by Steve Alten
“Until then, we’ll do what we can.” Reaching into his desk drawer, he pulled out a prescription pad. “I’m going to prescribe an antidepressant. Take it once a day before bedtime. As for the night terrors and your sudden fear of water, sometimes the best therapy is to deal with their causes head-on.”
“And how do I do that?”
“That, only you can figure out.”
* * *
I left his office, convinced the only way to salvage my career and “remove the Wallace curse” was to return to the Sargasso Sea and “face my dragon.” That meant resolving the mystery of the Bloops, no easy task, even without my psychological condition. Returning to the Sargasso meant raising money to fund another expedition. David had deserted me, and few companies would want to risk men and machinery in the wake of my recent disaster at sea.
Still, I had to try.
My mother and Charlie were returning home that afternoon. Charlie not only had money, but connections with several networks. Maybe his production company would be my sponsor?
* * *
“Absolutely not!” My mother stalked the living room, enraged that I’d even broach the subject. “You nearly died out there, Zachary, and now you want to go back?”
My stepfather winced. “Take it easy, Andrea—”
“Charlie Mason, you lend Zachary one silver nickel for this expedition, and you and I are through!”
She stormed off, the slamming door punctuating her words. “Sorry, Charlie, I didn’t mean to get you in any trouble.”
Good ol’ Charlie just shrugged it off. “As Will Rogers said, there are two theories to arguing with a woman, and neither of ‘em works. Your mom’s just worried about you. Let me work on her a while.”
* * *
But heart-stopping screams in the middle of the night were not exactly what my mother or Charlie had in mind when they invited me to stay with them. After the third straight night of listening to my mother threaten to send me to a sanitarium, I decided it would be best if I checked into a motel.
The next several months were a blur. I applied to every school with a marine sciences department, but the on-going war in Iraq, combined with the federal government’s massive tax cuts had led to deficits that were strapping the states and forcing universities to cut positions and programs. While I waited to hear something, I bounced around from job to job, painting houses, trimming landscapes, basically allowing my mind to turn to mush. The antidepressants made me nauseous, but had little effect on my night terrors. I soon found something that did: alcohol.
Being inebriated kept me from entering the deepest stages of sleep, the stages where the night terrors lay in wait. Given the choice between preserving my sanity and my liver, I chose my sanity.
I’d never been much of a drinker in college, but my tolerance rose quickly with my “cure,” and it wasn’t long before occasional use became abuse. Days were devoted to sleeping off hangovers, my nights reserved for bingeing on expensive drinks and cheap women, both of which I found in abundance in South Beach, my new favorite haunt.
Hey, everyone from my ex-fiancée to my shrink had told me to loosen up. As far as I was concerned, I was just following their advice. And it didn’t get any looser than South Beach after dark.
I’d hit the clubs by ten and party past dawn. Sometimes I’d make it back to my motel room, other times waking up in strange places I had no recollection of entering. I hung out with people whose names I couldn’t remember, and had sex with women who couldn’t care less.
And neither could I.
Having been goal-oriented and disciplined for as long as I could remember, I quickly became a rudderless, sinking ship. I stopped working out. I quit my job and lived off my savings, which vanished as quickly as the women in my life. No longer interested in the future, I was merely biding my time in the present.
I became a social vampire, a drunk haunted by my failures. I became my father.
* * *
It was a Thursday afternoon in May, five months after the Sargasso incident, when destiny came calling again. I was lying in a pile of wet towels on the bathroom floor of a motel efficiency when my brain registered a pounding on the door.
Sobriety greeted me with migrainelike symptoms. Pulling myself up by the porcelain, I spewed the prior night’s toxins into the toilet bowl (is there a worse stench than Jack Daniel’s over tacos?), then crawled toward the door.
The pounding awakened my escort from the previous night, a buxom rinsed-out blonde whose name never registered. Stumbling out of bed, totally naked, she unchained the door as the two of us confronted the stranger.
“Zachary Wallace? My name is Max Rael. How’d you do?”
He was a tall man in his late twenties, English, with strawberry blond hair, short and spiked, and his green eyes were highlighted by black eyeliner. Though temperatures were in the mid-eighties, he wore a heavy black trench coat and slacks, giving him a Gothic look.
In any other city he’d have been gawked at, but this was South Beach.
“What do you want? I’m paid up for the week.”
“No worries, brar, I’m not with the hotel. Actually, I work for your father.” He pushed past the blonde, then turned up his nose. “This room stinks of gunge. Pay off the bird and get dressed, we need to talk.”
* * *
An hour later, I found myself facing the Englishman on a park bench, hiding behind dark sunglasses.
“If you don’t mind me saying so, you look like you’ve come out on the wrong side of a swedge.”
“A swedge?”
“A fight. So who’s the battle with? Drugs? Booze? Women? Or all of the above?”
“Dragons. State your business, Mr. Rael. You said you work for my father?”
“I’m his barrister, his attorney. Your father’s been arrested for murder.”
“Murder?” I felt myself sober up. “Did he do it?”
“No. But it’s complicated. There were witnesses.”
“What happened? Who’s he accused of killing?”
“John Cialino Jr. Recognize the name?”
“Cialino ... wait, isn’t there a big real estate company in Britain—”
“Cialino Ventures. One of the largest in Europe. Angus was doing business with Johnny C. himself”
“That makes no sense. What would a man as wealthy as John Cialino want with my father?”
“The company’s building a fancy resort and health spa along the northwestern bank of Loch Ness, just south of Urquhart Bay. Angus held title to the land and—”
“Whoa ... My father owns land on Loch Ness?”
“Passed down to him from his paternal ancestors.”
“Funny how that never came up in my mother’s divorce settlement.”
“The land was unsellable for commercial use until a recent change in zoning. Anyway, Angus sold the land to Johnny C., but on the day in question, the two of ‘em got into a big squabble on a bluff overlooking the Loch. Witnesses saw your father take a swing at Cialino, who fell into Loch Ness. They’re still looking for the body, but with the depths and cold temperatures ... well, the Loch’s known for not giving up her dead.”
“Sounds more like an accident than murder.”
“Like I said, it’s complicated. There’s rumors that Angus and Johnny C’s wife were carrying on a bit under the sheets.”
And there it was. The moment Max mentioned the affair, I knew my father was guilty as charged.
“He was probably drunk,” I said, ignoring my own fall from grace. “Guess the numbers finally caught up with him, not that I’m surprised. Anyway, best of luck. I hope you’re a better lawyer than you are a hair stylist.”
“I’m not here as a messenger, Zachary. I’ve come to Miami to bring you back to Scotland. Angus needs you, he needs your emotional support.”
I blurted out a laugh, the sudden movement sending a fresh wave of pain through my hung over brain. “Emotional support? Since when does Angus Wallace need anyone
’s emotional support? Where was my emotional support? Hell, the man hasn’t so much as sent me a birthday card in seventeen years. As far as I’m concerned, he can use a few years in prison. Maybe next time he’ll think twice before screwing around with another man’s wife.”
Max shot me a stern look. “If Angus’s found guilty of murder in the first, he’s looking at the death penalty.”
“Death penalty? I thought Europe abolished capital punishment?”
“Britain’s quietly changed their view since that last series of terrorist attacks. Make no mistake, the Cialinos are a powerful, well- connected family. The murder’s become our equivalent of your O.J. Simpson trial. It’s in every paper, on every TV station. If Angus is found guilty, he’ll hang.”
I sat back and stared at the passing beach-goers, feeling a bit lost. “Max, I haven’t spoken with my father since I was nine. Why would he want me with him after all this time?”
“Maybe he sees it as his last chance to make some sort of restitution.”
“Toward me? You obviously don’t know my father. The man’s a liar and a cheat and that’s on his best days. The man never gave a damn about anyone but himself”
Max stunned me with a hard slap across the top of my skull. “That’ll be quite enough negativity After all, the man is our father.”
I balled my fists, until the Englishman’s words sank in.
“That’s right, little brother. Angus is my father, too. Knocked up my mum three years before leaving her and marrying yours. Maybe he did me a favor, seein’ as how you turned out. But people change as they get older, and, in my book, they deserve a second chance. No doubt Angus did us both some wrong, but he’s made amends with me, and now he’s reachin’ out to you. So now it’s up to you. Will ye be there for him in his time of need, or do you prefer to take your anger with you to the grave?”
Two hours later, Max and I boarded a Continental Airlines flight out of Miami, bound for Inverness.
Chapter 5 Quotes
« ^ »
I was seated on a rock, above Abriachan, just watching the water when I saw what I took to be a log coming across the Loch. Instead of going towards the river, as I expected, it suddenly came to life and went at great speed, wriggling and churning towards Urquhart Castle.
—D. MACKENZIE, BALNAIN RESIDENT, 1872
I regularly traveled on the mail steamer from Abriachan from Inverness. During the early morning hours, just before the dawn, I’d often see a strange, huge, salamanderlike creature frolicking along the surface.
—ALEXANDER MACDONALD, ABRIACHAN RESIDENT, 1889
Chapter 5
« ^ »
Aboard Continental Airlines Flight 8226
Over the Atlantic Ocean
IT WAS AN EIGHT-HOUR FLIGHT to Gatwick Airport, where we would have to switch planes to fly on to Scotland. We would not arrive in Inverness until seven in the morning, local time.
I was already exhausted, but determined to stay awake, fearing sleep and the possibilities of experiencing a night terror while on the plane. With the ongoing threat of terrorist attacks still keeping most Western travelers on edge, I knew that one bloodcurdling scream at forty thousand feet might result in an intense, free-for-all beating.
With Max snoring next to me, I remained awake, sobriety forcing me to think. Avoiding all thoughts of the Sargasso, I tried focusing my mind on Scotland, a land I scarcely remembered.
My mother had barely been out of college when she traveled to Britain with two friends and first laid eyes on my father. Angus Wallace was brash and handsome and larger-than-life to twenty-six-year-old Andrea McKnown, and the fact that she had recently lost her father and Angus was twenty-seven years her senior no doubt added to her infatuation. Their courtship lasted barely six weeks before he insisted they marry. Andrea said yes, partly because there was nothing waiting for her back home, partly because she was pregnant and couldn’t bear to face her mother, a strict Catholic. To this day, mom still insists I was born nine weeks prematurely instead of only three.
My mother put up with a lot during those early years, and, over time, as the glitter of her infatuation gradually faded, she began to see my father for what he truly was, an irresponsible drunk who loved to flirt as much as he liked to drink. I kept my father’s affairs from my mother as long as I could, but after nearly drowning, I’d confessed everything I knew. Biding her time, my mother waited until Angus’s next “business trip,” then sold our cottage and its furnishings, packed our bags, and filed for divorce. By the time Angus returned from Inverness, a new family had moved into his dwelling, and Mom and I were living in her mother’s home on Long Island, New York.
That was the last time I saw my father or Scotland, and I was surprised at how anxious I felt to see the Highlands again. Perhaps Angus was right when he said, “Born a Highlander, aye a Highlander, oor blood bleeds the plaid.”
* * *
Scottish identity comes from both the land and its history, and its history, like most of Europe’s, is a bloody one. Separated from continental Europe by the North Sea, Scotland forms the northern boundary of Great Britain, attached to England’s northern hip, and our people have always been in conflict with our neighbor to the south—a people greater in number and wealth and more advanced, especially in the art of warfare. Coexisting with the English has been our greatest challenge, and remains so, even today.
Like other nations, Scots are descendants of every race who ever settled upon our shores. Our earliest immigrants, primitive hunters, most likely came over from Europe about eight thousand years ago, shortly after the ice from the last Ice Age finally melted. We don’t know much about these ancient ones, but their island would be invaded some five thousand years later by a people known as the Celts. Hailing from parts of northwestern Europe, these conquerors referred to themselves as “Pretani,” which was later misconstrued by future Celtic settlers as “Britoni.”
Britons soon found themselves invaded by the Romans, the masters of Europe and the Mediterranean world who never met a land they didn’t seek to conquer. The Romans quickly subdued the Celtic tribes of the south, then gradually worked their way north toward the future nation of Scotland. Unfortunately for the Romans, the farther they distanced themselves from their southern ports, the more difficult it was to maintain their supply lines.
The northern region also involved another challenge: the Highlanders.
To the Roman conquerors, these mountain barbarians were known as the Picts, a name derived from the Latin word, Pictii, meaning painted, perhaps referring to the tribes’ body tattoos, or their written records, left in the form of pictures carved on great vertical stones. To this day, we’re not sure where they came from, what language they spoke, or what they even called themselves, but one thing is clear, these Highland warriors refused to succumb to the rule of Rome, or of any other invader. Like relentless vermin, the Picts never ceased attacking the Romans, and by A.D. 409, the Romans had finally had enough, abandoning Britannia, leaving as legacy their lifestyle and the Christian religion.
It was about this time that a Gaelic-speaking tribe invaded Britain and settled along Scotland’s southwest coast, establishing the kingdom of Dalriada. These were the Scots and they came from Scotia, the northeastern region of Ireland, then called Hibernia. By the seventh century, they had succeeded in moving their frontier a half day’s march south of Inverness, the Pictish capital, before eventually being pushed back again toward Dalriada.
By A.D. 834, the Picts found their armies occupied to the north by the invading Vikings, to the south by the Angles, and to the west by the Scots. Seriously weakened by the Viking raids, Drust IX, the new Pict king, accepted an invitation by Kenneth MacAlpin, a Scot from the Gabhran clan, to settle the issue of Dalriada. Arriving in Scone, Drust and his nobles were plied with alcohol and became quite drunk. The Scots then pulled the bolts from the Picts’ benches, trapping the king and his nobles in earthen hollows, where they impaled them on sharp blades
and killed them.
Having defeated the Picts, MacAlpin claimed the Scottish crown and renamed his new kingdom, Alba, which he ruled until his death in A.D. 858. For the next three hundred years, the Scots continued to battle the Angles to the south and the Norsemen in the north. The Viking wars would finally end in 1266 with the battle of Largs and the Treaty of Perth.
But Scotland’s turbulent history was just getting started.
The accidental death of Alexander II, King of Scots, in 1286, left an empty throne. As a sign of friendship and respect, the Scottish nobles invited King Edward (Longshanks) I of England to act as judge during the selection process for their new king. Instead of choosing, Longshanks arrived in Scotland with his army, citing a dynastic marriage made a century earlier as basis for his own right to the crown. Though Longshanks’s claim had no legitimacy, Scotland was forced to accept Sir John Balliol as their newly elected king as part of England’s compromise.
But Longshanks was not through. Still seeking Scotland as part of his own kingdom, he imprisoned John Balliol in the Tower of London, then used state terrorism to subdue the Scottish nobles and their subjects.
The Scots finally rebelled in the spring of 1297. They were led by Sir Andrew de Moray in the north and, in the south, by my own kinsman, Sir William Wallace.
William Wallace was born sometime around 1270, most likely in Ayrshire. He had an elder brother, Malcolm, an uncle Richard, and another uncle—a priest—who prepared him for life in the church. The death of William’s father at the hands of English troops changed William’s destiny, marking him as an outlaw. After killing several soldiers, Wallace was captured and locked up in a dungeon where he lapsed into a coma. Rumors spread that he died of fever, but when a former nanny received permission to bury him, she found he still had a pulse. She nursed him back to health, and soon he was out recruiting other patriots, organizing a guerrilla army against the English.
Longshanks had become William Wallace’s dragon, and a warrior was born.
