of photographs of the town.

  Storefronts and boats and festivals and people.

  I zoom in on one particular boat that has the same words painted on it as the kid with the red dog had on his Windbreaker. I pick it up and examine it.

  Nessie Quest.

  On the breakfast bar that borders the kitchen is a plate of plain square cookies with a handwritten note.

  Welcome to Fort Augustus

  I take a whiff of one and place it back on the plate.

  “Adelaide Ru,” Mom says. “Either eat one or don’t. Don’t sniff it and put it back.”

  “Yeah, but there’s nothing in them,” I say. “How can you eat a cookie with no chips or nuts or M&M’s or anything?”

  “Can’t you think of one nice thing to say about Euna Begbie leaving us a plate of homemade cookies?”

  I think it over. “Yep,” I say. “At least they’re not devil’s food.”

  Mom rolls her eyes at that one and pops a cookie into her mouth. “I wonder what’s taking your dad so long. Why don’t you go and meet Dad on the stairs and help him with the rest of the bags?”

  I sigh. “Fine.”

  Dad is already on the third-floor landing when I make it out to the staircase. I look down the squared-off spiral and see him working his way up to our floor.

  “Where have you been?” I ask him.

  “Oh,” he calls up when he sees me. “I was talking to a nice couple who are here on vacation for the summer. The, uh, the Cadys, I think they said, from Manhattan. So, how is it? Pretty nice?”

  I shrug. “If you call an actual lake monster that feeds off the flesh and bones of small children in the waters just feet from where your daughter lays her very head…nice.”

  Dad stops for a minute and pretends to think hard about my question with his nose in the air. “Nope,” he finally says, stepping up to meet me. “That doesn’t sound nice. Libby? Sound nice to you?” he asks Mom, who’s heading out the doorway of the flat.

  She stops in her tracks and puts her nose in the air too, pretending to think hard about his question. “Nope,” she says. “I don’t think it does.”

  “You guys are hilarious,” I tell them. “But you’ll be sorry when you find me on the shore of this lake with a big, fat monster bite out of me.”

  “Ru Ru, Nessie has never eaten a single child that I’m aware of,” Dad tells me. “But you’re quite an overachiever. Maybe you’ll be the first.”

  I throw my palms up to the sky. “You knew about that thing and you still brought us to this place?”

  Dad puts a heavy palm on my head and strokes my hair. “Ne
ssie is just a story, Rubbaboo,” he says. “A legend. It’s not real. I grew up on this loch; don’t you think I would know if there were a monster in it?”

  “Yeah, well,” I say. “I remain unconvinced.”

  Mom grabs a duffel bag from Dad’s shoulder and a suitcase from his hand.

  “You heard Dad, it’s a legend, honey,” she says. “We took you to Pikes Peak too—did we see a real Bigfoot?”

  “That’s totally different,” I tell her.

  “And why’s that?”

  “Ah, hello…Bigfoot are nocturnal,” I inform her. “Night dwellers. The chances of a sighting in the daytime are slim to none.”

  Dad’s still smiling. “Where did you get that one?”

  “It’s common sense.”

  “Zuma,” Mom says, grabbing another suitcase and heading back through the doorway of the flat. “Please stop encouraging this.”

  He winks at me and turns on his heel to head back down the stairs for more bags.

  “Dad.” I grab his arm. “I have a real bad feeling about this place,” I whisper. “I mean, real bad.”

  He wipes the heavenly staircase sweat beads off his forehead. “Oh, Rumorbug,” he says. “You’re a can of corn. There are more bags…want to help me?”

  “No,” I say. “I think I’ll go and get the monster 4-1-1 from that boy playing guitar on the second floor.”

  Dad’s eyebrows crinkle together all serious. “What boy?” he asks.

  My mouth falls open. “Wh-what do you mean, what boy? The boy on the stairs with the guitar…” I trail off when I see his Cheez Whiz look of confusion.

  “Rudy Tudy,” he says. “There is no boy on the stairs.”

  I cover my mouth with my hand and whisper between my fingers. “You mean…you can’t hear that?”

  His face cracks then and I get another one of his HAs.

  I put angry fists on my hips and watch him laugh his stupid head off while he bounds down the steps. As he hits the third-floor landing, I grab the carved wooden rail that runs along the fourth-floor hallway with both hands and hurl my words down after him through the center of the staircase.