Read The Boggart and the Monster for Free Online Page B

her chest again. She tried to look stern, to cover it up.
    Mr. Maconochie made an explosive sound like a cross grunt, and roared past two cars, narrowly missing a tour bus coming at them from the other direction. Turning in her seat, Emily saw Castle Urquhartcome into view again behind them on the edge of the loch, its broken grey walls smoothed into mounds by time and the low green grass. She wished they were not leaving it behind quite so fast.
    But Mr. Maconochie was hurrying, she found, only because he wanted to be sure they had a place at the campground halfway down Loch Ness. He relaxed, and even pulled off his sweater and rolled up his shirtsleeves, once they were tucked into a corner of the big grassy field overlooking the loch. They set up a small tent for Emily, and a larger one for Mr. Maconochie’s lanky frame, and Tommy and Jessup announced their intention of sleeping in the back of the Range Rover, amongst the gear.
    â€œSafe from wandering monsters,”
said Tommy with a grin.
    â€œPlesiosaurs only eat fish,”
Jessup said.
    â€œWell, we aren’t eating fish, not tonight,”
said Mr. Maconochie. He busied himself with the ice chest and the supply box in the car while Tommy and Jessup argued about the best way to light a campfire. When they finally had a suitably glowing red mound he fried sausages and bacon and thickly sliced tomatoes in a large frying pan, and served them up with chunks of homemade bread brought from Castle Keep, and what he described as
“Vedge.”
The children looked with grave doubt at Vedge, which turned out to be sprigs of broccoli and cauliflower, small green beans, and chopped red peppers, all precooked but crunchy, cooled and marinated in a dressing of oil, vinegar,brown sugar and mustard. But when they took a first cautious bite they found it so delicious that they gobbled it as fast and thoroughly as the apple pie that followed.
    One piece of pie was left on the plate, but everyone had eaten too much to finish it. Mr. Maconochie watched them, beaming indulgently, as if he were their mother.
“
Fresh
fruit from now on, not pie,”
he said.
“Campers are supposed to be simple folk.”
    Deep inside the Range Rover, tucked in his rolled blanket, the Boggart stirred, roused out of his faintly hungover sleep by the alluring smell of frying sausages. When he came flittering hastily out he was infuriated to find nothing left but an empty, greasy frying pan; he never seemed to be in time to encounter sausages, except in their unpleasant naked precooked state. In revenge he gobbled up the last piece of apple pie, and flittered off to the other side of the darkening campground, where a couple of young campers in boots and corduroy shorts were attacking slices of pork pie decorated with ketchup. The Boggart filched a little ketchup, sniffed disdainfully at the pork pie, and floated over the hedge to look down at the loch.
    The water lay still and grey in the dying light, unruffled now by any boat or bird. House lights were beginning to glimmer far away on the other side, like little stars prickling the dark mass of trees.
    And then the Boggart was suddenly stopped, as if he had flown into an invisible wall.
    He dropped down onto the branch of a tree and sat there, very still. Something most unexpected, something long forgotten, was beginning to happen inside his head. He could feel his senses quivering, calling deep inside him to the few very faint memories that lie far back and neglected in a boggart mind. What were they trying to say to him? He tried hard to concentrate:
What is it? What is it?
    Somehow he knew this place . . . there was somebody in this place that he had known, a long time ago, long ago in the beginning of things . . . Someone he had known as well as a brother, someone close . . . cousin, cuz . . . cousin, cuz . . . Someone of whom he had heard no word or hint for years, for decades, for centuries . . . someone . . . cousin . . . cuz.