For a surreal moment I simply held on, suspended 128 feet above the pavement. The fingers of my right hand held on for dear life while my mind, soothed by the ocean's dull roar, fought to convince my nightmare-laden brain that I was indeed awake and a butterfly's flutter from dying, only this time, there'd be nothing left of me to resuscitate.

Do something, Wallace, move!

Carefully, I raised my legs, my bare toes embracing the rough concrete along the underside of the balcony. My right ankle found a perch near the outside of the rail so that I could grab hold with my left hand, and I hauled myself up and over the cracked partition. My body trembled as my feet touched down upon the warm tile, my bruised chest heaving as I looked down ten stories, staring in disbelief at what might have been.

"Hey, son, you all right?"

"Isn't that Andrea Mason's boy?"

"The guy in the newspaper? Didn't know he was meshuga."

The neighbors were out on their balconies, dressed in shorts and robes and nightgowns, talking about me like I was some kind of suicidal freak.

Waving them off, I retreated inside the apartment and double locked the glass door.

I was wide-awake and pumped full of adrenaline, but the dark bedroom seemed filled with demons. Feeling myself beginning to freak out, I bolted from the chamber, flipping on light after light until I reached Charlie's liquor cabinet. Tearing it open, I grabbed the first unsealed bottle I could find and swallowed two long gulps, then heaved the cursed container of cooking sherry across the Saturnia marble floor and retched.

The life of wild animals is a struggle for existence. The full exertion of all their faculties and all their energies is required to preserve their own existence and provide for that of their infant offspring. The possibility of procuring food during the least favorable seasons, and of escaping the attacks of their most dangerous enemies, are the primary conditions which determine the existence both of individuals and of entire species. These conditions will also determine the population of a species; and by a careful consideration of all the circumstances we may be enabled to comprehend, and in some degree to explain, what at first sight appears so inexplicable—the excessive abundance of some species, while others closely allied to them are very rare.

—ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE, "ON THE TENDENCY OF VARIETIES TO DEPART INDEFINITELY FROM THE ORIGINAL TYPE", 1858

There are at least 10,000 known reported sightings at Loch Ness, but less than a third of these are recorded.

—DR. ROY MACKALL, CRYPTO-ZOOLOGIST

Chapter 4

South Beach

I woke up the next morning on the den sofa, the horrors of the previous night a fading memory. Staggering to the drapes, I drew them back, revealing blue skies, a shimmering white stretch of beach, and an azure ocean.

Nirvana.