Curse of the Boggin

by D. J. MacHale

  “Look, Theo,” I said. “I don’t know if this fortune-telling thing is real or not. It could just be a couple of strange coincidences. But after all the things I’ve seen, I know for sure that crazy stuff happens, and you can’t make it go away by denying it. People have died. That’s real, and I’m not going to let anything else bad happen just because it doesn’t make logical sense. And you shouldn’t either.”

  Theo pulled on his earlobe. His analytical mind was in overdrive as he tried to come up with rational reasons as to why we weren’t actually dealing with the supernatural.

  He couldn’t.

  “I’m scared,” he finally said.

  “We all are,” Lu said. “What are we going to do about it?”

  Theo finally looked up at us.

  “You really believe this is about an evil spirit that feeds on fear?” he asked.

  “I do,” I said with authority. “And I believe if there’s a disruption that caused Lu’s cousin to disappear, and that’ll cause you to get a nasty fortune, then we’ll find those stories in the Library. And finish them. The way they should be finished.”

  “How can you be so certain?” Theo asked.

  “Because we know how things should work. We know what’s supposed to happen. I don’t care what mystical forces are at work. This is still the real world, and we can use real-world logic to fight back. And you know what? There’s nobody who’d be better at that…than you.”

  Theo sat up a little straighter.

  Lu actually smiled.

  “Please help me save my parents,” I said.

  Theo looked between the two of us, then tugged on his ear and said, “All righty, Marcus, what can I do?”

  I clapped him on the back and said, “Come with me.”

  I ran across the kitchen, to the stairs that led down to the basement.

  “I’m not going back down there alone,” I said.

  We went down together. There were no spiders or spider bodies anywhere. Illusions don’t leave remnants. But the fallen tools were still on the bench, along with the hammer that nearly clocked me. That much was real. I led them to the workbench and picked up the metal box. The vessel.

  “Twelve years ago my biological father crossed paths with the Boggin. Somehow he trapped it in here. It was locked inside for twelve years, until Michael Swenor broke the seal and released it.”

  “Michael Swenor released it?” Lu exclaimed. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. He thought he was doing the right thing, but it backfired, and he paid the price. The Boggin killed him trying to get the key to the Library. It failed, and I got the key instead. Now the Boggin’s been haunting me, and it’s going after the people I care about to force me to give up the key.”

  “So how do we stop it?” Theo asked.

  “We trap it back in here,” I said. “In its spirit form. Once it’s inside we seal it with copper. That’s how it’s worked for centuries. I came down here looking for something copper but came up empty.”

  Theo took the box from me. He examined it, squinting, deep in thought, pulling at his earlobe.

  “It doesn’t have to be a real lock?” he asked. “I mean, with a combination or a key?”

  “We’re talking spiritual power,” Lu said. “The book said copper is the Boggin’s weakness. It’s about the material, not the physical strength of the lock.”

  Theo ran his fingers across the box’s latch, which had a slot for a padlock.

  “As long as it’s pure copper, all it needs to do is seal this latch?” he asked.

  “I think,” I said. “Sounds simple, but I don’t know what to use.”

  “I do,” Theo said with confidence.

  He handed me the box, reached for the hanging tools, and selected a heavy-duty wire cutter. We followed him upstairs, where he led us into the living room.

  “I’m assuming you’ve got the same setup as most every other house in the civilized world,” he said. “You’ve got to promise me one thing, though.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Don’t throw me under the bus with your parents when they find out what I’ve done. Your mother scares me.”

  “We’re trying to save their lives,” I said. “I don’t think they’ll be upset with anything you do.”

  Theo went straight for the cabinet that held our TV set. He pulled it away from the wall to reveal the wires that fed it power and data.

  “Coaxial cable,” Theo said. “It’s the standard conduit that carries a cable signal.”

  He used the wire cutter to clip off a two-foot section of cable.

  “Ooh, no,” Lu said. “Your parents aren’t going to like that.”

  “Is that copper?” I asked Theo.

  Theo held up the thick black cable.

  “This isn’t,” he said.

  He expertly clamped the wire cutter around one end of the cable and stripped off a section of the soft black material to reveal the thin metal wire that was its core.

  “But this is,” he declared.

  He quickly stripped off the rest of the covering and was left with a clean length of wire.

  Copper wire.

  “Feed this through the latch of that box, and presto, you’ve got a lock made of copper. As to how you get the spirit inside in the first place, I can’t help you.”

  “I’ve got an idea about that,” I said. “But first I have to make sure my parents are okay.”

  “My dad’s ski boat is at that marina,” Lu said. “Only one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m going with you. Dad will kill me if I let somebody take his boat out without me.”

  “No. Too dangerous.”

  “Then you can’t have it,” Lu shot back.

  “Really? You wouldn’t let me take it?”

  Lu looked ready for an argument but backed off quickly.

  “Of course I would. But I want to go with you. Everett said it. You need help.”

  “I’m going too,” Theo said.

  “Besides,” Lu added, “what if the Boggin realizes you’re going to warn your parents and decides to come after us instead? I think it’s better if we all stay together.”

  I couldn’t argue with the logic. I hated putting my friends in danger, but they were already in danger just for being my friends.

  “Did you ride your bikes here?” I asked.

  “Yup,” they both answered.

  “Good. It’s a mile to the marina.”

  The three of us rode our bikes furiously though the neighborhood, headed for the marina at Tod’s Point. In summer, the narrow access road that twisted through the neighborhood was always choked with shoregoing traffic. Fortunately, it was a chilly October, so the traffic was light.

  I tore through intersections without looking for oncoming traffic. I didn’t care. People were going to have to look out for me, because I was on a mission. On my back was a pack that held the vessel. I had a vague idea of how I might be able to coax the Boggin inside, but wished I had run it by Everett first, because I had no plan B.

  If my idea didn’t work, we were sunk.

  Theo and Lu struggled to keep up and were nearly hit more than once by cars I’d cut off. I had the sick feeling that I was leading them toward disaster.

  We flashed past the guard booth and into the park that held Stony Brook’s beach. It was a great place, with acres of wooded trails, a sandy beach, picnic areas, and a marina for small private boats. My legs were screaming tired, but that didn’t stop me from pumping even harder. The road snaked around the shoreline for another mile, until it led us to the series of floating docks that was Tod’s Point Marina. I sped into the parking lot, scanning for my parents’ car, hoping we’d find them packing up.

  I found our car, and the three of us skidded to a stop behind it on the sandy blacktop.

  My parents weren’t there.

  “My mother’s purse is on the front seat,” I said.

  “With her phone in it, I’ll bet,�
�� Lu said.

  I pushed off again, pedaling for the docks. Normally, I’d have locked my bike in the rack, but there was no time for that. I jumped off while it was still moving, dumped it, and ran for the shore.

  The floating docks were put into the water every spring and taken out in November before the Sound froze over. There were slips for a few hundred small recreational vessels, both powerboats and sailboats. Running down the interconnected docks was like speeding through a labyrinth, but I’d done it enough times to know exactly where I was going. Our slip was on the dock farthest out from shore, with the other fixed-keel boats.

  I ran from dock to dock, wending my way closer to ours. It was a chilly morning, so nobody else was there working on their boat. I kept my eyes on the masts of the boats that were tied up side by side, hoping to see ours. I didn’t even worry about what I would tell my parents when I got there. All I wanted to do was keep them from going out on the water, where anything could happen.

  I made the last turn and sprinted to the end of the final dock to see that…

  …our slip was empty.

  I wanted to scream. Or cry. Or hit somebody. None of that would have changed things. My parents were out on the Sound and sitting ducks for the Boggin.

  “How long do you think they’ve been gone?” Lu asked as she and Theo caught up, breathless.

  “They probably got here and did some work,” I said. “Then they had to rig the sails. It’s all a guess, but they probably shoved off about an hour ago.”

  Theo looked around at the cove, which was an inlet of Long Island Sound. The wind was kicking up ripples on the water.

  “There’s a good breeze,” he declared. “They could be anywhere.”

  “No, when they go out for a short Saturday sail, they always do the same thing. They loop around Great Captain’s Island.”

  “Then let’s go catch ’em,” Lu declared.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  Lu got a devilish gleam in her eyes that I saw only when she was ready to do something crazy…which was fairly often.

  “You’re asking me if I want to take my father’s ski boat, with a four-hundred-twenty-five-horsepower monster of an inboard engine, and open it up to catch somebody in the middle of the Sound? Do you know who you’re talking to? Have we met?”

  “It’s not as simple as that, and you know it,” I said.

  “Yeah, but you won’t let anything happen to us, right?”

  She didn’t wait for an answer and took off running.

  “You didn’t answer her,” Theo said.

  “What can I say? I’m making this up as I go along.”

  We followed her along the floats, headed for her father’s slip.

  “Do you really have a plan to catch this thing?” Theo asked.

  “Yes,” I answered truthfully.

  “Care to share?”

  “We’re going to beat this thing at its own game,” I said. I didn’t go into any more detail because I didn’t want him shooting down the only plan I had.

  We ran off the docks that held mostly sailboats and sprinted to the docks that held the powerboats. Lu’s father’s boat was in a slip on the dock closest to shore. She immediately started unsnapping the canvas cover that protected it. Seconds later she pulled back the canvas to reveal a gleaming yellow-and-white Glastron beauty with seats for four and a sunken deck for two more in the bow. The cockpit looked like something you’d see in a race car. Or a fighter jet.

  “Wow,” Theo said as the boat was revealed. “It looks fast just sitting there.”

  “I know, right,” Lu replied as she quickly stowed the cover under the rear bench. “You want to be holding on to something when I throttle up.”

  “Your dad lets you take this out on your own?” Theo asked.

  “It’s an ongoing debate,” Lu replied. “He won’t let me take it out alone until I prove I can do it, but I can’t prove it unless I take it out on my own.”

  “So what does that mean?” I asked.

  “It means I’m about to prove it.”

  “Don’t you have to be sixteen to take a high-powered boat out without an adult?” Theo asked.

  “You going to turn me in?” Lu asked coyly.

  “No, but you can handle this thing, right?” Theo asked in a shaky voice.

  Lu reached under the dashboard and took out the ignition key. She slipped it into the ignition and turned it. The monstrous inboard engine responded instantly and roared to life.

  She looked at us with a devilish smile.

  “Oh yeah,” she said. “I can handle this.”

  Theo gave me a nervous look. “I don’t know what worries me more, getting in this monster with her or facing the boogeyman.”

  “Cast off,” Lu commanded.

  Theo jumped on as I untied the bowline that was secured around the cleat on the dock and tossed the rope on board. With a quick shove I got the craft moving back out of the slip and hopped aboard.

  Lu stood at the wheel, looking confident. She eased the craft out slowly, being sure not to bounce off the nearby boats. When we were clear, she reversed the engine, and we were under way.

  “I’m supposed to go slow until we’re out of the cove,” Lu said. “Coast Guard rules. Can’t make a wake.”

  I wished she wouldn’t be so cautious.

  I got my wish.

  “But under the circumstances…,” she said, and pushed the throttle forward.

  We didn’t launch, but we definitely sped along faster than the Coast Guard would have liked, creating a wake that jostled all the boats that were moored along the channel.

  I took the shotgun seat next to Lu while Theo sat on the bench seat behind us. My pack went on the deck, between my feet. I didn’t want to risk losing the vessel over the side once Lu really opened it up.

  “So you’ve got a plan, right?” Lu asked.

  “I do. But if anything goes wrong, get away as fast as you can. I don’t want to put you guys in any danger.”

  “I think it’s too late to worry about that,” Theo said, tugging on his ear.

  We zipped past dozens of moored boats, headed for the mouth of the channel and the wide-open Long Island Sound.

  “Thank you, guys,” I said.

  “Don’t thank us,” Lu said. “We don’t want that boogey coming after us, either.”

  “I know, but this is my battle,” I said. “I’ve lost one set of parents. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost another.”

  Nobody commented on that. I think they were both imagining themselves in my shoes. The idea of losing your parents was beyond horrible, even if you didn’t always get along with them.

  “Did you make peace with them?” Lu asked.

  “Sort of. My mom made peace with me,” I said.

  “Go figure,” Lu said with mock surprise. “I guess now it’s your turn.”

  We moved along in silence except for the low growl of the engine, which sounded almost angry, as if annoyed by the fact that it was being held back from unleashing its full fury.

  It would get the chance soon enough.

  The Long Island Sound is a huge body of water that lies between the south shore of Connecticut and the north shore of Long Island. If you travel west, you eventually hit the waterways that surround New York City. To the far east is the Atlantic Ocean. The U.S. Navy berths many of its nuclear submarines out that way, in New London. That’s how deep the Sound is. It’s like an inland sea.

  There’s another town beach, on an island about a mile from the marina. It’s called Great Captain’s Island, and during the summer there’s regular ferry service out there. You can’t miss seeing it, even from a distance, because there’s a big old black-and-white-striped lighthouse on the far shore that towers over the small island. It’s the turnaround spot my parents always use when out for a short sail.

  We were about to pass the last of the buoys that mark the channel. Once beyond that, there was no speed limit.

  “The Sound is empty,�
� Theo remarked. “Once summer is over, nobody goes out anymore.”

  “Good,” Lu said. “Nobody to get in our way.”

  When we cleared the last spit of land and the tall trees that grew right up to the shoreline, Great Captain’s Island was revealed, along with its unmistakable lighthouse. It seemed so far away.

  “That’s it,” I said. “Head straight for the lighthouse.”

  Lu gripped the wheel with her left hand and grasped the throttle with her right.

  I tensed up.

  Lu gave us a look and a sly smile.

  “Hold on,” she said. “This is going to be fun.”

  I grabbed on to the seat cushion, and not a moment too soon. When Lu jammed the throttle forward, I was thrown back into the seat like a fighter pilot being launched from the deck of an aircraft carrier. The engine sound shifted from a low growl to pounding thunder. The deck hummed with the surge of energy as we took off and flew over the glassy water.

  “Whoa!” Theo exclaimed out of surprise. Or excitement. Or fear.

  Lu wasn’t exaggerating. It felt as though we were flying.

  “It’s a calm day,” Lu yelled over the fast thumping of the engine. “No swells. We should be there in ten minutes.”

  The conditions were perfect. The sky was blue, and the wind had died down, so the water was about as flat as I’d ever seen it. It was actually a terrible day for sailing but perfect if you wanted to get somewhere in a hurry and had a few hundred horses pushing you there.

  “What are we going to tell your parents?” Theo asked.

  “Hopefully, there won’t be any trouble and I’ll just tell them I was worried they’d be stuck out here with no wind, and offer them a tow.”

  “And what if there’s trouble?” Lu asked.

  “Then explaining myself will be the least of our problems.”

  We shot across the glassy surface for five minutes, watching the island and the lighthouse grow larger as we drew closer. I kept scanning the horizon, looking for anything out of the ordinary. There were no other boats out. Between the lousy wind and the late season, most people must have decided it wasn’t worth it. It was just my luck that my parents were the ones who didn’t care and went out anyway.

  “Grab the binoculars under your seat,” Lu called out.