“The chill, grey waters of the North Sea have long been notorious. Boats have been getting lost there for centuries, millennia even. Who knows how many dead lie in the cold depths and what stories they might tell if they could be persuaded? But to return directly to the topic at hand; my particular area of interest, as you know, is in the cryptozoological, and in aquatic beasties in particular.”
“Tell us the one about Thor and the fishing boat, go on… you know you want to,” Wiggo said.
“You’re better educated than you pretend to be, Corporal. But that story is also germane… it might even have come from a memory of the same beast.”
“Don’t bother trying to flatter me,” Wiggo muttered, “you’re not my type.” But again so low and under his breath that this time no one paid him any heed.
“Another visit to the University Library, then to the private collection in the crypts of St. Giles Cathedral quickly brought back to my memory the story that had been eluding me. It dates back all the way to just after the Norman conquest, and the fortification of Dunnottar Castle down in Stonehaven. Much quarrying was required, and many boats arrived and departed up and down the coast with supplies for the work. Some of them never arrived in port, and a story quickly spread of a sea-serpent. There were no conflicting rumors or theories this time; it was a general consensus, which in itself is somewhat remarkable.
“I found a contemporary description in St. Giles, and I’d like to read it to you; it’s in cod-Latin, but I’ve translated as best as I am able.”
He took out a single sheet of paper and read.
“It was a hideous thing, full half-a-league in length and broader in girth than the hull of our ship. Its head was similar to that of a great horse, with a mouth of teeth each as long as a man and as sharp as any axe. Silver it was, and gold and yellow and green all at once and all a-shimmer in the sun. It came up out of the sea like a leaping salmon and landed squarely on top of us. And it sang, a mournful thing like a dirge, as if in sorrow at the carnage it wrought. Of a crew of thirty, mere twa o’ us survived to tell the tale.”
Seton folded the paper and put it back in his breast pocket.
“Is that it?” Wiggo said and laughed. “An auld wifie’s story is all you’ve got? Best get that whisky in now, man; I think you need it more than us.”
Seton waited until the laughter of the other’s had died down before replying, and when he did, his tone was solemn.
“No, Corporal, that is not all I’ve got, unfortunately. With regard to that story, I could take you to a wee kirk near Stonehaven where you can still read the gravestones that mark where the men from that boat are interred; several of them even show depictions of the serpent, just as the writer described it. But germane to my story as it is, the history is not why you are here.
“You’re here because last night, at nine o’clock, something hit one of the oil rigs out to the north and east of us here. A man who happened to be looking the right way at the right time reported seeing, and I quote verbatim as it was said to me on the phone, ‘…a bloody enormous fucking snakey thing, green and silver and gold all at once. And do you want to hear the strangest thing? The bloody beastie was singing.’”
- 2 -
Captain Banks had been watching Seton closely. The wee man seemed sincere enough and didn’t appear to be trying to yank their chains but even despite everything they’d encountered and seen these recent years, Banks was still having trouble believing the tale.
“So it’s what, exactly? A thousand-year-old beastie that just happens to be back now?”
Seton shrugged.
“It appears so. I might conjecture it has something to do with a renewed period of drilling in that particular area, a disturbance that might mirror the quarrying done at Dunnottar all those years ago, but that would only be conjecture.”
“In that case,” Banks continued, “I’ve got another question or you. I understand the rig managers being concerned about something strange happening at the rig. But why you? How did you get to be the one involved enough to be able to persuade our colonel to send us?
Seton tapped the side of his nose and smiled.
“I ken a man who kens a man. One of the benefits of a great age spent mixing with people who mix in the corridors of power. Besides, you got the job done at Loch Ness… I knew immediately this was something you should be involved in.”
“Don’t do us any more favors, would you not?” Wiggo said bitterly. The corporal stood and left before Seton could reply, and Banks let him go; Wiggo wasn’t the only one who’d mourned for the loss of their previous corporal on the shores of Loch Ness.
Banks turned his attention to Seton.
“So you’ve got us here. What do you expect us to do? Short of hiring a sub and roaming the seas, I don’t see that there’s much we can do.”
“I don’t think we’ll have to go searching, Captain,” Seton replied. “I think it’ll come to us. They’ve already started drilling again as of about an hour ago. If my hunch is right, whatever’s down there will be coming up again for another look.”
It appeared Seton had said all there was to say. Banks addressed the squad.
“Looks like it’s another monster hunt, lads,” he said. “I’ve got nothing to offer beyond what the man here said; we’ll get to the rig and see what’s what. We’ll have to plan this one as it comes. We’ve got a couple of hours sailing before that, so take a breather or get your heads down. Report back here at fourteen hundred hours; we should be getting close by then.”
Banks waited until the men had dispersed then followed Seton as they went back up on deck. Wiggo was just finishing a smoke; he flipped the still glowing butt overboard and walked away, head down, without acknowledging either Banks or Seton.
Banks took a cigarette from Seton when the older man offered.
“He blames me for the Loch Ness thing, doesn’t he?” Seton said.
“No, that’s not it. He blames himself, the same way I do. Losing a man is tough. Losing a friend is tougher. Then, just when you think you might have put it behind you, a face from the past pops up and the memories… and emotions… come back as if they’ve never been gone.”
Seton nodded.
“I know that for myself from bitter experience. But I meant what I said back there—the things we saw at Loch Ness might be useful in figuring out what is going on here.”
Banks remembered the house on the lochside, the nightmare descent into the bowels of the earth and the magical practices they’d uncovered.
“There’s no mumbo-jumbo involved, is there? A big beastie I can handle but all that pseudo-mystical bollocks can go fuck itself.”
Seton shrugged again.
“With cryptozoological beasts such as this one, there is always an almost mythical element; what we carry in our heads and hearts becomes reflected in the physical environment and is made real in many cases.”
Banks laughed.
“See, pseudo-mystical bollocks. I knew it.”
Seton had the good grace to laugh in return.
“I cannot promise you a one hundred percent physically real beastie,” he said. “But I can promise to keep out of your way until we are sure one way or the other. Please don’t discount my expertise just because it doesn’t fit your personal mental construct, Captain. It might get us both killed.”
Even as Seton spoke, Banks was remembering times when reality had seemed malleable—in the Amazon with snakes who might be people or people who might be snakes, in Antarctica with a flying saucer that thrummed with a power sufficient to revive the dead, and, of course, on Loch Ness, where the same wee man that stood before him now had shown himself capable of using a magic ritual to soothe a savage beast.