Curse of the Boggin (The Library Book 1)

by D. J. MacHale

  Was that why he and my mother died?

  The vessel had gone missing for twelve years and suddenly turned up about a week ago. Where had it been? Who was the guy who contacted Michael Swenor about it? Why did Swenor break the seal and release the demon? Doors were suddenly opening, but they were only leading to more questions. Most important, the Boggin was still out there, threatening to hurt the people I cared about.

  It was going to be a long day.

  With the box under my arm, I went into the kitchen to hunt for some breakfast. On the counter was a note.

  Morning! Mom and I went to the marina to do a little work on the boat. Maybe we’ll go out for a short sail; it’s a beautiful day. Dad.

  The marina. The boat. We had a twenty-seven-foot Catalina sailboat. My parents spent most every weekend during the nice-weather months sailing on Long Island Sound.

  My heart rate spiked. There was nothing good about this news. It was on a sailboat that my biological parents died. I dropped the box, pulled out my cell phone, and called my mother. My father never took his cell on weekends, but Mom was wired to hers 24-7.

  The phone rang. And rang. And rang again. Finally, I got voice mail.

  “Mom,” I said, trying not to sound too frantic. “I, uh, I want to go with you. Don’t go out without me. I’ll wait for your call.”

  I disconnected and immediately sent her a text: Call me!

  She probably had her cell phone in her bag and couldn’t hear it. I wasn’t even sure what I was going to tell them. I just wanted to keep them from going out on the water. Not with the Boggin on the loose.

  The Boggin.

  I looked at the vessel that had once contained it. It was just a box. The box needed a seal.

  A copper seal.

  I grabbed it and ran for the kitchen and the stairs that led to our basement. Dad’s workshop was down there. He had to have something made of copper that I could use as a seal to lock the vessel.

  That is, if I could get the Boggin into it. How the heck was I supposed to do that?

  Our basement was filled with a collection of old furniture covered in tarps, outgrown bikes, sleds, garden equipment, and tools. It was a mess. I clicked the light on and ran down the rough-hewn wooden steps, headed straight for Dad’s workbench. Dozens of tools were hung neatly on a wire rack above the work surface. Underneath the table were dusty cardboard boxes of junk that I quickly pulled out and dug through. There were random electric switches and plumbing fixtures and painting supplies and absolutely nothing made of copper.

  On top of the bench was a square organizer with a bunch of small drawers full of screws and nails and washers. I pulled each one out, hoping to find anything made of copper. In one of the drawers, I actually found a ring of old-fashioned keys that were the same size as the Paradox key. They probably were for the ancient dressers that Dad stored in the basement. None were made of copper.

  I was feeling helpless. Even if I found something, how would I get a centuries-old spirit to go inside the vessel? I felt the Paradox key around my neck. If anybody could help, it was Everett. Maybe he’d found something in one of his books that would tell me how to coax a demon into the very same prison it had just escaped from.

  I pulled the leather cord up over my head and grasped the key. I could use it on the door at the top of the basement stairs to enter the Library. I spun around, ready to run up…and stopped short.

  Standing at the foot of the stairs was Miss Bogg.

  I was so surprised I jumped back and slammed into the workbench, rattling the rack of tools.

  “Enough,” the old demon said sweetly. “Surrender the key.”

  The Boggin stood between me and the stairs…the only way out.

  I slipped the Paradox key into the pocket of my jeans, whatever good that would do.

  “Leave me alone,” I said. Pretty feeble, I know, but it was all I could come up with.

  The old lady tilted her head and gave me a sweet smile that made her look like somebody’s darling old grandma.

  “I would be delighted to, child, once you surrender the key.”

  She took a step forward, which made me back into the tool bench again and knock a hammer off the rack. In desperation I grabbed it off the bench and flung it at her.

  The demon didn’t even blink. The hammer passed right through her as if she weren’t actually there. It hit the stairs behind her and bounced down at her feet.

  “What were you expecting?” she asked coyly. “Flesh and bone?”

  “But if you’re a…a…spirit, how can you even use the key?”

  Instantly, Miss Bogg transformed into vapor. It was so quick and so stunning that I let out a gasp. The white cloud hung there for a moment, but it wasn’t a cloud. It was her. The cloud dropped down to the floor as if pushed by an overhead fan. It swirled around the hammer I had just thrown, and grew dense. With no warning the hammer rose off the floor and flew toward my head. I ducked, and it smashed against the wall of tools behind me, sending more crashing to the bench. I glanced back briefly at the damage, and when I spun around again to face the Boggin, she had returned to human form.

  “I do have physical abilities,” she said with a smug smile. “Now. Please. Simply place the key on the floor and step away.”

  “Why?” I asked in frustration. “I don’t understand why you want to destroy the Library so bad.”

  “The agents of that library bring solace to the haunted,” she said, turning cold. “They eliminate mystery, uncertainty, and fear…everything I was conjured to create. I have done battle with them for centuries, and I tire of their meddling.”

  “Did you kill my father and mother?” I asked.

  Miss Bogg gave me a sinister smile.

  “Not knowing the truth haunts you, doesn’t it?” She chuckled, as if taking pleasure from my pain.

  This monster really did exist to create misery.

  “I could erase your doubts and end your constant wondering,” she said. “But first you must surrender the key.”

  She motioned for me to put it down on the floor so she could swoop over in a fog to take it away.

  It was tempting, but…

  “No,” I said with finality.

  I felt something tickle the back of my neck. I swatted it.

  “You have no purpose,” I said. “The druids conjured you to create fear in children. It was a mistake. Even they knew it.”

  “Yet here I am,” she said. “With an unquenchable thirst. I exist to create fear. I feed on it. It strengthens me. My powers have grown over the centuries, and now I am capable of so much more.”

  I felt another tickle on my neck and swiped at it again. It felt as though an annoying mosquito was buzzing me.

  “But you’re not powerful enough to take the key from me,” I said. “That means it must have some pretty serious power of its own.”

  She didn’t move.

  I felt another tickle, this time on the top of my head. I swiped at it and looked at my hand to see three spiders, each the size of a nickel. They were black and furry and very active. They scrambled across my palm and tried to shoot up my sleeve. I had to shake my arm to get rid of them.

  “You are an annoying child,” she said with disdain. “I enjoy annoying children.”

  Instantly, I felt something fall on my head. And my arms. And all around me. I swiped them away, but more fell on me. Many more. Looking at my arms, I saw hundreds of spiders scampering across my shirt. They crawled down my collar and tickled my back. I couldn’t help but look up. They dropped from the dark rafters of our basement like an army of commandos on zip lines. It was impossible, but they were there. And they kept coming. By the thousands. They swarmed around my face, trying to get into my mouth and eyes. No matter how fast I swept them away, more followed.

  Miss Bogg watched calmly.

  “You can end this,” she said. “Surrender the key.”

  My body was crawling with spiders. Literally. They weren’t satisfied with just landing
on me; it was as if they were on a mission to burrow into my skin as they scrambled into every opening in my clothing. My sleeves, the cuffs of my pants, my collar—all were entry points for this army of vicious creatures.

  The only things keeping me from going out of my mind were the memories of the impossible images I had seen: a ladder that wasn’t there, a bull that disappeared, a storm that wasn’t real, and a house that had been crushed by a predator tree…until it wasn’t.

  The Boggin dealt in fear created by illusion.

  “They’re not real!” I screamed while brushing off the spiders that actually seemed pretty real at the moment. They crawled over my skin, burrowed through my hair, and dug into my scalp.

  “None of this is happening!” I screamed.

  I fell to the floor and rolled, hoping the motion would crush some of the little monsters before they could sting me. Or bite. Or whatever it was that spider illusions did.

  I hated spiders. Did she somehow get into my head to figure that out?

  Miss Bogg loomed over me.

  “Michael Swenor is dead,” she said. “As are your parents. Is that not real?”

  “You tricked them,” I cried. “I can fight it. I can fight you.”

  The spiders kept coming. They hit the floor and instantly skittered my way. These were not mindless creatures. They had a target. Me. There were so many of them swarming all over me that it looked as if I was wearing a fur bodysuit. The tickling against my skin made me want to scream, but I held it back. I didn’t want to give that demon the satisfaction.

  The Boggin leaned down toward me and said through clenched teeth, “Perhaps you can fight me, but can you say the same for your new parents?”

  The evil gleam in her eye put me over the edge. I finally let out a scream. It was a desperate cry, filled with terror and anger. She was going after my parents, just as she had my birth parents twelve years before.

  History was about to repeat itself.

  I lunged at her, hoping to grab her wrinkled old neck. This wasn’t an old lady. It was a monster wearing a twisted disguise. She was an evil Mother Goose who told tales of terror. I reached up with my spider-covered hands and grasped at her neck. I had her. I closed my hands, expecting to feel flesh and bone. All I got was air. In that instant she disappeared in a white wisp of fog. It surprised me, but only for a second. This was a phantom. A specter. She wasn’t flesh and blood, and she was gone.

  The spiders weren’t.

  I screamed again in absolute, mind-bending anguish, jumped to my feet, and ran for the stairs. All I could think to do was get out of that dark basement and into the light of my yard. My normal yard. The spiders had other plans. They nipped at my skin like a thousand tiny pinpricks, all striking at the same time, making me feel as though I were being electrocuted.

  I screamed again. I couldn’t help it. I tripped up the stairs, falling once to my knees, but I got right back up and kept going. I threw open the basement door and sprinted through my house to the front door. I didn’t know what being outside would do, but it was better than being trapped inside with a thousand tiny marauders. I got to the door, grabbed the knob, yanked it open…

  …and came face to face with Lu and Theo.

  They were as surprised as I was.

  “Whoa, are you all right?” Theo asked.

  Dumb question. I pushed past them and jumped off my front step, continuing to swipe off the spiders.

  “Marcus, what are you doing?” Lu yelled.

  I continued to brush at my arms until I realized it was no use. The spiders were gone. It still felt as though they were crawling on my skin, but I was fighting with a memory.

  “I…I…there were spiders,” I said, frantic. “Thousands of them.”

  Theo and Lu gave each other worried looks.

  “I know you’re afraid of them,” Theo said. “But don’t you think this reaction is a little extreme?”

  I fought the urge to continue brushing them off and focused enough to realize I wasn’t even feeling them anymore.

  “It was an illusion,” I finally managed to say while gasping for breath. “She was here.”

  “The Boggin?” Lu asked.

  I nodded. My mind was already racing ahead to try to understand what had happened and what it meant.

  “My parents,” I said, and pulled out my cell phone.

  I entered Mom’s number and once again got her voice mail.

  “The Boggin’s going after them!” I shouted in a panic. “Lightning’s about to strike twice.”

  I sprinted back into the house.

  Lu and Theo were right on my tail.

  “Maybe my cell phone isn’t getting through to them,” I said frantically. “I’ll try the home phone.”

  I ran straight for the kitchen, grabbed the phone, and punched in Mom’s number.

  “Where are they?” Theo asked.

  “At the Tod’s Point marina. They’re going sailing.”

  “Ooh, not good,” Lu said.

  The phone rang….I got Mom’s voice mail again and slammed the phone down in frustration.

  “Take a breath, man,” Theo said.

  I forced myself to calm down and focus.

  “Do you know what’s going on?” I asked Theo.

  “Lu explained it all. That’s why I’m here, Marcus. Somebody’s got to be the voice of reason. There’s nothing supernatural going on here.”

  Theo was dead serious. I looked to Lu.

  Lu shrugged and said, “He doesn’t buy it.”

  “There are no such things as ghosts and magic,” Theo said slowly and clearly, as if to a child. “If you keep thinking that way, you’ll never get to the real reason behind what’s happening.”

  It took every ounce of willpower I had to keep from lunging at Theo, grabbing his shirt, and throwing him against the wall.

  “You know it’s not just me, right?” I said through gritted teeth. “Lu’s been to the Library too. We can’t both be having the same hallucination.”

  “I believe she thinks she’s been somewhere,” Theo said. “You both do. But a supernatural library run by ghosts? Seriously?”

  I grabbed the Paradox key from my pocket and held it up to Theo’s face.

  “Let’s go. Right now. I’ll take you there. Come on!”

  I stormed over to the back door, ready to use the magic on it.

  “No!” Theo shouted.

  His voice stopped me cold. I’d never heard him yell like that. He stood there awkwardly, unable to look me in the eye. Something was definitely off.

  “What’s going on, Theo?” Lu asked softly. “I know you’re being all logical about this, but at some point you’ve got to open your mind to the possibility that something strange is happening.”

  Theo started shaking. Truly shaking. This was a guy who was always calm and in control. It was as though he was battling with himself to keep from exploding.

  “I won’t accept it,” he finally said, though the words didn’t come easily. “I can’t. I know how the world works. This doesn’t fit.”

  “That’s the whole point,” I said. “The Library exists because sometimes things don’t fit.”

  “No,” Theo said adamantly, as if trying to convince himself. “If I believed that, I’d have to believe—”

  He didn’t finish the sentence.

  “You’re not telling us something, Theo,” Lu said. “Why have you been fighting this?”

  Theo wiped his forehead nervously and tugged on his ear.

  “If I let myself believe in this library, I’d have to accept that I’m going through my own—what did you call it? Disruption?”

  Whoa.

  Lu and I exchanged surprised looks.

  “What does that mean?” I asked. “Did something happen to you?”

  Theo sat down at the kitchen counter. He couldn’t look at either of us.

  “I don’t know,” he said hesitantly. “Maybe.”

  “Just tell us,” Lu said.

  Th
eo spoke slowly and carefully, as if he wanted to make sure everything he said was fully understood.

  “About a month ago, I went to Playland Amusement Park with my older brothers. We found an arcade, where they had one of those silly fortune-telling machines with the dummy of an oracle inside who picks a card out of a box to tell your fortune. It was ridiculous but we all did it. My oldest brother went first. The fortune on his card read Beware of the bite. My other brother’s said You will receive good fortune from an unexpected source. We laughed and forgot all about them until the next day.”

  He took a troubled breath.

  “What happened?” Lu asked.

  “The next day my oldest brother was running through the park. He saw a friend walking his dog. When my brother reached out to pet it, the dog bit his hand. He needed ten stitches. That dog never bit anyone before.”

  “That’s just a coincidence,” Lu said.

  “Later that same day, my other brother found out he’d been awarded a four-thousand-dollar scholarship to go toward college tuition. He hadn’t even applied for it.”

  “Okay, a little weirder,” Lu said.

  “What was your fortune, Theo?” I asked.

  Theo slowly reached into his back pocket and took out his wallet. He was moving so slowly, it seemed as though the effort was painful. From out of the wallet he pulled a card and handed it to Lu. Lu read it…and gasped.

  “Oh my God,” she said, breathless.

  She looked to Theo; he kept his eyes on the floor. Lu handed the card to me. I read it. Then read it again. I understood the words but wished I didn’t.

  It said: Life as you know it will end on your fourteenth birthday.

  “Oh man” was all I could say.

  “That’s why I can’t accept that these disruptions are real,” Theo said. “It isn’t how life works. There is no magic. Machines can’t predict the future. Nothing is going to happen to me on my birthday.”

  I thought Lu was going to burst out crying, and that’s saying something. Lu wasn’t the crying type. I didn’t feel so hot myself.