The Cryptid Files (5 page)

On 15 June 1965, Detective Sergeant Cameron was fishing on the shores of Loch Ness. He saw a whale
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like object between 20 and 30 feet long moving against the current. Other people witnessed the same event; it lasted nearly 40 minutes and is one of the longest incidences on record.

The party was well under way when Vanessa returned to the kitchen. Nobody noticed her coming in from the garden. Some of the guests were gathered around the Aga discussing how best to cook crabs. Lee was sitting at the table laughing with two implausibly old men. One had wrinkles all over the top of his bald head ending in folds of skin at the back of his neck, while the other had a head of white hair and a beard that would have put St Nicholas to shame.

There was a whiff of madness in the air, she thought; this was no average gathering. Maybe she could slip away up to her bedroom with her book and say she wasn't feeling well. She certainly felt nauseated at the thought of spending the evening with Lee's friends and family.

Before she could take another step, the sound of scraping on the floor under the kitchen table was followed by a blur of red hair which flew through the air and landed hard against her chest. Vanessa stumbled backwards, banging against the kitchen door amidst the cries of the rest of the party, who had suddenly noticed her. Mayhem ensued. Barks, shouts, laughter. Rolling onto her side to stop the beast from licking her face, Vanessa lay in a foetal position with her hands covering her face until someone dragged it off. She liked dogs, but not that much.

‘Stop that, Daisy, behave yourself,' a man with a thick Scottish accent shouted, as he dragged the dog off her by the collar.

Vanessa sat up as quickly as she could, noticing that it was the bald one who'd spoken.

‘Well, I must say, she likes you.' He smiled down at her, before offering her a hand up.

‘Stupid dog should be put down,' the one with all the hair grumbled crankily.

‘No, no, she's fine, honestly,' Vanessa said, suddenly afraid that he really meant it.

‘She's an Irish red setter. We brought her to dinner because we thought you might like to meet a fellow countrywoman,' the bald one explained.

‘A witch's dog if you ask me,' the hairy one grumbled. ‘Should be douked like the witches themselves.'

‘Hush now, you'll scare the child with that kind of talk.'

Vanessa's face lit up.

‘What's douking then?' she asked the hairy one.

He paused, taking the measure of Vanessa before he explained.

‘In the old days, if a woman was accused of being a witch, she faced trial by douking. They would tie her thumbs and toes together and then strap her to a special stool. Then she'd be held down under the water. If she drowned she was innocent, but if she survived she was a witch.' He stopped, watching her closely.

‘So what happened to the witch then?'

‘Why, she was burned at the stake of course.' Not a flicker of a smile or a trace of amusement crossed his face while he delivered the line.

Vanessa wished she could think of something clever to say, but her mind was reeling and she was lost for words. Maggie was suddenly beside her, an arm around her shoulder.

‘Well, that was quite an introduction, Daisy.' She put her other hand on the dog's collar. ‘Let's put you out during dinner and then I'll introduce everybody properly.' As she turned away, she winked knowingly at Vanessa. ‘It's a bit of a mad house around here at times.'

When they were all seated, Maggie served the crab with a little pot of hot garlic butter on the side. Vanessa examined the prehistoric-looking creatures and the instruments of torture which lay beside each plate – a cracker to break the shell and a long hook to get the meat out of the claws. She had never eaten crab before. Looking across at Ronan and Luke's bewildered faces, she couldn't help but laugh out loud.

‘Any tips on how to do this?' she said to Maggie.

The bald man had been introduced as Maggie's lifelong friend and neighbour, James Mackay. He was married to the very tall and severe looking woman who hadn't yet spoken. The other brother, Pat Mackay, was not married and not likely to be, given his dour manner, Vanessa thought.

‘Let me show you, lass,' James said.

Soon shell was cracking and flying in all directions across the table, much to the children's amusement. Dipped in the warm butter the morsels of crab meat were like nothing Vanessa had ever experienced. She noticed that Pat didn't touch his crab.

‘Vanessa reminds me so much of you, Lee, when you first arrived. A determined and meticulous crab-eater too.' James smiled across at Lee.

‘I think Vanessa's a natural, actually.' She looked encouragingly at Vanessa, who didn't acknowledge her, but bent further over her plate.

‘Remember how stubborn Lee was?'Pat added grumpily. ‘She would insist on throwing the remains into the loch.'

‘For Nessie,' Vanessa said appreciatively.

‘Why, that's exactly what she would say too.'

‘Have you ever seen her, Mr Mackay?' Vanessa asked hopefully.

‘Nae. Absolute rubbish. Total nonsense of course!' Pat said quickly.

‘Oh, don't mind him. He wouldn't believe in his own mother if he hadn't seen her every day for sixty years.' James grinned cheekily at his brother. ‘Lots of us 'ere have seen strange things over the years, as did our parents before us.' His gaze settled on Lee before he said quietly, ‘It's always when you're least expecting it. Isn't that the truth of it, Lee?'

Vanessa felt the jolt. She hadn't thought about Lee seeing Nessie, that she might have known the secrets of the loch before her. She looked across the table at Lee's open, friendly face and, hoping not to catch her eye, Vanessa waited for her reply. Lee looked thoughtful as if she was about to share something important when Ronan spoke.

‘So how does this creature breathe? If she has to come up to the surface for air, she'd be seen all the time.'

‘Well put, lad,' Pat egged him on.

‘There are caves down there,' Lee answered, ‘places with pockets of air. It's nearly 1,000 feet deep in spots, you know. But what if she has gills as well as being an air-breather?'

‘That's a believer talking for sure,' Pat said dryly.

‘No, the lung-fish can breathe in and out of the water, so why couldn't others adapt?' Lee became animated as she turned on Pat.

‘And if you're going to start that stuff about sea creatures not surviving in fresh water, you're wrong there too, Pat. Bull sharks have adapted to the fresh water of Lake Nicaragua. We've seen the occasional seal in Loch Ness. Admit it. Hell, even salmon come up river to the loch. So why not Nessie?'

‘Too far-fetched for my tastes. That's all.'

‘I thought it was some kind of long lost dinosaur,' James remarked, but before Lee could answer, Pat cut in.

‘Well, if it's a cold-blooded dinosaur it'll be bloody cold in that loch.'

‘True, except there has been a turnaround by the scientists there too,' Lee said with a smile. ‘Most now say that dinosaurs were, in fact, warm-blooded, so that means she could survive in the cold water. If she is a dinosaur, that is.'

‘Pah! See, it's all rubbish, even the scientists keep changing their minds.' Pat sat back and crossed his arms across his chest.

‘What do you think it is, Lee?' Luke asked.

‘Well, the most popular theory is that it's a plesiosaurus – that's a type of aquatic reptile.' Lee spoke to Luke directly. ‘And while most plesiosaurus fossils have been found under marine conditions, some have been discovered in places that were fresh water, particularly in rivers and estuaries. So they might well exist in salt and fresh water.'

‘Yes, but what do you think?' Vanessa asked abruptly. She blushed to her roots as all eyes turned to look at her.

Lee tilted her head slightly to one side and regarded Vanessa coolly; pausing as if she was deciding how to answer.

‘I think she's probably a deep-sea mammal – a type of whale that's evolved to deep water – with a long eel-like neck, flippers …'

Alan spoke up: ‘I think it's unlikely that there's a species of whale that we haven't discovered, given the amount of research these days.'

‘Well, until recently, nobody had ever seen the giant squid that lives in the deep,' Lee replied. ‘They were the stuff of storybooks until this century, and even now we've only got a dead one that washed up. No one has ever seen it alive.'

‘True … but a new species? That seems a bit of a cop-out, surely?' Alan could not resist a chance to cross-examine, but Lee continued unfazed.

‘There are new species of things being discovered all the time, Alan. Think of the coelacanth, a fish they caught alive this century which had been thought to be extinct for sixty-five million years.'

‘And how about those sea urchins that turned up on eBay recently? Scientists are now saying that they are a new species.' Vanessa couldn't resist joining in. She glared at her father, just to let him know she was still angry at him and that she hadn't forgiven him. She just wished that she didn't sound as if she was siding with Lee.

‘I heard about that,' Lee said excitedly. ‘Isn't it amazing?'

‘Well, I think you might have to be in your line of work to get excited about that one!' Alan smiled at her in an indulgent way.

Vanessa suddenly realised that she had no idea what Lee did. But there was no way she was going to ask Lee in front of all these people. No way on earth.

‘Where are you off to next?' Ronan clearly did know.

Vanessa racked her brains to remember some clue she might have dropped.

‘Finnish Lapland. It's interesting but could be tricky. The reindeer are in trouble up there.'

Vanessa was taken aback. That wasn't at all what she had expected.

‘Normally they eat the bark off the trees, but food is becoming a real problem for them now that the Finnish government are giving out logging licences to anyone who pays enough.'

Vanessa knew she was staring at Lee. She bit her lip hard before asking, ‘So what exactly are you going to do?'

‘I'm a zoologist; I work for Greenpeace. I'll be collecting evidence and assessing the impact with other scientists. Then, we will try to arrange talks with the government officials and get them to change their policy on it. It doesn't always work,' she added with a laugh, ‘but we have to try.'

Vanessa, who couldn't help feeling impressed, glanced down the table at her father. He was gazing steadily at Lee and the pride in his face struck at her heart.

Vanessa leaned over to Maggie, who was sitting beside her, and said quietly, ‘Daisy is going mad outside, Maggie. Will I go and try to calm her?'

‘You do that, dear,' she said kindly. ‘Her bark is torture isn't it!'

Touching Vanessa's shoulder, she added, ‘You take your time lass, the pudding has been slow-baking in the oven all afternoon, another few minutes will make nae difference at all.'

It was a relief to be outside, away from them all. Vanessa breathed in deeply and stared out into the blackness. The air smelled foreign to her. The vegetation, sweeter than at home, made her lightheaded. Surely the water was unnaturally still? Vanessa walked down to the edge where Daisy was barking furiously. She pulled at her collar, but Daisy shook her off and continued barking with an urgency that unnerved her.

‘Silly mutt, there's nothing out there,' she said uncertainly.

They stood at the edge of the loch for a few minutes more, Daisy barking, Vanessa searching. But no matter how hard she strained her eyes, Vanessa could see nothing at all. Tired now, she bent down and wrapped her arms around Daisy's neck. The dog stopped barking for a second, pleased with the attention and licked her face. Then she turned back to the loch and barked again.

Vanessa stood up slowly; she'd have to go back in and face them all again. She peered along the bank to the left where she thought the abbey at Fort Augustus should be, but it was too dark to make out except the outline of trees. Tomorrow she would explore it with Daisy and then go out on the loch in the wooden fishing boat Maggie had talked about. Not with Lee, though. She would have this adventure on her own.

In Drumnadrochit in the year 1880, E.H. Bright and his cousin saw a dark grey creature with a long neck come out of a wooded area, waddle to the water's edge and then plunge into the water.

It was ten o'clock before Vanessa stirred the next morning. She lay on in bed feeling very relaxed. The mattress was so much softer than her one at home and the crisp white cotton sheets were pure luxury.

She let her eyes travel slowly around the room, taking in every detail – the polished wooden floors; the pretty wash basin; the table and chair, both painted apple green, that were positioned in front of the window. It looked so inviting, a perfect place for her to do some sketching. She used to draw all the time when her mum was alive. They would take sketchbooks and charcoals with them everywhere. She thought of the terrible charcoal of Nessie on the file cover and smiled wistfully. She would give anything, absolutely anything, to have her mum here for even a minute or two.

There was a soft knock and a pause before Maggie put her head around the door.

‘Good morning, dear, did you sleep well?'

‘Great, thanks. The bed's so comfortable; I'm finding it hard to get up.'

‘Well, why should you? You're on your holidays, stay in it as long as you like. Why don't I bring breakfast up to you?'

‘Maybe I could have it at that little table there. I was just thinking about sketching the view, actually.'

‘Well, why not?' Maggie must have seen the uncertainty in Vanessa's face. ‘You'll need something to draw with, and on, of course.'

She pulled open a door on the opposite wall, revealing a cupboard lined with shelves and full of small wooden boxes and books. Resting on the floor were piles of canvases of all sizes.

‘Here we go.' Maggie pulled out a box filled with charcoals and then flicked through a sketchpad to check that there were some free pages. ‘You get started and I'll get breakfast. I won't ask you what you want; it will be a Highland surprise!'

‘Thanks, Maggie. I love it here,' Vanessa said suddenly, surprising herself. She was rewarded by Maggie's smile and the kindest of looks. ‘By the way, the rest of the family are heading of on a fishing trip with Lee to one of the rivers nearby. Do you want to join them or would you prefer to explore a little yourself round about here?'

‘Oh, yes, explore, please. That's exactly what I want to do.'

‘We are minding Daisy for a few days while James has gone to Glasgow. Maybe you could take her for a walk for me.'

‘Are all the Mackays gone away, then?' Vanessa asked.

‘No; Laura, his wife, rarely goes out. It's enough that she comes here occasionally for dinner. And Pat simply refuses to walk “the beast”, as he calls her.'

‘I suppose she might be a bit hyper for him.' Vanessa laughed. What a strange bunch they were!

‘You could take Daisy for a walk to Fort Augustus where the locks are. It's only a couple of minutes along the road.'

‘Isn't that the abbey where the monk saw Nessie?'

‘Aye, that's true. It's in ruins now, but the cloisters are still lovely. Take your sketchbook. Mind you, it will be hard to get Daisy to explore it with you. She's highly strung at the best of times and she hates that place.'