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The Monster

Lisa Gray

    “Are ye no worried about the monster?”
    There was a mischievous grin in Curly’s eye.
    Nevertheless I rose to the bait.
    “I can’t be worried about something I don’t believe in,” I replied, my city-self rearing an ugly, self-righteous neck.
    “It’s no good luck to say that!” said Curly, his normally cheery fisherman’s face suddenly darkening.
    “Oh, for goodness sake! Don’t tell me you believe in the Loch Ness Monster?” I said.
    His face was sombre.
    “I’m driving to Inverness to the cinema, monster or no monster,” I retorted.
    “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” said Mrs. Mackenzie, entering the room.
    I was ruder than I should have been to the lady who had offered me the best of Highland hospitality.
    “Don’t tell me you believe in it?” I said, incredulously.
    Mrs. MacKenzie had seemed so practical. So down-to earth.
    “I have seen something,” she said in a soft Highland voice. “But that’s beside the point,” she hurried on as if unwilling to confirm her sighting even to herself. “Yer no from here. Ye don’t know the road. And that road can be treacherous at night with all the bends. And then there’s the mist.” She stopped. “It comes down.” She seemed to be searching for the right words. “Down. Like a grey curtain. To another world.” She stopped as if she’d already said too much. “You don’t know. You haven’t driven it at night.”
    “A little mist doesn’t bother me,” I said.
    “But at night?” Mrs. Mackenzie persisted.
    I felt like saying I couldn’t spend another night cooped up at Mrs. Mackenzie’s Bed and Breakfast but I couldn’t hurt her feelings. After all I was the one who had chosen to stay there.
    Drumnatochan. It was the name that had attracted me. I’d been driving down the western side of the loch on my way to Fort William on an impromptu holiday. I’d spent the previous week in a less than comfortable Bed and Breakfast in Inverness and knew the wisdom of searching for a place to stay the night early. I pulled off the road glad to rest from the innumerable bends that had pushed my concentration to its limits. That’s when I saw the sign. “Drumochil Cottage – Bed and Breakfast”. The cottage was set apart from the few others that seemed to make up the small village of Drumnatochan and differed from the others in that it faced directly over the Loch.
    It couldn’t be worse than the Inverness Bed and Breakfast, I told myself.
    And it wasn’t. Mrs. Mackenzie had welcomed me like long lost family and her son, Curly, a local fisherman, with his curly red hair, ruddy complexion and bantering tone had kept me entertained. I was the only guest. But there had been others. In the past.
    “Do you get a lot of business?” I’d asked Curly one long, slowly darkening evening.
    “Ay, there’s been a few,” he said. “They stay here hoping to see the monster. Then get annoyed when they don’t and move on.”
    “You must have had quite a few through your hands.”
    “Ay, ye could say that,” said Curly, laughing, “but you’re by far the prettiest!”
    I side-stepped Curly’s compliment by matching his banter.
    “That’s not saying much if all you’ve got to compare me to is the monster!”
    I thought it was a fair match but Curly’s normally brightly lit face darkened.
    “It disnae dae to insult the monster,” he said.
    I ignored his respect for the mythical creature.
    “Don’t tell me you’re superstitious!” I said incredulously.
    “I believe in it,” he said. “I’ve seen it!”
    I was about to ask for further details when his mother had entered the room and shot him a warning glance that precluded further discussion. The few local people I’d met had all been the same. They’d tell you they’d experienced something but refused to go further. Fear of ridicule, I suspected. I was sorry. At least their stories would have been entertainment. There was little other entertainment that Drumnatochan could provide. How Mrs Mackenzie and Curly could tolerate living in such an isolated spot indefinitely I couldn’t fathom. All I knew was that after a week in the Highland countryside, I was ready to re-introduce myself to the delights of the city.
    I’d enjoyed the drive to Inverness and the film earlier. The sun had showered the loch with its setting sheen and the water seemed to respond in ripples of rapture that ranged the whole length of the loch. There had been only one boat on the loch, the remaining Nessie hunters having abandoned their search for the day. It had been at the far side of the loch and did not seem to be moving. For a split second, as I had taken my eyes off the road, the next bend not yet looming and the last one securely navigated, I wondered if it was a boat.
    You’ll be telling yourself it’s the Monster next, I chided myself.
    I could see how people thought they’d seen it. The ripples in the loch. The protuberance from the darkened water. It would be an easy mistake to make.
    That’s no monster, I had laughed to myself. It’s not moving.
    It seemed to be waiting. Waiting. For something.
    A bite, I thought, thinking of the fishermen who waited there daily, no doubt glad that the Nessie hunters had left.
    For a second I thought I saw a flash from the direction of the boat.
    Probably the late afternoon sun striking some metal on the boat’s hull, I thought.
    But the advancing bend and the outskirts of Inverness rapidly approaching had swept all thought of it and the idyllic setting of the loch from my mind.
    Now it was dark and the drive back bore no resemblance to my former journey. The journey to Inverness had been pleasant and relatively short. Not so the drive back. Each bend, that threatened like some monster waiting to devour me, seemed to come too quickly for my liking. I had never been keen on driving in the dark, my night vision totally unimproved by the vast amount of carrots I had once consumed in my eagerness for a solution to the problem. Now I was cursing. Cursing at every black bend that knew I was a stranger to it, But a greater curse was about to befall me. For, as I circumnavigated a bend that was perilously close to the edge of the road, so much so that I could see the dark water below in the glint of my headlights, it was as if a grey curtain had descended on my vision and I thought of Mrs. McKenzie’s words.
    “And there’s the mist.”
    Mist was a misnomer. Mist I had experienced. This was a shutter. A shutter over my sight. The road, that had formerly been so visible in the car’s headlights, had vanished like some Kelpie, called home. I could not see the end of the car bonnet, far less the road, though my eyes never left where the latter had formerly been.
    Keep focussing, I thought. It will clear at any moment. There was no way it will last all the way to Drumnatochan.
    But the mist like some mulish mermaid clung to the bonnet of my car and refused to dislodge itself. I did not know when the next critical corner of the road would appear too late for me to negotiate it and the plunge into the dark, murky waters of the loch would be my fate. My eyes ached from staring into the grey void and, more than once, I felt them tire and lose their concentration so that I swerved skittishly which at least served to wake them up. I felt I had travelled miles but, in reality, I could not have covered more than a few, the speed I was travelling at. This only served to deepen my depression for I knew I had met my match in the mist and, unless the mist relented soon, I would be in real trouble.
    For some reason I felt the road was climbing. I tried not to think about the drop. But suddenly the mist melted away mysteriously, and I could see the road ahead. Or a small portion of it. I was not foolish enough to think I had lost it altogether but, I surmised, I had left much of it, albeit temporarily, down there hanging over the loch. My eyes welcomed the intermission and my foot hit the accelerator in a frenzy of freedom. It was as I rounded the first bend that my eyes were dazzled by a car’s headlights travelling on the other side of the road towards me. It was the first car I had seen in a long time and I should have been grateful to know there was another foolish traveller out there like me. But all I could do was curse him out loud for he had blinded me to what now appeared on the road directly in front of me. A box. A large black box. And I was going to hit it. My foot hit the brake with a violent vehemence and I skidded to a stop inches from the contraption.
    My heart racing, I leapt out of the car, cursing the careless lorry driver who must have dropped it inadvertently from the back of his truck, and could, so easily have caused my demise. I made up my mind to remove the obstacle from the road so, at least, I would have the comfort of knowing no harm would come to any other loch-side driver. I could not afford to waste any time for, at any minute, another tired traveller travelling behind me might round the bend and plough into the rear of my car. I hurried towards the box but, as I did so, it moved. It moved across the road at a startling pace and down into the shrubbery at the side of the loch. I froze. Had some creature been underneath it? Mrs. McKenzie’s tales of the something she had seen pervaded my mind. It was only my rational mind that told me no monster was the size of a box. Even a large one.
    I ran to the bushes at the side of the road and looked down. The inky black water of the loch oiled the small pebble beach beneath. For some reason I pulled back. Then I heard the rustling. A creature was there. Some sort of creature.
    It was then I heard the laughing. There was no creature. No monster. It was a practical joke. Some idiot had thought it funny to plant a black box in the middle of the road to stop an unwary traveller. Teenagers, most likely. I should have climbed back in the car and driven off but my teacher training triumphed. No taunting teenager was going to get the better of me! I slithered down the broken, bushy slope and my feet landed on the hard pebbled ground. I made my way along the small black beach, vaguely aware of an empty boat tethered in the bay. I’d find them if it was the last thing I did!
    I found them all right. But it wasn’t teenagers. It was Curly. And his mother. And they were laughing.
    “I don’t think it’s funny!” I said irately.
    Curly’s eyes darkened suddenly.
    “You thought our tales of the monster were funny!” he said.
    Mrs. McKenzie nodded her head.
    “That’s different!” I said.
    I could see in the half darkness Mrs. McKenzie was already pulling the big, black box towards her. But why she was picking up pebbles and throwing them in there was beyond me. Perhaps she didn’t want the box blowing away in the night and polluting the waters of the loch. Perhaps she intended returning the next day to remove it.
    “Why is it different?” said Curly.
    I was getting irritable, longing only to return to my car and even contemplating the miserable mist beyond as a minor inconvenience.
    “The monster doesn’t exist!” I said.
    “You shouldna say that!” said Mrs. McKenzie, suddenly stopping her pebble gathering and looking at me strangely. “The monster gets angry at people saying that!”
    She looked out over the murky loch with a watery eye.
    “You’ll have to make it up to it!” she added.
    “And how, pray, am I going to do that?” I smirked, tired of the chat and the cold air from the loch, wanting only to return to the drabness of Drumnatochan.
    “Ay, praying is one way,” she said. “And sacrifice is the other. Isn’t that right, Curly?”
    I swung round. Curly was wading towards the anchored boat in the bay. He delved his hands into it, pulled out the most enormous fish I had ever seen, slit its belly with the knife in his other hand, held it aloft victoriously and started wading back towards us.
    “Sacrifice! Life’s all about sacrifice!” said Mrs. McKenzie, wiping a tear away from her eye.
    I couldn’t fathom whether she was proud of Curly or his fishing skills. I felt neither. Just an abhorrence at what he’d done.
    Curly walked over to the black box and put the fish in.
    “Do ya think it will be enough, Ma?” he said.
    “A big creature requires a lot of food,” said his mother.
    “Ay,” said Curly proudly. “And we’ve provided it with enough through the years, haven’t we, Ma?”
    “We sure have, Curly,” she said. “We’ve had a few through our hands.”
    The phrase sent a chill through me. I thought of my chat with Curly.
    “Ay, there’s been a few. They stay to see the monster then get annoyed when they don’t and move on.”
    “It’s not been that great a sacrifice. After all, no body’s been missed.”
    The woman’s voice was cold.
    Body? The word made me back away. Did they mean body of a fish? Who would miss that?
    “Yer just like the others,” she said, staring at me strangely. “You shouldna have mocked the monster! They did it too. And now they’ve made the ultimate sacrifice.”
    She turned towards the loch.
    “They’re out there! And you will be as well! In this!”
    She pointed at the black box and the stones that would weigh it down.
    The others?
    I swung round, realisation, slowly dawning. Too late.
    Curly was inches from me, the metal blade of his upraised knife, glinting even as it plunged into me.
    I heard Mrs McKenzie’s voice from afar.
    “I told you it wasn’t a good idea. No to be worried by the monster,” she said, as she dragged my slowly sinking body towards the black box.
    She meant Curly, I thought.
    Curly was a monster. The worst kind.
    But, as they both lifted my broken body into that black box, I wasn’t so sure. For beyond Mrs. Mckenzie’s back, far out on the loch, I thought I saw black ripples. And a protuberance from the darkened water. The condition I was in, it was an easy mistake to make.
    Yet it seemed to be waiting. Waiting for something.
    A bite.
    Mrs. McKenzie’s eyes followed mine.
    “Ay, ye believe in it noo,” she said. “You’ve seen it.”
    “I’ve seen something,” I whispered, as I was lowered into the black box and they nailed the lid on top.
    I heard Mrs. Mckenzie’s voice, as if from behind a curtain.
    “Ay, they all say that in the end. Ye believe in the monster, noo, don’t ye?”
    And, as I felt the black box being dragged towards the loch, a strange mist settled in front of my eyes. A shutter over my sight. I knew I had experienced something. Only one thing stopped me from going any further. Fear.
    I heard Curly’s mocking voice, as if from afar.
    “Are ye no worried about the monster?”
    But I was already on a journey. A road. A road with black bends that threatened like some monster waiting to devour me.
    And I was the bait.

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