— CHAPTER ONE —
The Loch Ness Monster

⊹ ₊⋆ 𖠋 ⋆ ₊⊹

The first incident had occurred halfway through July, a small fracture of mystery adrift the mellifluous summertime haze.

  Quinn knows the memory like the back of her hand; she's revised it in her mind enough times to know it inside out. Her thoughts have been bled dry onto the post-it notes in her room, exsanguinated every detail until the image in her head is all she sees when she closes her eyes at night. Sometimes it feels hard to define what's real and what's fiction; perhaps it truly was all in her head. It's haunted her for long enough now that everything else around her in the waking world feels distorted, paving the way for more speculation on what it was that she really saw that afternoon.

  Molten sunlight had sprawled across the town of Forks, smatterings of gold filtering through the canopy as that rare burst of actual summertime lingered in the air. The leaves above were alive with the chirpy birdsong as life stirred from where it had been dormant thanks to the recent thunderstorms, crickets chirping contentedly in the tall grass and wildflowers.

  Quinn's spine was beginning to ache where it rested against the gnarled base of a tree trunk. The soothing melancholia of a Jeff Buckley song poured through her earphones, her iPod tucked away safely in the confines of her bag to avoid dirtying it and getting a lecture from her dad later. She found herself slouched over her journal, scribbling notes down furiously beneath a few field sketches of various fungi and critters that she'd seen on her adventures around the woodland. Quinn sunk back into the comfort of her own little bubble, happily drowning out the distant hum of the outside world — until an interruption came to burst her peace of mind, that is.

  It began as a gut feeling. The distinct knowledge that something is just plain wrong. That nagging sensation borne from a pair of unfamiliar eyes settling on the back of her head, chills racing up her spine as the unshakable feeling intensified. She tore her earphones out until the wires rested limply in her lap, the hum of her music quietening down to a barely audible buzz.

  A twig snapped. Her blood ran cold.

  The woods had grown still around her, the birds eerily quiet — her own erratic breathing was the loudest thing in her ears. Her hair stood on end at the small shift in the soupy air, a hand coming up to rub her nape out of worry.

  It was then that she caught sight of him. A spectre cloaked in the honeyed glow of the forest, the world dulling around him as if he were sucking the brightness and replacing it with an unsettling phantasmagoria. He met her eyes with a furious glare, his irises yellow like hellfire and his skin alight under the sun rays; opaline and unnatural. From his grasp fell the limp body of a buck bled dry, antlers carving up the muddy soil at his feet. Quinn's vision began to blur by the time she'd spotted the blood adorning his canines like bitter rubies, her eyes blowing wide as it dripped down onto the collar of his crisp shirt.

Her breath caught in her throat, rattling around with fervour. A migraine began to build in her head, thoughts fizzing like static on a TV screen, when he all but disappeared in a billowing gust of wind that tousled her hair and left goosebumps on her flesh. . .

"Are you listenin' to me?"

Quinn snaps out of her stupor. "Sorry?"

"I said: are you listening to me?" Her dad furrows his eyebrows, a frown pulling at his face. "Christ, Quinn. I'm trying to teach you how to fish here."

   The rocking of the rickety boat brings her back down to earth. Ripples cascade across the murky surface of the lake, a turbulent swarm of mayflies coasting along the water. Through the thickening mist, Quinn can just about make out the towering pine trees that line the faraway banks, backed up by sloping hills and rock formations that her geography nerd of a father would never shut up about. Overhead, the clouds are growing thicker and greyer by the minute, miserable weather closing in on their little boat trip — Quinn hardly needs a crystal ball to tell you that it's going to start storming very soon.

   She looks down when something nudges against her shin. Her lips quirk up. A collie rests at her feet, his amber eyes blinking open to peer up at her sleepily when she shifts forward to lean her elbows upon her knees. Quinn extends her hand to scratch behind Rocky's floppy brown ear, exhaling a breath she hadn't realised she was holding.

She peers up against the glare of the evening light to take in her father in all his... er, glory. He's totally lost in the moment, humming an unrecognisable song under his breath as he begins to reel in, his green wellies planted firmly against the wood to stabilise himself. His stubble is growing thick around his jaw, salt and pepper hair falling out from under his cap that has a stupid fishing slogan printed onto the navy fabric. His accent is thick from a childhood raised in Donegal, his voice slightly scratchy and coarse from his unfortunate smoking habits. He was certainly a sight to behold.

It takes her a few seconds to notice that he's still waiting for an answer and she jerks her posture upright to look him in the eyes, nodding rapidly.

"I'm listening," she promises. At his dubious look, her stare hardens. "I am."

"You're away with the fairies, is what you are. If I wanted—" He grunts as something pulls on the line, arms tensing up as he leans backwards. "If I wanted to be ignored, I would've brought your brother wit' me instead."

Quinn hums sceptically. "And, um, why exactly couldn't your golden child come today?"

Kieran rolls his eyes. "Fionn is the furthest thing from my golden child."

   "Hey, that's not an answer."

   He scoffs. "The cheek of you. I have half a mind to chuck you into the lake for bait."

"You wouldn't."

  "Don't test me."

  She grins, settling back into her seat. Kieran curses under his breath as another fish slips out of his grasp, reeling the line back in so that he can reset his cast and fling it back out into the depths. Her focus drifts back up to the skies above as her dad gets caught up in his own creative profanities, eyes narrowing into a wince at the thundercloud heading straight for them.

  "Looks like rain," Quinn muses, eyeing the storm in front of them with concern.

  He swivels around to look between her and the problem she's pointed out. A snort leaves him, followed by the dismissive wave of a hand.

  "Oh, please. A bit of rain won't kill you. Besides, it makes fishing all the better," he insists. At the way she scrunches her face sceptically, he huffs a laugh. "The fish think the raindrops are insects and come up to the surface. Daft bastards. Makes our lives much easier, though."

  Rocky barks in agreement.

  Quinn raises her eyebrows. "Right."

  "D'you want to give it a go?"

  "Nah," she says a little too quickly. A grin ghosts across her lips. "Knock yourself out."

  "Uh huh." Kieran side eyes her. "You are aware that it's not really considered a fishing trip if you're not plannin' on doing any fishing."

"Well aware."

"Uh huh," he repeats, dragging out the syllables a little longer this time.

  They fall back beneath a blanket of silence, settling back into the melodic strumming of nature around them. Kieran squirms when the deafening quiet becomes too much for him, grasping for the first conversation topics that come to mind. He decides to avoid bringing up the rugby that she never takes an interest in, and briefly considers asking after her weekend plans only to be reminded that she has none. No, he needs to think of something more... topical. More relevant.

It's at moments like this when he realises how terrible his understanding on teenage girls can be.

  He clears his throat a bit too noisily. "So, er, any... um... boys at school taking your fancy?" Kieran asks awkwardly. "Or girls," he adds hastily. "No judgement here."

"Ugh, dad!" she groans in exasperation, burying her face in her palms.

   "What?" he exclaims. "I'm trying!"

   She peeks out from between her fingers. "Thank you for taking an interest but please don't go there," Quinn murmurs, mortified. "Y'know what, stay miles away from there if you can."

"Suit yourself," he grumbles. They find themselves ensnared in silence again, only this one is carrying more discomfort than the last. "Your mother was always better at... this... than I am."

  Her eyes soften at that, her hands prying open to fall into her lap. Quinn hesitates.

   She reaches out to graze her fingers over the side of his palm and he drops it from his fishing rod to squeeze her hand comfortingly, lips quirking up at the gesture. Neither of them have ever been particularly good with words — it's hereditary, after all — but they always have a silent way of offering each other comfort. They're awkward in a kindred, familial sort of way. ( Meaning: they're awkward, but they're awkward together. )

He lets go to cast out again. Quinn takes that as her cue to peer down at the water over the edge of the boat, arms resting along the sides as she studies the depths. Thinking of the things hidden down in the darkness makes her feel all giddy, conjuring up pictures in her head of deep sea creatures and Lovecraftian horrors which encourage her imagination to spark. For a large fraction of her childhood, talk of lake-dwelling monsters was the only way her father could coerce her into actually going on the fishing trips in the first place. Old habits die hard, she supposes.

She's always been curious to dissect the essence of anything and everything unexplainable — like, what lurks in their unexplored oceans? What prowls in the undergrowth of all the woodland around them? What truly orbits their earth? She's unsatisfied that nobody can give her a straight answer. Ever since she was a kid, it's been her greatest ambition to explain the unexplainable; to determine why the mechanics of all things weird spin the way they do. That's her goal. That's her purpose.

  ( Well, that and become captain of the volleyball team before she graduates. A girl can always do both, you know. )

Her dad claims she drove him mad as a toddler with all her impossible questions, though she suspects that never quite stopped. He also tells her that unrestricted access to comic books, far too much Scooby Doo and that broad imagination of hers had fuelled her mind with pictures of flying saucers and the undiscovered supernatural from a young age. Quinn believes that getting older only made her thirst for knowledge on all things obscure only grow more insatiable. The thought makes her chuckle slightly.

"What's so funny?" Kieran asks, puzzled.

She opens her mouth to speak, only to be interrupted by a glacial droplet of water landing square on her head. Then she makes the mistake of looking up.

When the rain begins, it starts off as a delicate tiptoeing against the surface of the lake, droplets splashing onto her face and slipping down the bridge of her nose with featherlight touches. It begins as a ballad strummed in that pitter pattering chord of nature which Forks is so acclimatised to, the world going silent and handing over the spotlight to the gentle rainfall for a small while.

That aforementioned peace, however, is short lived.

It grows cold fast, searing any exposed skin with a chill that's just downright wrong considering it's supposed to be one of the warmer months. Every drop lands like a cannonball against the lake surface, waves rippling through the water. Her chestnut hair clings to her face uncomfortably, sat shivering with her drenched clothes hugging her like a second skin.

  "I take it back," Kieran grumbles, reaching for the oars with fumbling hands. "Maybe it's not so good for bloody fishing."

She has to sit and watch as Kieran rows back to shore with fervour, arms straining from the effort. Her raincoat can only do so much to protect her from the rain when it's coming down in horizontal sheets. It hardly helps that Rocky begins jumping exceptionally high to try and catch the raindrops in his gaping maw, causing the boat to teeter back and forth violently.

They reach the shore after a few more minutes of struggling, water seeping into the cotton of their socks and pebbles kicking up into the safety of their boots. The trees sway when the wind begins to pick up, pine needles showering down on them as the canopy jolts.

  "Fuckin' rain!" he cries, fumbling through all his pockets for his car keys.

"Thought it made fishing all the better," Quinn shouts over the thunder and downpour.

He glares. "Oh, don't start."

Kieran ushers her into the safety of their old green jeep, raindrops bulleting down against the creaky metal roof. He mutters angrily to himself as the car engine sputters awake, the wheels churning up the mud on the forestry track as the tires begin to spin wildly into motion. Rocky barks in the back, his paws wetting the towel they had launched over the seats earlier in preparation for his usual dirtiness.

The car jolts to life like some kind of a Frankenstein reprise and they begin to propel down the road, sheets of rain being swept away by the windscreen wipers. Quinn props her hand up on her chin, staring out in a daze as the landscape goes whisking past. She daydreams of jackalopes and other critters running rampant in the undergrowth, her eyes beginning to flutter closed as those stray reveries get the best of her.

  However, Quinn's drowsiness doesn't last for much longer.

   She's jolted awake by a pair of yellow eyes that stare back at her from between the trees. With every jolt of the car, they appear further down along the road, paced to materialise beyond her passenger window each time. Like they're following her.

  Rocky whimpers. She doesn't dare to move.

The eyes stare back. Yellow and unblinking, the unsettling glow amplified by the shadows that shroud from the downpour. A pale, sinewy figure draped in bland clothes sticks out from the trees with the odd smattering of light through leaves when they're jostled by the rain. Morbid curiosity urges Quinn to stay perfectly still. The eyes stare back. . .

Until they disappear altogether. A hazy vision, a flash of phantasmagoria lost to the howling downpour. Quinn's skin prickles with fear and she sinks back down into her seat, a new realisation sputtering through the cacophony raging in her mind.

There's something wrong in the sleepy town of Forks, and she's going to get to the bottom of what exactly it is.

AUTHOR'S NOTE 🧛🏻‍♀️🎸

shoutout to quicksilvrs  for bullying me into updating 🤞🏻 doing god's work

we're off to a slow start w this one lol it's not very interesting but i felt like introducing quinn's first vampire encounter would be a good way to begin this whole thing!!!

i'm salty that it's been raining here for weeks on end and i woke up to thunder + lightning so i'm making quinn go through the same problems because i love to project that way

and with a fic where every chapter is a cryptid i feel like i'd be failing my country if i didn't have nessie as the first one