Paul Zindel - Loch

“You stay with the boat,” Loch told Zaidee.

“I don’t want to,” Zaidee complained.

“Just until Sarah and I check something out,” Loch said. He reached over and smoothed Zaidee’s hair, which, thanks to the wind, was standing up like the bristles of a brush. She looked at him pleadingly. “But you can depend on me. You need me. …”

“We’ll be right back,” Loch told her. “I promise.”

Zaidee watched her brother and Sarah head down the dock toward the boathouse. “Five minutes!” she called after him. “Please find Wee Beastie!” Then she remembered the skiff’s radio. She’d play with that awhile.

“It’s a nice little boathouse,” Sarah said, looking up at the picture window on the second floor. “It’s like the dwarfs’ cottage in ‘Snow White,’ she added. “My mom made Dad buy a new place in Switzerland. She hangs out there full-time now. It’s got the same kind of boathouse, but with six boat slips underneath and a couple of heavy-duty racing boats. You’ve got to come over.”

“Sometime when your father’s not there,” Loch said, checking the water on both sides of the dock.

“Exactly,” Sarah said.

Closer, they saw the door to the boathouse had been left open. It swung gently in the breeze.

“Hello! Anybody here?” Loch called out. He knew Jesse wouldn’t be showing up, but maybe he had some kind of family or friends.

Walking inside the boathouse, Loch and Sarah saw a small outboard and a canoe bobbing in their slips. “Anybody here?” Loch called again, his voice reverberating between the water and the second floor.

“Nobody’s here,” Sarah said.

They started up the steps to the living quarters. At the top of the stairs they heard a TV playing. Loch knocked on the door. There was no answer.

“This place is deserted,” Loch said, reaching out turning the doorknob. The door was unlocked and they went in.

“Who’d go out on the lake and leave their TV on?” Sarah asked. “Unless you think the caretaker got it right here, of course.”

“No,” Loch said.

Sarah sat in the armchair in front of the TV. She grabbed the remote and started flipping through the channels. Loch went to the picture window to check on Zaidee. He had a clear view of her with a pair of earphones on her head in the boat at the end of the dock. She saw him and gave a big wave.

It was then that Loch noticed the motion of the water in front of the boathouse. It was as if a wave were forming, a slow surging of water heading into the open boat slips below. Loch shut the TV off.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Sarah asked.

Loch put a finger to his lips. “Shhhhhh,” he whispered. “Something’s here.”

The small boathouse began to vibrate, and the blood drained from Sarah’s face. She had felt that motion before on the catamaran with Erdon. …

In black-rubber dive suits and scuba gear, Dr. Sam and Randolph climbed down the stern ladder to the rear swim platform of the yacht. Randolph steadied himself and motioned a crew member to pass down a speargun armed with an explosive head. He asked Dr. Sam to hold the speargun while he finished adjusting his equipment.

“Make sure Emilio signals us if anything comes back on the sonar,” Randolph called up to the deck.

Cavenger’s head peered down at him from the top railing. “You’re wasting time. Get in the water and fix the damn thing!”

Randolph put his mask and mouthpiece in place and rolled off the platform into the water. When he surfaced, Dr. Sam carefully placed the speargun in his hands. He waited until Randolph was good and clear, then put his own mask and mouthpiece in place. He turned on the dive lamp mounted on his back, then followed Randolph into the murky water.

Below the surface, Dr. Sam kicked his flippers to trail Randolph down the side of the hull. The powerful arc light bounced off the chalk-white paint of the ship’s hull, giving them a visibility of nearly twenty feet. Clusters of peat particles rushed at his mask, and the aerator in his mouth turned his breathing into a pronounced wheezing. He felt unsure, all systems of his body on alert as if he were diving in shark waters.

Randolph reached the propeller first. Dr. Sam swam to his side, grasping the propeller-shaft cowling so he could hold the light steady. The edges of the prop were chipped, but this was nothing that would have stopped the ship. Randolph put the safety binding on the speargun, leaving both hands free. He moved his fingers to the base of the prop and signaled Dr. Sam to bring the light around. He set a grip plier onto a thick rod that looked like a large hairpin. The rod slid right out.

“Cotter pin’s sheared,” Randolph said, his voice distorted, bubbling through the water to Dr. Sam’s ears.

Dr. Sam nodded that he understood, took a new pin from his waist kit, and handed it to Randolph. It slid in easily, and Randolph used the pliers to bend the ends of the pin and lock it into place.

“That’s it,” Randolph said.

Suddenly, both men became aware of a movement to the port side of the ship’s underbelly. At first Dr. Sam thought it was some type of parallax effect from the arc light reflecting off their air tanks.

“Let’s get out of here,” Dr. Sam said, giving a thumbs-up signal.

Randolph signaled him to wait. He unclipped the speargun and swam in the direction of the movement. There was another movement, this one to the starboard, followed by a glimpse of a small black body hurtling itself into the light field, then disappearing.

Dr. Sam signaled Randolph again that he was going up. He had started away from the center beam when he heard a high-pitched cry like that of a small land animal or seabird. Randolph began backing toward Dr. Sam, as two more small creatures darted in and out at the edge of the light beam. The only frame of reference Dr. Sam had for such animal behavior was on the few occasions he had swum with very young seals and penguins.

“Come on,” Dr. Sam said.

“Wait,” Randolph insisted.

Another of the little creatures came fast by Randolph, then scooted quickly to disappear out into the blackness again. Randolph got a good look at it this time and knew it was smaller than the creature that had been with the kids when he and his men had chased them in the grid. It was younger, maybe only days old. His mind began to spin with the possibilities of how Cavenger would reward him if he could bring the carcass of one up to The Revelation .

“By God, I’ll go up without you,” Dr. Sam threatened, reaching out to Randolph’s shoulder to turn him.

“No,” Randolph said.

If there was one thought creeping into Dr. Sam’s head, it was the realization that there was a family of plesiosaurs in the lake, maybe as many as eight or ten, including the young ones.

The creatures’ cries grew more piercing, excited now. Randolph shook off Dr. Sam’s hand and raised his speargun.

“No,” Dr. Sam yelled, the air of his shout bursting out to block the view beyond his mask. When the bubbles cleared he saw a few of the creatures flying at them, each on a slightly different trajectory like atomic particles in a cloud chamber.

Randolph let loose the spear.

The spear sped forward beyond the light before it struck something. The explosion from its tip was small, a slight shock wave of sound and light.

Dr. Sam thought about hitting Randolph, about putting his arm around his neck and physically dragging him up to the surface.

The cries stopped.

Randolph smiled at Dr. Sam. Then he signaled that he was swimming forward under the hull to retrieve the specimen. Randolph got only a few yards before the cries returned, this time in a rush that was earsplitting. There was only a moment to be aware of the painful, angry sounds, before five of the small creatures flew straight at Randolph. They hurtled themselves at him like missiles, their cartilage-rimmed mouths opening to reveal the gums of their jaws and their oversized, needlelike teeth. Like a school of piranha they struck Randolph’s body, first tearing away dozens of small pieces of his rubber suit and then, finally, his flesh.