The rest of the drunks at Sniddles rose and applauded.
I took a wobbly bow, then fell sideways into my friend's brawny arms. "Was I clear this time, True? Are you getting the whole picture?"
"Aye, lad, but dinnae ye worry, I willnae tell a soul."
Afraid to sleep, I found myself greeting the dawn at the summit of Drumnadrochit's highest peak, sobriety returning fast as I contemplated my existence.
What had happened to me? In six short months, I had gone from goal-oriented bastion of science to a sulking shell of a man, afraid of his own shadow, afraid of his own life.
A former teetotaler, I was well on the road to becoming an alcoholic. A former thinker, I was now afraid to reason, making pathetic excuses for my new-found phobia… and a long-lost fear that seemed to be reappearing in my dreams.
I was burnt out and exhausted. I hated myself, I hated my life, and there was no way to escape from my own head.
Except one.
Removing the vial of prescription drugs from my pocket, I stared at the pills, debating a fatal overdose.
How many times had I considered suicide since my ninth birthday? Six times? A dozen? With the help of my teachers and coaches, I had reinvented myself, but deep inside, I knew I was still Angus's runt.
What was keeping me alive? What did I have to live for? What did I have to lose?
I had spent the last six months poisoning myself slowly with alcohol. Why not just get it over with now?
Do it, Zachary! Swallow the pills! End the pain and fear and humiliation, once and for all.
I cupped the pills in my hand, but there was still one thing preventing me from offing myself on that beautiful mountainside. This time it wasn't fear — it was anger.
I was angry at Angus for forcing me to return, for forcing me to take a harsh look at myself. And having looked, I now realized that as disgusting as my father was, he was just a convenient excuse for my pain.
In truth, I was angry at myself, because Angus was right. I had been living a lie.
With each passing night terror, fragments of long-buried memories were moving into the light. As frightening as they were, I finally realized the dreams were serving a purpose — to shake loose my false foundation of reality.
As much as I tried to fight it, I now knew that something monstrous had grabbed me in the Loch seventeen years earlier. Unable to cope with the truth, my child's mind had buried it. Somehow, my second drowning in the Sargasso Sea had released these long-dormant memories, and now I had a choice; take the coward's way out and kill myself, or track down the very being that was responsible for my pain.
The dragon can sense fear, he can smell it in yer blood. Will ye stand and fight the dragon like a warrior, or will ye cower and run, lettin' him haunt ye for the rest of yer days?
"No!"
The echo of my voice crackled across the Glen like gunfire.
Leaping to my feet, I tossed the vial of pills as far as I could into the bushes. "No more cowering. No more running. If I'm going to die, then let my death serve a purpose!"
Standing beneath that gray morning sky, I looked down upon the ancient waters of Loch Ness, my words growling beneath my breath, sending shivers down my spine. "Okay, beast, whatever you are, you've haunted my existence long enough. Now I'm coming, do you hear me?
"I'm coming after you!"
Chapter 17
Police Sergeant George Mackenzie and I were standing among a group of people near Altsigh Youth Hostel watching two humps travel up the Loch doing ten knots. It was obvious these two humps were part of one animate long object, making it at least thirteen meters [42.6 feet]!"
Suddenly there was a terrific disturbance in the Loch. In the midst of this commotion, my friend (Mr. Roger Pugh) and I saw quite distinctly the neck of the beast standing out of the water at a height we later calculated to be about three meters (ten feet). It swam towards us at a slight angle, then thankfully disappeared.
For the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt a true sense of purpose. Feeling reborn, my long-dormant mind focused upon my mission like a laser.
As to my hydrophobia, I wasn't quite ready to rush back into the water. Still, I convinced myself that logic and reason would provide me with the courage needed when the time came… if it came.
First things first, I needed information.
I knew there were hordes of self-proclaimed monster hunters on the way to Loch Ness, and they'd be well equipped and financed, armed with the latest sonar buoys and remotely operated vehicles, underwater listening devices and high-speed cameras, strobe lights and depth sounders. They'd probe the Loch from dawn to dusk and dusk to dawn, just as they had for decades. They'd talk about capturing the beast in a net (though technically Nessie was still protected by Highland law) and brag about selling underwater photos to Time magazine and Life and the Times of London. As my stepfather, Charlie, would say, they were the embodiment of insanity, performing the same rituals over and over again, yet always expecting different results. Though each was willing to sell their souls for a fleeting glimpse of a fin or a passing signal on sonar, in the end, they'd fare no better than the rest.
Nessie hunters were like bad golfers who lose their ball out of bounds, yet always search the most advantageous rough for their shot.
Whatever lurked in Loch Ness might be a semiamphibious species, but it still preferred the deep. Locating a creature in a lake that was twenty-three miles long, a mile wide, and seven-to-eight hundred feet deep was equivalent to finding garter snakes in an Olympic-sized swimming pool filled with black ink. As history attested, it was purely hit-and-miss… mostly miss, especially with the public anticipating glimpses of the monster along the surface.
As a scientist, I needed to narrow those odds considerably by understanding my quarry. To do that, I had to attack the challenge from a completely different angle.
What would Alfred Wallace do?
Rather than focus on locating an elusive and quite mobile creature, I decided to analyze Loch Ness as a whole. Granted, the waterway was a unique body of fresh water, its surface waters running into the North Sea (and perhaps, at one time, its deeper recesses as well) but the Loch was still an isolated ecosystem, supporting a variety of different species. At least one of these, presumably an apex predator or predators, had suddenly changed its behavioral pattern and, as a result, its diet. To me, that meant something within the food chain itself had been disturbed.
The first task would be to figure out what was off-kilter.
The second would be to use this information in order to track down the creature… and find a means to lure it up from the deep.
I spent most of that morning in the village buying supplies, and everywhere I went, people were talking about the monster. Word had spread that two large fishing trawlers were already making their way south through the Moray Firth, while another research vessel was coming north up the Caledonian Canal from Fort William. Later in the day, a tractor trailer loaded with sonar buoys was expected to arrive at the Clansman Hotel, this part of an American expedition funded by AMCO Productions, out of Cleveland.
The circus had officially come to town, but I refused to play the clown.