Thomas Nilsson staggered toward the object, wide-eyed as he stripped goggles and gear from his head. “My God. You say you found this in the crevasse?”
“Yes. The water pressure pushed it up from the bottom. One of the Tasmanian researchers spotted it three days ago while en route to a GPS station.”
The object was the remains of not one species, but two, a prehistoric battle preserved in a block of ice. The creature that had been doing the eating was serpent-like and immense. Nilsson estimated its length at perhaps sixty feet. Flaky mouse-gray patches of skin were visible over its exposed skeleton, its girth impossible to gauge accurately as it was coiled around the crushed, unconsumed remains of the second monster — its meal. The tail of this second creature extended out of the terminally open fangs of the first along with part of its left rear leg, which was a skeletal mess, the exposed bones having been damaged long ago by the relentlessly shifting ice. The rest of the second animal’s body was concealed within the serpent’s belly, the cartilage of which had expanded to the size of a sperm whale to accommodate its undigested, life-choking supper, which had caused the attacker’s demise.
“Can you identify either of these two species, Dr. Nilsson?”
“No. But I know someone who can.”
Part One
The Beginning…
1
“Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle.”
The village of Drumnadrochit lies on the west bank of Loch Ness, a sleepy Highland hamlet of nine hundred nestled between Urquhart Bay, the Caledonian Forest, and two thousand years of history. I was born in Drumnadrochit. In fact, I died here and was resurrected—twice. I suppose that last rebirth was more of a metaphor, but when your existence is haunted by demons and you exorcize them by staring death in the face, that’s what we Templars call a resurrection.
More about that later.
Drumnadrochit achieved its modern-day fame by proclaiming itself the Loch Ness Monster capital of the world. Two hokey museums, a few smiling plesiosaur statues, hourly tours by boat, and enough souvenir shops to shake a stick at was all it took — that and Castle Urquhart.
No doubt you’ve seen photos of Urquhart, its ruins perched high on a rocky promontory like a medieval memory, the loch’s tea-colored swells roiling against its steep cliff face, the surrounding mountains drifting in and out of fog. Perhaps the photographer caught an unexpected wake or a mysterious ripple, or better still something that resembled humps violating the surface. Such are the sightings that once enticed a quarter of a million tourists to Drumnadrochit each spring and summer, everyone hoping to catch a glimpse of the legendary monster.
My name is Zachary Wallace, and I’m the marine biologist who resolved the legend. Using science, I brought light to seventy years of darkness, separating a contrived myth from the presence of a very real, very large amphibious fish that had become a serious threat to locals and tourists alike. In the end, I not only identified the predator, I baited it, stared into its eyes, and vanquished the miserable beast from its man-imposed purgatory.
In doing so, I turned a thriving cottage industry into a bunch of vacant bed-and-breakfasts, rendered two local museums obsolete, and brought ruin to a brand-new family-owned five-star resort. If you’re curious, the whole story is there in my tell-all biographical thriller, aptly titled The Loch.
This is the story of what followed, a tale I had intended to leave by audio diary to my wife, Brandy, and our young son, William. As usual, it began when I was manipulated into accepting a mission by the most diabolical creature ever known to inhabit the Great Glen — my father.
In his youth, Angus Wallace was a brute of a man who possessed the piercing blue eyes of the Gael, the wile of a Scot, the temperament of a Viking, and the drinking habits of the Irish. Now in his seventies, he’s less temperamental but just as wily, and abuses Viagra and women along with his whiskey.
In his younger days, it was yours truly that he abused, mentally, not physically.
Angus met my mother, the former Andrea McKnown, when she was on holiday. It didn’t take long for the older, dark-haired rogue to sweep the naive American beauty off her feet. I was born a year later, heir to the Wallace heritage. I was small compared to my big-boned Highlander peers, leaving my father to right his namesake’s “bad genes” the only way he knew how — by intimidating the runt out of me.
I won’t bore you with the details, other than to mention one pivotal event that transpired on my ninth birthday. Angus had promised to take me fishing on Loch Ness so I could try out an acoustic fishing lure, my new invention. Those plans changed, however, when I caught my inebriated sperm donor naked in a tent with a local waitress.
Allowing a childhood’s worth of anger to get the better of me, I returned to the loch and launched the boat myself. As fog and night rolled in, my reverberating acoustic device attracted a school of fish and with it a very real creature that rarely left its bottom dwelling. Without warning my boat flipped over, and I found myself treading in forty-two degree water. Then something closed around my lower body and dragged me with it into the depths.
Terrifying darkness surrounded me; the growling gurgles of the creature accompanied me into the abyss, my lower body held within its jaws. I saw a flash of white light, which caused the demon to release me, and then those tea-colored waters quenched the fire in my aching lungs… and I drowned.
When next I opened my eyes it was to hellish pain, a veterinarian’s needle, and the frightening face of my rescuer and best friend’s father, Alban MacDonald. At the time Alban served as water bailiff, and it was lucky for me that the man I disrespectfully called “the Crabbit” had happened upon the scene to rescue my sorry, pulseless arse.
When my mother learned what had happened (the Crabbit and the vet claimed I had become entangled in barbed wire and thus the bloody markings), she saw to my recovery, divorced my no-good father, and moved us to the good ole U.S. of A.
America: land of the free, home of the brave — only I was neither free nor brave. In an attempt to escape the mental abuse associated with my drowning, my traumatized brain had compartmentalized and isolated the incident. Buried in denial, the unfiltered memory remained dormant, waiting for just the right moment to return.
That moment occurred fourteen years later.
By the age of twenty-five, I had earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Princeton and a doctorate from Scripps, and my research into deep-sea acoustic lures had been featured in several prominent journals. As a budding “Jacques Cousteau,” I had been asked to lead a National Geographic-sponsored expedition to the Sargasso Sea, in search of the elusive giant squid. To attract the legendary colossus, our three-man submersible was armed with a lure I had designed, that emulated the sounds and vibrations of salmon.
We descended into the blackness of the depths and waited, our patience rewarded with what would be the first visual documentation of Architeuthis dux—the giant squid. Unfortunately, the lure summoned not only a hungry squid but a swarm of unexpected and unknown predatory fish. The squid panicked and tore loose our ballast tank, sending us spiraling into oblivion. The acrylic cockpit cracked and threatened to implode as we waited desperately for a drone to secure a towline. The underwater robot finally reached us in four thousand feet of water.