Carly looked from Aston to Slater and back again. “Did the monster get him?” she asked. They didn’t answer right away, so she pressed her point. “He goes out for photos, goes to town and then just disappears, doesn’t come back.”
“We don’t know what—” Slater started.
“We don’t know anything!” Carly became angry as well as hurt. “Where’s the boat he took? Maybe he went to town, had a great old time, and then came back like he said he would, but didn’t get this far. Did you think of that? Do you remember those pictures we were just looking at?”
Slater reached out, put a hand on Carly’s arm.
“And what about Gaszi?” Carly demanded. “Has everyone forgotten about that guy? A lot of people are just wandering off on this trip, don’t you think?”
A contemplative silence hung in the air. No one had anything to say for a few moments, lost in their own thoughts.
Eventually Slater said, “I suppose the only real question right now is whether we continue or not?”
“Are you asking me?” Carly said.
“I’d like to hear your thoughts.”
“I want to go to the police about Dave,” she said. “Now, not later.” She crossed her arms tight, defiantly shielding herself against argument.
“Tell you what, I’ll go in the morning,” Aston said, keen to head off any enmity between the two remaining members of the film crew. “Holloway has the motorboat now anyway, and by the time they’re back it’ll be late.” He paused, grinned without much humor. “I don’t want to go out across the lake in the dark. We’ll carry on, have our dinner and whatever else the madman has planned, then first thing in the morning I’ll go directly to Rinne. That okay?” He didn’t relish the idea, but Carly was right.
Carly deflated slightly, maybe relieved there wasn’t going to be further disagreement. “Okay.”
They busied themselves for what remained of the late afternoon investigating the region where the photos had been captured the previous night. No sure hits on sonar or anything else definitive came their way, the slow business of monster hunting once again winding down to its lowest gear.
Like so many sections of the lake shore, this place was riddled with underwater passageways, many of which would be large enough for a creature of substantial size to squeeze through. Of course, there was no telling how far any of them went, or which of them narrowed or disappeared entirely, and right now there were too many to explore individually, so they kept searching. Any one of them could potentially be some kind of lair.
“Look there,” Aston said, moving quickly to the screen showing a feed from a high definition camera attached to the underside of the Merenneito. “Can we zoom in?”
Laine operated some controls and the image swept deeper into the lake.
“We need more light,” Aston said.
Laine hit another switch and a bank of powerful halogen spotlights along the hull snapped on. The camera flared out for a second, then matched the new exposure levels and showed more detail than ever. Silt and particulate matter sparkled and drifted past the lens, but the creases and ridges of rock puncturing the lakebed mud were clear now.
“Slow down,” Aston said. “Pan left a bit. Bit more. There! See those?”
A trio of odd-looking creatures swam lazily through the water, not far above the bottom. Heart hammering in his chest, Aston turned to gape at the others.
“What are we supposed to be looking at? Those fish?” Slater asked.
“Look closer. Those are skate!” The small, ray-like creatures, with their long tails and wing-like fins, seemed to not so much swim as fly through the depths.
Slater leaned in, brow creased in confusion. “Skates only live in salt water, right? In the sea.”
Aston knew for certain she was right. It was his job to know this stuff. What he saw down there was not a freshwater creature, but he had no doubt he had identified it correctly. “Yeah. They shouldn’t be here,” he said quietly as his mind worked through possibilities to explain their presence.
“Can’t some fish live in both salt and fresh water?” Slater asked.
“Some, sure. There are anadromous fish like salmon, smelt, sturgeon, which are born in freshwater but spend most of their lives in the sea, but then return to fresh water to spawn. Then there are catadromous fish, which generally live in fresh water and spawn in salt water. Certain types of eels, for example. And there are creatures that are happy in brackish water, you know, a mix of salt and fresh, like low salinity oceanside lakes or something. But I’ve never heard of skate living in fresh water.”
“So how can this be?” Laine asked.
“I don’t know,” Aston admitted. “I’d love to catch one. I’ll wager they’re a unique variation on the species. We might have discovered something entirely new here. I know it’s not what you’re all after, but this is pretty fucking exciting stuff for someone like me!”
Makkonen wandered up behind them to watch. The taciturn captain’s brow was creased. “You’re sure about this?” he asked, but the others simply stared.
Slater’s eyes widened. “If we could prove the existence of a new species, that would make this whole expedition worthwhile even if we don’t find a monster, right?”
“Definitely!” Aston said, trying not to sound like a kid at Christmas. Perhaps he could escape this job with a positive bank balance and his professional reputation intact, enhanced even. He could get papers published out of this. He might get the opportunity to name a new species. There were numerous skate already identified, dozens of genera, but nothing freshwater, he was sure of it. Calm down, Sam. He took a deep breath. There was a strong possibility for how these things came to be here and it didn’t automatically mean they had a new species on their hands.
“Maybe the monster is a large skate,” Laine offered, interrupting Aston’s thoughts.
“That doesn’t match up with the images we’ve found,” Slater said. “Not by a long way.”
“You know what this means?” Aston asked.
They both looked at him.
Aston stood back from the screen and shook his head. “It means at least one of these channels leads all the way to the ocean.”
“We’re dozens of miles from the ocean,” Laine said. “Maybe more. Is that really possible?”
“I don’t see any other way that those things can be here,” Aston said. “Their ancestors must have worked their way here and become comfortable with the brackish conditions over many generations. Which means there has to be access back and forth between their natural marine habitat and this lake.”
“So if that’s true,” Laine went on, “then our creature may well be a seafaring critter that’s discovered this same access to our lake.”
Aston turned to the cryptozoologist. “But why?”
Laine’s brow creased. “Why, what?”
“Why would it come here?”
Laine raised his hands. “Isn’t that your field of expertise?”
Aston laughed and shook his head. “I suppose so. This is such wild speculation on every front, but if there’s a channel that does go to the sea, and if there is a monster here, and if it does use the channel to travel back and forth, there needs to be a biological reason. Feeding? Breeding ground? Perhaps this is its original home. Is there possibly even a population here? We can’t know, but we need to establish these facts.”
Slater glanced back at Carly. “Are you getting all this?”
Carly nodded, the camera fixed on Aston.
“Holloway is going to have a cow when he hears this development,” Slater said. “His bubble will be impossible to burst.”