The Boggart (14 page)

“Let's do it!” Jessup nudged Barry's shoulder impatiently.

Emily nodded, her eyes on Barry's. “Okay.” She got up, and hopped over to stand behind their chairs.

Barry turned back to the screen, and ran one hand through his hair nervously. “Down the black hole!” he said.

His fingers moved on the keyboard, and the screen was filled with the black sky and the prickling stars of the Black Hole game. There was no small spaceship icon visible in this sky, because now it was as if Jessup, Emily and Barry were inside the spaceship, and the computer screen was their window on space. They watched, and watched, and they seemed to move through space with agonizing slowness, for lack of reference points to show their speed. One star moved off the screen and out of sight; then another. Then a notice flashed, in a rectangle set in the center of the starry screen.

CHECK YOUR COURSE!

DANGER!

CHECK YOUR COURSE!

Barry ignored the message, and instructed the computer to move on. Stars drifted gradually toward them through the dark sky, giving an eerily vivid illusion that they were indeed looking through the window of their own spaceship. Then the computer began to make a high bleeping sound, and a second warning flashed.

DANGER!

YOU ARE NEARING BLACK HOLE!

CHANGE YOUR COURSE!

Barry turned off the warning and the sound alarm. They traveled on in silence. But gradually Emily thought she began to see a strange quivering in the sky, as she had when the Boggart's cheerful blue arrow of flame was streaking toward disaster. It grew stronger, until the stars on the screen were no longer still points of light but small juddering scribbles, jerking up and down. The sense of vibration consumed Emily's consciousness until she felt as if the floor under her feet were shaking; as if she were truly inside a doomed spaceship. Propped on her crutches, she grabbed Barry's shoulder with one hand and Jessup's arm with the other, as huge letters on the screen flared a final warning at them:

DANGER!!!

DANGER!!!

DANGER!!!

And the screen filled again with the whirling, pulsing dark funnel that was the black hole, sucking them down, and they felt that in a terrifying giddy fall they plunged into its black center, the heart of death, taking their breath, taking all light from their eyes, all sound from their ears. Jessup closed his eyes, knowing this was the moment when his computer would crash, when its screen would turn black and dreadful noises rattle deep inside its calm grey boxy body, and when everything that had been fed by its energy would be lost. Including the Boggart.

But instead he heard a gasp of wonder from Emily.

He opened his eyes, and on the screen of his computer he saw Castle Keep.

It was a clear, beautiful image, far clearer than any picture normally generated by a computer or even a film camera. It swayed a little, as though they were looking at it from a boat. A sea gull swept across the screen, calling its discordant, plaintive cry, and suddenly Jessup felt that he was indeed in a boat, tossing gently, looking inland from the sea at the misty grey hills of the Highlands of Scotland, and the stark chunky shape of Castle Keep, set on its small rocky island. He could hear the whine of the wind, and the lapping of the waves; he could smell the sea. He heard a strange honking bark, and from other rocks closer by he saw a big dark seal heave itself up and slide down into the waves.

Emily saw the seal too; she felt that it had turned to look at her, and that for an instant she was staring into its wide black eyes. She was facing a small computer screen and yet she felt she was surrounded by the ancient mountains and the beckoning sea. She wanted passionately to be back in Scotland; it was calling her, tugging at her. She saw the same longing on Jessup's face, and she heard a quiet sigh even from Barry, who had never been there at all.

Castle Keep loomed before them across the grey-blue waves, and yet never seemed to grow closer. If they were in a boat, it was not moving, but waiting.

They heard a voice, faraway but clear, a husky, dusty, creaky voice that seemed not to have been used for a very long time, and yet filled the room around them.

“
Tha
mi
'g iarraidh 'dol do'm dhuthaich fhein
,” it said, softly, plaintive as a small child. “
Tha mi
'g
iarraidh 'dol do'm dhuthaich fhein
.”

Emily whispered, “It's the Boggart! That's the piece of Gaelic that Willie read to us.
I want
to go to my
own country
.”

Barry shook his head, tossing the long hair, as if to free himself from a spell. He said firmly, “That's coming from the computer, Em.”

Jessup said quietly, “There's no voice synthesis in this computer. That's the Boggart talking.”

“My God,” Barry said.

The husky voice spoke again, this time in a faltering, uncertain English. “I want to go to my own country,” it said. “My own country. . . .” Then it faded into the wash of the waves, and the sighing of the wind.

The screen was dark again, filled with the black space and prickling stars of the Black Hole game; peaceful, unmoving, silent. Barry sat staring at it. He said, “And you don't have a color monitor either. But the hills were green and the sea was blue, and that tower was, like, all colors.”

“That's Castle Keep,” Emily said. “That's where he lives. That's where he wants to go.”

Jessup said, wondering, “He's amazing. He knew he couldn't talk to us on his own, so he used the computer, he used the black hole. And maybe that's the way he wants to go back.”

“Through the computer?” Barry said slowly.

“Tommy Cameron has a computer,” Jessup said. He nudged Barry out of the chair, and sat down in front of the computer. Out of a box he took one of the small flat squares that are bafflingly called discs, on which computer-generated information is stored or moved around. He slipped it into the appropriate slot in the computer, and his fingers hovered over the keyboard.

“Tommy Cameron has a computer,” he said again, eagerly. “What we do is, we copy the game onto a disc, and we send it to Tommy. And if he plays it through there, the Boggart will know he's at home — and he'll come out of the computer and go to Castle Keep.”

Emily said uncertainly, “How will he know he's back?”

“He just will. Like birds knowing where to go when they migrate. The Boggart may not be able to fly over the ocean, but I bet you he'll know when he's on the other side.”

Emily was trying to see Scotland in her head. “Tommy should take his computer over to the castle, and put the disc in it there.”

“There's no electricity in the castle, remember? His own house will do.”

Barry said, “Is this Tommy reliable?”

“Of course he is!” Emily said indignantly.

Jessup grinned, and began the process of copying material from the inside of the computer to the little disc.

“Wait a moment,” Barry said. “You can't copy it. You have to transfer it, lock stock and barrel.”

Jessup stopped, horrified. He heard wild shrieks of protest inside his cautious computer-trained mind. “
Transfer
it? But then that's all there'd be, this one little disc! It could get damaged, it could get lost. You should always keep a copy of
everything!
”

“You can't copy a person,” Barry said.

Jessup paused. “Oh,” he said. “Yes.”

“The Boggart's inside this game. He put himself in, and he'll take himself out, I guess. But there's only one of him. You'll just have to take a risk on him.” Barry gave a small wry grin. “That's the way it is with people,” he said.

“Here he goes, then,” Jessup said.

His fingers spoke to the keyboard; the computer whirred; the small square disc was ejected, in due course, from the slot. Jessup held it in his hand, and they all gazed at it, trying to absorb the idea that this small piece of metal and plastic contained all the ancient magic and mischief that was the Boggart.

“He's really in there?” Emily said, awed.

“If he's anywhere,” said Barry.

“Wait a minute,” Emily said. She put one finger gently on the disc that lay on Jessup's palm. “Boggart,” she said, “we'll come back some day. We will. Our great-grandmother was a MacDevon. We'll come back to Castle Keep.”

Jessup said, “He can't understand unless you speak Gaelic.”

“Oh yes he can,” Emily said.

Downstairs, a voice rose; it sounded angry. They all jumped. Barry said, “What time is it?”

Jessup peered at his clock radio. “Seven-thirty.”

Barry groaned. “I should have gotten out before your Mom woke up.” He looked back at the disc in Jessup's hand. “
Well, see, Mrs.
Volnik, I spent the night in your kid's room because he
was
looking for this, like, magic creature in his computer
. . . .”

The voice rose higher; it was recognizable now as Maggie's voice. They heard Robert rumbling in reply, then Maggie bursting out again. To their alarm they heard her voice growing closer; she was coming up the stairs.

“Emily!” She was in the other bedroom, which was of course empty. Jessup jumped up, and Barry sat down at the desk. Emily stood in front of him.

“Emily! Have you or Jessup spoken to any reporters?” She was talking as she came through the door, wearing her bathrobe, waving a copy of the morning newspaper and trying to read it at the same time, so that she scarcely glanced at them.

“No,” Emily said. “There was a television lady, but I hung up on her.”

“Look at this! That wretched man!” Maggie held the newspaper still long enough for them to see the headline
GHOSTS IN THE ANNEX,
and underneath it a two-column story with two photographs. One showed a front view of their own house, and the other was a head-and-shoulders portrait of a solemn Dr. Stigmore with his hair combed flat. He looked a little like Adolf Hitler, without the mustache.

“What is it?” Jessup said.

“Garbage. All about how there's a poltergeist throwing furniture around this house and your father's theater, and how the celebrated scholar of parapsychology Dr. William Stigmore is thoroughly researching the circumstances.”

“Meaning me,” said Emily unhappily.

“Meaning you. And how all his findings will be revealed next week in that ‘Beyond Belief' TV program, which just happens, of course, to be on the channel owned by the owner of this newspaper.” Maggie's voice rose to something like a howl. “I will
kill
William Stigmore!”

“He's a creep,” Jessup said simply. “He always was.”

Maggie wasn't listening. She was beginning to sound extremely English, as she always did when upset. “If he thinks I'm going to let him do his bloody research on my daughter, he's got another think coming! How
dare
he talk about us in public, the rotten publicity hound! He's never coming near this family again — I don't care how many chairs get thrown about!”

Emily said, “I don't think there'll be any more.”

But Maggie had caught sight of Barry. She stared at him, her hand going instinctively to push back the long hair loose about her face. “What are you doing here?”

“Working,” Barry said.

“That makes a change,” Maggie said tartly.

Barry flushed. He opened his mouth to retaliate, and then changed his mind. “It does, doesn't it?” he said.

Emily was about to start loathing her mother when Maggie did one of the quick engaging mood changes for which she was famous in the family. “I'm sorry, Barry, that was a bitchy thing to say. I'll find better ways of nagging you to finish school. You seem to have worked a miraculous cure on my son, at any rate.”

They all looked at Jessup, fully clothed, bright-eyed, the picture of health. He had forgotten he was supposed to have the flu. He looked down modestly, and his hand closed over the computer disc.

“Let's all go have breakfast, and drink bad health to Dr. Stigmore,” Maggie said.

“In just a moment,” Emily said. “Jess and I have a quick letter to write.”

     
I
T WAS A
Saturday morning in Port Appin, four days after Christmas, and Tommy Cameron was helping his father Angus load boxes into his car. Angus had found no newspaper stories for several weeks, so he was at home working in the shop, and Tommy's mother was looking much happier. Business was brisk, and they had even sold nineteen of the six-dozen boxes of Christmas crackers Angus had insisted on buying secondhand in a fire sale. Tommy was as glad to see the car as he was to see his father. Making special delivery runs on a bicycle in December was a chilly business.

There was a fine mist of rain in the air, and clouds hung ragged and low over the hills and the islands. But sea gulls were weaving endlessly to and fro over the sea, calling, calling. Tommy looked up at them curiously, wondering what could be making them so restless on a dank winter day.

Another sound came from the direction of the road, the growing raucous rattle of an engine in trouble, and around the corner came the bright familiar van of the mailman. It was traveling in a series of strange jerky hiccups, coughing and spluttering alarmingly.

“Lord!” said Tommy's father, straightening up, peering. “What does David Ross have in his petrol tank today, do you suppose?”

The van zigzagged toward them, and stopped with a final violent tremor and cough. The mailman got out; he was a portly man with a neat grey beard. “New Year!” he said bitterly. “It has to choose New Year to die on me!” He glared at his van, and kicked its rear tire.

“Poor thing,” said Angus Cameron. “You should be kinder, David — we are all getting older.”

“This van is only two years old and it had a checkup last week,” said David Ross the mailman. He opened the rear doors and began pulling parcels out of a mailbag. “The Post Office is having some sort of epidemic, if you ask me. Last night's mail train from Glasgow nearly crashed, with some sort of brake failure — and last week one of the transatlantic planes came in on one engine —”

“Dangerous occupation, mail delivery,” Angus said solemnly. “You should take up hang gliding.”

“A happy New Year to you too,” said David Ross dourly. He handed over several boxes and a package of mail, then reached back into his bag. “Oh, and there is a registered piece for Tommy here. A late Christmas present, I dare say.”

He pulled out a brown padded envelope — and staggered suddenly, juggling the envelope between his two hands as if it were all at once very hot, or very heavy. He handed it hastily to Tommy who took it warily but was surprised to find it very light.

“Sign here,” David Ross said. Tommy signed his name.

“Maybe you should take my bike, Mr. Ross,” he said cheerfully.

“It's been getting worse and worse all day,” the postman said morosely. He climbed back into his van and raised a resigned hand in farewell. Then he turned the ignition key.

And the engine purred into life as quietly as a kitten, and David Ross's astonished face disappeared with his van, driving smooth as silk away down the road.

“Registered, eh?” said Angus. “Who's it from?”

Tommy looked at the stamps on his package, and the warnings printed all over it in careful capital letters:
FRAGILE . . . URGENT . . . HANDLE WITH CARE. . . .

“It's from Canada,” he said.

“D
EAR
T
OMMY,”
said the letter, when finally, privately, he opened it.

The letter had one final page after this, headed “Instructions for Black Hole Game.”

Sitting up in bed, Tommy took a deep breath, and let it out in a long soundless whistle. He looked at the small unremarkable disc lying beside him on the quilt. The Boggart had always roamed so free, here in Port Appin, in his own small world. Life must have become terribly complicated for him, over there, if the only way he could find to escape was by locking himself up.

He listened to the sounds of his parents preparing for bed, in the room next door. In this small house, there was no chance of running his computer undetected at night. But he knew what he would do. Tomorrow night there would be a
ceilidh
at the village hall, a splendid communal party at which everyone would perform and sing and dance, eat and drink, and generally enjoy being together. Tommy would be part of it; unknown to Jessup and Emily, he was one of the best Scottish dancers Appin had ever produced, and he was to do a sword dance from the Isle of Skye. But after that, when the dancing had become general and his parents were laughing and talking with their friends, he knew he could slip away.

He looked at the disc again; then slid it under his pillow, and lay down. Before he turned out the light, he reached for the letter. He re-read the postscript, several times. Then he pushed the letter under his pillow too.

L
IGHT AND
music and laughter poured out of the windows and door of the village hall, with the rhythm of dancing feet and furious fiddle playing. At one moment Tommy was standing at the door, smiling, applauding, resplendent in his kilt and velvet jacket; at the next he had backed quietly away and disappeared into the night. Nobody noticed him go. He ran down the dark road, grateful that he didn't have to worry about bumping into the new owner of Castle Keep. Mr. Maconochie had left the
ceilidh
early, with his two small visiting great-nephews. The little boys had had a fine time, but one of them had already fallen asleep and the other was well on the way.

Like the Volniks, Mr. Maconochie the lawyer had fallen in love with Castle Keep; unlike them, he had decided to change his life and move there. Perhaps he had been waiting for an excuse to start again. For that was what he had done: he had sold his house in Edinburgh, bought all the MacDevon's remaining books and furniture from Maggie and Robert, and, just last week, sent them a large check that made him the new master of Castle Keep. To the great relief of the Camerons and the rest of Port Appin, his intention seemed to be to change the castle only in ways that made it safer, warmer and more weatherproof. He had already settled happily into worn tweeds and corduroys, and bought a dog.

Tommy sat down at his desk, spread out the letter of instruction, put the disc in his computer and launched himself into Jessup's Black Hole game. Soon his screen took him into space, among the glittering stars. He found that his fingers were trembling. He could feel his heart beating faster too, faster than it had beaten after his sword dance, or even before it, when he had been nervous.

Looking up at the windows, he realized that he had forgotten to draw the curtains, so he switched off his desk lamp. Now the only light in the room was that from the glimmering computer screen — and, beyond it, from the few faintly-glowing windows of Castle Keep. With his great-nephews staying, Mr. Maconochie kept night lights on all night long, in case they should wake up and feel lonely or alarmed.

Tommy looked back at the screen, and it drew him into the feeling of flying in a spaceship, deeper and deeper, out among the stars. The game carried him on, far into space. Like Emily and Jessup he traveled through galaxies, billions of light years in seconds, until like them he began to see the perilous quivering of the stars, and the warnings thrown up at him by the computer game. Slowly he went on, and on, nervous all the time that his inexperience with the computer would lead him to make some terrible mistake.

Suddenly the screen was full of huge glaring words.

DANGER!!!

DANGER!!!

DANGER!!!

In a hasty, frightened reflex Tommy pushed the keys that would interrupt the course of any program in the computer. He must have made some dreadful mistake. If he could stop the game, he could reread the instructions to find out where he had gone wrong.

But to his horror, the computer ignored him. It was too late to stop.

Image after image whirled by on the screen, warning after warning. The spaceship of his imagination flew on, undeterred. Tommy could feel himself rushing through space as if it were really happening, and he fought to keep himself out of the illusion. In panic he stabbed at the keyboard, desperately trying to find some way to obey the computer and avert disaster. What had he done wrong? He was going to kill the Boggart!

Then looking wildly around, he caught sight of the words in Emily's sprawling black capitals on one of the pages beside him.

YOU JUST HAVE TO FLY. TRUST US.

The words filled Tommy's mind, pulling him out of panic, and with a sound like a sob he forced his hands away from the computer keyboard. He felt himself let go, give up control. And he was staring wide-eyed at the screen, reaching his arms wide as if for balance, as the terrifying whirlpool of the Black Hole pulled him down into the dark, down, down, into unending deathly emptiness. . . .

The screen was black, quite black, save for one point of blazing blue light in the center. Giddy, breathless, Tommy stared at it.

The blue light bounced a little, as if it were dancing. And very gradually, Tommy began to feel all the tension being drawn out of him. His mind and his body began to relax, free now from anxiety. He seemed to hear the sound of this relaxation too, warm, comforting, filling the room — and he laughed aloud as he realized it was exactly like the purring of a cat. A sense of laughter was all around him; he was at the center of the Boggart's happiness. He stood up, wondering, and the purring sound enveloped him like music.

All at once there was a noise like a gunshot inside his computer, and it spat out the disc in an explosion of blue flame. Tommy jumped back. The disc lay on the carpet, burning and yet cold, flickering without smell or sound. Against his face he felt for an instant a cool brief touch, as if a small hand had stroked his cheek.

He stood very still, holding his breath.

Then he heard another sudden crash, and he spun around and saw that a pane of one of his windows had shattered. And through the window, out over the dark water, he saw a blue flame flying like an arrow, through the clear night, curving out, until it touched the roof of Castle Keep, leaped up for an instant as if in triumph, and disappeared.

Tommy stood looking out, in the formal Scottish kilt and shirt and jacket of the sword dancer, and he smiled. “
Do
bheatha dhachaidh
, Boggart,” he said. “Welcome home.”

I
N A GENTLE WHIRL
of sooty dust the Boggart dropped down the chimney and out into the broad living-room hearth of Castle Keep. He breathed a long happy sigh. Then he put himself through the gap under the door and flittered into the kitchen, which seemed warmer than he remembered, and he twitched at the tail of a prowling mouse. The mouse squeaked indignantly, and the Boggart saw fragments of sandwich lying on the table near two small plates, as if two small people had left the remnants of a snack. He popped a piece into his mouth, and tasted peanut butter. He smiled.

In the glow of the night-lights he flittered happily around the castle, greeting every stone and board and corner, every room and door. Nothing had changed. It was all the same as before, though cleaner. He drifted into the MacDevon's bedroom, and found the wardrobe full of clothes that were not the MacDevon's but similar, and in the MacDevon's bed a sleeping man who breathed with the same right kind of gentle snore. The Boggart beamed a welcome, and tied Mr. Maconochie's shoelaces together to greet him in the morning.

In the next room, to his delight, he found two small sleeping boys, of a perfect age for Boggart teasings, and he flittered busily about the house until he found a needle and thread. Then he came back and sewed neat little stitches across the ends of the sleeves of one boy's shirt, and the legs of the other one's jeans. He would take care to be hovering, appreciative and invisible, when they woke up and began to dress.

In a sheltered corner downstairs he heard a sleeping dog whimper at his passing, and when he went to investigate he found not an experienced adult dog or a tired half-blind wreck, but a big-pawed, flop-eared Labrador puppy. The Boggart could hardly believe his luck. Here was someone else with whom he could have great fun. As a beginning, he caught a large black beetle and dropped it in the puppy's water bowl.