The Lady of Loch Ness

Submitted for the Writing Battle Tempest Owl challenge. The story required the following three prompts: CRYPTID FICTION (genre), REPORTER (character), and COIN (object). Word count limit was 1000 words.

Status: Judging

You’re being ridiculous. 

The words play on repeat in my mind. I heard them countless times from half a dozen people back at home: my husband, my mother, my best friend, to name a few.

Still, those words didn’t stop me — not as I bought the roundtrip ticket to Edinburgh, or boarded the train to Iverness, or drove a dilapidated 1994 Volkswagen down the A82 all the way to that whitewashed little cottage called the Old Pier House. 

And they didn’t stop me now, standing at the lake’s edge, clutching a 2500-year-old coin in my bare hands.

I can still smell the cigarette smoke on my father’s breath: 

“A Daric. Persia, around 500BCE. Part of the Achaemenid Empire’s bi-metallic monetary system. Extremely rare, after Alexander the Great melted most of them down for his own coinage.” 

My father was many things. To those who liked him, he was an eccentric. An amateur historian. A collector and lover of rarities. To the rest, he was a kook. A conspiracy theorist. A man more interested in hunting down impossibilities than raising his own children. 

Honestly, I can’t fault the sentiment. My therapist tells me he’s at least partially the reason I became so obsessed with the truth — why I see deception around every corner. You see, uncertainty makes me anxious. I’m always afraid of some unknown truth bursting out from the darkness and upending my life. It’s half the reason I became an investigative reporter: to find the truth, before it finds me. 

I open my palm to reveal the gold coin. It’s in pristine condition, embossed details still distinguishable even in the dim light of early dawn. I hold it up between my thumb and forefinger. 

“Hey Dad.” 

Ridiculous, they said. Fortunately, they aren’t here.

“You know, of all the stories you told, this was always the one where I called bullshit. Seriously? The Loch Ness Monster bummed a cig off you on the pier? That’s even worse than the one where the chupacabra stole your chicken leg.” I chuckle. “It was a fucking coyote, Dad.” 

My expression goes serious again. “I was so sure it was another one of your stories. But then you died. And when I was going through your stuff, and I found that coin collection you always bragged about, I discovered something: a clue. A lead. Towards an impossible truth.”

My father’s coin collection was robust. He prided himself on completionism. He had managed to acquire every single currency from pre-Muslim Persia — from the Achaemenid to the Sassanian Empire — save for one. 

“The Siglos,” I answer the unspoken question. “The Daric’s silver counterpart. Alexander the Great melted down most Daric, but the Siglos were overlooked. These days, you can pick one up for thirty bucks. Where was the Siglos, Dad? Why on earth would you neglect such an attainable find?”

I crouch down towards the water and breathe a whisper: “I think I know why.” 

I place the gold coin between my teeth and reach into my pack to procure my father’s journal. He had dozens of them, all tracking the scattered thoughts of a man caught somewhere between fiction and reality. I spit the coin back into my hand and flip to a dogeared page:

“Man is fascinated by cryptids due to their novelty. They don’t fit cleanly into our understanding of the world. It’s a great irony that they, too, most value what is unprecedented. When providing offerings to the more intelligent cryptid species, make an offer which stimulates their curiosity.”

I tap the last words emphatically. “The Achaemenid Empire was immense; but it never reached modern day Scotland, did it?” I shake my head, hardly believing the course of my own thoughts. “A Sig? Really, Dad? The proof, the truth, and you hid it behind a fucking pun?”

I am met, of course, with silence. 

“Only one way to find out,” I reply, and toss the priceless coin into the still water.

At first, nothing happens. The soft kerplunk reverberates through the quiet morning air. Ripples carry across the lake. The birds chirp their sunrise song. 

But then, I feel it — an energy in the breeze, as if the very lake itself has awoken. Small bubbles begin to form in the precise spot where the coin hit the water, and gradually, a form rises from the surface. 

She has hair like Spanish moss, silver and green and teeming with life. Grey skin deepens to murky black in the shadows of her face. Her eyes are large, too large, and wide with an intensity that makes my bones shiver. The body beneath her angular shoulders stays submerged in the dark water.

I take a deep breath, hoping to still the quiver in my voice. “I’ve been told that, 32 years ago, a man came here and presented you with that coin’s twin.” I nudge my head towards the water. “I’m here to confirm if that’s true.” 

She narrows her eyes at me. A series of strange sounds come from her mouth, all hisses and clicks.

“It’s important to me,” I explain, standing a little straighter. I didn’t understand the question, but it felt like the right answer. “The truth, I mean.” 

Seconds pass as she watches me. It takes a few moments for me to notice the rippling across the lake; and from my periphery, I swear I see tentacles kissing the surface. 

Then, slowly, the disturbance in the water stills. What ripples remain come from the creature herself, bony hand poised gently above the water. In her palm rests a small silver coin. 

My chest swells with some emotion I cannot place. My vision blurs with unshed tears. 

“Thank you,” I breathe. Then, silently, she disappears into the water. 

Alone once more, I plop down onto the wet dirt, feeling both too tired and effervescently alive. I reach into my pack, produce a cigarette, and light it. 

“Well played, Dad,” I smile, as I watch the Scottish sunrise.