Loch

  He stood to get his bearings. When he looked up at the top of the waterfall, he saw a familiar ridge and the back of the cement bunker.

  “Hey!” he yelled. “Hey, Zaidee!”

  He called twice more before Zaidee could tell where his voice was coming from. When she realized he had disappeared, she had checked the shoreline. She wasn’t expecting to hear his voice calling from behind her.

  Zaidee climbed the knoll to the grid control bunker. From there she could see Loch standing far down the slope.

  “What are you doing there?” she shouted, glad to see his grinning face. The one thing she always knew was that Loch was able to take care of himself.

  He waved. “Come on down!”

  “All right, all right!”

  She scooped up the picnic basket and laptop, made her way down the steep path along the stream, then cut in toward the pool. When she got closer, she saw that Loch was flushed and minus the scuba gear.

  “Did you fall down that?” she asked, eyeing the waterfall.

  “And then some,” he said. “I think something else might have come down it too.” He described the set of smaller scrapings.

  “Maybe they’re from a beaver or an otter.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry.” Zaidee sat down on the rock and opened the picnic basket. “Do you want roast beef or ham and cheese?”

  “Not now,” Loch said, staring down into the pool. He saw his mask and air tank dead center on the bottom, and slipped on his fins again.

  “You’re not going back in, are you?”

  SPLASH.

  “You’re crazy,” Zaidee called after him.

  Loch retrieved his mask on the first dive. Next, he brought up the air tank. He knew he’d probably never see the weight belt again, but that didn’t matter. Quickly, he got the scuba gear back on and dropped back into the pool, this time leaving a gurgling stream of air bubbles behind him. Across from the deep, gravelly center was the wall of boiling chaos where the waterfall crashed into the pool. On both sides were thick clusters of lush water plants and floating lilies with enormous stems and roots reaching down like tentacles to anchor among the rocks.

  Loch settled on the bottom. Slowly, he moved on toward the underwater garden. He veered away from the bedlam of the falls, sliding into the light and shadows of the eerie waterscape.

  It was here that he first heard the music. At least, that’s what it sounded like to him—a single muted instrument being played, a kind of otherworldly singing. It was faint and plaintive, like strains from a distant cello.

  Suddenly, there was a fast, quick movement in the thick of the water plants, and Loch knew he was not alone at the bottom of the pool. He swam closer, very slowly, but his mask began to fog. He would have to fix it immediately. He stopped, braced his feet on the bottom stones, and pushed for the surface. His head popped out of the water next to the slab of granite.

  “You see anything?” Zaidee asked, busy eating her sandwich and playing Crashers.

  Loch pulled his mask off. “I’m not sure.” There was no point in telling Zaidee anything until he had checked it out.

  “You know, the screen’s even worse now,” Zaidee complained. “The squiggly line’s going ballistic. You want half a roast-beef sandwich?”

  “No thanks.” Loch spit into his mask again and smudged the saliva around on the plastic with his fingers.

  “Hey.” Zaidee gagged. “I’m eating!”

  Loch put the mask back on, kicked his legs high into the air, and dove back to the bottom of the pool.

  Again he heard the faint, curious music. He knew it wasn’t caused by any water in his ears, and he certainly hadn’t been down long or deep enough to have delirium levels of nitrogen in his blood. Once more he approached the water plants. This time he glimpsed the dark blur rushing behind a rock, a creature about the size of a seal. He knew even seals bite if their territory is invaded, so he used his fins to glide slowly up and over the top of the rock. The cello sound changed suddenly into an ominous hum.

  When he looked down, all he could think was, Oh my God.

  Directly beneath him was the black, bony, plated back of what had to be a very young plesiosaur. Adrenaline shot into Loch’s blood. The long neck of the creature lifted, then twisted so its head could turn and look up at him. Loch stared into the face of the creature, a miniature of the ghastly, terrifying Rogue.

  Hummmmm…

  The hum became more of a growl. He realized the creature’s mouth could open at any moment, and the little beast might lunge for his throat. Loch let his legs settle slowly, until his fins lay on the top of the rock. The creature’s eyes stayed riveted on him, but its frightening humming dropped a pitch, becoming softer and less threatening. Loch saw bruises on the creature’s ribbed fins and body. He knew it had to have been cornered with its mother at the nets, then washed through the cavern and over the falls. Now it was trapped in the pool, hurt and dazed. Loch had seen the same sad look in the eyes of a coyote he once saw limping out of a canyon after a fire. The flames had burned the coyote’s back, compromising its wild instincts.

  The humming stopped.

  Loch moved and settled slowly to one side of the rock. Now the creature was in front of him.

  “Okay, fellah … it’s okay.” Loch spoke softly through the mouthpiece. He knew to minimize the stream of bubbles from his air tank and let his words reverberate deeply from his chest, a type of intoning his father had taught him when they had hand-fed groupers and sea turtles off tropical reefs.

  The creature raised its bumpy snout.

  “Good boy … uh, good little boy,” Loch repeated as he reached out his right hand just a few inches, as he would to pet a strange dog. “Nice little plesiosaur …”

  Suddenly the hoods above the creature’s eyes lifted, revealing the full size of its enormous eyes. It reared up, drew its head back, then shot it forward, brandishing a massive mouth of jagged teeth. Like a demonic swan, it lunged its snout again and again at Loch, never touching him, but causing him to fall over backward. Loch froze with the creature on top of him, its teeth whirling just above his face. Loch’s heart beat crazily, until the lunges stopped. Finally the creature closed its mouth, slowly retreating from Loch’s head. Lock took a deep breath.

  It doesn’t want to hurt me, Loch told himself, astounded.

  Inch by inch, Loch eased himself away from the creature and righted himself. It began to make a new sound. At first it was a type of clicking, as if it were sending out a kind of sonar to examine Loch. But the clicking sounds changed into the eerily beautiful music again.

  “You make music when you feel safe,” Loch said to the creature. “Music when you trust someone …”

  Loch didn’t know the words to express the thrill of being in the presence of the creature, but he knew he was witnessing something rare and precious and inexplicable.

  Loch pushed against the bottom and swam slowly upward. He surfaced near Zaidee and spit out his mouthpiece.

  “Give me a sandwich!” he gasped, deciding not to tell her yet about the creature.

  “Say please,” Zaidee insisted.

  “Please.”

  “Roast beef or ham?” she asked, offering both.

  He grabbed the roast-beef sandwich, bit down on the mouthpiece, and quickly dove back beneath the surface.

  “Hey!” Zaidee yelled, watching the sandwich go under.

  Loch reached bottom. The creature hadn’t moved. Again it started its music. Slowly, he held out the disintegrating sandwich, letting the bread and meat float down in front of the creature. Quickly, its head reared back, then snapped forward, over and over again until every speck of the sandwich was devoured.

  “Good boy … you’re a little hungry … good fellah.” Loch knew there had to be small fish in the pool—shoreline crappies and sunfish from the lake that had gotten caught up in the underwater current the same way he had—but hardly enough for a growing young plesio
saur. Loch attempted to imitate the sounds, the pitch, and the rhythm, of the creature’s music. Eventually, he inched his hand out toward its head. The creature allowed him to slide his fingers gently over the knobby plating on the skull.

  “You need a name,” Loch told the creature, as he continued to pet its head. He thought about calling it Dan or Steve, but a human name didn’t seem to fit. He remembered they had named its mother Beast. “Son of Beast” also didn’t sound right.

  Loch stopped petting the creature for a moment and moved his hands to adjust his mask. The creature seemed disappointed. It lifted its head until Loch’s hand was touching it. Again Loch petted it, then tried moving his hand away. Once more the creature slid its head under Loch’s hand.

  Loch laughed. “You want more.”

  Finally Loch tried moving away a few feet. The creature moved with him. “You’re smart,” Loch told the creature. “And you probably want another sandwich. I’ll be right back, okay?”

  Loch started to swim, reaching his cupped hands out, pulling at the water. When Loch looked back, he saw the creature swimming after him, its fins thrusting it forward smoothly, powerfully.

  “How about this?” Loch said, bubbles rising as he looped over backward. The creature stayed with him, circling at his side. By now Loch knew the creature understood it was a game, and they began to spin and turn joyously beneath the water.

  Zaidee knew Loch’s air supply would be running out soon, that he’d have to come up. She hung over the edge of the pool, watching Loch cavort in and out of the deep shadows with something that looked to her like a big otter. It appeared they were playing a weird game of tag.

  When Loch finally started up toward her, the creature followed almost to the surface, but then disappeared into the water plants.

  Loch’s head bobbed up near the ledge.

  “What is that thing down there?” Zaidee asked. “Whatever it is, I think it’s making the static line on Crashers go bonkers.”

  Loch pulled himself out. “You’ve got to see it to believe it,” he gasped. “You got another sandwich?”

  “There’s half a ham and cheese left.”

  “Hold it over the edge,” Loch told her. “It needs to know you’re a friend.”

  Zaidee scrunched up her face. “I am not that thing’s friend!”

  “Come on,” Loch said. “Don’t you want to see it?” He took the sandwich and stuck it in Zaidee’s hand. “Just let it watch you putting it in the water. It can see what you’re doing.”

  “Big deal. Dad let me feed otters in the Galápagos when I was three years old.”

  “Do it!”

  He helped hold Zaidee as she reached out and set the sandwich in the water. She no sooner let go of it than the head of the creature exploded from the surface, hurtling the bread and meat into the air. As the food fell down, all Zaidee could see and hear was a whirling blur of ferocious, gnashing teeth. Zaidee screamed until the creature had finished its feeding, closed its mouth, and settled quietly at the edge of the pond to look at them.

  “Nasty,” Zaidee said.

  “Right,” Loch agreed. “It’s ugly as sin, but it’s all ours!”

  6

  INVASION

  It didn’t take Zaidee long to see past the gnashing teeth, beyond the horror of the creature’s face, to realize what a mind-boggling, cool thing they had found. She fed it every last piece of food they had, including the Mallomars.

  “It loves chocolate,” Zaidee said. “It’s really smart.”

  Loch laughed. “I think it would rather snack on a nice, fat salmon.” Then, deadly serious, he continued, “You can’t tell anyone about this.”

  “What about Dad?” Zaidee asked.

  “Of course we’re going to have to tell him,” Loch said. “But if Cavenger finds out, how long do you think it’d be before he’d have his name on a plaque with the creature stuffed and under glass in the British Museum?”

  Loch and Zaidee swam and played with the beast all after-noon, but finally the time came when they had to leave.

  “We have to go now,” Loch told the creature. It was as if the moment the thought had entered Loch’s mind, the creature understood. It began to make rapid, sad sounds.

  CLICK CLICK …

  CLACK CLICK CLACK …

  “What’s it doing?” Loch wondered.

  “It doesn’t want us to go,” Zaidee said.

  The creature lifted the hoods of its eyes high and stared at Loch and Zaidee.

  CLICK CLACK … CLICK …

  “It knows we’re going to leave it alone again,” Zaidee said, giving the creature a last gentle pat on its head.

  “We’ll be back,” Loch promised.

  The creature swam back and forth in the pool, lifting its head high to watch Loch and Zaidee until they disappeared over the ridge. By the time they had made it back to the boat, Loch had thought of a name for the creature. “Remember that Robert Burns poem ‘To a Mouse’?” Loch asked Zaidee. “I had to memorize it once.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “It was about a mouse who ends up homeless because its nest gets dug up by a farmer’s plow,” Loch said, as he got into the boat and primed the motor. “I remember only the first line, ‘Wee, sleekit, cow’rin’, tim’rous beastie …’ ”

  Zaidee untied the anchor rope, pushed the boat off, and settled back into the bow seat. “That’s a long name.”

  “Wee Beastie,” Loch said, leaning over the outboard and pulling the start cord. “That’s his name.”

  “Wee Beastie?”

  “What do you think?”

  Zaidee turned the name over in her mind as the motor coughed to life. “I think I like it,” she said.

  “Then it’s settled.” Loch threw the boat into gear and gave it full throttle. The boat hurtled back out onto the lake. The tall pines along the north shore cast huge shadows across the shallows, making the drift logs harder to see.

  “Dad will freak when he finds out we took the boat,” Zaidee said, worried.

  “Not when we show him Wee Beastie,” Loch said.

  Zaidee opened the laptop and brought Crashers up on the screen. “The game picked up the sounds from yesterday’s creatures too,” Zaidee said. “How come their lines were on this before they showed on the sonar screens?”

  “Look, it’s a computer,” Loch reminded her. “Maybe there’s something about having Crashers with 580 megabytes that turns it into a kind of receiver for sonar.”

  “What’s a megabyte?” Zaidee wanted to know. “You said one day you’d teach me all about computers.”

  “It’s going to take more than one day, but what I’m saying is maybe the creatures register on our screen because of those sounds they make, like whales and dolphins do. Maybe Wee Beastie and these guys make more concentrated and directed sounds, waves that can travel through water, then vibrate the surface and continue through the air. Who knows?”

  “There are no interference lines now,” Zaidee said, keeping one eye on the edge of the deep water.

  When they got back, they tied the boat at the dock and hurried up to the trailer. They tossed their gear inside and walked down the driveway to the south road to look for a lift to the base. A beat-up Toyota 4×4 headed their way. Loch waved it down. It was only after the truck stopped that they both realized it was Jesse Sanderson, the caretaker of the logging mill, behind the wheel.

  “I’m not riding with him,” Zaidee whispered as Loch opened the door. “He’s probably drunk as usual.”

  “Where you kids headin’?” Jesse asked, his mouth open wide, proudly revealing his gold front teeth.

  Loch decided he’d get Jesse to say a few more words to see if he had been doing any afternoon nipping. “Hi, Mr. Sanderson. We were out to see you at the logging mill with our father, remember?”

  Jesse took a closer look at them as he lifted his rifle off the front seat and stuck it on the shelf below the rear window. “Oh, yeah,” he said, his big belly hitting into the ste
ering wheel. “Wanted to know what I’d seen in the lake … and I told you. Something with a head big as a barrel, yes, sir, big as a barrel …”

  “He’s sober,” Loch mouthed to Zaidee as he slid into the middle seat. “Can we ride along as far as the base?” Loch asked Jesse.

  “Glad for the company,” he said.

  Zaidee made a face. She hopped up next to her brother and slammed the door. Jesse put the truck into gear. Its front end had a major shimmy, but Jesse was driving slowly enough.

  “Seen anything in the lake lately?” Loch asked, checking to see how much Jesse knew. Everyone at camp knew he was a big creep, and he was always wandering around trying to stick his big red nose into the expedition’s business.

  “Can’t say I have,” Jesse said.

  “What are you doing on this side of the lake?” Zaidee wanted to know.

  “Ran out of supplies. Had a little shopping to do.”

  Zaidee turned to look behind her. She saw a half dozen cases of beer jiggling in the bed of the truck.

  At the main gate of the base, Jesse was surprised to see the encampment swarming with new recruits and heavy equipment. The loud, steady clanking of a pneumatic driver cut through the air as a crew of sweating men completed the installation of a high link fence topped with barbed wire.

  “What’s going on around here?” Jesse asked the guard. “Looks like you’re goin’ to war.”

  The guard put on a phony, folksy smile. “Nothing much. Just getting ready for another sweep tomorrow.”

  “No kidding,” Jesse said like he cared. The only thing that really interested him was a pile of lumber and a couple of big toolboxes. He figured he’d go home, have a couple of drinks, then come back and see what he could rip off.

  Loch and Zaidee thanked Jesse for the lift, jumped down from the truck, and ran in through the gate. Construction workers were throwing up additional structures and setting up machinery. A large military helicopter made a pass along the shoreline, then stirred up a big cloud of dust as it landed on a freshly leveled pad.

  They spotted John Randolph cutting across the base in a jeep. “Have you seen Dr. Sam?” Loch called.