The Loch Ness Lock-In

by Matthew Cody

  And posters.

  And I’d make it my screen saver.

  “You’ve all got your camping provisions,” said Walter. “So you won’t go hungry. And you’ll all have a nice quiet night’s rest once you take care of the red cap.”

  “Huh?” said Ginger. “What’s a red cap?”

  “I believe Ben has the scouts’ handbook,” said Walter. “Page 180, if I remember correctly.”

  My handbook, or The Strange Scouts Handbook of Cryptozoology and Manners, as it was properly called, was part scout guide and part monster encyclopedia. Also, it was a smelly old relic that gathered dust and grew mold in equal measure. But it was filled with all sorts of valuable information on knot tying, camping, and monsters—the usual Strange Scouts stuff.

  I flipped to the correct page. “It says here that red caps are small, gnomish creatures that make their homes in old castles and lighthouses—places so decrepit that they’ve been abandoned by humans.”

  Ginger glanced up at the ancient lighthouse. “Fits the bill.”

  I kept reading. “The red cap gets its name from its distinctive choice of headwear….”

  “Sounds cute,” said Asma.

  But I wasn’t done. “However, the legend that their caps are red because they dip them in their enemies’ blood is almost certainly without merit.”

  “Okay, I take it back,” said Asma. “Definitely not cute.”

  “You’re not going to make us spend the night in there with one of those creatures, are you?” I asked.

  The old Scout Master shrugged. “The locals say this lighthouse is haunted, but it’s really just the red cap up to his usual mischief. Keep your wits about you, stay calm, and you’ll be fine. The book says the whole bloody cap thing is a legend without merit, right?”

  “Almost without merit,” said Ginger. “Pretty important distinction!”

  But Walter waved her worries away. “Follow the handbook’s suggestions for handling a red cap and there’ll be no problem. This is your first Strange Scouts lock-in!”

  “And what will you be doing while we wrangle this red cap?” I asked.

  Walter gazed out over the misty lake. “I gotta find out what all this Nessie business is about. But I’ll be back to fetch you in the morning. Meanwhile, Scout Master Spitzer will keep an eye on the lighthouse from out here in the bus.”

  “Why can’t Spitzer come inside with us?” asked Ginger.

  “Whoa, that nasty little guy is your problem,” answered Spitzer.

  Walter shoved a shiny silver whistle into Ginger’s hand. “Here. If you all think you’re in over your heads, blow this and Spitzer will come get you out. Won’t you, Spitzer?”

  The thick-necked Scout Master sighed. “I guess.”

  “There,” said Walter. “Now I got some investigating to do, so I’ll see you all at sunup.”

  And with that, Scout Master Walter trudged off along the shore, disappearing into the mist.

  As the rest of Troop D grabbed their sleeping bags out of the bus, I approached Spitzer. “Uh, excuse me, sir?”

  He eyed me warily. “What is it, Beederman?”

  “Well, Walter said that you were once a Strange Scout yourself, maybe one of the best.” Actually, he’d said Spitzer was the best. My handbook had even belonged to him once upon a time. He’d written all sorts of useful tips in the margins back when he was a kid. But for whatever reason, he practically loathed the Strange Scouts now.

  “What’s your point?” he asked, scowling.

  “I was wondering if you ever did this. Walter said that every scout spent the night in that lighthouse, so I thought you might have some tips.”

  Spitzer leaned in close and said, “Yeah, I got a tip: Forget about all of this. You kids don’t have what it takes, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll quit while you still can.”

  Have I mentioned that Spitzer is also a bully? I mean, here’s Exhibit A. All I did was ask for a bit of advice! But I was not about to let him spook me now.

  “Fine, don’t help us,” I said, getting angrier with every word. Seriously, I was channeling my inner Ginger. “We’ll be just fine on our own!”

  Spitzer laughed in my face. “You’ll be blowing that whistle ten minutes in. Just watch!”

  And with that encouraging pep talk out of the way, Troop D marched up the steps to the lighthouse. I had the handbook and a newfound determination to prove Spitzer wrong. I was ready for anything.

  Or so I thought.

  It was dark and spooky inside, just like you’d expect a haunted lighthouse to be. When the front door squeaked open on its rusty hinges, the sound echoed all the way to the signal room at the very top. Cobwebs crisscrossed the ceiling, and someone had stacked a few old tables and chairs against one wall. Several were missing legs. A few small windows set high in the wall let in a bit of moonlight.

  “No light switch,” said Ginger.

  “Worse, no Wi-Fi,” said Manuel.

  We set up battery-powered camping lanterns and spread out our sleeping bags on the ground floor. So far, there was no sign of the red cap, but inside a dusty cupboard we did find a bunch of old butterfly nets and a few mason jars with holes poked in the lids.

  “These might be useful,” suggested Asma. “What does the book say, Ben?”

  “It’s weird,” I said, skimming the page on red caps. “It says that they are usually solitary creatures, but they have a unique defense mechanism: multiplication.”

  Ginger wrinkled her nose. “Multiplication? They do math at you?”

  “It just says ‘multiplication.’ Weird. Oh, and it also warns that red caps are empaths.”

  “Emp-whats?” asked Ginger.

  “Empaths. It means they can sense emotions. Says in here they like the calm quiet of abandoned places, but strong emotions such as fear, anxiety, and especially anger get them riled up.”

  Asma cleared her throat to get our attention. “Um, I think we’ve got a visitor.”

  Standing on the table was a tiny creature wearing a red cap. He was calmly watching us, as if he’d been there the whole time. He blinked up at us with big, kitten-like eyes.

  “Aww!” said Asma.

  Then he picked his nose and flung it at her.

  “Eww!”

  The red cap mimicked her “eww” in his squeaky little voice, then grabbed his belly and laughed.

  “All right,” snapped Asma. “You don’t have to be rude!”

  The red cap blew a raspberry.

  “Jeez,” said Ginger. “Does the book say anything about red caps being beasties?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Manuel. “This little guy’s no threat. All we gotta do is keep our cool until sunrise and we’ll have no prob—”

  Manuel was cut off by a loud beep coming from his video game. “Whoops. Battery’s almost dead. Anyone see an outlet where I can plug in?”

  Asma, Ginger, and I shared worried looks. The three of us were thinking the exact same thing, which hadn’t yet dawned on Manuel.

  There was no electricity in the lighthouse, which meant no outlets.

  Which meant Manuel was about to seriously freak out in three…two…one…

  “Gah!” he screamed. “I’m gonna lose my progress! I’m too close to the save point now to quit!”

  He grabbed Ginger by the shoulders. “Quick, blow the whistle! We gotta get out of here!”

  Ginger shoved him off. “We just got here, you dimwit.”

  “Uh, guys?” I said. “Guys!”

  Ginger and Manuel stopped arguing, and everyone looked down at the red cap.

  His face was bright red, and he was huffing and puffing like he was going to explode.

  “You said that things like anger get them riled up?” whispered Asma.

  “Oh, shoot,” moaned Ginger.
/>   Then it happened. The red cap multiplied.

  There was a “pop!” and suddenly a second red cap appeared out of thin air. Then another.

  Another “pop!” and one landed in Asma’s hair. “Gross! Get it off! There’s no telling where it’s been!” she screamed.

  It sounded like a popcorn popper in there, but instead of kernels flying around, the air was filled with red caps. They went for the backpacks and began grabbing whatever they could find. Food, socks. One of them stuck a mini box of Corn Flakes over its head.

  “Hey!” shouted Ginger. “That’s my breakfast!” She charged after the little creature, but it ducked under a broken table, bumped into the wall (remember, it had a box of cereal over its head), and scurried out of reach.

  Ginger’s face was getting redder by the minute as she tried, and failed, to catch the little monsters.

  Another snatched Manuel’s video game out of his hand and began maniacally pushing random buttons.

  Asma ran for the door, but it was blocked by a whole group of red caps squirting hand sanitizer at anyone who came too close.

  We grabbed the butterfly nets and mason jars and tried to catch them, but the creatures were too fast. And when we did manage to snag one, it would go “pop!” and produce three more.

  “Wait!” I shouted, trying desperately to get my friends’ attention. “We have to calm down, everyone! We’re just making it worse.”

  But then something tripped me as I was going by. I fell face-first onto the dusty floor, and suddenly I was covered in a swarm of little red-capped beasties. They pinched, tickled, and blew raspberries at me until I managed to swat them away.

  When I was finally able to stand, my boots were gone.

  This was a disaster. The door was blocked and soon we’d be up to our knees in red caps. “Ginger!” I yelled. “Blow the stupid whistle!”

  Ginger was busy playing whack-a-mole with a frying pan and two red caps.

  “GINGER!” Asma, Manuel, and I all shouted at once.

  “Fine!” She dropped the pan and put the whistle to her lips. She blew, and a clear, high-pitched whistle rang out into the night.

  Everyone froze, even the red caps.

  She blew it again, but nothing happened.

  “Where’s Spitzer?” asked Asma.

  I shooed a group of red caps away from a chair and climbed on it to look out the nearest window. There was the bus, but no Spitzer. He was nowhere in sight.

  There was no one to come to the rescue.

  And with a shout of triumph, the red caps resumed their super annoying frenzy.

  “Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!” they cried.

  We were done for.

  So that’s how I ended up bootless in a Scottish lighthouse that was swarming with little red-capped beasties.

  And I still hadn’t seen a real live haggis.

  But the story doesn’t end there. In fact, the real excitement was about to start. Because just when I thought things couldn’t get scarier and the red caps had reached their height of beastiness, the lighthouse started to shake.

  It began as a low rumble that could barely be heard over the red caps’ party, but then it grew into a roar. Dust fell from the rafters, and a few red caps did, too, as the whole lighthouse trembled. Everyone, even the red caps, stood stock-still as an enormous shadow passed by the windows, blocking out the moon.

  Something was outside the lighthouse, and that something was huge.

  Then we heard the loud crash of metal twisting and glass breaking, followed by the sound of something big splashing around in the water.

  Hey, here’s something the book didn’t mention about red caps—they’re also little cowards. Because one minute they were there and the next, gone. They scurried into hiding so fast they left my boots behind.

  As for Troop D, we waited until all was quiet. Then we crept outside.

  Everything was a complete mess. Something had crushed the bus like a tin can, and the ground all around was flattened, like something enormous had dragged itself across it. And just like at the wind farm, the trail led back to the misty lake.

  “Uh, guys?” said Asma. “Did Nessie just wreck our bus?”

  It sure looked like it. What else coming out of that lake could have done so much damage? It was an awful possibility to think about.

  After all these years of peacefully avoiding humans, why would Nessie start smashing up the shore now?

  “Wh-what? What happened to our bus?” a voice sputtered from behind us.

  We turned to see Spitzer standing there, mouth open in shock. He had his golf clubs slung over one shoulder and a stuffed lake monster under his arm.

  “I leave you alone for one hour and look at this!” he said. “What did you do?”

  “We didn’t do anything,” snapped Ginger. “Other than get our behinds whooped by red caps while our chaperone played Putt-Putt golf!”

  Spitzer’s sneer cracked, and suddenly he looked worried. “I…I only played a few rounds. I just needed to get the trophy.” He held up the stuffed lake monster.

  Ginger slapped her forehead. “That’s not a trophy, it’s a toy!”

  “Says someone who knows nothing about the art of miniature golf!” said Spitzer as he hugged his toy closer to him.

  I had had enough.

  “Can we please stop arguing about golf?” I shouted. As my voice echoed along the shore, I suddenly heard the chitter of little voices drifting from the lighthouse.

  “Better keep your voice down,” warned Asma.

  I sighed. “Asma’s right. Let’s all take a deep breath and calm down, because it’s no use arguing about what’s already happened. I think our bigger worry is Nessie.” I pointed to those weird, slithery tracks leading to the lake. “If she did this to our bus, there’s no telling what else she might do.”

  But Spitzer, surprisingly, disagreed. “She wouldn’t do this. Not in a million years.”

  “You have another explanation?” asked Manuel. “Our bus didn’t implode by itself.”

  “I don’t know,” said Spitzer. “But if you scouts failed Walter’s red cap test as spectacularly as it appears, we may never find out.”

  “Test?” I said. “What do you mean?”

  Spitzer laughed bitterly. “You haven’t figured it out yet? This trip to Scotland is a ritual for the Strange Scouts, and meeting Nessie is only the final part. First you gotta prove you can work as a team, keep your cool, and overcome your fear. If you don’t, you’ll remain junior scouts forever.”

  So the lighthouse was a test? That felt super unfair. Pop quizzes are bad enough, but at least you know you’re taking a pop quiz when it starts. “You could have told us.”

  “What more did you need to know?” asked Spitzer. “Being a scout isn’t about doing the right thing when you’re expected to—it’s about doing the right thing all the time.”

  “Hey, it wasn’t a total failure,” said Manuel. He held up a glass mason jar. “I caught one of them.”

  Inside the mason jar was a single red cap, sound asleep. The little guy had tuckered himself out. If you listened closely, you could even hear his tiny snores.

  “What are you doing!” whispered Spitzer. “Aren’t you all in enough trouble?”

  Manuel blushed. “Okay, I’ll let him loose.” He started to unscrew the lid.

  But Spitzer frantically shook his head. “No! Not here! Take that thing back inside.”

  “I’m not going back in there,” said Manuel. “You do it.”

  Spitzer paled. He looked like he’d rather eat an entire haggis than step one foot inside that lighthouse. “Fine,” he sighed. “Just put it away. We’ll figure out what to do with it later.”

  With a shrug, Manuel stowed the jarred red cap safely inside his backpack.

  But Ginger wasn’t about to let Spitzer of
f that easily. “We’re not the only ones in trouble. You were supposed to be watching us!”

  “None of that matters,” said Asma. “Because I don’t think this”—she pointed to the ruined bus—“was part of the test, was it?”

  “No,” confirmed Spitzer. “There’s something fishy going on.”

  “Asma’s right.” Jeez, was that the second time I’d said that in five minutes? “We may stay junior scouts forever, but right now I think we need to find whatever did that to our bus.”

  “And if it is Nessie?” asked Manuel, worried.

  “Well, let’s hope the handbook has something useful in it about dealing with out-of-control lake monsters.”

  At the mention of the handbook, Spitzer gave me a look. “Shouldn’t we wait for Walter?” he asked. “He said he’d be back at dawn.”

  “That’s like eight hours away,” I said. “If Nessie really is on a rampage, people could be in danger. We need to protect them.”

  Asma, Ginger, and even Manuel nodded. “That’s what Strange Scouts do,” said Asma. Then she recited the Strange Scouts Oath, word for word:

  On my honor I will do my best:

  To honor Mother Nature and all her creations, especially the monstrous ones, to help my fellow citizens of the world, to preserve oddity and strangeness in all its glory, especially my own, because uniqueness is never weakness.

  Darn, she was right again! Even Spitzer gave in. “Fine. But I’m still the adult around here, so when we get out there, you kids do what I say. Promise?”

  We promised. Of course, each one of us had our fingers crossed behind our backs, but hey, if it made Spitzer feel better, then why not?

  “Okay, so now that we all agree that we’re honorable and honest scouts doing the right thing, I only have one question,” I said. “Anyone know where we can steal a boat?”

  In the end, we didn’t actually have to steal a boat, since Spitzer just rented one instead. Adventures are a lot easier when you’re a grown-up with your own wallet and credit cards and stuff.