The Cryptid Files (2 page)

Nessie first became famous about 80 years ago, but the locals told stories of a water beast in Loch Ness long before that. They called it a Kelpie. It was a terrible creature that came out of the waters when it was hungry. After transforming into a most beautiful horse, it would wait for someone to climb on its back and then gallop back into the loch to devour them.

It had all started the previous night when Vanessa's father announced at dinner that they would be going on holiday to Scotland for the Hallowe'en midterm break. The delight that followed was worthy of an around-the-world cruise, and Ronan and Luke high-fived boisterously across the table, knocking over a bottle of milk. It was after the milk clean-up, as they were getting down to the details of dates and flights, that her father let slip the fact that Lee McDonald would be coming as well. Luke and Ronan had taken it in their stride as usual, but Vanessa had not. She shouted and ranted and then, running upstairs to her bedroom, finally cried herself to sleep that night behind a locked door.

Vanessa's dreams were often filled with strange winged creatures and shadowy monsters lurking out of sight. But last night was different. One particular monster appeared to her as clear as if she had drawn it herself and the shock of recognition shot through her body like an electric current. She had woken suddenly out of the dream into pitch black. The glowing light on her bedside clock twinkled the ungodly hour of five past five in the morning. Tangled up in her sheets with her head wedged against the wall, Vanessa's physical self felt tired and miserable, but her brain tingled with excitement.

She threw herself back on her bed and pulled her covers tightly up to her neck to think about it some more. Maybe it wasn't a sign as such, but she knew exactly what she had to do that morning. She would have to find her mother's cryptid files. She felt certain that they were the key to her dreams. But where would they be? She twisted her mother's engagement ring on her finger thoughtfully and mentally examined each room in the house. The attic, of course. Two very long years ago, her father had put her mum's things up there. She suspected that nobody had been up since.

The cold in the attic was really beginning to get to Vanessa. Her teeth were chattering now and she rubbed her upper arms vigorously with her hands. How much longer could she last? After another ten minutes moving boxes and reading labels a small frisson of doubt began to seep in. What if the cryptid files had got lost or had been thrown away? In her growing unease, Vanessa failed to notice a low wooden box in front of her. She tripped and fell heavily, grimacing with the pain as her knees hit the floor beams. So much for being quiet, she thought. She hunkered into a sitting position and then waited, motionless and listening. It was only then that she noticed the blood and the gash on her knee, which was bleeding profusely. Irritated with herself for being so clumsy, she bunched the end of her nightdress into a ball and pressed it to her cut, glaring at the box. Her eyes widened with surprise. Rather than her father's neat handwriting on a label, she saw the big capital letters scrawled across the wooden lid. Even upside down she could read her mother's bold writing: THE CRYPTID FILES. They had found her.

She took a few moments to examine the box before opening the lid. It was old and very battered with rusty hinges and Vanessa couldn't recall seeing it before. What if there was nothing in it or it was just full of old shoes? The disappointment might be too much. She ran her hand slowly over the wood and then finally pushed open the lid. A tiny shrunken head stared up at her and she dropped the lid back down. Opening the lid again, she stared hard at the empty eyes and the puckered skin. It was a human head, she felt sure, but what was it doing in her attic? Slowly something stirred in her memory. Something to do with her grandfather Todd, wasn't it? Picking the head up gingerly, she found that it fitted perfectly into the palm of her small hand. She tried to remember the story of a tribal chief in Papua New Guinea that had given it to him, but the memory danced just out of reach. Instead she heard her mother's voice.

‘Life without adventure is no life at all.'

At bedtime when she was small, instead of reading about ballerinas and princesses, her mum had told her stories of wicked Incan gods and strange animals with magical powers. As she grew up, Vanessa was actually proud that her mother never did the things that other mothers did. Even before her illness, she never bothered much about the ordinary stuff – the car pooling, haircuts, coffee mornings, sales of work. Instead her world was full of the extraordinary – myths and cryptids, archaeological artefacts from various digs and, her most prized possession of all, an enormous antique world map, which took up an entire wall of Vanessa's bedroom. It was covered in dots – red ones for places they had already visited, green for ones they had to visit within the next five years, orange for the next ten years and purple for the outside chance ones. They spent many hours poring over it and discussing travel. No wonder Vanessa's end-of-year school reports always referred to her as a determined day dreamer. One had said: ‘If Vanessa put as much energy into real life as her imaginary world, she might just scrape by in her exams …'

‘Excellent,' her mother had said as she threw the report into the wood-burning stove, ‘there's nothing like an imagination to get you through life.'

A door banging downstairs in the house startled Vanessa back into action. Hurriedly, she pushed the shrunken head into the pocket of her nightdress; there was no time to lose. The box was full of coloured folders but she recognised the one she wanted immediately – a red plastic ring-binder with a charcoal picture stuck to the front. It looked so smudged and childish to her now – her first sketch of the most famous cryptid of them all: Nessie, The Loch Ness Monster, the creature of her dreams.

In 1934, a local bye
-
law was introduced to protect the Loch Ness Monster. If the monster is just a myth, why does it need real laws to protect it?

Back in her bedroom, Vanessa snuggled down under her duvet with her cryptid folder. Maybe she could spend the rest of the day in bed and avoid seeing her father at all. Bed was the best place to be on miserable days.

A bang on the door made her start. Luke or Ronan, she guessed, hardly her father. Either way, they knew better than to open the door without an invitation.

‘Vanessa, can I borrow your new tennis racket? I'm playing doubles this morning and I don't want to show myself up,' Ronan shouted loudly through the closed door.

‘Best not to play then, Ronan,' she shouted back unsympathetically.

‘Oh come on, Vanessa, you owe me.'

She hesitated. Was he referring to the scene last night? He was far too kind for that. She remembered the look on her dad's face when she had accused him of betraying her mum's memory. She felt guilty for saying it in front of everyone, but she really had meant it. Her upper lip curled in distaste. Imagine wanting to bring Lee McDonald on a family holiday to Scotland! It was bad enough having her come for dinner so often. She remembered now the rush of adrenaline, the outrage that had reached her lips before she could cool her reaction. She felt the anger flare inside her again. How dare he mention her mum in the same breath as Lee McDonald!

‘Come on, Vanessa, please?'

‘OK, but if you break it or lose it, you're dead.'

She heard him whoop as he sped down the stairs before she changed her mind. Ronan wasn't bad compared to other younger brothers she had met. Of course he missed their mum terribly, but, two years on, both he and Luke seemed to be really well adjusted. And yet two years on, things were getting worse and not better for her, Vanessa thought darkly.

She opened the first few pages of the Loch Ness folder and a thrill shot through her. There was one section on the geography of Loch Ness and two on the scientific arguments – one for and one against. And her favourite section – the sightings. These were stories of little old ladies and children, priests and fishermen. Her mother had downloaded hundreds off the internet. She scanned the dozens of pages. Surely they couldn't all be pranksters or lunatics?

Witness: Sir Graham McDonald and sons Brian and Ben
Date: 7 August 1934 at 5 p.m.
Description: While fishing on the banks of the loch
they saw a creature with one hump about 15 feet
in length. It remained stationary for about a
minute and then moved off at speed.

Witness: Mrs Elizabeth Allen and Mrs Agnes Thomas
Date: 2 October 1946, mid-afternoon
Description: Noticed something in the water as
they drove. When they stopped they saw a single hump moving slowly but producing a large wake. It appeared and disappeared a couple of times.

She wondered what Mrs Thomas and Mrs Allen had been doing at the time. Were they in an ancient black car with a picnic basket and a rug on the back seat, their dog, Cricket, pawing at the basket, desperate to get at the roast chicken? Had they almost crashed the car when they saw the humped monster appear in front of them? She imagined them as two frail English ladies of impeccable character with hornrimmed glasses. Who could believe that this unlikely pair would make it all up?

Witness: Miss Jennifer Grant
Date: 10 August 1986 at 11.30 a.m.
Description: Head and long neck sticking out of the water. It sank slowly as she watched it. Two photos taken but only ripples visible in both.

She could imagine young Jennifer, a university student, on her way to visit her aunt in Inverness. Standing on the bank near Urqhuart Castle, paralysed as a snake-like neck rises out of the water. Her reactions so slowed with shock that she misses Nessie in her photo.

Vanessa stopped reading and let the folder fall back onto the bed. Did her mother believe in Nessie or was it just more of her ‘weird and wonderfuls', as the boys used to call her stories? What if she had believed? Wouldn't it be incredible to prove her right, especially after all these years of scientists and journalists on the hunt?

‘I'd like to be a cryptozoologist when I grow up, Miss.' Vanessa smiled at the thought of saying it to Miss Carter, her pathologically dull headmistress, and wondered what her reaction would be.

‘A what?'

Vanessa would have to explain.

‘You mean you want to chase imaginary monsters for a living? Childish nonsense. It's time to grow up, Vanessa Day.'

But her own mother, a rational, grown-up academic with a doctorate from Oxford, had done just that.

Vanessa pulled out her shrunken head from her nightdress pocket and stared intently at the wizened face and tiny beady black holes for eyes. It was such an ugly little face and yet so compelling. As she stared at the mouth, her mind played tricks and she saw it move ever so slightly. She knew it wasn't the tiny head that whispered, but she heard it all the same.

Go and find what you are looking for.
The words rolled around in her mind and then took root. Perhaps a holiday in Scotland might not be such a bad idea after all.

In Scots Gaelic, the monster was known as Niseag, which got shortened to Nessie. Then, in 1975, Nessie was given the proper scientific name of
Nessiteras rhombopteryx
by the president of the World Wildlife Fund at the time, Sir Peter Scott.

During the weeks after the big row, there was no further mention of the family holiday. The days rolled by and Vanessa noticed that Lee was much less in evidence than before. She saw her father most evenings, if only briefly, before bed. He was working far too hard, according to Mrs Gannon, who came in the afternoons to prepare dinner and recreate some semblance of normal family life.

In the days leading up to her tests before the midterm break, Vanessa tried to focus on revising, but trade and industry graphs and irregular French verbs were of little interest compared to the stories of Nessie.

On the Thursday of that week, when Vanessa came down to breakfast, she found a brand new Dorling Kindersley guide book to Scotland on the kitchen table.

‘Did Dad leave this book out, Luke?' Vanessa eyed it suspiciously.

‘Don't know,' Luke grunted as he spooned mounds of Rice Krispies into his mouth hungrily. ‘He's gone to work,' he added, as if that explained it.

‘Are we going to Scotland after all?' Ronan asked innocently.

‘Dad didn't mention it again,' Luke offered without looking up from his bowl.

Vanessa's mouth went dry. Suddenly she didn't feel like breakfast. Looking at Luke and Ronan busily feeding themselves, she realised that she might have cheated them out of a much-needed holiday, and lost her chance to visit Loch Ness.

‘Sorry,' she mumbled, and, when no one acknowledged it, she went on: ‘You know I'd love to go to Scotland, but I'm not going with her.' Her voice rose defensively.

‘She's not that bad, Vanessa,' Ronan said, looking directly at her.

‘Isn't she?'

‘OK, she's not Mum, but who can be? You should at least be fair,' Luke added. ‘She's not the devil either.'

Vanessa felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, and her temper flare, but she managed to keep her mouth shut this time. Fair, Luke had said. Fair? Why the hell should she be fair? Fair had absolutely nothing to do with it.