The Cryptid Files Read online

  Acknowledgments

  Sincere thanks goes to my friends and writing buddies, Paula, Gemma, Una and Geoff for all their encouragement and helpful comments over the last few years. To Siobhán Parkinson who has been such an inspiration and whose comments and insights have kept me on the right track. Thanks also to Kate Thompson and Conor Kostick for their professional guidance and advice in general.

  My thanks to John Short and his talented art students at DIT for their participation in The Cryptid Files Design Competition and Elaina O’Neill in Little Island for making the whole publishing process seem exciting and yet effortless.

  And finally to friends and above all family – my wonderful parents, Mary and Alan; brothers Brian and Graham for years of love and support. My heartfelt thanks to my husband Ian for his absolute belief in me, his great insights and his willingness to discuss characters and plots any time and any place, preferably somewhere foreign. And finally to Callum, Myles and Oliver, our fantastic children who inspire me always.

  CRYPTOZOOLOGY

  The word cryptozoology comes from the Greek word kryptos, meaning hidden, and zoology, meaning the study of animals. Cryptozoologists study animals which may exist in nature, but whose existence has not yet been accepted by modern science.

  The animals cryptozoologists search for are called cryptids. The Loch Ness Monster, ‘Nessie’, is the most famous cryptid of them all, with thousands of recorded sightings.

  PROLOGUE

  It was the last day of October. The light was fading fast and dark shadows rippled across the surface. A cold wind had picked up and, in the blink of an eye, Loch Ness had changed from a place of yellow sunshine and charm to metal-grey clouds and bleakness.

  No one saw Vanessa Day fall. No one saw the tar-coloured water close over her head. For a moment, she was stunned by the icy cold, then terror gripped her and she thrashed about, kicking and slapping the water. She threw her head back, face to the sky, gulping at the air.

  But for how long? Her clothes were already waterlogged and the pull of the water relentless. She grabbed at the upturned boat, but the wood was too slimy to grip. Within a few heartbeats, the cold had worked its way into her muscles and her kicks began to grow feeble. In just a few more, her body sagged and then, limp as a ragdoll, she went under.

  As she sank she twisted and turned, a slow and deadly dance. Long strands of her black hair were matted across her pretty face. Well before Vanessa reached the bottom, her mouth was wide open and her eyes shut tight.

  CHAPTER 1

  It is hard to imagine just how deep Loch Ness is. There is more water in it than all the other lakes in England, Wales and Scotland put together. Enough room to fit every person on this earth three times over. Certainly enough room for a few mysteries.

  Vanessa crept across the landing. The chill in the early morning had already made its way through her thin cotton nightdress and she wished she had put a sweatshirt on over it. She hesitated for a moment, listening to the stillness of the sleeping house. When she moved on, the silence was broken only by the sticky patter of her bare feet on the wooden floor. She twisted the ring on her middle finger as she walked, anxious in case her footsteps might wake someone. Maybe not her brothers, they would need an earthquake to rouse them, but her dad was a different matter. He had always been a light sleeper and the big fight last night would not have helped matters.

  Once she was inside the guest bedroom and onto the thick carpet, she closed the door in slow motion and leaned against it to look around. She hardly ever came into this room and was surprised now at how pretty it was. It was so uncluttered and ordered compared to her own. Looking up, she saw the trapdoor to the attic. Now, where was that long wooden pole with the hook on the end that she needed to open it? It took a couple of minutes to find it under the bed and then much longer to actually hook it through the metal clasp on the trap. Her hands were cold and she found she was shaking with the effort. She twisted and turned it back and forth until it finally flopped open. Next, she had to hook the bottom step of the ladder and pull down hard. The grinding noise was terrible as the ladder unfolded out of the attic, and Vanessa froze, cursing furiously under her breath. That was it, she’d be caught now. She waited to hear a door open, footsteps on the landing, but there was only silence. She placed her feet carefully on the cold metal and wobbled up, one step at a time. At the top she stared into the gloom. Please God, let there be a light, she thought, as she searched frantically around the opening. She smiled to herself as her fingers found the switch and a harsh white light filled the dusty space.

  Vanessa pulled herself up the last step and sat on the floor of the attic, her legs still dangling down through the opening. Row upon row of neatly stacked boxes filled the room. Her heart sank; they all looked identical. Where on earth would she start?

  She stood up, crouching over because of the low beams, and looked closely at the lids of the first few boxes. She was relieved to see that each one had a small white label and she recognised the neat italic writing as her father’s hand, Marie’s history books. The words were like punches to her stomach. One, two and a left hook. Her heart took off, pounding so fast that she felt as if she might faint. Marie’s travel books. Marie’s research. Her mother’s life packed up in boxes. Hot tears filled her eyes and spilled over. Neat boxes labelled and catalogued and stacked in an attic. Her mum would have hated her stuff like this; she had loved jumble and chaos and life … life. Vanessa felt the sudden urge to overturn every single one of the boxes. Why hadn’t she guessed she would feel like this? Why had she come up? Sitting down heavily on one of the boxes, she put her head in her hands and shut her eyes tightly.

  She didn’t know how long she sat there, but gradually her tears slowed and she began to feel calmer. It started first as a flutter in the pit of her stomach that spread slowly out as a tingle, travelling through every nerve fibre and right to her very fingertips. It had happened once or twice before in the last couple of years. She could feel her mum’s presence. She was there with her in that small, bleak attic. It was then that she knew with certainty that she would find what she was looking for.

  CHAPTER 2

  Nessie first became famous about 80 years ago, but the locals told stories of a water beast in Loch Ness long before that. They called it a Kelpie. It was a terrible creature that came out of the waters when it was hungry. After transforming into a most beautiful horse, it would wait for someone to climb on its back and then gallop back into the loch to devour them.

  It had all started the previous night when Vanessa’s father announced at dinner that they would be going on holiday to Scotland for the Hallowe’en midterm break. The delight that followed was worthy of an around-the-world cruise, and Ronan and Luke high-fived boisterously across the table, knocking over a bottle of milk. It was after the milk clean-up, as they were getting down to the details of dates and flights, that her father let slip the fact that Lee McDonald would be coming as well. Luke and Ronan had taken it in their stride as usual, but Vanessa had not. She shouted and ranted and then, running upstairs to her bedroom, finally cried herself to sleep that night behind a locked door.

  Vanessa’s dreams were often filled with strange winged creatures and shadowy monsters lurking out of sight. But last night was different. One particular monster appeared to her as clear as if she had drawn it herself and the shock of recognition shot through her body like an electric current. She had woken suddenly out of the dream into pitch black. The glowing light on her bedside clock twinkled the ungodly hour of five past five in the morning. Tangled up in her sheets with her head wedged against the wall, Vanessa’s physical self felt tired and miserable, but her brain tingled with excitement.

  She threw herself back on her bed and
pulled her covers tightly up to her neck to think about it some more. Maybe it wasn’t a sign as such, but she knew exactly what she had to do that morning. She would have to find her mother’s cryptid files. She felt certain that they were the key to her dreams. But where would they be? She twisted her mother’s engagement ring on her finger thoughtfully and mentally examined each room in the house. The attic, of course. Two very long years ago, her father had put her mum’s things up there. She suspected that nobody had been up since.

  The cold in the attic was really beginning to get to Vanessa. Her teeth were chattering now and she rubbed her upper arms vigorously with her hands. How much longer could she last? After another ten minutes moving boxes and reading labels a small frisson of doubt began to seep in. What if the cryptid files had got lost or had been thrown away? In her growing unease, Vanessa failed to notice a low wooden box in front of her. She tripped and fell heavily, grimacing with the pain as her knees hit the floor beams. So much for being quiet, she thought. She hunkered into a sitting position and then waited, motionless and listening. It was only then that she noticed the blood and the gash on her knee, which was bleeding profusely. Irritated with herself for being so clumsy, she bunched the end of her nightdress into a ball and pressed it to her cut, glaring at the box. Her eyes widened with surprise. Rather than her father’s neat handwriting on a label, she saw the big capital letters scrawled across the wooden lid. Even upside down she could read her mother’s bold writing: THE CRYPTID FILES. They had found her.

  She took a few moments to examine the box before opening the lid. It was old and very battered with rusty hinges and Vanessa couldn’t recall seeing it before. What if there was nothing in it or it was just full of old shoes? The disappointment might be too much. She ran her hand slowly over the wood and then finally pushed open the lid. A tiny shrunken head stared up at her and she dropped the lid back down. Opening the lid again, she stared hard at the empty eyes and the puckered skin. It was a human head, she felt sure, but what was it doing in her attic? Slowly something stirred in her memory. Something to do with her grandfather Todd, wasn’t it? Picking the head up gingerly, she found that it fitted perfectly into the palm of her small hand. She tried to remember the story of a tribal chief in Papua New Guinea that had given it to him, but the memory danced just out of reach. Instead she heard her mother’s voice.

  ‘Life without adventure is no life at all.’

  At bedtime when she was small, instead of reading about ballerinas and princesses, her mum had told her stories of wicked Incan gods and strange animals with magical powers. As she grew up, Vanessa was actually proud that her mother never did the things that other mothers did. Even before her illness, she never bothered much about the ordinary stuff – the car pooling, haircuts, coffee mornings, sales of work. Instead her world was full of the extraordinary – myths and cryptids, archaeological artefacts from various digs and, her most prized possession of all, an enormous antique world map, which took up an entire wall of Vanessa’s bedroom. It was covered in dots – red ones for places they had already visited, green for ones they had to visit within the next five years, orange for the next ten years and purple for the outside chance ones. They spent many hours poring over it and discussing travel. No wonder Vanessa’s end-of-year school reports always referred to her as a determined day dreamer. One had said: ‘If Vanessa put as much energy into real life as her imaginary world, she might just scrape by in her exams …’

  ‘Excellent,’ her mother had said as she threw the report into the wood-burning stove, ‘there’s nothing like an imagination to get you through life.’

  A door banging downstairs in the house startled Vanessa back into action. Hurriedly, she pushed the shrunken head into the pocket of her nightdress; there was no time to lose. The box was full of coloured folders but she recognised the one she wanted immediately – a red plastic ring-binder with a charcoal picture stuck to the front. It looked so smudged and childish to her now – her first sketch of the most famous cryptid of them all: Nessie, The Loch Ness Monster, the creature of her dreams.

  CHAPTER 3

  In 1934, a local bye-law was introduced to protect the Loch Ness Monster. If the monster is just a myth, why does it need real laws to protect it?

  Back in her bedroom, Vanessa snuggled down under her duvet with her cryptid folder. Maybe she could spend the rest of the day in bed and avoid seeing her father at all. Bed was the best place to be on miserable days.

  A bang on the door made her start. Luke or Ronan, she guessed, hardly her father. Either way, they knew better than to open the door without an invitation.

  ‘Vanessa, can I borrow your new tennis racket? I’m playing doubles this morning and I don’t want to show myself up,’ Ronan shouted loudly through the closed door.

  ‘Best not to play then, Ronan,’ she shouted back unsympathetically.

  ‘Oh come on, Vanessa, you owe me.’

  She hesitated. Was he referring to the scene last night? He was far too kind for that. She remembered the look on her dad’s face when she had accused him of betraying her mum’s memory. She felt guilty for saying it in front of everyone, but she really had meant it. Her upper lip curled in distaste. Imagine wanting to bring Lee McDonald on a family holiday to Scotland! It was bad enough having her come for dinner so often. She remembered now the rush of adrenaline, the outrage that had reached her lips before she could cool her reaction. She felt the anger flare inside her again. How dare he mention her mum in the same breath as Lee McDonald!

  ‘Come on, Vanessa, please?’

  ‘OK, but if you break it or lose it, you’re dead.’

  She heard him whoop as he sped down the stairs before she changed her mind. Ronan wasn’t bad compared to other younger brothers she had met. Of course he missed their mum terribly, but, two years on, both he and Luke seemed to be really well adjusted. And yet two years on, things were getting worse and not better for her, Vanessa thought darkly.

  She opened the first few pages of the Loch Ness folder and a thrill shot through her. There was one section on the geography of Loch Ness and two on the scientific arguments – one for and one against. And her favourite section – the sightings. These were stories of little old ladies and children, priests and fishermen. Her mother had downloaded hundreds off the internet. She scanned the dozens of pages. Surely they couldn’t all be pranksters or lunatics?

  Witness: Sir Graham McDonald and sons Brian and Ben

  Date: 7 August 1934 at 5 p.m.

  Description: While fishing on the banks of the loch they saw a creature with one hump about 15 feet in length. It remained stationary for about a minute and then moved off at speed.

  Witness: Mrs Elizabeth Allen and Mrs Agnes Thomas

  Date: 2 October 1946, mid-afternoon

  Description: Noticed something in the water as they drove. When they stopped they saw a single hump moving slowly but producing a large wake. It appeared and disappeared a couple of times.

  She wondered what Mrs Thomas and Mrs Allen had been doing at the time. Were they in an ancient black car with a picnic basket and a rug on the back seat, their dog, Cricket, pawing at the basket, desperate to get at the roast chicken? Had they almost crashed the car when they saw the humped monster appear in front of them? She imagined them as two frail English ladies of impeccable character with hornrimmed glasses. Who could believe that this unlikely pair would make it all up?

  Witness: Miss Jennifer Grant

  Date: 10 August 1986 at 11.30 a.m.

  Description: Head and long neck sticking out of the water. It sank slowly as she watched it. Two photos taken but only ripples visible in both.

  She could imagine young Jennifer, a university student, on her way to visit her aunt in Inverness. Standing on the bank near Urqhuart Castle, paralysed as a snake-like neck rises out of the water. Her reactions so slowed with shock that she misses Nessie in her photo.

  Vanessa stopped reading and let the folder fall back onto the bed. Did her mother believe
in Nessie or was it just more of her ‘weird and wonderfuls’, as the boys used to call her stories? What if she had believed? Wouldn’t it be incredible to prove her right, especially after all these years of scientists and journalists on the hunt?

  ‘I’d like to be a cryptozoologist when I grow up, Miss.’ Vanessa smiled at the thought of saying it to Miss Carter, her pathologically dull headmistress, and wondered what her reaction would be.

  ‘A what?’

  Vanessa would have to explain.

  ‘You mean you want to chase imaginary monsters for a living? Childish nonsense. It’s time to grow up, Vanessa Day.’

  But her own mother, a rational, grown-up academic with a doctorate from Oxford, had done just that.

  Vanessa pulled out her shrunken head from her nightdress pocket and stared intently at the wizened face and tiny beady black holes for eyes. It was such an ugly little face and yet so compelling. As she stared at the mouth, her mind played tricks and she saw it move ever so slightly. She knew it wasn’t the tiny head that whispered, but she heard it all the same.

  Go and find what you are looking for. The words rolled around in her mind and then took root. Perhaps a holiday in Scotland might not be such a bad idea after all.

  CHAPTER 4

  In Scots Gaelic, the monster was known as Niseag, which got shortened to Nessie. Then, in 1975, Nessie was given the proper scientific name of Nessiteras rhombopteryx by the president of the World Wildlife Fund at the time, Sir Peter Scott.

  During the weeks after the big row, there was no further mention of the family holiday. The days rolled by and Vanessa noticed that Lee was much less in evidence than before. She saw her father most evenings, if only briefly, before bed. He was working far too hard, according to Mrs Gannon, who came in the afternoons to prepare dinner and recreate some semblance of normal family life.