The Curse of Loch Ness

by Peter Tremayne

  Even as she was dismissing it, the sound started again. Well, one thing was for sure, it was certainly an animal. How could Mrs Murdo have expected her to swallow a tale about underground water? It must be some sort of wild dog. Perhaps Mrs Murdo was trying to protect her with the water explanation in case she was scared of wild dogs. No, that sounded a bit weak.

  She stared out wonderingly across the great loch.

  About a hundred yards out her eyes caught sight of a movement.

  As she watched she felt the adrenalin begin to flow through her.

  A patch of the black water seemed to be swirling and forming a whirlpool, the waters tossing and bubbling.

  In that moment Jeannie was overwhelmed by a sudden panic.

  She turned and began to run swiftly along the path towards Balmacaan. An awful fear gripped her by the throat. The hair on the nape of her neck began to bristle. She ran wildly, without the aid of the torch, and several times bushes tore at her dress and scratched at her face and hands as she collided from one side of the path to the other.

  After the first initial panic, she slowed down and pulled herself together.

  Hell! What was she? Some ridiculous parody of a female from an Edwardian ‘penny-dreadful’ novel?

  She halted and recovered her breath, casting a look back along the pathway. The path had now swung inland as it began to wind through the foot of Maitland’s woods towards the Balmacaan estate. Everything was quiet.

  How ridiculous, she rebuked herself. What a strange thing imagination was. Probably the movement had been caused by some natural current in the loch and she had convinced herself that she was about to see the monster. If time and place could have that effect on her imagination, it was no wonder that so many people saw monsters and other creatures in such a place.

  She checked her flashlight, feeling ashamed of herself, and walked on.

  Even so, she began to experience an uncomfortable feeling … a feeling that someone or something was watching her. She stopped and turned around several times, peering half-fearfully into the blackness of the surrounding woods.

  She wished for the hundredth time in the past few days that Tim Colbert was there with her. Things would have been so much more enjoyable had Tim been there to dismiss her fears with his wry humour. Damn it! She was admitting her dependence on Tim … on a man. That was something an independent, liberated young woman should not do.

  Then she felt a piercing scream wrenched from her throat.

  A tall figure had detached itself swiftly from the blackness of the trees and stood barring her path.

  She knew who it was even before she brought up her trembling hand to bathe the figure in the light from her torch.

  ‘I did not mean to frighten you, Miss Millbuie … ’ the ponderous accents of Lachlan MacVey’s voice were thick and slurred by drink.

  There was the faint aroma of whisky on the evening air.

  ‘Miss Millbuie … I must have a word with you.’

  He stood swaying in the torchlight, his eyes screwed up trying to focus on her.

  ‘There is nothing to prevent you coming to Balmacaan Castle in the morning,’ she returned coldly, having recovered her wits.

  ‘No,’ the word was almost a growl. MacVey took a hesitant, swaying step forward. ‘I shall not be coming to that place … that place of all places … Miss Millbuie. I have made some enquiries. You are from London, they tell me. You do not know these parts and you have no real connection with the Millbuie family. Leave things like that. Go! Go back to London. Forget about the Millbuies of Strath Errick. Forget about Balmacaan Castle. Just leave now before … before … ’

  His voice trailed off.

  Jeannie sighed. This was all she needed. The ramblings of a drunk simpleton.

  ‘Mr MacVey, if you have anything to say to me I would suggest you leave it until you are in a condition to explain yourself properly.’

  ‘Och, damn your English superiority! Do you not know what I’m telling you, woman?’

  The words were a harsh snarl.

  Involuntarily, Jeannie backed before the man.

  ‘I’m telling you for your own good; for the good of us all here … leave Balmacaan immed … ’

  He broke off his eyes staring wildly towards the loch.

  ‘What is it, MacVey?’ asked Jeannie, seeing the skin go taut across his skull so that the bones showed like some awful death mask.

  ‘Do you not hear it?’ whispered the man.

  A second later there came to her ears the soft whispering sound, rising, rising and abruptly ceasing.

  ‘Oh God!’ Lachlan MacVey cried in an awful voice. ‘Will you not go home, woman? Will you not leave?’

  Then he turned, wild-eyed, and stumbled off into the woods.

  For a second or so Jeannie stood looking after him and then she, too, was running. But the path now led into the open space, across the tangle of gorse which accompanied the pathway up to the stone wall of Balmacaan Castle.

  Five minutes later she was pounding at the heavy oak door of the old house.

  ‘Saints preserve us! What ails you, Miss Millbuie?’ demanded Mrs Murdo, opening the door and regarding Jeannie’s dishevelled figure.

  Jeannie stumbled into the hallway, now brightly lit by the electric generator. Her mind raced rapidly. Mrs Murdo led her into the parlour, sat her down and made a pot of tea.

  ‘What has happened?’ she asked again.

  ‘I met a man along the path,’ Jeannie gasped. ‘He scared me a little.’

  ‘A man on the path between here and Tymony?’ queried the housekeeper, pouring out the tea.

  Jeannie nodded.

  ‘I’ve seen him before. His name is MacVey, Lachlan MacVey. Colonel Maitland says he comes from the village. I think he was a little drunk.’

  Mrs Murdo eyed her grimly.

  ‘Aye, if I know Lachlan MacVey he would not be a little drunk. The man is well known in these parts, Miss Millbuie. An idle, worthless fellow. Do you want me to go to Balmacaan tomorrow and see the minister about him?’ Jeannie shook her head.

  ‘No … no, I wouldn’t want him to get into any trouble.’

  ‘Did he … did he make advances to you?’

  Jeannie suddenly laughed, releasing the tension in her body.

  ‘Good Lord, no, Mrs Murdo. No, he merely suggested that I leave Balmacaan for the good of everyone. No, it was just that he scared me a little, it being a dark night and he being drunk. No, he didn’t do anything insulting.’

  Mrs Murdo eyed her grimly.

  ‘He told you to leave?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he say why he wanted you to leave?’

  ‘No. I gather he seems to have something against the Millbuie family, that’s all. He just warned me to go away from here for the good of everyone.’

  Mrs Murdo bit her thin lips.

  ‘He did, did he?’

  The tone in her voice caused Jeannie to stare at her.

  ‘He was drunk, Mrs Murdo. The incident will be best forgotten.’

  To her surprise Mrs Murdo suddenly smiled.

  ‘You are right, Miss Millbuie. ’Twould be best forgotten.

  MacVey has held a grudge against the Millbuies ever since the old laird refused to employ the man on the estate. He has always been known as a worthless scoundrel. He gets charity here only because of his young daughter. He is not even a Balmacaan man but was born and raised in Mallaig. His parents were born in Balmacaan though and so, after his wife died and left him with a daughter who is not so well in the head, you understand, he came to Balmacaan and has been living on charity ever since.’

  She paused.

  ‘Aye, well, the business is best forgotten. I’ll away and run a bath for you. You look as if you’ll be needing it.’

  Jeannie looked at the state of her clothing and the scratches on her hands and nodded her assent.

  After the door had closed on the housekeeper’s tall figure, she found herself reflecting that Mrs Murd
o was a strange woman.

  *

  When Jeannie woke up in her darkened room sometime later she was sure that it was the strange wailing sound which had awoken her yet again. She rubbed her eyes, reached out for her torch and shone it at her travelling clock on the side table. It was two-thirty. She sat up listening.

  There was a movement along the corridor, the creaking of a loose floorboard and the soft hum of voices.

  Jeannie frowned.

  Was it Mrs Murdo and, if so, who the devil could she be entertaining at this time of the night?

  Swinging out of bed, Jeannie donned her bathrobe and walked softly to the door. Carefully, she drew it open and looked up and down the corridor. She could see it was deserted in spite of the shadowy gloom.

  She went out into the corridor, drawing the door of her room shut behind her.

  Head to one side, in order to pinpoint the hum of voices, she walked cautiously along the corridor and came to the stair well. Everywhere was shrouded in blackness and she kept close to the wall, feeling her way along it to the head of the stairs. Why did she not simply call out and ask who was there? She could not explain. She felt a strange thrill of apprehension, of danger.

  As she reached the head of the stairs, her ears picked up the sound of a door opening on the landing below. It was the room in which Mrs Murdo slept, for she knew every other room on that floor was empty. Keeping close to the wall, Jeannie felt her way down the stairs until she was able to peer over the bannister rail and see a shaft of light illuminating the gloom, shining from the half opened door of the housekeeper’s bedroom.

  Jeannie listened intently as the hum of voices came again.

  The first voice was the brittle tones of Mrs Murdo.

  ‘ … fast asleep. Suspicious? No, she’s just a silly young thing who knows nothing.’

  Another voice answered, a man’s voice, low pitched and urgent. Jeannie strained to hear what it said but could not catch any individual words. But there was something strangely familiar about that voice. It was a voice that she had heard fairly recently. But whose was it?

  ‘No, no,’ Mrs Murdo was replying. ‘But are we sure that she is truly a descendant of Cathan?’

  The man’s voice answered.

  ‘We know that,’ rejoined Mrs Murdo. ‘But are you sure? Will she be acceptable?’

  The voice said something else.

  ‘Very well. But it must be soon. We cannot keep him waiting much longer. The period is almost passed away. We’d best go.’

  Jeannie turned, tensing herself for Mrs Murdo and her guest to emerge from the room; she had ascended three stairs before she halted. A silence had fallen. She paused and turned back to look at Mrs Murdo’s door. No one had emerged.

  After a few minutes she gathered her courage. After all, it was her house. She pulled herself upright and walked to the door of the room. She paused a second outside, head to one side, listening to the silence, then she pushed it open and entered.

  The room was empty. She stood in amazement, examining the room in which a myriad of shadows danced to the tune of the flickering flames of the fire, which cast its eerie glow about the place. She shuddered involuntarily and took a hesitant step forward. There were no other doors apart from the door she had entered by, yet the room was definitely empty.

  Where had Mrs Murdo and her visitor gone?

  Who was the owner of that strangely familiar voice?

  Biting her lip in perplexity, Jeannie turned and hurried back to her own room. Before entering she switched on the light and looked around. Then she went in, closed the door and locked it.

  Her mind was suddenly a riot of fears: who had Mrs Murdo been talking to; where had they gone; were they talking about her? It must have been her they were talking about. What was the reference to Cathan? It was surely Cathan of the Yellow Honey, Cathan Millbuie, they meant. And she was certainly the only surviving descendant of his. But what was meant as to whether she was acceptable? Acceptable to whom? The solicitors had already adjudged her acceptability as the inheritor of Balmacaan. So who else should she be acceptable to? And who was it that they were keeping waiting? And what period was almost passed? Questions twirled like a kaleidoscope through her mind.

  In addition to the questions came the memories of Lachlan MacVey, of the village policeman, the unfriendliness of Mrs Murdo and the strange keening sounds.

  Jeannie eventually fell into a troubled sleep with the lights of her room still on. It was a sleep in which fanciful dreams connected with monsters, Lachlan MacVey, Mrs Murdo and even Colonel Maitland became interwoven; in which she was taken on board some vessel, bound hand and foot, and ferried into the middle of the loch and then cast into its black depths towards a great serpent-like creature while millions of tourists took photographs from the shore.

  She started awake with sweat pouring from her face.

  It was sunlight outside.

  She felt terrible.

  She sat in bed thinking hard about the events of the past few days.

  There was some mystery at Balmacaan; something was wrong, she could feel it. But what? If only Tim was here. Even as she made the wish her mind crystallised it into a course of action. Today she would ring up Tim and try to persuade him to change his plans and come to Scotland for a few days. She would feel so much better if he was there — calm, stable, dependable.

  Jeannie smiled.

  So much for feminine independence. But Tim would surely know what to do; he would be able to get to the bottom of these peculiar events.

  Thus resolving her plan, Jeannie jumped out of her bed and went to the bathroom to wash and dress.

  INTERLUDE

  And all were stricken with very great terror, both Christian monk and Celtic warrior alike. Then the blessed saint, Colm Cille of Iona, raised his hand and drew the sign of the cross in the air and invoked the name of God and commanded the fierce monster from the depths of Loch Ness, saying: ‘Think not to harm us nor to touch my servant. Return to the depths, o great beast!’ Even the very ground trembled at his voice and the waters of the loch hissed and bubbled. Whereupon, the monster, hearing the voice of the saintly man, was terrified and fled backwards and Lugh Mac Colm returned safely to the shore greatly marvelling and glorifying the God of the Christians.

  translated by Donald Millbuie from

  Leabhar Mor na Moireabk

  The Great Book of Moray

  In the cold black waters of the loch , the intelligence brooded on its loneliness; too long had it wept for its dead, of the things it had loved — its mate and its offspring. And the memories grew bitter and the bitterness became acute when it reflected on the times when it had not loved its mate enough; the times when it had shown anger when it should have shown love; when it had shown indifference when it should have shown concern. Did the man-things ever feel such emotion? Or were primitive animals incapable of feeling such things?

  The intelligence sighed, grieving once more for its lost mate and offspring, its lost future, its lost immortality.

  The images of the day, so long, so long ago, ran through its memory once again.

  The man-things came out on the loch searching for it and its mate, provoking them, after destroying the unhatched egg in which an entire species had perished. Its mate had fled to the caves beneath the shores of the loch while rage had overtaken it. It had sped upwards to revenge itself on the puny man-things. But there stood a silly man-thing, one who stood apart from the others, clad in white with a silver cross around its neck. One who held up his hand and roared unintelligible words in a loud voice.

  The ground had trembled with his roarings; the waters had bubbled and the intelligence had realised that the silly man-thing’s roaring had set off an underwater subsidence. It had sped back to its mate … but the caves were no longer there. The boulders had cascaded down burying its mate. And now the Saurian was alone. Alone.

  The last of its kind.

  And now, out of its grief, there were only two desperate cravin
gs which gave meaning to the long years of lonely existence. Vengeance on the breed of puny man-things who wore the cross-symbol at their necks; and the driving need to procreate its kind before it, too, perished and the Saurian race would be no more.

  The centuries had come and gone and still the intelligence knew the pain of grief. Once its sire had rebuked that to grieve too excessively for things dead was to affront the living. But that was so long ago, while there was hope for the Saurian species. Now there was no life; no Saurian life. So to whom would the affront be made? To the mannings who now so proudly strutted the earth thinking they were chosen among the species, chosen to rule the earth? Yet their time would come, they, too, would witness the dying of their race, their species, their world. They, too, would go down into the blackness and what then of their vainglorious boasting, their paltry knowledge and their hopes?

  Again the intelligence reflected on the silly man-thing clad in white with the silver cross around his neck whose loud roaring voice had set off the tremors at the loch side which had led to the underwater subsidence and the death of its mate.

  A surge of anger shot through its nerves.

  It wanted to destroy, to obliterate all who wore that cross-symbol around their necks.

  It wanted their destruction.

  It wanted vengeance.

  And yet the Saurian intellect, the hundreds of millions of years of culture and philosophy, the rational, kept repeating that vengeance was no answer. It was not right to return evil for evil; the blood of the Saurian could not be washed away with the blood of the Human. Vengeance was merely the joy of the sick, petty mind which though sweet at first recoiled and became bitter. Vengeance became its own executioner; keeping red the wounds of hate which could have healed through the long ages.

  Yet the emotional mind dominated the rational mind.

  Aeons had passed since the first Saurian had pretended that they were above, and better than, all other animal species; had pretended and rationalised that they had been placed as the dominant species on earth by some undefinable superior force. The Saurian philosophers had, at first, even denied their animal origin and claimed to have been created in some miraculous fashion to command all the other creatures of the earth.