Chapter 5: 5 – New Data

Agnes invited us to stay for dinner - a thick, delicious stew accompanied by oatcakes and cheese. Although the sun was still shining when we finally left the bank of the loch, there was a definite nip in the air, and I was glad for the warming food. During the meal, Dr. Pendle asked Agnes about the days and weeks after Fiona’s disappearance. We learned that although Stephen had acted with kindness, the other police officers treated Agnes with little more than open contempt, albeit tinged with pity.

“They think I’m a simple old fool who can’t see that her daughter got bored and left here for some excitement. Stephen comes by from time to time to check on me, and I get the sense he’s surprised I still haven’t heard from Fiona. Surely if she’d just run off to go and get leathered every day she’d have picked up the phone at least once.”

“Did they send a dive team into the loch after she went missing?” Dr. Pendle asked.

“Aye, they did – the day after she disappeared. Only the once, mind. I’ve since paid some local divers to search the loch, but they’ve found no trace of her, either.” Agnes held her spoon in mid-air, staring into the distance. “The worst part is not knowing what’s happening to her. Every day, I think about that man – that creature ­– taking her down there with him. How is she breathing? It isn’t possible. And if it isn’t possible, then she’s not alive.”

Rufus’s face loomed into my mind, vibrant and full of life, laughing at something I’d said. I knew exactly how Agnes felt; if you believed the impossible, that the person you loved was taken under, to the deep, how could you imagine they were still, somehow, alive? To imagine it was to believe that legends and myths were reality, not just stories we told to amuse ourselves. I’d made that leap of faith because I had to believe that Rufus was still alive, but my imagination didn’t know where to lead me; every time I tried to imagine his life underwater, it became the stuff of movies.

Dr. Pendle broke my reverie by giving me a look of such knowing, I was sure he was reading my thoughts. I was glad when Agnes interrupted the intense moment by asking him, “But surely if these creatures can take people under without anyone seeing what’s happened, they can just as easily bring them back to us? Every single night since Fiona disappeared, I have a dream where he rises up out of the water, holding her close to his body, then sets her down on the bank gently, like fragile crystal. After a moment, Fiona opens her eyes, looks around her, then slowly stands up and starts walking back to the cottage, back to me.”

Dr. Pendle said nothing, just looked at her kindly. Agnes asked, “Has that ever happened, Doctor? Has anyone ever come back from the deep?”

Max’s eyes flickered towards Dr. Pendle and I saw something in them – fear, or worry, or perhaps a warning. After a long moment, Dr. Pendle shook his head. “I’m afraid not – at least not in the course of our investigations.”

A look of sad acceptance settled on Agnes’s face. “I thought as much. But I had to ask.”

“Of course,” Dr. Pendle said, covering her hand with his own.

When we finished eating, Max and I offered to wash the dishes, so that Agnes and Dr. Pendle could continue talking. I could have strained to hear what they were saying, but Agnes’s story had triggered memories I usually fought to suppress, about the night Rufus disappeared. It came to me, as it always did, in a series of flashing images, like a film montage. My back was to The Wash because I was staring up into Rufus’s kitchen, where he stood by the kitchen window, singing along to a song I couldn’t hear as he grabbed us more snacks. I sensed a shift in the air, and turned to see a green halo of light just above the surface of the water, close to the shore. The water bubbled, although it made no sound. It was then that I saw her stepping out of the water, silently, onto the bank, wearing what looked like a full-body wetsuit.

I didn’t make a sound – just watched as she walked up the sloped lawn and disappeared between Rufus’s house and his neighbour’s. At the time, I didn’t really know what I was looking at. My rational brain might have thought it was a late-night swimmer, although no one in their right mind swims in The Wash, and certainly not at night.

The slight hitch in her walk, the way her right leg froze – only for an instant – when she lifted it off the ground, didn’t really register with me that night. If I’d given a statement to the police, let’s say, I wouldn’t have said anything about it. But, two days later, when I observed the new girl working at the diner – the way she flipped her red hair over her shoulder, turning to look at Rufus with a flirtatious grin, him staring as she walked away – I recognized it. Before I knew she was dangerous, I’d even asked her about it.

“Saphrine, you don’t do any late-night wild swimming by any chance, do you?” The look she gave me was pure venomous hatred, like she wanted to rip out my throat.

“What a ridiculous question,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Why would you even consider asking me that?”

“My mistake,” I said, even though I knew then deep in my heart I was right. “I saw someone who looks like you coming out of The Wash one night. Maybe you have a twin.”

Her green eyes narrowed. “How much beer did you drink that night, Thom? Or was it maybe something else?” She mimed putting a joint to her lips.

Rufus burst out laughing, and I felt a sharp pain in my chest, knowing that he was crazy about her and that his loyalty was now to her. I tried to give her my best I know it was you look, but she just turned and kissed Rufus. Loudly.

After that, she engineered the situation so that the three of us were never together, if she could help it. I still stopped in at the diner almost every night after work – I wasn’t going to give up my friendship with Rufus just because she worked there. It was a way I could still see him, still talk to him when he was on his breaks. It was rare for her to get the same breaks as Rufus – even though I have no doubt she tried – so for those twenty or thirty minutes, it felt like it was just the two of us again.

That is, until the night he disappeared. The night she set me up, left a trail of crumbs so that the whole town thought I was involved.

“I think it’s dry now.” Max’s voice interrupted my thoughts.

“What?”

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“I think that bowl can be put away. You’ve been drying it for the past five minutes.”

“Oh right –sorry.”

Max kept his feelings mostly hidden, but he looked at me kindly as he said, “It’s pretty heavy, the first time you hear someone’s story. Likely brings back bad memories for you, huh?”

I nodded. “It all came back to me. I try not to think about, mostly, if I can help it.” I couldn’t suppress a yawn, and had the sudden, urgent desire to lie down on a soft bed and cover myself with a pile of blankets.

“It’s not quite time for bed,” Max chuckled. “We’ve got one more stop to make. That’s where we’re spending the night, though, so you can turn in early.”

“Where are we going?”

“Dr. Sidris’s cottage, at the other end of the loch, in Killin. He used to work with Dr. Pendle. Well, he was his boss, really.”

“He worked for MFIT?”

“No, Sidris doesn’t believe in what we do, calls it mumbo-jumbo. But he’s an expert in water lore, so Dr. Pendle consults him when new data emerges.”

“Is Agnes’s story new data?”

Max looked over his shoulder and, when he saw that Agnes and Dr. Pendle were still deep in conversation, said, “Yeah, it is.”

I almost flicked him with the tea towel, I was so impatient to hear what it was. “In what way?”

“We’ve never had anyone claim that a water beast has spoken to them inside their head before.”

“Doesn’t that call the plausibility of Agnes’s story into question?”

“How so?”

“She says the water beast told her it wanted her daughter, not her. It’s like something someone would make up after their child went missing, to try to convince the police to take it seriously.”

Max stopped washing dishes and looked at me, incredulously. “You think telling the police that would make them take you seriously?”

My cheeks burned. “Yeah, okay, now that I hear you say it I see what you mean. The opposite is true.”

“Right. So, we go and talk to Sidris, find out whether thought-sorcery is something in the lore. If so, it might help us identify the type of water beast this is. If not, it means that Agnes might be the first person to encounter this type.”

That was when I realized something significant: Max believes. He isn’t an impartial observer. He believes in the existence of water beasts, just like Dr. Pendle, and just like me.

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