Lara and Stu spent their honeymoon cruising through the Scottish Highlands. After one wonderful week filled with beautiful and inspiring impressions they reached a lonely and dark green Loch amidst high rising, wooded hills. The young couple came towards a small village with an adorable hotel in an old, enchanting Victorian Villa situated on a big flat rock above the lakes level.

The Landlord, dressed in Scottish Highland costume, greeted Lara and Stu heartily and showed them to their room – it was a little gloomy and furnished oldfashioned, but warming flames licked in the huge fireplace.

There where about a dozen more guests in the hotel, all much older than Lara and Stu, friendly and good humoured, and after enjoying an extensive dinner they gathered in the little bar room where McPhearse, the Landlord, invited them to a degustation of various local Whiskeys.

The evening turned into a wonderful night, full of laughter, jokes, weird stories, singing and McPhearse playing the bagpipes and zealously filling the glasses again and again and again. So it was rather late and nobody could be called sober when the party finally ended and the guests where staggering to their rooms.

Stu fell asleep immediately and began to snore unbearable loud. Lara tried to wake him and stop the disharmonius concert, but without any success. She sighed, got out of the bed, slipped into her leisure suit and sneakers and left the room.

Slowly she strolled down to the stony shore of the Loch. Dark clouds where hunting over the sky and a fresh wind from the hills made her shiver.

Suddenly the silver rays of the full moon broke through the cloudage and fell down to the softly rippled surface of the lake like a bright shining ladder to heaven. A strange sound rose, it was similar to the singing and babbling of a little baby child, sweet and innocent. Lara gave a short thrilled laugh and clapped her hands.

But the next moment she was frozen in fear. Directly under the gigantic fan of moon beams something enormously big rose from the water – a snake like head, a very long neck, a hulky curved body…

„Oh, no!“, Lara yelled. She tried to run away, but she was unable to move any limb. The monster swam straight in her direction. It came nearer – and nearer – and nearer – the ground shivered under its stamping feet when it moved up to the shore – it snorted – it fixed the young woman with its little glowing fishy eyes – and then it started to – sing again – with that high and childlike voice – it softly bowed its head – and within seconds Lara had lost all her fear – she reached out and touched the cheek of that – strange being. The skin was rough but warm and she felt the strong breathing of – Nessy? Could this be the legendary Nessy? – softly striking her face.

The hunting clouds closed the gap in heaven, the moonlight ladder vanished, the strange creature turned around and went back into the Loch. A last singing sound – then it vanished, and the little waves where crumpling the surface of the lake as if nothing ever had happened…

… Stu buttered his fifth slice of toast, he always had an enormous hunger at morning.

„Honey, you don‘t seem to have any appetite.“, he mentioned with a frowne looking at his young wife pushing back and forth with her fork the scrambled eggs on her plate.

„Well, I could not sleep at night, so I got up and took a little walk down to the Loch. And there I have seen something very strange.“

Stu seemed to be only little interested. „And what did you see?“

Lara took a deep breath and looked him straight into the eyes.

„I am pretty sure that I had an encounter with Nessy last night.“

Stu burst into laughter. „Nessy? Huh? – I tell you what, my dear, you have been as drunk as an owl last night! – Nessy! It‘s only a humbug, a tale to lure tourists to the Highlands! It does not exist! It never had existed!“…