“Where are we going?” Sarah asked.
“The logging camp.”
“Why?”
Loch knew he had to warn them. “I found the caretaker’s head last night,” he said. “You don’t want to know about that, but something’s spilling the logs out of the pond there.”
“You found Jesse Sanderson’s head?” Zaidee said, her eyes wide. “Oh, puke.”
“I’ll give you the grisly details later. How fast does this baby go?” Loch asked.
“You saw me,” Sarah said.
Loch threw the throttle full open. The motor roared, settling the rear of the skiff deeper into the water. It threw out an enormous wake and lifted the bow above the horizon line.
“It’s doing ten, maybe twelve knots,” Loch called over the noise. “That’s not too bad.”
“Glad you like it,” Sarah said. She moved closer to him, putting her arm around his waist.
Zaidee gagged. “Oh, that’s cute.”
“How would you know what’s cute?” Sarah asked.
Zaidee stuck her tongue out and sat on the side bench. She started checking out the equipment on board. There was a coil of old rope, rusted trolling gear, and a half dozen tar-covered life vests in a center storage chest. She rummaged through the life vests, picked out the cleanest one, and put it on, tying the strings in front into neat bows. She moved forward to get a better look at the electronic equipment. There was a gaping hole in the center where the sonar equipment had been pulled out, but an old tuner protruded from the right of the control panel.
“At least they left the radio,” Zaidee said.
Loch stayed on a course straight across the lake. He wanted to spend as little time as possible traveling in the deepest water, and at ten knots he figured no creature would have the time or the inclination to take a bead on them. If there was one thing he really believed about the beasts, it was that they wouldn’t attack unless they thought someone was going to harm them.
“Careful in the shallows,” Sarah said as the boat approached the north shore.
“Right,” Loch said, circling wide to the left, then straightening the skiff out to run parallel along the deep-water line.
The three of them looked in awe at the huge wall of thick, tall pines that rose from the rocks of the north shore. The late-morning sun wasn’t high enough yet in the sky to light the mammoth trees of the north bank. Farther up the shallows disappeared altogether, blending into a great blackness of water. From here the massive scars the logging mill had inflicted on the mountains could be glimpsed on the highest ridges.
Sarah pointed, shouting above the din of the motor: “There’s the mill.”
Zaidee was on her feet now, watching the approach to the boathouse with its long wooden dock. The mill itself was a long rectangle of corrugated tin, with an entire wall of windows overlooking the lake. It was cantilevered on jutting supports that thrust the building high out over the water. An elevated sluice emerged from one end of the building like the tracks of a roller coaster.
Zaidee felt a chill. “Jeez, it looks spooky.”
“If Wee Beastie’s anywhere, it’s around here,” Loch said.
At the base of the mill was the holding pond, its surface covered with enormous, moldering logs left over from when the mill had closed.
Loch took the boat in closer, checking the levee between the log pond and the lake. “That’s where all the logs have been drifting out from,” Loch said, pointing to a break in the levee. He shifted the boat into neutral, letting it glide toward the dock. Sarah took the wheel as Loch ran out on the bow and jumped onto the dock with the front tie rope. A second later Sarah jumped onto the dock and secured the rear tie.
“You stay with the boat,” Loch told Zaidee.
“I don’t want to,” Zaidee complained.
“Just until Sarah and I check something out,” Loch said. He reached over and smoothed Zaidee’s hair, which, thanks to the wind, was standing up like the bristles of a brush. She looked at him pleadingly. “But you can depend on me. You need me. …”
“We’ll be right back,” Loch told her. “I promise.”
Zaidee watched her brother and Sarah head down the dock toward the boathouse. “Five minutes!” she called after him. “Please find Wee Beastie!” Then she remembered the skiff’s radio. She’d play with that awhile.
“It’s a nice little boathouse,” Sarah said, looking up at the picture window on the second floor. “It’s like the dwarfs’ cottage in ‘Snow White,’ she added. “My mom made Dad buy a new place in Switzerland. She hangs out there full-time now. It’s got the same kind of boathouse, but with six boat slips underneath and a couple of heavy-duty racing boats. You’ve got to come over.”
“Sometime when your father’s not there,” Loch said, checking the water on both sides of the dock.
“Exactly,” Sarah said.
Closer, they saw the door to the boathouse had been left open. It swung gently in the breeze.
“Hello! Anybody here?” Loch called out. He knew Jesse wouldn’t be showing up, but maybe he had some kind of family or friends.
Walking inside the boathouse, Loch and Sarah saw a small outboard and a canoe bobbing in their slips. “Anybody here?” Loch called again, his voice reverberating between the water and the second floor.
“Nobody’s here,” Sarah said.
They started up the steps to the living quarters. At the top of the stairs they heard a TV playing. Loch knocked on the door. There was no answer.
“This place is deserted,” Loch said, reaching out turning the doorknob. The door was unlocked and they went in.
“Who’d go out on the lake and leave their TV on?” Sarah asked. “Unless you think the caretaker got it right here, of course.”
“No,” Loch said.
Sarah sat in the armchair in front of the TV. She grabbed the remote and started flipping through the channels. Loch went to the picture window to check on Zaidee. He had a clear view of her with a pair of earphones on her head in the boat at the end of the dock. She saw him and gave a big wave.
It was then that Loch noticed the motion of the water in front of the boathouse. It was as if a wave were forming, a slow surging of water heading into the open boat slips below. Loch shut the TV off.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Sarah asked.
Loch put a finger to his lips. “Shhhhhh,” he whispered. “Something’s here.”
The small boathouse began to vibrate, and the blood drained from Sarah’s face. She had felt that motion before on the catamaran with Erdon. …
In black-rubber dive suits and scuba gear, Dr. Sam and Randolph climbed down the stern ladder to the rear swim platform of the yacht. Randolph steadied himself and motioned a crew member to pass down a speargun armed with an explosive head. He asked Dr. Sam to hold the speargun while he finished adjusting his equipment.
“Make sure Emilio signals us if anything comes back on the sonar,” Randolph called up to the deck.
Cavenger’s head peered down at him from the top railing. “You’re wasting time. Get in the water and fix the damn thing!”
Randolph put his mask and mouthpiece in place and rolled off the platform into the water. When he surfaced, Dr. Sam carefully placed the speargun in his hands. He waited until Randolph was good and clear, then put his own mask and mouthpiece in place. He turned on the dive lamp mounted on his back, then followed Randolph into the murky water.
Below the surface, Dr. Sam kicked his flippers to trail Randolph down the side of the hull. The powerful arc light bounced off the chalk-white paint of the ship’s hull, giving them a visibility of nearly twenty feet. Clusters of peat particles rushed at his mask, and the aerator in his mouth turned his breathing into a pronounced wheezing. He felt unsure, all systems of his body on alert as if he were diving in shark waters.