"Stop yer squirmin', I'm tryin'!" She continued attacking the rope, unaware that something immense was now rising slowly beneath them.
Calum steered his boat to the edge of the pontoon bridge. "I cannae get inside the bay!"
I saw the Nothosaur, and beyond it, the capsized Nessie III. I saw David thrashing in the water, caught inside a partially submerged fishing net, and I saw Brandy, trying to free him.
And in my mind's eye, I saw the monster, rising from the depths to take them, just as it had taken me seventeen years earlier.
Tearing off my shoe and walking boot, I grabbed the log-sized plastic case in my right hand and climbed onto the prefabricated bridge.
I hurried across the structure, then dove into the water, swimming as fast as a frightened man could.
My eyes watered, the icy temperatures like a vise on my lungs, each breath a forced gasp, my throat tensing up.
I reached David, "where's Brandy?"
She surfaced next to him. "Zack, we're both caught… I lost my knife!"
The light, Zachary, get to the light!
Move!
I ducked my head underwater, aimed the light cannon, and pressed the power switch.
The underwater beacon ignited, blazing a penetrating funnel of light into the depths. The beam illuminated a tea-colored environment swirling with particles of peat. I saw Brandy and David's legs, entangled in the drifting latticework of cocoa brown netting, my heart nearly stopping as I spotted the breaching monster's head!
It was rising directly beneath us, thirty feet and closing, a dark majestic serpent as wide as an SUV. As it moved closer, the light caught its hideous snub-nosed snout and fang-filled outstretched jaws in mid-yawn, the insane creature intent on devouring both Brandy and David.
Fighting through my fear, I maneuvered the angle of the beam, catching the ascending leviathan flush in one of its sensitive yellow eyes.
The monster spasmed as if hit by a laser, then whirled about in a sudden 180-degree retreat. I caught a blurred glimpse of an enormous brown tail before I was literally driven free of the surface by its retreating wake.
I grabbed a quick breath and ducked my head again, the light cannon's beacon catching the tip of the beast's tail as it disappeared into the darkness in a flurry of peat and bubbles. My right ankle jerked free of the net, a reflex, as it suddenly went taut and submerged, dragging Brandy and David with it!
Kicking hard, I lunged for the edge of the net with my free hand and held on, allowing it to tow me into the depths as I struggled to reach Brandy.
She grabbed onto my arm and held tight, using my body as leverage as she struggled to free herself from the heavy bonds entangling her left knee.
We were submerging at a frightening speed, dropping an atmosphere every few seconds. The pain in my ear passages tore into my brain as we jettisoned beyond eighty feet, when Brandy slipped out of her jeans and pulled her leg free.
We floated away, no longer encumbered, while the net continued below into darkness, dragging the hopelessly encumbered David along for the ride.
I hovered there in the blackness and silence of watery space, searching for him with the light. The edge of the beam caught his pale face, his expression — frozen in horror — as he disappeared into the frigid depths of Loch Ness.
Brandy tugged at my elbow and we kicked toward the surface. I kept the beam aimed below as long as I could, hoping David would see it.
Get to the light, David. Get to the light.
We surfaced and exhaled, gasping for air, our extremities no longer functioning in the cold. Desperate moments passed, until we were finally hauled out of the water by the Nothosaur's crew, and dropped on the deck.
Crewmen draped wool blankets over the two of us and we held on to one another, panting and dripping and shivering. Brandy threw an arm around my neck and hugged me, her purple lips cold against my face.
"Thh… thought ye were afraid o' the water?"
I pressed my mouth to her ear. "More afraid of losing you." She hugged me tighter, saying nothing.
Michael Newman, wrapped in his own blanket, flopped down next to us. "Caldwell?"
I shook my head.
Captain Hoagland tapped Brandy's shoulder, pointing at the construction pontoon and derrick. "Look, the pen's sealed. We've got the monster trapped."
It was true, the pen had been sealed. And then I heard the crowd cheer amidst a strange sound. It filled my ears like rolling thunder, only it wasn't thunder, it was David's underwater speakers, pumping out a familiar cadence from my childhood.
It was bagpipes, the recorded sounds originating around the shoreline, the bizarre tune muffled behind layers of water.
David was right, the acoustics were keeping the creature from accessing land, but they were also tormenting the beast, enraging it.
Without warning, the incensed creature struck the perimeter fencing. Metal screeched and connecting hinges snapped as sections of the floating bridge expanded and buckled under the ungodly force. A dozen of the prefabricated platforms broke free from one another, held together only by the interconnected lengths of chain link fence.
The crowd gasped. The Nothosaur's crew looked stunned.
Four hundred feet below, the monster whirled about in the darkness, then struck again.
This time it pounded the just-completed northern end of the barricade, its head bulldozing the underwater barrier. The strike severed the cables connecting the last platform to its concrete land anchor, collapsing the entire expanse.
Protesting metal rent the night as twenty-eight-foot sections of bridge buckled and broke free from one another like a derailed locomotive.
The monster kept at it, driving its enormous head through two wobbling sections of fence until it managed to thrash itself free.
As the animal escaped into open water, the bait line snapped, leaving behind an entanglement of fishing net and the lifeless body of David James Caldwell II.
Chapter 30
I'm guessing it was around 4:15 in the afternoon on July 30 that Sue and I noticed a dark shape appear and disappear three times very quickly. Whatever it was, it was about 150 meters from shore, moving into Urquhart Bay. The object then appeared to churn about in a left turn and surface a little farther away.
It looked like the top of a huge tire inner tube, at least six meters (approximately twenty feet) long. It was only visible about five seconds, but it was definitely an animal of some sort.
Brandy moved in with me that night. Having lost her home, all her worldly possessions, and her livelihood, she had nothing left.
She said it didn't matter, as long as she had me.
It was nearly 3:00 A.M., the summer sun already gray in the eastern horizon by the time we squirmed together between the crisp hotel sheets, our entwined naked bodies creating all the heat we'd need. Too exhausted to make love, I simply held her until she fell asleep, then I slipped out of bed and sat at the desk with my laptop.
I was exhausted. Sleep tugged at my brain, but I was too afraid to doze. The intensity of my night terrors had been increasing, and after what had just happened on Urquhart Bay, I was simply too exhausted to face them again. Images of my childhood drowning had now been replaced by something else, and this vision was even more terrifying because it was not of my past. In truth, I feared it was my destiny.
Stay awake until dawn. You'll rest easier in the daylight.