by Hunter Shea
Austin slides off his stool. “Great speech. I gotta take a wicked piss.”
Henrik pats my arm. “I liked it very much.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Chapter Fourteen
Because I wasn’t expecting to have to feed another person, I head over to Mrs. Carr’s for some provisions.
My nightmare rocketed me awake at a little after five. I stayed awake, my brain buzzing with all of the things we have to do over the next few days. It’s also buzzing a bit from a hangover, but I solve that with two aspirin and enough water to drown a sea turtle.
I give Sphere back to Mrs. Carr.
“Did you like it, deary?”
“It was great. Thank you again for thinking of me. Hopefully, you can pass it on to someone else.”
I doubt it’ll survive another reading. The spine cracked to the point of being soft as tissue and the pages are barely clinging to the dried-up glue.
“Oh, I’m sure I will. Plenty of people about who like a good science fiction story around these parts. It doesn’t look like today will be a good one to be on the water. I don’t suppose you’ll be needing to rent a boat.”
I look outside the display window. It’s gray and gloomy and raining. It’s supposed to be like that for the rest of the week. Perfect.
“Not today, Mrs. Carr. I have other plans to keep me busy.”
She gives me a beatific smile. I just want to hug her; she’s so adorable.
For someone about to go to battle with a family of monsters that almost killed me, I realize I’m awfully happy. Perhaps I’ve just gone native and appreciate a dreary day.
The boys are still sleeping it off when I return. The butchers will be here in four hours. The inside of the RV smells like sour booze sweat and farts. Thank God there’s a collapsible awning on the side of the RV. I set it up, grab a trashy magazine, and settle under it, listening to the tap-tap-tap of the rain plinking on the canvas awning. I love the smell of rain in the morning. It’s so comforting.
“You have a fly in your mouth.”
I wake up so startled, I almost fall out of my chair.
Henrik stands over me with a towel draped over his shoulder. “It’s gone now.”
My magazine must have fallen and blown away while I slept. It’s a waterlogged blob in the mud where my picnic table used to be.
“What time is it?”
Henrik checks his watch. “Almost eleven. Here, your awning leaves a little to be desired.”
He tosses the towel on my lap. I’m not soaked, but I am damp all over. At least it’s not from my terror sweat.
“I was thinking about what you said last night. About the creatures being a new species. I can’t help but wonder if we have a responsibility to preserve at least one of them in the interest of science.”
Rubbing my face and hair dry, I stare at him from under the towel. “Any chance you brought a big ass cage in that cute little van of yours?”
He looks back at the pink delight.
“Um, no.”
“Well, I don’t have any plastic bags that’ll hold one like it’s a goldfish at a county fair, so I guess we’re out of luck.”
I can see Henrik will not go down that easy. “Perhaps if we wound one so it’s complacent enough to be tugged in. We can call a university or even that television network and have them do with the body as they wish.”
I hand the towel back to my German co-conspirator.
“It’s not like we can stick around and take a bow. We’re going to stir things up pretty bad. We’ll be lucky to make our exit without getting arrested, much less waiting around for some scientist to claim the find of this or any other century. I’m sorry, Henrik, but we’re here for one reason only – to kill those bastards.”
“And bitches,” he adds.
“Right. And bitches.”
“I understand, Natalie. It was just a thought.”
“You want to save an Orang Pendek for that Finding Bigfoot show when we’re in Indonesia?”
“Point well taken. Now, I believe your bait is about to arrive.”
We hear the vans rumbling toward us before we see them. My little plot of land is about to get a bizarre makeover – modern outdoor slaughterhouse. It’s all the rage in Europe.
“Hey, muscle man! Time to earn your keep.” I slap my hand on the side of the RV.
My brother comes out in that black jogging suit. “Afraid of a little rain?”
“What, I like it.”
Henrik raises an eyebrow at me. “At least someone appreciates it.”
I’m not going to tell him that I plan to wear mine tomorrow.
The cows come home, this time without Popeye and his shaggy haired assistant. My strange order may have wigged them out.
It takes us the better part of twenty minutes to get all dozen carcasses out of the two vans. We lay them on the ground, in the wet leaves and pine needles. These drivers don’t ask any questions, especially after they eye the big tip I hand over to the guy with the clipboard. I’m sure they’ll talk about us later. The key is, I won’t be around to hear it.
Austin is breathing heavy, having done most of the lifting and shifting bodies around. The muscles on his arms are raised like little racecar tracks. It’s a tad unsightly. “Now what?”
“We prepare Vindicta for tomorrow. I’ll show you guys all the little storage nooks and crannies. She can take on a lot of gear.”
Henrik wipes the cow blood on his hands on some leaves. “I have a lot of gear to give.”
“And Austin, I elect you to carry those depth charges because they look heavy.”
“This is better than the gym.”
“I know most gyms are meat markets, but this is going to an extreme,” Henrik says, opening up his rainbow van.
I’m happy to see Vindicta is afloat. I keep checking on her, waiting for some fatal crack in a pontoon to appear and literally sink our entire mission. She’s one tough bitch.
By the time we’re done, Henrik and I are soaked to the marrow, whereas Austin in his now smelly tracksuit can’t stop talking about how dry he is. Vindicta sits lower in the loch. Her speed will be compromised. That’s a concern. Those things are fast. All my years of planning didn’t account for an arsenal provided by a German with the polite nature of a maître de.
With any luck, we won’t need to run away. When they come at us, our job will be to face them head on until there’s nothing left of them.
Still, it’s nice to have the option of living for another day, should things go sideways. And I smell sideways blowing on the wind.
“She looks heavy,” Austin says. We stand on the shore, looking at Vindicta. There’s nary a weapon of monster destruction in sight.
“I thought you liked girls with a little meat on them.”
“I do. But not when I need them to carry my ass around.”
Walking back to the RV, I hear my cell phone chirping. Austin is already here, which means it can be one of only a couple of people. I’m not big on giving out my number. Hell, I don’t even exist on social media. I’m a total outlier in my generation and I make no apologies.
I run into the RV, tracking in a full cloud of water. “Yeah.”
“Nat? It’s Rob Rayman.”
“Hey, Rob. You keeping dry in that tent of yours?”
“I had to ditch the tent last night. The car is much more waterproof. Listen, I thought you should know about what I just saw. Or what I think I just saw.”
“Why don’t you come over and tell me in person. My brother is here.”
“Do you have coffee?”
“Yep.”
“Hazelnut?”
“Don’t push it.”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes or so.”
Austin has unzipped the top of his jogging suit. I catch him admiring his solid chest, pecs bigger than my own tits. “You really are in love with yourself.”
“Just checking out the definition all that lifting brought out. Who was on the ph
one?”
“A guy who’s just like me. Lives on the other side of the loch. He’s coming over. Please put a shirt on. I don’t want him getting all hot and bothered.”
Henrik stands on the narrow steps by the door, letting the water drip from his clothes and under the door. “If you want some privacy, I can drive a bit.”
“No, I’ll want you to hear this. You can make yourself useful and get some coffee started. Make a lot. Rob is a caffeine addict.”
Chapter Fifteen
Rob Rayman quit his job as a school administrator in Ohio ten years ago to devote his life to capturing definitive proof of the Loch Ness Monster. He’s short and narrow, with slicked back gray hair and loaded with nervous tics. The locals all think there’s something wrong with him, aside from the fact he lives in a tent most of the time, setting up cameras night and day in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the monster. He reminds me of a bird sipping from a birdbath, knowing several cats are close by and watching his every move.
He’s one of a half-dozen, full-time monster hunters on Loch Ness. A couple of the others have gotten their fifteen minutes of fame, being featured on specials about the Loch Ness Monster, interviews on the news and newspaper and magazine articles.
Rob, with all of his fluttering machinations and compulsions, has been kept under the radar. People sum him up in one word: kook.
Naturally, Rob is the only one I talk to. He’s actually quite bright, a victim of a skittish temperament brought on from a nervous breakdown the year his wife died and he lost his job. It brought out a raging case of OCD, and he’s been fighting it ever since.
“Greetings and salutations,” he says, scratching at the back of his neck like he’s trying to dig something out from deep under the skin.
“Long time no speak.” I hand him a steaming cup of coffee. He takes it in both hands.
“Ah, sweet elixir from the gods. So, which one of you is the infamous Austin?”
“Infamous?” Austin pouts. It looks off-putting on that beefed up meatball face.
I make the introductions all around.
“Are you a Nessie enthusiast , too?” he asks Henrik.
“I’m very enthusiastic to assist Natalie and Austin.”
It comes to me that I never want to play poker with Henrik. The man knows how to play it cool.
We gather around my less than spacious kitchen/dining room table.
Rob says, “You planning on having a big barbecue?”
I’m not sure where he’s going with that one. He sees my confusion, because he quickly adds, “All those sides of beef you have out there. Looks like you’re ready to feed all of the Highlands.”
“I’ll tell you all about it after you tell me what you saw.”
“Promise?” Now he’s tapping his heel against the floor and tugging at his eyebrow. I know in his head, he’s counting.
“Promise.” That stops the eyebrow tugging.
He takes a long sip of coffee. “Mind you, it all happened so fast, I didn’t catch it on camera. You’ll have to take me at my word.”
Rob has dozens of cameras around him at all times. I wonder how he could miss anything.
Austin sits so close to me, I’m almost pushed off the bench. Henrik stands beside Rob.
“I saw it early this morning, right around sunrise. Well, if the sun would have been able to make it through this cloud cover. I got out of my car to, ah, relieve myself. I’d had a hard time staying asleep, what with all the racket the rain was making coming down on the roof.”
“What did you see?” Austin asks impatiently. I can tell he wants to add, I bet it’s nothing like what we saw. I pat his forearm, a gesture I hope he interprets as keep it down, boy.
Rob blinks his eyes rapidly for a bit, then says, “It was on land.”
“You saw the creature on land?” Henrik says, crossing his arms.
“Yes. It was about fifty or so yard away from me, between a stand of trees. I watched it kind of slither around them for a few seconds. I think it realized I was watching, because next thing I knew, it darted right for the loch. It barely made a splash when it hit the water.”
Henrik’s mouth is open. “And you say it wasn’t in the water at first.”
“That’s what a land sighting implies,” I remind him.
“But, it’s a lake creature.”
Austin gets up to refill Rob’s coffee. “Not entirely. In fact, one of the very first sightings of the creature in the 30s happened on a road not far from here. A couple was in their car, driving home one night and they saw this strange animal loping across the road, headed toward the loch.”
“That was just the first of many,” I add.
Henrik takes a seat. “But that would mean they can breathe air. If that’s the case, how can they stay under water for so long?”
“Maybe they can do both,” Rob says. “Or, as I’ve often posited, we’re looking at two separate cryptids.”
The thought of having to track and take down two types of monsters gives me a headache. I really don’t want Rob to be right.
Austin sits back down, shaking his head. “I don’t think this area could support and hide two unknown animals. If it did, there would be sightings and close encounters all the time. Logic says they’re one and the same.”
Henrik stares into his coffee.
“Like the Creature from the Black Lagoon.”
I break away from watching Rob dab at his lips with a handkerchief to ask, “Come again?”
“Did you know there are three Creature from the Black Lagoon movies?”
Austin, who is no movie buff, says, “I’m not even sure I saw all of the first one.”
Rob nods excitedly. “Yes. There was Revenge of the Creature and then The Creature Walks Among Us. The quality degrades with each sequel, but I love them all.”
I have to ask. “What does a movie monster have to do with this?”
“They say the inspiration for the Gill Man, as he’s affectionately known, came from the discovery of the coelacanth, a fish that had been thought to have gone extinct millions of years ago, until a live one was caught in 1938. You see, the Gill Man in the movie lived underwater, but could also breathe for a time on land. Once it was captured and surgically altered in the last film, it lost its gills and became half-man, half-creature. I wonder if the creators also drew from these reports of a land and lake monster in Scotland. A little art imitating life.”
“I’ll call Universal and find out.” I turn my attention back to Rob. “How long did your sighting last?”
Now his shoulders jerk back four, five, six times. “I’d have to say close to twenty seconds.”
“And you didn’t get one shot?”
“My cameras, the few I had up that early, were pointed at the loch, and naturally not the spot where it dove back in. It’s like those damn things know. I was so overcome, I don’t think I moved for a good five minutes after it disappeared. To realize that everyone was wrong and I haven’t wasted my life out here, it’s a bit overwhelming.”
I feel both happy and sorry for Rob. Yes, he now knows he isn’t crazy, despite my assuring him of that for years without revealing my own experience. When the dust settles, he’s going to beat himself up about not getting it all on film. He’s in his mid-sixties. I’m sure he’ll worry about whether or not he’ll be this side of the dirt if and when he gets his next crack at it.
Looking at Austin, I can see the hamster wheel turning in his own brain.
“Rob, that’s just incredible,” I say. “See, I told you to stick with it.”
“You did, you did. Thank you, Natalie, for never giving up on me.”
“Can you excuse us for just a second?”
I pull Austin to my bedroom and close the door.
“I want to let Rob in.”
He massages his scalp. “I don’t think he’ll be much help taking down those things.”
I shake him off. “Not that. Poor guy might stroke out if he had to grapple with one
of them. No, I want him to film it.”
“Oh, and have our faces plastered all over the world as the great monster murderers?”
I look at my made bed, my neatly folded change of pajamas on the pillow. I’m suddenly very tired.
“I’ll tell him to make sure he only shows the creatures. He’s good for it. This way, he gets all the notoriety. And he’ll be able to sleep at night, not toss and turn with thoughts of what he missed.”
Austin takes a deep breath, pacing around the room. There’s enough space to take about four steps, so it’s really mini-pacing.
“If you trust him, I trust him.”
“I do.”
“Guess he’ll be like one of those wartime photographers.”
A jolt of concern runs through me. “Yeah. We just have to hope the military doesn’t swoop down and take all his stuff away.”
“He’ll have to make backups of backups and stash them all around before he goes public. I can help him with that.”
I give my brother a hug. It’s like embracing an anvil. “Thank you. We’re going to make that man very happy.”
Henrik is listening to Rob retell his story, asking for descriptions of the creature. The coffee has Rob’s nerves singing. He’s talking like an auctioneer.
“Rob, I have something to tell you.”
He cuts his tale short, staring up at me with shining, emerald eyes. This morning’s encounter has turned him back to an excited kid.
While he traces the outline of his jaw with his fingers, I clue him in to what we’re planning to do. When I’m done, I’ve never seen him so quiet. He says nothing, all of his tics vanished.
After a long while, he says, “You’re going to kill them?”
“Yes. I have a very good reason for that, and I can tell you if you want to hear it.”
He shakes his head. “I know you wouldn’t do it without some measure of validity. It just seems very extreme.”
“An extreme circumstance is what started all of this.”
“And you want me to capture it on film so the world can see?”
Austin leans into him. “Yes. You’ll be as famous as the Loch Ness Monsters themselves.”
