Brandy tugged at my elbow and we kicked toward the surface. I kept the beam aimed below as long as I could, hoping David would see it.

Get to the light, David. Get to the light.

We surfaced and exhaled, gasping for air, our extremities no longer functioning in the cold. Desperate moments passed, until we were finally hauled out of the water by the Nothosaur's crew, and dropped on the deck.

Crewmen draped wool blankets over the two of us and we held on to one another, panting and dripping and shivering. Brandy threw an arm around my neck and hugged me, her purple lips cold against my face.

"Thh… thought ye were afraid o' the water?"

I pressed my mouth to her ear. "More afraid of losing you." She hugged me tighter, saying nothing.

Michael Newman, wrapped in his own blanket, flopped down next to us. "Caldwell?"

I shook my head.

Captain Hoagland tapped Brandy's shoulder, pointing at the construction pontoon and derrick. "Look, the pen's sealed. We've got the monster trapped."

It was true, the pen had been sealed. And then I heard the crowd cheer amidst a strange sound. It filled my ears like rolling thunder, only it wasn't thunder, it was David's underwater speakers, pumping out a familiar cadence from my childhood.

It was bagpipes, the recorded sounds originating around the shoreline, the bizarre tune muffled behind layers of water.

David was right, the acoustics were keeping the creature from accessing land, but they were also tormenting the beast, enraging it.

Without warning, the incensed creature struck the perimeter fencing. Metal screeched and connecting hinges snapped as sections of the floating bridge expanded and buckled under the ungodly force. A dozen of the prefabricated platforms broke free from one another, held together only by the interconnected lengths of chain link fence.

The crowd gasped. The Nothosaur's crew looked stunned.

Four hundred feet below, the monster whirled about in the darkness, then struck again.

This time it pounded the just-completed northern end of the barricade, its head bulldozing the underwater barrier. The strike severed the cables connecting the last platform to its concrete land anchor, collapsing the entire expanse.

Protesting metal rent the night as twenty-eight-foot sections of bridge buckled and broke free from one another like a derailed locomotive.

The monster kept at it, driving its enormous head through two wobbling sections of fence until it managed to thrash itself free.

As the animal escaped into open water, the bait line snapped, leaving behind an entanglement of fishing net and the lifeless body of David James Caldwell II.

I'm guessing it was around 4:15 in the afternoon on July 30 that Sue and I noticed a dark shape appear and disappear three times very quickly. Whatever it was, it was about 150 meters from shore, moving into Urquhart Bay. The object then appeared to churn about in a left turn and surface a little farther away.

—ALASTAIR BOYD, ART TEACHER