The Boggart and the Monster

by Susan Cooper

  There Nessie still lay now, while the Boggart perched on the roof of the Range Rover, and the night grew black all around. Tommy and Jessup slept peacefully inside the car, and Emily and Mr. Maconochie in their tents. The clouds blew apart a little, to show a gleaming sliver of moon, and two of the bright stars of the Plough. The Boggart sighed, heartrendingly, and from a scrub oak nearby a barn owl hooted to him in reply. The clouds drifted over the moon again, and the night was dark.

  Down through the gap left open at the top of the window, the Boggart poured himself like water into the back of the Range Rover, where the two boys lay wrapped in their sleeping bags, two cloth-covered cocoons. He hovered over them, feeling a great longing to share the troublesome mixture of emotion that was whirling through him: the worries, the love of kin, the memories that came so seldom but would not now go away. His thoughts flew into and through Tommy’s sleeping mind, like music waiting to be heard. But Tommy was dreaming of Emily, dancing a Scottish reel with her in his sleep, and could not hear him.

  The Boggart too thought of Emily, but Emily was out in that difficult orange mushroom of a tent, which he had sworn not to go near. So instead he hovered over the head he had felt was least likely to pick up his plaintive signals: the head of Jessup, whose rational brilliance was quite likely to provide a barrier to the flickering whispers of an Old Thing.

  But there was no barrier. And Jessup began to dream.

  He was an observer, in his dream, suspended somehow in the air, over the waves of Loch Linnhe. He was far in the past, he knew, for even though this was certainly Loch Linnhe, backed by the outline of Lismore Island and the faint blue hills of the Isle of Mull, there was no sign of Castle Keep. There was only the bare rock on which, in the thirteenth century, the castle would be built. Grass and some scrubby bushes grew on the rock, and the waves lapped its edges — and in the waves, two glowing formless creatures magically played.

  Smiling in his dream, Jessup watched the flicker and flash of light as the creatures twisted and danced in the water, and he knew that they were boggarts. He had seen that kind of wonderful iridescence only once in his life, when the Boggart had shown himself to them in the MacDevon’s library. As he watched, the boggarts darted through the waves to the Seal Rocks, and the grey seals, looking just as they did in the present day, splashed into the water and joined the swift, playful game that was a dance. Dreaming, Jessup knew that this was a dream, and longed for it not to end.

  He saw Castle Keep then, rearing up on the rock, its stones magically bright and new-cut as they were when it was first built. He found himself inside the castle, its walls hung with tapestries and lit by smoking torches, and he saw human figures, though only vaguely, and knew that the Boggart was there, attached to Castle Keep now, playing his tricks. These people must be the first MacDevons, the beginning of the family with which the Boggart had lived for so many centuries, in this one home. He wondered where the other boggart had gone.

  And the instant that the thought came into his sleeping head, he found himself on the ramparts of another castle, bigger and more elaborate, overlooking a loch and forested mountains. Beside him he saw two children, younger than himself, laughing as water poured into a bowl from a jug held by disembodied hands — and he knew that this was the place to which the other boggart had attached himself, and this the family. Looking out across the water, he realized that the loch was Loch Ness. So the castle must be Castle Urquhart, which he in the twentieth century had seen only as a ruin of tumbled stones and grass.

  Jessup was overwhelmed by an immensely strong sense of home, of belonging, and knew that he was feeling what the two boggarts felt for their respective castles and people, through the years. He saw the passing of the centuries, as if pages were flicking before him and carrying the castle with them; he saw other children, in other times, and saw the Loch Ness boggart changing his shape for them: from a little black cat to a long white snake, to a four-tined stag, to a unicorn. And then, to a huge grey-bodied monster swimming in the loch, with a long neck and a small bright-eyed head. . . .

  In the moment that he recognized the image, from his space somewhere in the air he heard a great terrible noise, and saw Castle Urquhart explode into a sudden immense burst of smoke and flame, with stone and wood flying out in blazing arcs and into the loch. Jessup shouted in horror.

  And then he woke up.

  Tommy was leaning over him, gazing down at him in concern. “Jessup! You having a nightmare? Are you okay?”

  Jessup blinked at him, trying to remember where he was. “Uh,” he said. “Ah. Uh.”

  There was a tapping at the rear window and Tommy saw Emily’s face, pale and concerned; he unrolled the window to let her in. “Jessup was dreaming,” he said.

  Emily said, “I thought one of you was being murdered.”

  “Somebody blew up the castle,” Jessup said.

  Emily stared at him. “What castle?”

  “Castle Urquhart, the one that’s a ruin. They blew it up, and he got stuck in the shape he was playing in. And he was so lonely after that, he just slept and slept for hundreds of years.”

  Emily rolled her eyes at Tommy, and tugged her parka tighter around her pajamas. “He’s still dreaming,” she said.

  “I’m not, I’m awake, I’m awake!” Jessup sat upright, and banged his head on the car roof again.

  “Oh Jess!” said Emily. She reached out maternally to feel his head.

  Jessup shook her hand away ungratefully. He said, “He was lonely, don’t you see? He just didn’t enjoy being awake. That’s why he slept for so long.”

  “Why who slept so long?”

  “The Loch Ness Monster,” Jessup said. “Only he’s not a monster and he’s not a plesiosaur. He’s a boggart.”

  “A boggart?”

  “Just like ours. But . . . clumsier.”

  Emily looked at him sympathetically. “This was quite some dream. It must have been the fish and chips. We’ll talk about it in the morning.” She scrambled down off the tailgate, into the shadowy night.

  “Wait a minute, Em,” Tommy said. He reached out, as she paused, and took her hand. Emily stood still, and looked at him sideways.

  “Remember when the Monster disappeared, while we were looking at him on Harold’s screen?” Tommy said. “Remember Mr. Mac saying he couldn’t really have been there, because no real creature could disappear like that?”

  “Mmm,” said Emily uncertainly.

  “Well, he could too have disappeared — if he were a boggart. Our Boggart does.”

  Emily nodded slowly, as a dozen swift images of the shape-shifting Boggart danced around her memory. She looked around at the dark campground and the night sky. “He came with us, our Boggart, didn’t he? Where d’you suppose he’s been today?”

  “I think he’s been giving Jessup a dream,” Tommy said.

  In the air around them, so faint and diffuse that they couldn’t tell if it were inside the car or part of the night itself, they heard a low sound growing, a low warm sound, lapping them with approval, like the purring of a cat.

  SIX JESSUP SAID, “And in the minute after the castle exploded, when I was waking up, I had this terrible feeling of how lonely he was. Lonely, lonely, down in that dark water. And I really wanted to do something about it.”

  He was sitting beside Mr. Maconochie, looking out at the loch as they drove toward Harold Pindle’s trailer. The long gleaming expanse of water stretched beside and before them, and now and then as the road curved they could see the grey-green mound of the ruined Castle Urquhart in the distance.

  Tommy said, “That was what the Boggart was putting into your head. His own feelings. He hates Nessie being lonely.”

  “And he wants to do something about it,” Emily said. Their two earnest heads leaned forward from the back seat, into the gap between Jessup and Mr. Maconochie.

  “Nnnnnnnn,” said Mr. Maconochie. It was a kind of growling hum, full of uncertainty.

  Jessup looked at him accus
ingly. “You don’t believe me!”

  “Jessup,” Mr. Maconochie said. “I believe in your dream and I certainly believe in your Boggart — our Boggart. It just seems to me that the dream must have come from your imagination.”

  “Maybe he’ll give you a dream,” Emily said.

  Tommy shook his head. “No. Mr. Mac would just think his own imagination was making it up.”

  Mr. Maconochie turned into the little gravel-topped parking area beside the long metallic rectangle of the Kalling-Pindle Project. “Oh dear,” he said. “Boggarts and monsters and messages in dreams. This is a sore test for an elderly member of the legal profession.”

  “The Boggart has to find special ways of talking to us,” Emily said insistently. “He always has. He’s very bad at spoken words, he can only manage a few at a time.”

  Jessup had fallen silent. He was looking at Harold Pindle, who was coming down the steps of the research trailer with a stranger, a small man with a lot of white hair. “What do we do about Harold?” he said glumly. “He’s so set on proving Nessie is a plesiosaur. What’s he going to do when he finds it’s not true?”

  * * *

  THE BOGGART WAS SLOWLY circling Nessie’s massive sleeping body, like an invisible coronet of floating weed. “Nessie, wake up. Come on now, you’re not really asleep, you’ve had enough sleep for sixteen boggarts, these last few centuries.”

  Nessie opened one eye and regarded him mournfully “They blew up my castle,” he said. “My family went away.”

  “That was three hundred years ago!” the Boggart said. “And anyway I’m your family.”

  “You are. I’m sorry, cuz.” Penitent, Nessie raised his long neck and, with a huge effort, tried to shift his shape from solid monster to insubstantial boggart. It took great effort, and he was lamentably out of practice. First he shrank to a thin monster, like a large aquatic giraffe; then a very small one, like a plastic dinosaur from a cereal package. At last he managed to dwindle completely away, reappearing — to the Boggart at least — as the iridescent flicker of energy that was his natural invisible form.

  They turned somersaults around each other in the murky water, and the whirling current made by their somersaults rose to the surface and completely turned around the little boat in which Jenny, wearing a baseball cap, was sculling across the lake. Jenny had rowed in the MIT lightweight women’s crew when she was a student, and liked to keep in practice wherever she was. She rested on her oars and stared in astonishment at the wooded shore of the lake, which she had been approaching but which she now seemed to be leaving behind.

  Nessie and the Boggart, surfacing, watched her with satisfaction, and swam cheerfully away.

  The Boggart turned into a seal, and made a figure-eight dive.

  “Don’t do that!” said Nessie plaintively, as he surfaced again. “You make me feel so stupid.”

  The Boggart turned back into a boggart. He said with longing, “We could have such fun, if you’d only learn how again. We could go all the way to Loch Linnhe and Castle Keep — my castle wasn’t blown up. We could live there and tease my family, and play with the seals.”

  “I cannae stay boggart-shape long enough,” Nessie said.

  “You could swim all the way there, now. They made a canal to join the lochs a hundred years ago — you can swim from Loch Ness to the western sea!”

  But this news not only failed to fill Nessie with delight, it enveloped him in such fear that the water all around him chilled almost to freezing. He looked at the Boggart in terror, and he changed instantly back into monster form and sank down, down toward the mud.

  The Boggart groaned, and dived after him.

  * * *

  AS THEY PILED out of Mr. Maconochie’s car, Harold Pindle waved merrily at them, and made extravagant beckoning gestures. He still wore his battered sweatshirt and faded jeans, but Emily thought he had probably changed his shirt; the collar jutting out of the sweatshirt looked cleaner than before. And his long grey hair showed signs of having been combed.

  He beamed at them as they crossed the parking lot. “Allow me to present Axel Kalling, our wonderful sponsor,” he said. “Axel, these are my co-witnesses — Emily, Jessup, Tommy, and Mr. Maconochie of Castle Keep.”

  The small, neat man at Harold’s side gave them a small, neat bow, so formally that he almost seemed to click his heels. He wore an old-fashioned dark grey suit with wide flat lapels, and his thick white hair was cut to a carefully elegant shape. Two strongly-marked clefts ran down past his mouth, but the eyes above them were bright and alert, and fanned with little laughter-lines.

  “Emily is the name of my sister,” he said, crinkling the laughter-lines at Emily. “She grows sweet peas, they smell most delicious, but her llamas eat them if she is not careful.”

  Emily blinked at him. “Her llamas? ”she said.

  “I look forward so great to the Worm!” said Mr. Kalling warmly. He had a surprisingly deep voice, with the lilting Swedish accent that takes the end of every sentence up and then down. “And tomorrow night the moon is full! Is that not right, Mr. Maconnie?”

  “Er,” said Mr. Maconochie, taken by surprise. “Uh. Yes, I expect so, yes.” He looked down at Mr. Kalling in wonder and bafflement.

  “Worm will like that,” Mr. Kalling said, nodding his head firmly.

  “This way, folks. This way to the great Monster show, in the screening room! Axel’s flown in to see the tape from yesterday.” Harold was shepherding them across the parking lot, toward a trailer less boxlike than the first. It had windows, and a bright red door, which he flung open.

  “Good!” said Mr. Kalling. He trotted briskly inside, and Harold paused just long enough to flash a quick grin over his shoulder.

  “Not crazy, not really,” he whispered. “He’s a great guy, just — different.” He disappeared after Mr. Kalling.

  “And very rich,” said Mr. Maconochie. He took a matchbox out of his pocket and held it up, and under the familiar label that they had never really examined before they saw the words: KALLING MATCH.

  Chuck the technician was crunching toward them across the parking lot, with a backpack over his shoulder. He no longer wore his MEAN MAN T-shirt, but his expression was no more cordial than before. “You on your way in, or out?” he said, unsmiling.

  Emily flashed him a beautiful smile. “We’re following you in.”

  Chuck grunted unappreciatively, and marched past her.

  Inside, the second trailer was quite different from the first. After a small office, with desks and telephones and a fax machine, they found themselves in a thick-carpeted space filled with comfortable armchairs and an enormous television set. Chuck opened his backpack and began fitting what looked like a miniature video-tape into a machine beside the television. He crouched beside it, twiddling dials. From one of the chairs Harold waved an expansive welcoming arm. Then he bounced to his feet, as they all settled themselves around the largest armchair, which Mr. Kalling was occupying as if it were a throne.

  “Axel Kalling, my friend,” Harold said, in clear careful tones as if he were making a speech, “before we see this amazing tape, I want you to know how utterly delighted I am that your trust in this project has been rewarded.”

  Mr. Kalling nodded his white head impatiently. “Happy for sight of the Worm,” he said.

  But Harold wasn’t to be rushed. He hadn’t finished. He was making a speech.

  “Without your faith and your financing, none of our research would have been possible,” he said solemnly, each word weighing at least fifteen pounds. “No other man on this planet could have had the foresight and the imagination to set up the Kalling-Pindle operation. I want you to know that what you are about to see now — the shattering images that we all witnessed yesterday — these are the justification and reward for your generosity. And they will engrave your name in the annals of scientific history.” He paused, looking misty-eyed at Mr. Kalling, and then suddenly his face split into a great joyous grin and, to everyone’s great re
lief, he was his bouncy enthusiastic self again. “Hit it, Chuck!” he said.

  The lights went out, and the television screen grew bright, and turned green. Chuck sat back from his dials, to watch.

  Something made Emily put her right hand into her pocket. She found the little cockle shell there, pressing into her fingers, and for an instant had an odd impression that it had summoned her. She clutched it instinctively as she gazed at the screen.

  “This is the laser image,” Harold whispered. “Gradually you’ll see the creature coming toward us, getting closer, becoming clearer. And then we switch to video from the surface — and my God, Axel, it’s such a sight!”

  They all stared at the green rectangle. It glowed at them, and flickered a little. But nothing appeared on it at all.

  They waited. And waited. The screen remained blank.

  Harold said impatiently, “What’s wrong, Chuck?”

  Chuck peered at his dials. He pressed a button, he turned a knob. The green square flickered, but remained empty.

  “For Pete’s sake,” said Harold. “We watched it over and over, last night, and it was fine. Is this the right tape?”

  “Yes,” said Chuck. He swallowed hard. Emily began to feel sorry for him. His fingers moved desperately to and fro, and he switched the television off, then on again. The picture vanished and then grew, still green, still empty.

  “Oh dear!” Emily said. “There’s still nothing there!”

  “We can see that!” said Chuck nastily, and her sympathy for him dwindled. Minutes went by as they stared at the blank screen. Irritably Harold pushed Chuck aside and played with the controls himself, but nothing changed. Finally there was a click, and the screen changed from green to black.

  “This is impossible!” Frenziedly Harold rewound the tape and began trying again, to be faced once more with the same unchanging flat green image. He groaned, and clutched his thinning grey hair.