The Boggart Read online

  But then he remembered the shape of Barry’s house. It was a Victorian mansion with many rooms, including two separate and enormous studies, for Barry’s father, a world-famous management consultant, and Barry’s mother, who had a belligerently different surname and was vice president of a bank. Attached to the mansion was a carriage house. Its ground floor housed the present-day carriages, the mother’s Mercedes and the father’s Jaguar, and above them was a studio. This studio was Barry’s bedroom, and in it he had his own telephone. . . .

  Jessup crept downstairs to the kitchen, stroked the cat, closed the door and dialed Barry’s number. There was a great deal of ringing and then a very blurry voice. “H’lo?”

  “Barry? It’s Jessup.”

  “For Pete’s sake — it’s three in the morning!”

  “I know it is,” Jessup said, and to his horror he suddenly found his voice full of tears. “I know it is. I’m sorry. Oh Barry, I’ve lost the Boggart.”

  “Lost him?”

  Jessup told him the story, and all the while he was fighting to keep his voice from shamefully breaking, for like Emily, he had discovered he was fiercely attached to their invisible, tiresome, uninvited friend. Being himself a good friend, Barry was aware of this, and when Jessup had finished he said simply, “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  “Thanks,” Jessup said gratefully.

  “You got an alarm system?”

  “They don’t put it on when we’re home.”

  “I’ll tap at your kitchen door.”

  Quietly and carefully Jessup made two mugs of hot chocolate. He gave a splash of milk to Polly the cat, who could hardly believe her luck and purred so loudly he was afraid she would wake his parents up. In a little while he heard a strange scuffling outside the door, and opened it to find Barry, red-faced, shaking thick snow from his jacket and cap.

  “More snow!” said Jessup, in a wondering whisper.

  “It’s been snowing for three hours, they haven’t ploughed yet. I came on skis.”

  “On skis?”

  “My car’s blown its muffler — makes a noise like a garbage truck. I didn’t think your mom would appreciate that, in the middle of the night.” Barry gulped his hot chocolate with enthusiasm, but his mind, as usual, was focused on computers. He said, “I was wondering — you have an automatic save program, right?”

  “Sure. Ten-minute intervals.”

  Barry reached down and began unlacing his boots. “Let’s get to that computer and try something. . . .”

  They crept upstairs, Jessup directing Barry to avoid the fourth stair from the top, which contained an abominable creak. Past his parents’ bedroom, from which he heard reassuring sounds of regular breathing; up the last stairs, past Emily’s almost-closed door. From Jessup’s room came the faint husky hum of his computer.

  Jessup carefully closed his door, and Barry sat down at the desk like a pianist facing the start of a concerto. He took a deep deliberate breath. “Okay,” he said. “Here we go.”

  For more than two hours he worked at the computer, delving back into the process by which they had constructed the game of Black Hole; trying to reach the area into which the Boggart had disappeared. To some extent he was trying to deal with the same problem that is faced by anyone who has ever lost a piece of information in a computer: the important letter, the term report, the vital record that vanished from the screen because you pressed the wrong button, and refuses to reappear no matter how many other buttons you hopefully press.

  But Barry was hunting for more than words or figures; his quarry was alive. And it was not simply lost — it might also be deliberately eluding him. He and Jessup both knew there was a strong chance that the Boggart, always a creature of mischief, might be playing a terrible game of his own, not understanding that there were perils in the world of a computer from which even he might not be able to escape. If he was playing hide and seek with them, he might at any moment doom himself to go on playing it forever.

  Barry sat with his long frame hunched over the keyboard, sometimes typing furiously, sometimes brooding, staring at the screen. Now and then Jessup took over, to try an idea of his own, but most of the things Barry was doing were so complex and obscure that it was impossible to help him. Again and again they tried to reconstruct the game in which, somewhere, the Boggart was hiding or trapped. But every time they failed.

  The door opened, and Jessup swung around, alarmed. It was Emily, in her bathrobe, blinking sleepily.

  “Barry!” she said in a startled whisper. “What are you doing here?”

  “Shut the door!” Jessup whispered. “We’re trying to find the Boggart!”

  Barry stood up and stretched, touching the ceiling. He said gloomily, “And it may be impossible.”

  “Oh!” Emily said wretchedly. She sat down on Jessup’s bed.

  “Well, we’ve been trying for two hours.” Barry looked at his watch. “No, three. “He seated himself at the computer again. “Jess — I think there’s only one thing left to do.”

  Jessup said nervously, “What’s that?”

  “Reverse the final info loop on the game and just see what happens.” He looked across at Emily. “Roughly speaking, that means we go down the black hole too.”

  “Downthe black hole?”

  “But that’s a major conflicting instruction!” Jessup said, lapsing into computalk.

  “Right. Megamajor.”

  “The computer will crash!”

  “Maybe. On the other hand, we might find ourselves face to face with the Boggart.”

  Emily said fearfully, “What are you guys talking about? What does it mean if the computer crashes?”

  “You have to restart it, and you lose what you’ve been working on. In our case, this Black Hole game — and the Boggart inside it.”

  “You lose it forever?”

  “Yup,” Barry said.

  “Don’t do it!” said Emily in panic.

  Barry said, persistent, “We’ve lost the Boggart anyway — nothing we’ve tried has been able to reach him. This is the only thing left. I think we have to try it. Take the risk.”

  “So do I,” Jessup said.

  Emily looked doubtfully at Barry: at the lanky sixteen-year-old frame, and the face that didn’t quite seem to know yet what shape it was going to be. Barry’s long dark hair lay greasily over his shoulders, and his upper lip looked vaguely dirty because it needed a shave. He had a major acne pimple on his chin. He looked the image of the dubious layabout that Maggie Volnik thought him to be. But on that point Emily had always felt her mother was wrong.

  Barry said gently, “Em, I wouldn’t do you dirt. Jess is just about my best friend, whatever your mom may feel about that. I really think this is what we have to do.”

  “Mom doesn’t mean any harm,” Emily said.

  “She’s all right,” Barry said. “I like her. At least she cares what her kids do with their lives.”

  “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, g
iving 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!”