The Boggart Read online

  But then he forgot them instantly, and his eyes widened, as he saw approaching in the shadows, dim-lit and terrible, the dark hunched figure of the winter hag herself. There she was, tapping with her stick at trees and bushes, advancing on him. Her blue face glowed pale and ghastly; she drew closer and closer, and he could feel already the icy breath that would clamp the long dead months of winter over the lochs and hills like a shroud. She was on her way to eat up this house, to envelop it in ice. But he was ready for her! They were fortunate, this foolish unprepared family, that they had a boggart to take precautions for them! He dived hastily back toward the house.

  And as the stooped figure of the Cailleach Bheur turned in from the dark street, all hell broke loose. A chair hurtled from one bedroom window, smashing into pieces on the ground; a bookcase from another, scattering books that did not drop as they should, but seemed to drift down through the air, their pages fluttering like the wings of birds. There was a loud shrieking voice, calling out words in a language nobody could understand, and from both sides of the house great blasts of icy water leaped forward at the blue-faced hag, and she crumpled into a heap of dark clothes on the ground.

  The water fell away, and the voice dropped into silence. In the darkness the children moved again, out of a sudden appalled paralysis. Emily came down the path from the front door. She bent down by the figure in the dark witch robe, and pulled off the blue plastic mask that was held over the face by a rubber band.

  It was Maggie, blinking up at her in reproach and the beginnings of rage.

  EIGHT

  MAGGIE VOLNICK was an awesome sight when very angry, even wearing a bathrobe, with her hair wrapped in a towel. She seemed to be even angrier now than she had been a few moments ago, when she stalked inside to pull off her wet clothes. She stood on the stairs, glaring down at them.

  “I go to the trouble of dressing up to surprise you, because you aren’t allowed out, and what happens? You half drown me! You smash the furniture! And on top of everything else you have to destroy Bob’s beloved holly bush! What’s the matter with you kids? Have you completely lost your minds?”

  Emily said blankly, “The holly bush?”

  “Oh for Pete’s sake, Emily, who are you kidding? There are holly branches all over the house — every window, every mantelpiece —” Maggie’s voice was quivering with rage. “What the hell were you doing, playing Christmas? And that insane booby trap — you could have killed me! I thought you were responsible people, not half-witted two-year-olds!”

  In a silent group they gaped up at her, baffled and shaken, all feeling suddenly ridiculous in their Halloween gear. Jessup gave a loud sniff. Barry shifted uneasily, his legs and lower body still encased in the bottom half of the rocket. He said in a low voice, “Mrs. Volnik, I swear, no one had any —”

  “And you!” Maggie yelled at him, jabbing a finger through the air. “What do you think you’re doing, playing with ten-year-olds at your age? You’re sick! Did you dream up this nasty little enterprise, eh? Is this your coked-up idea of being funny?”

  “Stop it!” Emily shrieked. Her voice was so loud it startled her as much as everyone else. But now she in turn was angry with Maggie, and she wasn’t stopping to think. “Barry didn’t do a thing, none of us did a thing! You always blame people without knowing what you’re talking about! How could we throw furniture out of the windows if we were all right down there on the street? It wasn’t us!”

  “Then who was it?” Maggie snapped. “Burglars?”

  Emily took a deep breath. Several black velvet ribbons from her wig fell across her eyes, and she pulled the wig off impatiently. “Maybe . . . maybe the house is haunted.”

  “Ha!” It was half a scornful laugh, half a sneer. Maggie pulled a handful of the same black ribbons from her pocket, and held them up. “Pretty smart ghost, to use your ribbons to tie holly branches over my windows.”

  IN HIS PAJAMAS, Jessup tiptoed across the landing to Emily’s door. A floorboard creaked, and he paused, but there was no movement downstairs. He could hear a faint murmur of voices from the sitting room. Robert had come home late and was now no doubt hearing an outraged recital from Maggie.

  Jessup opened the door, very carefully. “Em?” he whispered.

  Emily switched on the angle lamp beside her bed, and tilted it down so that it gave only a little light. Even so, he could see that she had been crying.

  “Shut the door,” she whispered back.

  Jessup turned the knob, silently, and came and sat on the edge of her bed. He said softly, “In case you wondered, it wasn’t me either.”

  “I know,” Emily said. “It wasn’t anybody. Not anybody real.”

  Jessup wrinkled his nose, in the way he did in math class, when the teacher offered an answer that Jessup knew was inaccurate.

  “Listen,” said Emily. “I know you’re a genius, I know you understand lots of things I don’t, I know you only believe in facts and figures. But you’ve seen all this impossible stuff happening, right?”

  “Right,” said Jessup. He looked unhappily at her swollen eyes. “Are you okay, Em?”

  “I’m fine,” Emily said. She gave him a faint, grateful smile. “Listen,” she said again. “I was talking about it at the theater, to Dai Rees and Willie Walker.”

  “Ah,” said Jessup with respect. Everyone connected with the Chervil company had a vague but powerful sense that there was something special about Dai and Willie, their two native-born Celts.

  “They were different from anyone else,” Emily said. “They believed straight away that we had nothing to do with all this stuff. And they knew about it, they said it comes from a . . . from a sort of invisible creature, that likes playing tricks. Not a ghost. But not human.”

  “Not . . . human?”

  “No.”

  Jessup said hopefully, “An alien?”

  “No. From Scotland and Wales and old places like that. Very old. Magic.”

  “Magic,” Jessup said slowly, as if he were tasting the word.

  “It likes to live with a family, and play jokes, Dai and Willie said. They said it might have come with us from Scotland. It’s called a boggart.”

  There was a brief, faint rustling sound from Emily’s bookshelf. Jessup glanced into the shadows. “What’s that?”

  “I dunno. A mouse. Jess, we have to go talk to Willie.”

  “Yeah,” Jessup said.

  The Boggart was dancing on the edge of the bookshelf, delighted. He had been lying in a resentful half sleep, but when Emily had spoken his name he had shot up into the air, wide awake, filled with joy. They had recognized him! Finally, after all this time in this very strange place, they had realized that he was there! For the first time since the MacDevon had died, he could begin living with friends!

  Emily was explaining to Jessup, in as much detail as she could remember, everything that Willie and Dai had said about boggarts. “The amazing part was the way they recognized everything I was describing. Willie just said straight away, It’s a boggart. Like you turn on a faucet, and someone says, That’s water.”

  “There’s a lot of questions to ask,” Jessup said. He stood up — then paused suddenly, looking surprised. He touched his cheek.

  “What’s the matter?” said Emily — and then paused, and put her hand up to her own face. She looked at Jessup with a strange expression that was a mixture of astonishment and total disbelief.

  Jessup said, bemused, “It was like someone stroked my cheek. Someone’s hand.”

  “That’s right,” Emily said. “A very small hand.”

  They stared at each other.

  Somewhere in the room, faint, growing, there was a slow happy sound like the purring of a cat.

  “Is Polly in here?” said Jessup.

  Emily said shakily, “No.”

  AUNT JEN said brightly, “Well, I’m glad to see you, whatever the circumstances. And it’s always nice to have help on Dusting Day.”

  Emily said resentfully, “Mom only had
to ask us to help — she knew we’d have come. But she has to turn it into this great huge punishment deal. You will spend Saturday working at the shop! As if we hadn’t been helping at the shop ever since we were little!”

  Aunt Jen gave her a comforting hug, and produced a handful of dusting cloths from the pocket of her voluminous jumper. Dusting Day came once a week at Old Stuff. It was a tedious process from which not only every piece of furniture but every small object, from roasting pan to thimble, had to emerge dust free and sparkling to attract the customers.

  “Silver cloth for Em, standard for Jess” she said, handing out dusters. “And for Pete’s sake don’t break anything.”

  “Are you kidding?” said Jessup with feeling. “She’d atomize us!”

  “You’ve all been having a difficult time,” said Aunt Jen diplomatically. She was always careful not to take sides in Volnik family tussles. “Do a great job, and things’ll get better. Maggie will be back soon — she’s picking something up from Customs.”

  She disappeared into the back of the shop, and Emily and Jessup began their dusting, very carefully indeed. Jessup took six champagne glasses off a shelf, polished the shelf and each glass, and put the last glass back with a sigh of relief. Emily polished a silver coffeepot, cream jug and sugar bowl. “Good thing that boggart’s not here,” she said.

  “Why holly?” Jessup said.

  “What?”

  “He put holly branches over all the windows. He must have had a reason.”

  “I don’t think it has real reasons for anything,” said Emily wearily. “It just likes bothering people. I mean what reason would it have for putting a squishy sandwich on your chair, except playing a silly joke?”

  “I don’t think he’s an it —” Jessup began, but the door of the shop opened and their mother came in, carrying a cardboard carton. Emily looked up warily, and saw behind Maggie a tall, dark, grave man whom she felt she had seen before, though she couldn’t remember when or where.

  “Emily, Jessup,” said Maggie, formal and brisk. “This is Dr. Stigmore.”

  “Good morning,” said the man.

  “Hi,” said Jessup.

  “Hello,” said Emily. She started to polish a box full of silver-plated knives and forks, all set neatly in rows.

  Sitting on the open lid of the box, the Boggart looked across at Maggie, resentfully. He had come to the shop, clinging invisibly and uncomfortably to the handlebars of Emily’s bicycle, because he wanted to be with his two new friends — not with this woman who had dared to dress up as the Cailleach Bheur. Someone had described her costume that night as the Wicked Witch of the West, whatever that might be, but he knew better. The Boggart felt disappointed. He was not good at coping with more than one emotion at once, and the sight of Maggie had brought a shadow over his new-discovered happiness. He made a small self-pitying sound, and it vibrated through the air of the shop like the whimper of a lost puppy.

  Emily and Jessup stiffened, and looked nervously at each other.

  “What did you say?” Maggie said, pausing.

  “Nothing,” said Emily.

  “Nothing,” said Jessup.

  “We’re just dusting,” Emily said. “Very carefully.”

  “Good,” said her mother. She gave them a last suspicious glance and beckoned the dark man into the room at the rear of the shop. “It’s in here, Dr. Stigmore. The largest piece we brought back . . . too large for you perhaps, but it would go well with your desk . . .”

  They disappeared. Jessup said, “It’s the creep.”

  “So it is,” Emily said. That was why he had looked familiar: he was the bad-tempered man who had bought her rolltop desk. Well, now she had one of her own, so there, and it was nicer than his and had come all the way from the castle.

  Emily paused suddenly. Through her mind there floated an image of Ron and Jim the delivery men, struggling to bring the little Scottish desk up the stairs to her room. It had lurched erratically all over the place, and in the end seemed to tip itself onto Jim’s foot. “It’s bewitched!” Ron had said. . . .

  She looked uncertainly around the shop. “I don’t think that noise was anything, do you?” she said to Jessup.

  “Course not!” said Jessup heartily, hoping he was right.

  The Boggart watched with approval as Emily and Jessup dusted and polished. He felt relaxed again now that the three of them were alone. My friends! he thought joyously. He was filled with the instinct for happy meaningless mischief which was his normal state of mind, and debated with himself how best to share it with them. What could he do that would make them smile?

  Emily finished polishing the silverware, closed the box and reached up to put it back on its shelf. Then she glanced across the shop and stood frozen, staring.

  A small rag doll was climbing out of a box of antique toys which stood on a table at the far end of the shop. Another followed it, and then a third. The third had its head missing, but seemed not to mind. The three dolls stood on the table facing Emily, holding hands in a line, and they began to dance, floppily, first in one direction and then back again. One-two-three, hop, one-two-three, hop, one-two-three, hop —

  “Uurgh!” said Emily, in a strangled, stricken voice, and Jessup looked up swiftly. His eyes widened, and he dropped the glass he was polishing — and instead of falling to the ground the glass floated back to the shelf from which it had come. The dolls danced on, one-two-three, hop, one-two-three, hop, and not far away an antique dressmaker’s dummy began to sway to the same rhythm. So did the silk flowers in a vase on the other side of the shop, and the tall dried grasses standing in an empty World War II shell case. So did the group of chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, making a gentle jingling, tinkling sound. On the face of every clock in the shop — and there were more than a dozen — the hands began twirling gaily around and around. Very gently, the shop began to vibrate to the beat of the dolls’ slow dance, and Emily and Jessup looked at each other, and began to smile.

  “He’s doing it for us!” Jessup said, entranced. “He’s putting on a show!”

  Emily called out softly, into the air, “It’s lovely, Boggart!”

  An umbrella stand full of umbrellas gave a small drunken lurch, and one by one the umbrellas flew up out of it to the ceiling, and opened, and hung there like bright hovering parachutes, swaying in time. A handsome brocade armchair rose three feet off the ground, slow and stately, and so did an old wooden church pew, creaking. One-two-three, hop, one-two-three, hop . . . Like a final flourish, a round table covered with a set of twelve delicate crystal glasses rose up, and up, and hovered, and Emily laughed in delight, but quivered in terror lest it too begin swaying to the rhythm of the dance.

  She called out, laughing, “Careful —”

  And Maggie came back into the shop from the room at the back, followed by Dr. Stigmore, and the table and glasses dropped to the ground with a terrible crash. Maggie screamed.

  Dolls, clocks, chandeliers were instantly still, but there was a whirling like a trapped flock of birds as the umbrellas folded back into their stand. The armchair lurched to the floor, and Dr. Stigmore pulled Maggie out of the way as the heavy church pew floated through the air and down.

  There was a moment of dreadful breathless silence, and Emily panicked. There had been so many accusations — now there would be more. She couldn’t bear it. She shrieked, “It wasn’t us! It wasn’t us!” — and she seized Jessup by the arm and ran with him out of the door, out into the street and away.

  DR. STIGMORE had Maggie sitting in one of the antique armchairs with her head down between her knees; he was patting her on the back and murmuring gently. Aunt Jen stood by, anxious, baffled; she had come running after Maggie’s scream, and seen nothing but the upturned table in a small sea of broken glass. Emily and Jessup were gone, and her partner was sobbing hysterically. She looked helplessly at Dr. Stigmore.

  He was glowing. She had never seen him smile before. “Amazing!” he said. “Quite amazing! An absolutely
classic poltergeist manifestation! I’ve never seen anything like it! This is really one for the record books!”

  “What happened?” said Aunt Jen, her round face pale and troubled. She bent over Maggie, stroking her neck.

  Maggie tried to pull herself together; she sat up, sniffing. “It was terrible — it was like last night! Furniture flying through the air, things crashing around as if the place was possessed! Oh Jen — it was terrifying!” Her voice began to quiver again.

  “Now don’t worry,” said Dr. Stigmore soothingly. “This can all be explained. No possession here, no demons and exorcists, dear me no!” He paused, looking keenly at Maggie. “What do you mean, like last night?”

  “It happened at home too,” Maggie said wretchedly. “Funny things have been happening for a while, but this was the worst — a chair and a bookcase flying out the window — water spraying — I thought it was the children, but now I see it couldn’t have been.” She clung to Aunt Jen’s hand.

  “There, there,” said Aunt Jen, totally baffled.

  Dr. Stigmore pushed back his thick dark hair, his face bright with professional enthusiasm. “Well, in a way it probably is the children, or one of them. Poltergeist phenomena are classically linked with the emotions of a disturbed adolescent. His or her rage produces the psychokinesis, you see!” He beamed at them.

  “The what?” said Aunt Jen.

  Maggie said rebelliously, “My kids aren’t disturbed! They aren’t even adolescent! Oh dear —” Her face crumpled again.

  “There, there, honey,” said Aunt Jen.

  “Psychokinesis is a force by which the power of the mind is said to move physical objects,” Dr. Stigmore said.

  “Oh dear,” said Aunt Jen.

  NINE

  THE THEATER WAS FULL of the scurry and bustle of technical rehearsals, and one of the busiest places of all, backstage, was the wardrobe room. Emily and Jessup sidled in, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. Dai had his mouth full of pins, and was busy shortening the tunic of an actor who stood on a chair with his eyes closed, silently reciting lines. Two wardrobe assistants were hunched over sewing machines, and a third was fitting tall boots onto a life-size dummy with no head, which lay spread-eagled across a table. For an instant Emily thought of the Boggart’s dancing dolls. Then Dai caught sight of her.