Magnificent Vibration (30 page)

“Dude! It’s the most famous monster in the world!” I assure him.

“Frankenstein is the most famous monster in the world,” he answers deadpan.

“I mean
real
monster,” I reply, and I may be pushing the envelope on the meaning of the term “real” here.

“What is that? Some white-boy folklore thing?” he asks with a smirk.

“We are going out on the Loch tomorrow, and five bucks says
you will see for yourself whether it’s folklore or not,” I challenge him, pretty sure it’s a bet I’ll lose.

“What?” laughs Alice. “That’s crazy.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it,” answers Lexington Vargas. “I’m not a water guy. You know how I’m not an airplane guy? Well, I’m twice as much not a boat guy.”

“I don’t think my hands could deal with the pain,” I tell him as he scowls at me amiably.

After some rooting-around in the kitchen, I make my way back to the fireplace gathering with three fairly clean but water-spotted glasses and a bottle of newly breached port.

“What the heck is ‘port,’ anyway?” I ask, sitting down on the hearth and filling the tumblers. It’s blood-red and seems to have more body and weight than wine as it flows from the thick neck of the bottle.

“I don’t know if either of you is up for a nightcap, but I’m pretty certain I could use one,” I say, smiling, as I raise my glass in a toast.

Lexington Vargas picks his glass up and tips it to mine with a hail-fellow-well-met nod of his sizeable head. Alice hesitates, and then with a shrug joins the group. We clink in salute to whatever is to come.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen or if anything is, but whatever is coming down the pike, I hope it comes soon because I’m running out of paid vacation days and my credit card is in traction,” I announce and wish I hadn’t. Both Alice and L.V. seem disappointed with my toast. So I say what I meant to say in the first place.

“You both have become my friends, and I couldn’t imagine going on this wild ride with anyone else. Here’s to a positive outcome!” I say, not knowing of what I speak.

“I love you,” I toast to them both but dare not look at Alice as I utter these heartfelt words disguised as bonhomie. We tap our glasses and down the slightly cherry-cough-syrup-flavored and exceedingly sweet salute.

“It tastes like communion wine,” says Alice. “But not as good.” She smiles as the warmth envelops her tired frame.

“The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for you, preserve your soul and body unto everlasting life,” I say from the dark recesses of my memory.

Alice gives me a quick, sharp look.

“Just reciting a little liturgy from a long time ago,” I say. So many communions with my mother that I never understood and that were never explained to the young boy I was. Nor did I seek any explanation once I became a man. Who’s to blame? The teacher or the young scholar?

Her look turns softer as she regards me, understanding that I mean no offense to her years under the veil. I think at this point she feels as lost as I do.

We drain our glasses and I refill them. We are all beyond tired but are reluctant to leave one another’s company. We are three vagabond orphans with no ties to home. There is nothing we pine for that would cause us to wish we were anywhere but where we are right now. And I can’t think of any other people I would rather be sitting by the fire with than Alice and Lexington Vargas. I have a suspicion that both of them share my view.

We bed down eventually, exhausted, excited, and a little afraid. Sleep comes. And I dream. I dream of the Loch Ness Monster. He is male and carries a gift in his dark blood.

S
omeone else has found his way to 5 Holm Dell Park. A raw wind blows off the wintry lake and pushes its way into this old town, as a figure stands motionless, across from the darkened house. He feels no cold. No enmity. No indecision. He is merely watching. More has been revealed to him, the one they know as Merikh, and although he is unsure of when or where or even what the outcome may be, he understands that he may soon have to be ready.

I
surface slowly from my dream with an uneasy feeling. It’s still night, and in my jet lag I have no idea what time it is, but I am heavy with an emotion I can’t quite name. It feels like guilt and depression, but for the life of me I can’t figure out why I’m feeling this. I haven’t had a dream about the Loch Ness Monster since I was a boy and they always used to excite me, leave me breathless. Now I just feel sad. I turn over in the creaky, complaining bed and try to shake the sensation.

Since meeting Alice and getting involved in whatever the hell this journey is, my spirits have been pretty high. Considering where they were, it’s been a godsend. Okay, that’s an odd choice of words . . . considering. My eyes are gradually adjusting to the lightless bedroom and I think about getting up to pee. Holy shit! Somebody’s in my room. I can see a dark form standing in the corner just away from the door. I’m freaking. It’s a ghost! Crap! These old British houses are crawling with ’em. Some crazy old lady who murdered the hapless family that lived here centuries ago, then tucked them all into
bed and read stories to the dead children until they found her days later, insane, frothing at the mouth and eating the bloody flesh off her own fingers. She was publicly beheaded in the town square and now the ghost of her body is looking for the ghost of her severed head that was probably stuck on a pike in the center of the village . . . stop, stop, STOP!!! This is not helping. Jesus, it just moved! It’s really not a coat or a shadow or something. I want to call out for Lexington Vargas to come and save me but that will only reveal my location to the wraith, and if I open my mouth to scream the ghost will enter my body through that offending orifice and steal my soul. I read that somewhere in
Tales from the Crypt
when I was an impressionable dickweed. Hoping it is benevolent and only looking for its head, I slooowly reach up and fumble, trying to locate the switch through the ruffles of the Grandma-designed bedside lamp. I find it and the room explodes with light.

“Alice?” I croak in surprise.

She is standing in the corner shivering, wearing a way-too-thin-for-this-climate nightdress. Her eyes grow owl-big as they adjust to the sudden intrusion of light.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” she says, and she seems so fragile.

I’m in shock. I was more prepared for the headless ghost of the crazy lady. Alice is
totally
unexpected. I push the covers back and sit up on the edge of the bed, looking for some kind of answer for her. I say softly,

“Well . . . you’re here to claim your inheritance and because we believe we were somehow . . . called here.”

“No. I mean, I don’t know why I’m here in your room,” is her answer. My heart is beating so loud that I’m sure she can hear it. She moves to me and I rise to take her willowy frame in my arms. She
buries her face in my “Loch Ness Lives” T-shirt (which has a very snappy drawing of my favorite monster beneath the caption) that I’m wearing for the occasion. The occasion of being at Loch Ness, I mean, not the occasion of Alice appearing unannounced in my room.

“Can you just hold me?” she asks.

“Here?” I’m cold now, too.

“In bed,” are the words she says to me. I step aside and let her enter Woody’s playground, but Woody will be a good boy, hang tough, mind his fucking manners, and not screw this moment up.

I climb in after her and she snuggles into me for warmth and comfort, without the “modesty sheet,” as I pull the thick covers over both of us.

My heart is a hammer in my chest. I have to say it. I can’t stop myself as Woody steps up to the podium, taps the microphone, and says “Hello? Is this thing on?” I take a deep breath and inhale her. She is beautiful. I tell her from my soul:

“I want you.”

“I know,” she says.

That pregnant phrase hangs in the chilly, still night air.

“Thank you for not pushing me,” she adds and kisses me on the cheek. Woody asks why the cheek again. “We do have other parts of our anatomy that are smooch-worthy, y’know.”

I ignore him and hold this incredible human being close to me until her steady, rhythmic breathing tells me she is asleep.

We don’t know it, but this is the last restful night we will ever spend together.

W
hen morning breaks, chill and bright, Merikh is standing on the shore of the great Loch, communing. His long sleek hair trails behind him in the wind like some ritual headdress as spirit voices come and go through the ether and across the surface of the dark and ancient water.

Now he understands why he is here.

I
blast through the front door of 5 Holm Dell Park at a serious clip, head for the much needed bathroom, and enter without knocking, thinking Alice is still asleep in my bed just as I left her more than an hour ago. Lexington Vargas, God bless him, has taken the couch again even though, as I see while I sprint by, he is almost bent double, trying to fit his full frame on the small country sofa. I have had a staggeringly productive morning on my walk around this town, but apparently the Scots don’t believe in public bathrooms, or at least I couldn’t find any on my travels and had to hold it all the way back home. Woody is howling as I burst into the “privy” (the local term) just as Alice is stepping out of her bath. She gasps in surprise and clutches the towel to her breasts as the door swings open and I roar in.

“Oh, shit! Sorry. Oh my God!” I can’t believe she’s standing there naked. I back out, pulling the door shut with more apologies and professions of ignorance and “What an idiot I am for not knocking, sorry, sorry. I thought you were still asleep . . .”

She smiles warmly as I slam it into reverse.

“It’s okay, Tio,” she says through the closing door, and I lean against the outside wall struggling to catch my breath, such is the intensity of the sight I just stumbled in on.

Her face rosy and flushed from the heat of the bath, the tips of her hair wet at her slender neck, her skin dripping and unblemished, and a large, brilliantly executed half-sleeve tattoo that is totally unexpected. So surprising is the ink on her right arm that it burns itself into my brain as I walk out to the kitchen trying to push the image of her naked body from my reptile brain. The symbols on her skin were both beautiful and bleak. Complex and intertwined images that seemed to be centered around a death’s-head skull with a cross on its forehead. She fills my senses. All of her. All of me. But first I
must
pee! I make my way out to the back garden so I can do a little watering, which has now become exceedingly difficult because Woody also caught sight of the stunning and naked Alice-of-the-Cloth and he is refusing to go flaccid, the little bastard. The male of the species simply cannot take a whiz with an erection. So I hang outside with my great Loch Ness news and wait for the Woodman to relax his crack so I can take a leak. Eventually he does and I do. I wait for Alice, with trepidation, in the kitchen.

She finally strolls out in a robe and a smile. I am all apologies again as I diligently brew tea, but she hugs me from behind and whispers her okay.

One step closer.

“I like your tattoo,” I say, much more casually than I feel.

“It’s from my wilder, younger days,” she explains.

“It’s beautiful,” I reply and want to add more but don’t dare, so close am I to mentally going AWOL when I rerun the vision of her, naked, flushed, and branded in her rebellious youth.

“I’m not the only sister with a tattoo, believe it or not,” she continues. “We don’t all come from devoted, God-fearing households. A lot of us are damaged goods looking for personal healing, too.”

“I get that,” is all I will allow myself, even though I want to say, “Please can I see you naked again? I’ll pay ya!” but even Woody isn’t that stupid. I obviously need to change the subject before he makes me say something we’ll both regret, so I turn to her and begin to run off at the mouth about my amazing morning. I tell her of the old guy I met who said he has a boat and will take us out on the Loch this afternoon for free!!! AND he says he knows where Nessie hunts! Okay, maybe some wily local is just pranking me, but I want to have the chance to be on the great Loch Ness. I’m just like all those kids who looked up at the moon when they were little and wished they could go there and then Neil Armstrong grew up and did it. Well, I am the Neil Armstrong of Loch Ness, mofo, so get used to it. Of course I say none of this to Alice, mainly because she’s begun to giggle.

“Stop it, I’m serious,” I try, but it doesn’t help and I actually begin to laugh, too. “He said we should meet him at the little jetty just south of Urquhart castle at four this afternoon. It’s a small boat with room for no more than two passengers, which is perfect, right?”

“You’re a nut,” is all Alice says to me. And I like it when she calls me a nut like that. This journey has been good for both of us and has eased some of the pain we have both left behind.

Lexington Vargas hears none of this, as he is busy with the snoring farm noises again. The guy could sleep though an earthquake.

And an earthquake it is.

The fracture in the world that is known as the Great Glen Fault, which runs directly under Loch Ness, decides to make itself known at 10:33 in the morning, and Alice’s new home starts to shake for the first time since 1901.

“Is that an earthquake?” asks Alice in alarm.

We grab hold of each other and the kitchen counter as teacups slosh their contents out over our hands.

“Ow!” I yell in pain as the hot brew scalds my fingers.

“What the heck’s goin’ on?” Lexington Vargas shouts in his morning voice from the sofa. I guess he
doesn’t
sleep through earthquakes.

“I think it’s an earthquake,” I yell to him. I thought we escaped this type of natural disaster when we left L.A.

It lasts for an interminable thirty seconds, and when the house stops rolling, the world is still. Until every parked car’s alarm begins bleating and honking like a good, angry day in New York City.