The Boggart

by Susan Cooper

  For the last ten minutes of the snow fight, the Boggart clung to the inside of Jessup’s shirt, tucked in the gap above his collarbone. He was bounced around horribly every time the arm connected to the collarbone threw a snowball, but at least he was close to the warmth of Jessup’s skin, protected from the terrible cold of the winter air outside. When at last the cold was too much even for the boys, and they came running back indoors shouting for mugs of hot chocolate, the Boggart squeezed himself out while Jessup was taking off his jacket, and he flittered feebly back upstairs.

  He sat on the edge of Emily’s bookshelf, gradually growing warmer again in the house shut so wisely against the bitter winter air, and he gazed quietly at the pictures of green Scottish hillsides for a long, long time.

  NEXT DAY Jessup, Barry and Yung Hee spent an hour working on Black Hole, their computer game. Then they reached an impasse, and decided they needed a break. Yung Hee wandered into Emily’s room to chat, and Jessup, still sitting at the computer, began bragging to Barry about a selection of new typefaces he had been illegally given by another computer-freak friend.

  “Garamond’s my favorite. It’s a really neat shape. Look at this.”

  He pressed the right buttons to request his computer to print a document in the Garamond typeface, instead of its usual sturdy Times, and turned on the printer to carry out the computer’s commands. There were the usual whispered clicking and whirring sounds, and the printer gently spat out a piece of paper. Jessup took it out of the tray and handed it to Barry, grinning. “It’s a piece we’re going to stick on the fridge to stop Mom smoking,” he said. “Em found it — it comes from an old English book called A Counterblast against Tobacco.”

  Barry read the sheet, frowned, and put it in front of Jessup.

  “Don’t you like it?” Jessup said, wounded. Then he paused, looking at the page. It read:

  Smoking is a habit loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful THA MI ’G IARRAIDH ’DOL DO’M DHUTHAICH FHEIN to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fumes thereof, THA MI ’G IARRAIDH ’DOL DO’M DHUTHAICH FHEIN nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.

  Barry said, “Yeah, that’s a pretty typeface, but where’s the garbage coming from?”

  Jessup frowned at the intrusive lines of capital letters. “I never saw that before.”

  “You think it’s a virus?

  “Can’t be. I have an antivirus program — everything gets scanned automatically.” He pressed several keys, and the computer obediently printed the antitobacco paragraph again — and the strange invading words THA MI ’G IARRAIDH ’DOL DO’M DHUTHAICH FHEIN were still there.

  Jessup breathed heavily. His fingers spoke to the computer, and a little box with words inside appeared on the screen. “Conducting virus scan on file TOBACCO,” it said. There was a flicker, and almost at once the words inside the little box changed. “No viruses found during this scan!”

  But before Jessup had even touched the keyboard again, the little box on the screen vanished, and in even bigger capitals than before they saw the same unintelligible words.

  THA MI ’G IARRAIDH ’DOL DO’M DHUTHAICH FHEIN

  “What’s the matter?” Yung Hee said.

  Jessup said, “My computer’s lost its mind.”

  “Garbage in, garbage out,” said Emily. It was their father’s favorite comment on the performance of computers and their operators.

  Jessup snarled at her.

  “Emily!” Maggie was at the bedroom door, looking concerned. “I didn’t know you were up. You shouldn’t be roaming about on that leg.”

  “I’m not on it.” Emily lifted a crutch and waggled it. “I’m on these. The doctor said I could.”

  “Just take it easy,” Maggie said. She moved a little sideways in the doorway, with a rather formal smile. “Well, now you have another doctor visiting.”

  Looming over her they saw the heavy dark eyebrows and forelock of Dr. Stigmore. Emily’s heart sank. She stood still, leaning on her crutches, hoping vaguely that if she stayed within the circle of her friends he might go away.

  “Hello, Emily!” said Dr. Stigmore, with the unconvincing heartiness she remembered from his hospital visit.

  “Hello,” said Emily coldly.

  “I brought you a present,” he said, and showed her a pot of yellow chrysanthemums. Emily was not fond of chrysanthemums; she thought they smelled like wet cats.

  “Thank you very much,” she said without enthusiasm.

  “Put them in your room, then,” said Maggie with a faint edge of impatience.

  “No, no,” said Dr. Stigmore. “She’s on crutches, poor child. I’ll do it. Show me where, Emily.”

  With a very bad grace, Emily hopped out of Jessup’s room and across the landing to her own. It was extremely untidy, and the bed was unmade, but Dr. Stigmore made elaborate comments on the prettiness of the curtains, and the originality of the drawings Emily had made on the wallpaper with a stolen Magic Marker when she was six.

  From the curtain rod, the Boggart looked down peevishly at Dr. Stigmore. He recognized him. This was the man who had come bursting into Maggie Volnik’s shop, interrupting the show he was putting on for Emily and Jessup. This man had spoiled his friends’ fun, and his own. The Boggart felt a wave of dislike for him; he wanted him to leave, at once. He looked around for objects that might encourage the process.

  From his room, the first shout Jessup heard came from Dr. Stigmore. Then there was a loud crash, and a shriek from Maggie. Jessup, Yung Hee and Barry rushed through Emily’s door just in time to see a large school textbook hurtle through the air and hit the wall, narrowly missing them. The carpet was covered with pieces of flowerpot, and spilled earth, and scattered yellow chrysanthemums. A shower of pencils rattled against the wall and fell on the broken flowers. Maggie was pressed back against the wall, looking terrified, and Dr. Stigmore was dancing about the room, dodging the missiles, with a wild, excited grin on his face. “Wonderful!” he was exclaiming. “Classic! Wonderful!”

  Emily was in a corner, wide-eyed, a crutch under each arm. She shouted, “Stop it, Boggart! Stop!”

  Another book whizzed through the air from the bookshelves. Instinctively Jessup ducked. Barry whooped, and tugged Yung Hee back out through the door. Dr. Stigmore ducked too, but the book grazed his forehead before dropping to the ground. He staggered, and a bright trickle of blood appeared above his brow. Maggie wailed, aghast.

  Suddenly there was silence. Emily glanced nervously around the room. She grabbed some tissues from a box on her dressing table and handed them to Dr. Stigmore. He inclined his head in dignified thanks and dabbed gingerly at the graze on his forehead.

  Maggie said faintly, “Are you all right? Oh dear, I’m so sorry!”

  Dr. Stigmore’s square, perfect white teeth gleamed at her. He looked like a large predatory animal about to gobble someone up. “Quite remarkable,” he said happily. “Amazing manifestations. It’s so very uncommon to be able to conduct this kind of research. I can’t wait to see what we find when we take Emily into the psychiatric unit for observation.”

  Emily was horrified. She moved back toward Maggie as if for shelter. “Mom!” she said.

  Maggie looked uncertainly at Dr. Stigmore. “There surely isn’t any reason for that?” she said.

  Barry stuck his head cautiously around the door. “Wow, Em!” he said, “How do you do that?”

  “It wasn’t me!” Emily said, desperate.

  Dr. Stigmore said briskly to Maggie, “Oh, there’s no alternative. Dr. Rhine’s work in parapsychology showed conclusively that an evaluation of psychokinesis requires close, detailed study, under controlled conditions. It’s very important to be able to rule out the possibility of manipulation, either by the subject or some dominating personality.”

  Maggie Volnik was not the kind of woman to be cowed by long words. She said calmly, “Perhaps you would repeat that in English.”

  Dr. Stigmo
re’s black eyes narrowed. He said, “In other words, if you want these disturbances to end, Emily needs to be watched day and night in a hospital.”

  TWELVE

  BARRY AND YUNG HEE sat in Jessup’s room, gaping at him in amazement. He had just finished telling them about the Boggart, and the background given them by Willie and Dai and Tommy Cameron.

  “But creepy old Stigmore doesn’t know anything about boggarts,” said Jessup. “And he wouldn’t believe it if he did. He thinks all these things are being thrown about by a poltergeist, which he says is a fancy name for energy coming out of a disturbed kid. In this case Emily.”

  “Emily,” said Yung Hee, “is about the least disturbed person I know.”

  “Right. At least till now.”

  They all fell silent for a moment, thinking of the loud sobs with which Emily had greeted Dr. Stigmore’s continued insistence on her going into the hospital. They had all retreated, quietly and quickly, and Dr. Stigmore and Maggie were still shut up with Emily in her room. Jessup was concerned about her, but not distressed; he knew his sister very well, and had heard a note in those sobs that told him they were at least partly calculated. Emily was on the defensive, working out a strategy as she went along.

  “Boggarts,” said Barry reflectively, as if he were trying the word out.

  “There is a spirit a little like that in Korea,” Yung Hee said. “I forget the name, but I have heard my grandmother tell. It lives in the house, and plays tricks.”

  Barry said, “This is really crazy. If I hadn’t seen those books flying around —”

  “You saw things flying around on Halloween,” Jessup said.

  “Yeah, but I thought you guys had rigged that somehow. And you let me think it.”

  “Well, it was only that night that we found out about the Boggart.” Jessup thought of the small invisible hand stroking his cheek, cool as the hand of a frog.

  “Is he in here?” Yung Hee’s shiny black hair swung as she looked around the room, half fascinated, half fearful. “Can he hear us?”

  “Maybe.”

  Barry stood up. “We have to do something, quick. Before that jerk takes Emily away and starts sticking electrodes on her head.”

  “Listen,” Jessup said. He glanced cautiously at the door, but it was still shut. “When you go home, call Willie Walker for me. It’ll be hard to phone from here. Ask him to come over tomorrow, if he can.”

  “What can Willie do?”

  “I don’t know. But he’s the only person we can ask.”

  The door opened, and Maggie stood there alone, looking at them. “Don’t disturb Emily,” she said. “She’s going to sleep now.”

  Jessup said, “You aren’t going to let him take her away?”

  “No. Not yet, anyway.”

  “Not ever!”

  “Oh Jessup,” Maggie said wearily, “you really don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s complicated.” She turned to Barry and Yung Hee. “We have troubles in this family, as you see,” she said stiffly. “I’d be grateful if you wouldn’t speak about them to anybody.”

  “Of course not!” said Yung Hee warmly. She darted forward and gave Maggie a kiss on the cheek.

  Barry remained still. He said, “You mean me, don’t you? You’ve never trusted me.”

  “I mean you and Yung Hee and Jess,” Maggie said.

  “But especially me, because I’m a junkie and a bum and a bad influence. And all those other things you said at Halloween.”

  Maggie said coolly, “I think you’re wasting your life by leaving school, but that’s your problem. I’d just be grateful if you wouldn’t discuss ours, outside this house.”

  Barry shrugged. “Okay,” he said.

  Jessup was furious with his mother; he glared at her, but she seemed to look through him. “Dinner in half an hour, Jessup.” And she was gone.

  “Stay cool, Jess,” Barry said. “She’s just worried. C’mon, Yung Hee — we’re outa here.”

  There was a loud crash downstairs, as Dr. Stigmore opened the door to leave and the Boggart threw a vase at him.

  THE NIGHT was clear and cold, and the streetlights cast harsh black shadows on the dingy white snow-banks edging the sidewalks. From the landing window, the Boggart tried to look up, to see the friendly prickle of the stars in the dark sky, but trees and buildings enclosed him and there were no stars to be seen. The house was sleeping, and he could not get outside; and even if he could, no creature would be stirring out there. It was too cold.

  The Boggart was lonely.

  He could play tricks, of course. Right this moment, he could make the sound of a howling wolf, or a clanking chain, or moan heartrendingly like a textbook ghost. His two friends might appreciate that, but nobody else in this house would, not even that hostile cat. They would call in the tall dark man, who was an enemy; who reacted to boggart games with a fierce self-satisfaction that made the Boggart very uneasy.

  He flittered into Emily’s room, and in the light that crept around the blind from the streetlights outside, he gazed longingly at the pictures of the mountains of Argyll, and the rocks where the seals lived, and he wished that he were there.

  EMILY WOKE UP with a sense of awful dread. It was as if she were being warned that something bad was about to happen. She lay unhappily in bed, in the morning light, drifting in and out of a kind of waking nightmare in which Dr. Stigmore locked her in a room full of furniture and sat facing her, staring, waiting for tables and chairs to start flying about. And nothing moved, so they sat there for days, and days . . . and outside, the Boggart was loose, playing his tricks, and Toronto caught fire and the whole of Canada lost its electricity, and airplanes crashed and ships went aground and nuclear power stations blew up. . . .

  She shook herself awake and got dressed, more slowly than usual because of the cast on her leg. She heard a murmur of voices in Jessup’s room, and then Robert came in and announced that Maggie had left early for Quebec on a buying trip, and that Jessup had every sign of the flu and would be staying in bed instead of going to school.

  “The younger generation is falling apart,” he said. “Are you well enough to get his lunch, if he wants any?”

  “Sure,” said Emily. She was sorry for Jessup, but greatly relieved that the Boggart would not be shadowing him to school. Almost in the same moment she realized that the flu was probably due to Jessup’s having had the same thought. They had a day together: one day, to solve the many-sided problem of the Boggart. Whatever could they do?

  Robert said awkwardly, “I hear last night was difficult.”

  “Do you think I’m crazy?” demanded Emily.

  “Nobody thinks you’re crazy, Em. We’re just looking for solutions to a very peculiar problem.”

  Suddenly Emily just wanted to get rid of him. She loved her parents dearly, but they were out of their element in this situation, and it was urgent to get advice from someone with the right kind of understanding. Which meant someone Robert and Maggie would never dream of asking for advice.

  She said, trying to sound calm, “Jess and I will be fine.”

  “I have a board meeting,” Robert said. He made a face. She could tell that in spite of the unstable condition of his family, his mind was already busy in the theater. Good, she thought.

  “Good luck, Dad.”

  Robert departed, scarcely recognizable with a tie round his neck and a briefcase in his hand, and in a flash Jessup was out of bed and pulling on his clothes. He came down to join Emily in the kitchen, tugging a sweatshirt over his head. “I did a truly excellent impersonation of a sick kid,” he said with satisfaction. “I think I’ll try out for the school play in the spring.”

  Emily leaned on her crutches, worried, feeling quite unlike a reliable older sister. “Oh Jess,” she said plaintively. “What are we going to do?”

  “Stay indoors. He doesn’t go out except with one of us.” Jessup spooned a dollop of homemade applesauce into a bowl and poured cereal over it.

  “That’
s no help. We can’t stay indoors forever.”

  “Maybe he won’t do any more bad stuff like the traffic lights. After seeing what happened.”

  “I bet he will. He just thinks it’s fun.”

  Hovering near the table, the Boggart smiled. The girl was beginning to understand him. But he was more interested in the applesauce than the conversation; he dipped one long finger into it, tasted, and shivered with pleasure. The kitchen had become his favorite room in the house; at least here he could be distracted by food, and forget that he was in the wrong country, the wrong place.

  The telephone rang. Emily picked it up.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi,” said a warm, friendly voice. “Mrs. Volnik?”

  “No, this is Emily.”

  The voice sounded delighted. “Emily! This is Mary Brogan of Eastern Television. I work for a program called ‘Beyond Belief.’ I understand you’ve been having some interesting, er, manifestations recently.”

  “No!” said Emily in a panic. “No, we haven’t!”

  The voice was calm and persistent. “Furniture being thrown about, and books. And strange lights shining in your father’s theater. Isn’t that right?”

  “No!” said Emily. She put the phone down hastily.

  “Someone selling something?” Jessup said, through a mouthful of cereal.

  “Sort of.”

  The doorbell rang. Emily jumped.

  “I’ll go,” said Jessup.

  “Don’t let anyone in!”

  “Don’t worry.” He pushed back his chair and went out, and the Boggart sat down happily on the rim of his cereal bowl and drank the remaining small pool of milk. Very faintly, Emily heard the slurping sound; it was like a dripping tap. She was about to get up and check the sink when Willie came into the room.