Of course, Drumnadrochit would always be Angus Wallace and his mind games, and pretending not to hear Mom's tears. As a child, I couldn't wait to leave, if only to be at peace with myself.

Seventeen years later, the nightmares of my childhood had returned… and so had I.

I drove through the village green and past the petrol station where I used to hang out. I idled by Blarmor's Bar until I could smell the chicken and fish, then passed the Sniddles Club, my father's favorite watering hole.

I parked and stretched my legs, my groin feeling numb. The post office was nearby, and I entered, just as it was about to close.

There was one clerk on duty, an old man in his eighties who had taught me history back in grammar school. "May I help ye?"

"I'm looking for an old friend, his name is MacDonald, F. True MacDonald."

"Dae ye mean Alban MacDonald's laddie?"

"That's him. Know where I can find him?"

"Usually in the North Sea. Dives off one o' them oil rigs, but this month an' next he's back in toon. Stays wi' his faither, who works up at the lodge, I'd check there first."

"Thanks."

The old man squinted at me through a pair of copper-rimmed spectacles. "Ye look a wee bit familiar. Dae I ken ye?"

"You did. Thanks, Mr. Stewart, I gotta run."

I made it halfway out the door before he shouted, "Ye're Angus Wallace's laddie, the big-shot scientist. Had tae come hame tae look for yer monster, didn't ye?"

"The only monster I know of, Mr. Stewart, is locked up in Inverness Castle."

I hopped on the Harley and drove south, accelerating up a steep gravel path that led into the hills.

The lodges at Drumnadrochit were a series of private cottages and chalets set high above the village on a mountainside overlooking Loch Ness. I parked, then entered the main office, hoping to find True before I ran into his father.

Too late.

Alban Malcolm MacDonald, known to the bairns (children) of Drumnadrochit as "Crabbit MacDonald," looked as gruesome and bad-tempered as I ever remembered. His moon-shaped Norseman's face remained half-concealed behind a thick, graying auburn goatee and sideburns, neither doing much to hide the scars left behind from a childhood ridden with smallpox. Fog-gray eyes stared at me as I entered his dwelling, his thickly callused fingers and yellowed nails tapping the wooden check-in desk in rhythm.

"Mr. MacDonald, good to see you, sir," I lied. "Do you remember me?"

He removed a toothpick hanging from his liver lips, his crooked, yellowed teeth revealing themselves as he spat, "Zachary Wallace."

"Yes, sir. I can't believe you remembered."

"Didn't. Saw yer photo in the papers five months back."

"Oh, right. Is, uh, is True here?"

"Nah."

"No? How about Brandy? Gosh, last time I saw your daughter, she must've been five, maybe six years—"

"Go back tae the States, Zachary Wallace, there's nowt here for ye."