Operation: Loch Ness

- 5 -

Banks’ gut was shouting now and he knew he didn’t really want to hear the man’s story. But ‘roving brief’ meant listening to any intel, however ludicrous. Besides, he had good coffee, and he was warm, two things that didn’t apply out on the road.

“Tell me,” he said.

“It’s a longish tale, and I have a dry throat. Will you lads join me?”

He took a bottle of single malt down from a cupboard and five small glasses.

“We’re on duty, sir,” Hynd said, but Banks waved him down with a smile.

“It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve had a dram when we shouldn’t, and one’s not going to hurt anybody, so hush, Sarge, and let the man pour.”

It was more expensive stuff than Banks was used to, honey and wood smoke in the mouth, and a fire in the gut, and he had to resist the temptation to dive head first into it. He lit a cigarette, raised the glass to their host, and waved for the man to continue.

When the older man spoke, it was in the tone of a man who knew how to tell a story, and had one that needed to be told.

“The current house, what remains of it, was built in the mid-18th century as a hunting lodge for the Fraser family. Before that, there was a church on the spot dating from the Reformation, with a wee cemetery and a yard where they hanged cattle rustlers and murderers on a gibbet. Before the church was there, the ground had a series of burial mounds going back well before Christianity, before the Romans, into the depths of prehistory, the rumor among the local populace being that all those who were ever buried here were cursed folk, abandoned by God. In all that time, so the stories go, this particular patch of ground has always had a dark reputation.”

“More auld wives tales and fairy stories,” Wiggins said. “Cally will be in his element.”

Seton smiled.

“I’m rather fond of auld wives myself,” he said. “And I’m partial to fairy tales, as there is usually a kernel of truth to be found in even the most unusual of them.”

“Sounds like you’re a bit of a scholar, wee man,” McCally said.

“At one time, I was indeed a scholar, but in science rather than anything less mundane. Today, however, I am, and have been for many years, before all of you were born I’d guess, a student of what you might call the esoteric.”

“Come on now, if this is more of yon occult shite, I’m going out on deck for a fag,” Wiggins said.

“More?” Seton said, and raised an eyebrow.

“You tell your story, and maybe we’ll tell you one of ours,” Banks said. “You were telling us about the house? What were you doing there? And how does a monster fit in?”

“I’ll get to that,” Seton said, pouring himself another drink before continuing.

“You may have heard of Aleister Crowley, the so-called ‘Great Beast’ and ritual magician? Now is not the time to discuss the man’s supposed Satanism or his demerits as a human being. But one thing at least is true of him; he was a great student, indeed master, of the history and practice of the lost magical arts. He bought the house here in 1899, and you can be sure he knew of its history before doing so.”

“I knew it. More occult shite,” Wiggins said.

Seton stopped the private from leaving by the simple expedient of pouring them all another drink. Banks didn’t complain; there wasn’t enough in the bottle for any of them to get drunk and, besides, he was starting to get intrigued by Seton’s story.

“Crowley was interested in all manner of ancient practices,” Seton continued, “not least of which was the alchemical path to perfection and how it might be obtained. It is no surprise that there are reports from the early part of the last century of animals, and household pets, disappearing in this area. I believe the man was using them for his experiments. Again, I will not bore you with the detail of the full range of magical practices that he carried out, but they were many and diverse. Household servants told the folk down in Foyers of a small menagerie being kept in a shed at the rear of the property, and of animals being changed and turned into chimeras, monsters if you like.”

“Pish,” Wiggins said. “A load of auld pish.”

“That’s as maybe,” Seton said. “However, I could show you documentation, letters, sworn statements and journals and such, that go a long way to backing up my assertions. The papers tell that Crowley at least had some control over the beasts when he was present here. But he was often away on business. One night while he was in Edinburgh, at least one of the animals escaped, and the housekeeper, and two small children, were found dead in the doorway in the morning.”

“That’s the story I read,” Hynd said. “It was a big scandal back in the day.”

“That it was,” Seton continued. “But as I said, it is not Crowley’s reputation that concerns us here, but what became of his experiments. For only a few years later, the first modern stories of a monster in the loch started to appear, the first to make the papers being a report in the Inverness Courier on the second of May 1933. One thing to note is that there was no mention of any reptilian features, none of the ‘extinct dinosaur’ theories that emerged later, after the famous, now proven fake ‘Surgeons’ photograph. Indeed, one of the more credible early sightings speaks of a very large otter-like beast rather than anything resembling a dinosaur. It ate a cow in front of some ladies out for a quiet Sunday drive in the 1940s.”

Banks jerked at the mention of the otter, for suddenly pieces were starting to fall into place. To cover it, he spoke up.

“That still doesn’t explain what you were doing up at the house tonight,” he said.

“Doesn’t it?” Seton said. “I thought it did. I was, of course, looking for something, anything, that might tell me by what magical rites Crowley managed to control the beasts. I heard about the attack on the village and thought I might be able to do something to help.”

“We’ve seen firsthand what this thing can do, mister,” Wiggins said. “I don’t think it gives a fuck about your mumbo-jumbo.”

“Nevertheless, what kind of man would I be if I didn’t at least try?”

“You sound like you know a bit about the history of the monster here,” Banks said.

“I know a bit about a great many things,” Seton said, laughing, “But yes, I’ve done a lot of study in the area.”

“So what do you think it is?”

“I think it’s probably as much a result of science gone wrong as of magic, although Crowley definitely used magic to control it. And I think it’s likely to be more like the giant otter I mentioned earlier than anything else, an aquatic predator, mostly hiding in dark places, wary of man but now, somehow, emboldened. And I also believe that the burning of the house might have been a trigger, of sorts. Perhaps it saw the house as a symbol of control, perhaps the house itself contained some magic that kept the creature at bay.

“And now that the house is gone, the beast feels able to feed freely, perhaps for the first time in its life. And it is coming to enjoy it.”

“That’s quite a theory, Mr. Seton,” Banks said. “Does it go any way to telling us where the beast might be or how to find it?”

“Alas, no. I was pinning my hopes on finding something at the house. Beyond that, I planned to sail the length of the loch tomorrow and attempt some incantations, but I have no idea if they will prove useful or not.”

“Whether your magic works or not is neither here nor there to me,” Banks said. “But we could use the boat. We’ll come out on the water with you tomorrow. At least that way we can cover a much wider area than on foot.”

“And I’ll be glad of the company. What about tonight?”

“Going out on the loch in the dark is asking for trouble we don’t need. And if the beast is, as you say, tied somehow to the house, here is as good a place to search. I’ll set watches, and we’ll sit moored here until dawn. The lads need their kip anyway; we’ve been on our feet all day.”

“There’s four berths below,” Seton said. “I hardly sleep, so they’re all empty. You’re welcome to them.”

“I must say, you’re the cheeriest wee burglar I’ve ever met,” Wiggins said, and Seton laughed.

Banks took first watch again; the other three were heads down and asleep before nine o’clock. He smoked a cigarette as he stepped up onto the wooden dock and walked up to the roadway. He stood there for as long as it took to finish the smoke. No traffic came either way, and the night was quiet, so much so that he heard the honk of a car horn coming from clear across the other side of the loch. He ground the butt of the smoke out, had one last look up and down the road, then went back along the dock to the boat and stood at the rear viewing deck.

Seton came out to join him, bringing a toasted cheese sandwich and a mug of coffee for each of them. They stood in silence for a while as they ate, looking out over the still waters of the loch, what little they could see of it. The mist was thicker now, and colder, so much so that Banks was glad of the fleeced jacket of his camo suit, and the warmth in his belly as the coffee went down. Seton wore only his worn tweed suit, but showed no signs of the cold affecting him.

“It doesn’t bother me much. These old bones are too used to long winters,” he said when Banks asked. “Plus, you’ve got to take into account the general benefits regular consumption of good whisky brings, of course.”

“I look forward to testing that out for myself in years to come,” Banks replied, before turning the conversation around to matters he had been mulling over. “Do you really believe that stuff you were spouting earlier? You think your theory about the monster being of Crowley’s doing is valid?”

“I do,” Seton said. “And so do you, I think. I saw it in the eyes of you and your men. I know from bitter experience that not many people would have heard me out so readily with so few questions. You’re obviously not run-of-the-mill soldiers. You’ve all encountered something like this before, haven’t you?”

“Not exactly like this,” Banks said and without realizing he was going to do it, launched into the story of their encounter with the saucer and the occult experiments of the Nazis in their base in Antarctica. It took a while in the telling, and he needed another smoke during it as the memory of the icy tomb brought a fresh chill to his bones. He spoke of the secret experiments of Carnacki and Churchill, and how they almost led, inadvertently, to giving Nazi Germany a decisive weapon, almost 30 years later. Then he related how the S-Squad had gone in, over 60 more years more on, to clean it up, and at what cost. He wished the older man had brought scotch rather than coffee, for he had lost men on that mission, and the memory was still raw.

Seton listened, and if he was at all incredulous, he did not show it.

“That is quite a tale, Captain,” he said. “And not one I expected to hear when I set out on this jaunt. I know Carnacki’s work, of course. A fine fellow and everybody in the field is indebted to him. I did not know he had got involved with Churchill before WW1 though; everybody played that one close to their chests, and there’s not a hint of it in the literature.”

“How about you? How did you get into all this esoteric stuff?” Banks asked, looking to change the subject and stop the surge of memories that threatened to throw everything else out of his mind.

Seton laughed.

“It’s a family tradition, just like my name. No, really, there was an ancestor of mine, Alexander Seton, an alchemist, at Robert the Bruce’s bedside, healing him when no other physician could help. He wrote a book about his process that’s rare as hen’s teeth now, worth a small fortune, and purports to be a true telling of a successful experiment on the path to enlightenment. It is known as ‘The Twelve Concordances of the Red Serpent’ and it is said that Crowley had one of the few copies still known to exist.

“A couple of hundred years after that original Sandy, an Alexander Seton was getting into trouble making gold for Dutch shipping magnates; that one got a castle, and eventually a town, named after him down the coast from Edinburgh. There are rumors he was the same man, ageless and wise, as had been at Bruce’s bedside, and there are other rumors that he’s still running around somewhere to this day, although if he is, he’s not one for checking in with family. There has been other Alexander Setons, with Queen Mary of Scotland at Fotheringhay, on the Highland side in both Jacobite rebellions, and another at Trafalgar with Nelson. All were purported to be ‘advisors’ to the powerful, on matters arcane and dark. As for the name itself, I was lucky to get Alexander. There’s another scion of the family tree that gets named Augustus, but they went to the dark side centuries ago, the first one selling his soul for a shiny sword to a strange wee man in a Dundee bar. We don’t talk about them.”

Banks laughed, then saw the man was serious.

“As with you, that’s a story I wasn’t expecting when I set out on this mission. But I understand. Soldiering is my family way,” he replied, “so I know only too well how history and family bonds affects a man when he’s growing up. It just seeps in, doesn’t it?”

Seton nodded.

“That it does. And on hearing your story, I see now why you heard me out; you are open to these kinds of possibilities. That might prove to our advantage, should we find the beast.”

Banks laughed.

“If it comes to that, I’ll be relying on my family way. It’s what saved us in Antarctica… a fuckload of bullets and blind luck.”

Seton left Banks alone and went to sit in the cabin, writing in a journal. Banks stood at the rear of the boat, unable to find the calm, trace-state he’d fallen into so easily the night before. Thinking of Antarctica had dredged up too many memories and they flitted to and fro in his head, refusing to be banished, fleeting images of dead men, and some who should have been dead but weren’t. He tried to concentrate on the task at hand, smoking a succession of cigarettes as he pondered Seton’s story and its implications.

He still couldn’t come to any conclusions, and the long day walking in the hills was taking its toll. He felt tired down to his bones, and was almost dead on his feet by the time Hynd came to relieve him. He was lost to sleep seconds after his head hit the pillow, the soft roll of the boat at the dock acting to rock him away and down into blessed oblivion.

He woke to thin, watery sunshine coming in through the small porthole above him, and the smell of cooking bacon and coffee wafting down from the cabin above. He had a remarkably warm shower in the cramped washroom, then quickly dressed and went up onto the cabin to find Hynd and McCally tucking in to a fried breakfast.

“Make yourselves at home, lads, why don’t you?” he said. The other two grinned back at him.

“Nowt happened all night except Wiggo’s snoring. And now a full breakfast? Cushiest job in ages, Cap,” McCally said. “Can we live here?”

“Don’t get too comfortable, Cally. We’re still on the clock,” he replied. “Everybody get kitted up and on deck in five. Sun’s up and we need to get going.”

Seton had already thought of that, and had made all the preparations for departure. The engine kicked in just as Banks walked out onto the rear viewing deck, and Wiggins stepped down off the quay after dropping the mooring ropes back aboard.

“All ashore who’s going ashore,” Seton shouted, then put the boat in gear and they pulled away from the bank.

Banks went back inside and grabbed a bacon sandwich and a mug of coffee from the cabin, taking them both out onto the deck to join the men. The sun was up, the mist had cleared away, and they’d divested the fleece overcoats, but each had his rifle in hand.

“Cally, up front, Sarge and Wiggo, rear deck,” he said. “I’ll be up top at the wheel with Seton. Shout if you see anything.”

There was no chitchat now; they all knew when they were needed to be paying attention. Banks waited until he was sure they were all in position, then went up the six-step ladder to the top deck, where Seton sat at the upper pilot’s wheel station, the best driving position to get a view, if the weather permitted it.

“A fine day for it,” Seton said, and Banks could only nod, his mouth full of bacon and bread. He washed it down with coffee, made sure that Seton seemed to know what he was about in piloting the boat up the loch, and put in his first report of the day to the colonel.

It took longer than normal to get connected, a byproduct of the fact that he wasn’t calling Lossiemouth, but a field base down the far end of the loch. He heard scramblers engage; given the colonel’s obvious feelings for the press, they were being extra careful to avoid any eavesdroppers.

“Any news of the missing kid, sir?” he asked first.

“Nothing yet,” the colonel said, and Banks heard the weariness in his superior’s voice. “And no reported sightings of either them or your beast. We can’t issue a general alert for the public to keep an eye out because of the damned List D notice. The press will be making shit up anyway, of course. That’s what they do. I’ve asked for more men to be sent up from Leuchars, but it’ll be a couple of hours yet before they get here. Anything at your end?”

“Nothing here either, sir, although we have procured a boat and will make a tour of the loch throughout the day, taking our time to get a good look around. We should be down your end at the castle by around 1600 hours.”

“Very well, check in with me here then if you’re still drawing a blank, and I’ll be in touch to let you know if anything happens here apart from me kicking every single damned reporter up the arse.”

Seton saw Banks’ grim smile as he switched off the phone and put it away.

“Any news?” the older man asked.

Banks shook his head.

“Nothing yet,” he replied, and heard the same weariness in his voice he’d heard from the colonel. He knew that the longer the search went on, the less chance there was of finding anyone alive, let alone a child. He changed the subject.

“I’ve had a wee think about your theory, Mr. Seton,” he said.

“Are you convinced?”

“Partially. But don’t stories exist about monsters in the loch far older than the newspaper report you cited as the first?”

“Indeed there are many, myths, legends, snippets of song, oral history, and even some scrambled fragments of history in journals and manuscripts,” Seton replied. “They date from Columba’s supposed encounter in the 7th century all the way up to the time of the Jacobite rebellions. But you’d struggle to find any large body of dark water on the planet that hasn’t been rumored to host one kind of beast or another; Nessie’s hardly unique in that area.

“Can I read you something? I happen to have one such piece of ‘evidence’ on me. It’s a fragment only, one I translated from the Latin, a document that was found in Urquhart Castle years ago, detailing a failed Viking raid in the 12th century. It might amuse you, if nothing else, as you’ll see you’re not the first warriors to venture onto the loch unaware of what might be there, nor are you even the first captain. You’ll have to take the wheel as I read though. Wouldn’t want me causing an accident.”

Banks swapped positions so that he was in control of the wheel, then waved him on. Seton took two thin sheets of paper from his pocket and read, in the singsong voice of a storyteller.

“It starts, and ends, in the middle of a story. I’m afraid this is all that has survived down the long years.”

“A serpentine shape took form, a huge body that looked to be the length of the longboat itself, and nearly as wide. A long, swan-like neck rose up, and a head like a great axe wedge turned. Deep blue eyes looked straight at Tor as it solidified and strengthened.

“The serpent fell the short distance out of the air into the loch, the resulting splash sending the longboat careening from side to side, almost capsizing before righting itself. Fully solid now, the beast aimed its gaze at the longboat, and came forward, straight at them. The great neck rose, the wedge head came down and its mouth gaped impossibly wide, a black maw some four feet across. The guard next to Tor raised a sword but the beast was too fast. It plucked the Viking from the deck so neatly that he had no time to scream. Tor heard bones crunch, and felt the spatter of blood on his face.

“The huge head of the serpent rose high above the boat then made a new lunge forward toward the stern of the longboat. The Viking — Orthus Klinnsman — who stood directly beneath the open jaws was awake to the danger. He stepped back sharply, cutting a swipe with his sword at the beast’s exposed snout, only to curse when his blade hit flesh and immediately broke in two, as if he’d just struck a hefty blow at obdurate rock. The beast lunged again, and knocked Klinnsman off balance then caught him between its jaws and bit his torso into two bloody pieces, as easily as a man might bite into a soft fruit. The sound as the body was chewed and broken between the serpent’s twin rows of teeth echoed loudly all along the longboat.

“Tor stepped forward, sword raised as the serpent’s head rose up high above the longboat, preparing for another strike. Terror and fear raged through him, but as captain to these men, he was determined that no more of them would die. The deep blue eyes of the serpent fixed on him as he stepped forward, and seemed to pierce into his inner depths. Once again, Tor heard the rhythmic beat in his bones and in his gut, felt the call of the dance, offering him peace, an eternity to be spent swimming in the darkness of Niflheim. And even above the roars and shouts of Vikings now scrambling for weapons, he heard the invisible choir’s song rise in the wind again, their hymn to the Dreaming God.

He sleeps in the deep, with the fish far below,

He sings as he sleeps in the dark.

“Tor felt more than saw Skald step up to his side, but he could not afford to take his eyes off the writhing serpent that was even now propelling the bulk of its body closer and closer to the longboat. As Tor stood tall on the stern, he saw for the first time the full extent of the thing. The skin was gray, almost black in mottled areas, and seemed oily, with a shimmering to it like the air above a hot skillet. The head and neck were definitely serpentine, but the body resembled more that of a large seal or walrus, barrel-shaped and complete with two massive triangular flippers which propelled it through the water with great rapidity. Behind the bulk of the body, it tapered away into a tail at least as long again as the swan neck. In total length, it was almost twice the size of the longboat, and it was coming ahead so fast now that its intent was clear. It meant to swamp the Viking vessel completely.

“The wedge-shaped head finally swooped down in another attack, but Tor had been waiting for it. He stepped nimbly aside and brought his sword down in a cut that would have cleaved a man in half. The blade rang as it struck but it was as if he’d hit a wall. The weapon bounced back, the impact and vibration so severe it sent Tor staggering backward. The blade did not break, but it thrummed for several seconds in his hand, sending shaking vibration and tingling all up his sword arm. It momentarily weakened him, and he was too off balance to prevent another Viking from being swept up from the deck and into the great maw. He only saw the man’s legs kicking even as he was swallowed whole with a single gulp.

“The attack seemed to have been going on forever, but Tor realized it had only been a matter of seconds. The rest of the crew were only now rousing from their oars and joining in the fray. Several spears struck at the serpent’s head, but they had as little impact as Tor’s sword. One of the men stepped over Tor and struck at the beast’s left eye, but yet again, despite being aimed directly in the center of the iris, the point of the weapon met only with a surface as hard as any stone. The beast was unscathed and scooped the attacker up, biting off his head with a sickening crunch and spray of blood.

“Tor managed to steady his stance his sword raised again, but he had no deal how to fight such a seemingly indestructible foe. And Skald was no help; he stood at the stern, his gaze blank, his eyes fluttering, lost in the Wyrd even as his crewmates fought and died around him.

“And then there was no more time to even fend the thing off. The serpent surged high out of the water and a full half of its considerable bulk fell right onto the stern of the longboat. The back end went down, the prow went up, and everything aboard — Vikings, oars, weapons, and pillaged loot — was tossed into the water like strewn pebbles.

“Tor landed in the black waters of the loch with a splash that momentarily knocked the wind from him, but he had enough presence of mind to hold onto his weapon; it might well be the only thing between him and death in the next few seconds.

“To shore. To the north shore,” he shouted. He knew from the splashing and cursing that there were men in the water all around him, but how many there were was something he could not know. He could only hope that the remaining crew had heard him and were able to do something about it. He swam forward, kicking with his legs and paddling with his spare arm. His hand hit a timber the length of a man, a piece of the longboat which he guessed was now mostly at the bottom of the loch. Using the timber as a float, he hung on tight and kicked with his feet with all his strength, heading toward where he thought, hoped, the northern shore might be.”

“Is that it?” Banks asked, as the story ended far too abruptly.

“That’s all there was. But you see, there was a monster, if not an otter of any kind, here all that time ago, if this is to believed. I think the occult influences around the area of Boleskine house predate Crowley by centuries. But as I said before, it was only after 1933 that the reports around here started to get more frequent, and more specific, only after Crowley’s great experiment.”

“And do any of them since the Viking’s ‘walrus’ mention your proposed giant otter?”

“In fact, there are several over the years that are remarkably similar. And many more reports of three humps moving as one. Have you seen an otter swim when it is traveling with purpose, Captain? There’s a small hump for the head, a large one for the body, and a third where the tail is curved and upraised acting as a rudimentary rudder. Even for a normal-sized otter, it’s the classic ‘lake monster’ profile. I suspect many of the purported photographs of Nessie are simply of an otter with nothing else in the picture to give a sense of scale.”

“What about those scientific investigations a few years back? The ones Peter Scott was involved with. Didn’t they photograph what looked like a plesiosaur flipper? That might have been more akin to your admittedly outlandish Viking story?”

“They said they did, certainly,” Seton replied. “But those photographs were inconclusive at best, and a hoax at worst. I am far more inclined to believe in an overly large modern mammal than in a 200 million-year-old dinosaur miraculously surviving into the modern era without ever being seen properly by anyone.”

“But if it is a giant otter as you say, how did it get so bloody huge? And how has it survived for a hundred years?”

Seton smiled.

“I don’t know, but as I said last night, I suspect it might be some form of alchemical experiment of Crowley’s gone wrong. Alchemy’s history is replete with tales of homunculi and chimeras being raised to gigantic proportions, and of them being unnaturally long-lived, almost immortal.”

“This alchemy, though? It’s all just chemistry experiments when it comes down to it, isn’t it?”

“No. Just as there was in the tale I just told of the vikings, there’s a large element of mysticism and the occult in the mix too. If I’m right, the beast is as much formed by magic as it is by natural forces. That’s why I’m hoping my area of expertise will come in useful if we come across it out here.”

“I still can’t say that I’m convinced. But I’ll take any help I can get right about now,” Banks replied.

He had just lit the second cigarette of the morning, and was studying the water between the boat and the bank to his right through Seton’s binoculars when McCally shouted from up front.

“Some fog ahead, Cap.”

He looked forward. It looked like a gray wall stretched across the deep valley from shore to shore and up over the hills on either side.

“How far to the head of the loch?” he asked.

“Another 10 miles or so,” Seton replied. “I can navigate just fine in fog though, so don’t worry about that. Still want to go all the way up?”

Banks nodded.

“A full sweep is what I told the colonel, so that’s what he’ll get. I’m not sure we’ll see much of anything in there though.”

“Morning fog rolling down from the firth past Inverness,” Seton replied. “It might burn off quickly if we’re lucky.”

Seton studied the fog through the binoculars. It looked thick, almost solid from this distance, not like anything that was going burn off fast.

“Let’s hope we’re lucky.”

Seton took them into the fog two minutes later.