The Bog Beast Read online

  6

  Bogbean

  As they got closer to the bog, the trees grew thinner and the grass grew higher. All around them were swampy pools of dark water. A wispy mist swirled close to the ground.

  Beneath their feet, the land was getting smooshy. Mrs. Nukluk had taught them to be very careful in bogs. You could step on something that looked like solid ground and drop straight into water.

  “There it is! Bogbean!” Gigi pointed to clusters of thin stems with small white flowers that were growing out of a pool of swampy water. Bogbean for sure. Hugo had seen his grandpa make ointment out of it when his knees felt achy.

  Hugo tried to remember everything Mrs. Nukluk had taught them about walking through a bog. But he was so worried about Bog Beasts that his mind went blank.

  “We need to find a long walking stick,” said Gigi. “That way we can test the water as we walk through it to make sure it’s not too deep.”

  “Right!” said Hugo, thankful that Gigi’s brain was working well. He looked around and spotted a long, crooked branch on the ground.

  “Got one!” he said, scooping up the branch and handing it to Gigi.

  Gigi poked the stick into the pool of water.

  “Look, it’s not too deep,” she said. “The water only covers half the stick.”

  Slowly and carefully, Hugo and Gigi walked into the murky water. First, Gigi plunged the stick into the water to check the ground ahead of them, and then they took a step forward.

  The whole time, Hugo looked around for signs of the Bog Beast. His stomach felt so fluttery that he wouldn’t have been able to eat a single acorn butter–and–raspberry cream sandwich. Well, maybe one, but definitely not two.

  When they reached the Bogbean, they gathered up some of the plants and carefully put them in their backpacks.

  These will make Grandpa’s knees feel better, Hugo thought with satisfaction.

  From behind the swamp grass across the water Hugo saw something move. He turned in time to see a hand shoot out from behind the grass. It plunged into the water and a moment later pulled out a cluster of plants. There was something strange about the hand. For one thing, it had long claws. And for another, it was covered in green tendrils, as though it had vines growing out of it.

  7

  Something Tasty

  Hugo screamed. It wasn’t actually a proper scream. It was more like a very loud squeal.

  “What’s wrong?” Gigi asked, alarmed.

  Hugo looked over at the swamp grass again. The hand was gone. He wondered if it had simply been an otter or a beaver and his imagination had turned it into a Bog Beast.

  “I think I stepped on a bee,” Hugo lied, then checked the bottom of his foot for a pretend beesting. He didn’t want Gigi to think he was acting like a giant chuddle (which is a baby Sasquatch).

  While he was checking his foot, Gigi reached into her backpack and pulled out her big red book again. She began flipping through the pages.

  “I bet we can find some swamp berries around here for our ‘something tasty.’ Or we could look for wild mint, but that grows near the river, not in the bog—”

  “Wild mint, definitely!” Hugo said. The sooner they left the bog, the better.

  As they made their way out of the bog, Hugo kept looking around nervously for anything green and slimy lurking behind the tall grass. Once, out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw something dart behind a tree. But when he turned around to get a better look, nothing was there.

  After a while, the ground beneath Hugo’s feet became less smooshy. The trees were taller here and grew closer and closer together. Now they were safely under the canopy of thick woods again, with the sound of Ripple Worm River burbling in their ears and the bog far behind them.

  Hugo felt better immediately. He began to think about those five acorn butter–and–raspberry cream sandwiches in his backpack. His stomach growled.

  “I think a little snack might be—” he started to say, but Gigi interrupted him.

  “Look, Hugo!” Gigi pointed up ahead at a patch of green plants. “Wild mint!”

  So they went to work gathering up the mint and carefully wrapping it in a cloth. The fresh minty smell reminded Hugo of his grandfather’s mint-and-honey iced tea. Grandpa stored the iced tea in oak barrels to give it a special flavor. Oh, it was delicious with a fat slice of gooseberry pie! Hugo’s stomach began to feel growly again.

  “Um, Gigi, I was just thinking that now might be the perfect time for a nibble—”

  “K’nooba-kaboo!!”

  “What was that?” Gigi asked, looking around nervously.

  “Probably just a bird,” Hugo suggested as he reached into his backpack to feel around for a sandwich. But he stopped when the sound came again, louder this time.

  “K’NOOBA-NOOKA-BOOOOOOOOO!!”

  “That didn’t sound like a bird,” Gigi said, her eyes flitting around the woods.

  Hugo had to admit that she was right. He began to wonder if Bog Beasts sometimes left the bog.

  Hugo and Gigi stood very still, listening carefully. Now the growly feeling in Hugo’s stomach was replaced by a nervous fluttery feeling.

  The sound came again.

  “K’NUBA-KADEEDLE-OO KA-HOOOOOOOOO!!!”

  “I think it’s coming from the river,” Gigi whispered.

  “KOOKA-KOO-KAPOOOOKA . . . KOOPOOPLY—oh, darn it, I can never get my knoodles right . . . HELP!!!”

  Hugo and Gigi looked at each other in shock.

  It was Boone’s voice.

  8

  Big Trouble

  They took off running, heading for the sound of Boone’s calls for help.

  When they reached the river bank, they looked out at the stretch of water. Hugo had never been to this part of Ripple Worm River before. It curved sharply, like an arm bent at the elbow. The river forked here, and down one of those wide channels, the water grew very rough. It rushed and churned and splashed wildly around large boulders poking out of the river.

  “HELP!” came Boone’s shout again.

  Off in the distance in the channel with the wild water, Hugo spied a tiny island covered with huckleberry bushes. And in the middle of that island stood Boone, all alone, while the river writhed and thrashed around him.

  Hugo jumped up and down and waved until Boone saw him and waved back with both arms.

  “Can’t he swim to shore?” Gigi asked.

  “The water is too rough,” Hugo said. “And there are rocks all over.”

  “I wonder how he wound up there in the first place.”

  They both watched Boone, trying to figure out a way to help him. Suddenly Hugo turned to Gigi. His eyes were bright with an idea.

  “I think I know what to do!” he said.

  Hugo led the way as he and Gigi ran as fast as they could, following the riverbank. After a few minutes, they saw it: a small red rowboat lying on its side. Hugo had known exactly where to find the Voyajer. Boone always left it in the same spot when he rode his boat to school.

  Gigi looked at the Voyajer and frowned.

  “It seems awfully small,” she said in a worried voice.

  “It is awfully small,” Hugo agreed.

  “And that water was running very fast,” she said.

  “Faster than I’ve ever seen,” said Hugo.

  They were silent for a moment. Both of them were thinking about Boone standing alone on the island with the wild water raging around him.

  “But you have strong arms for rowing, right?” Gigi said stoutly.

  Hugo nodded. “I do. And you are the smartest squidge I know.”

  “Smart enough,” agreed Gigi.

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  9

  The Voyajer

  In the whole history of Sasquatches, only four Sasquatches had ever been in boats. One of them was Hugo. Another one was a squidge named Nogg. Then there was Dr. Oliver Feathergill. And now there was Gigi.

  The water was calm at first. Hugo rowed while Gigi
navigated, watching for rocks.

  “She’s a good boat, isn’t she?” said Gigi, patting the Voyajer’s side.

  “The best,” said Hugo.

  Ripple Worm River turned sharply. They had reached the fork in the river. Up ahead they could see Boone standing on the little island. The water was churning like a boiling broth.

  “Okay, Gigi, here we go!” Hugo said. “Let me know if you see rocks ahead, and I’ll steer around them.”

  “Got it,” Gigi said. She sat up straight and squinted at the water ahead of them, looking like a true navigator.

  “To your left, Hugo!” she called out.

  He saw the rock, a small one, poking out of the water. The current was strong, but so was he, and he steered the Voyajer around it.

  Hugo smiled. He was feeling pretty confident now.

  “Another one off to the right!” Gigi called. After he steered past that, she cried out, “A big one after that, Hugo, to the left, TO THE LEFT!”

  There were more and more rocks now. The strange thing was that they seemed to pop up out of nowhere. One minute there was a stretch of unbroken water, and suddenly they’d spot a rock they hadn’t noticed before. And even worse, the current was getting stronger and stronger. Hugo was having a hard time controlling the oars as the Voyajer tipped this way and that.

  Up ahead, Boone was watching them anxiously. He knew how dangerous the river was here.

  “Hugo, there are two huge rocks dead ahead!” Gigi cried.

  Hugo saw them—two boulders that had suddenly appeared right in their path. He tried to steer the Voyajer around them, but Ripple Worm River had other ideas. The powerful current swooped them straight toward the boulders, and a second later, the Voyajer was hopelessly wedged between the two big rocks.

  The racing water splashed and sprayed and churned all around them.

  “We’re stuck, Gigi!” Hugo yelled over the water’s roar.

  “See if you can push us off the rocks with your oars!” Gigi yelled back.

  Hugo lifted his right oar out of the water, jammed it up against one of the rocks, and gave a mighty push.

  That was when both rocks suddenly sank down into the water and disappeared.

  Hugo and Gigi looked at each other. They were too surprised to speak.

  Hugo remembered what Boone had said about the North Woods being full of strange and mysterious things. Vanishing rocks must be one of them.

  The very next moment, the current made the Voyajer tilt sharply to one side. Hugo and Gigi screamed but managed to stay inside the boat. The oars, however, did not. They flew right out of Hugo’s hands, and the river carried them away.

  With no oars, Hugo could not control the Voyajer at all. And the thing that worries me (and will probably worry you, too) is that Sasquatches can’t swim.

  There was nothing for Hugo and Gigi to do but hold on tight and let the wild river take them where it liked. They could see Boone just ahead, pacing the island, calling directions that they couldn’t hear over the sound of the river.

  They both saw the wave at the same time. It was large and wide and aiming straight for them.

  “Hugo!” Gigi shouted, panicked.

  “I see it!”

  Without oars, there was nothing they could do. The wave crashed against the boat, and the Voyajer and Hugo and Gigi were flung upward.

  When they came back down, they were on land. And Boone, with all of his thirty-eight freckles, was grinning at them.

  10

  Prank

  “You did it!” Boone cried.

  “We did it,” Gigi agreed with happy astonishment.

  But once they looked around for the Voyajer, their happiness turned to dismay. The poor boat was lying on the island with its hull bashed in.

  “Oh, Boone, I’m so sorry,” Hugo said. He felt an ache in the pit of his stomach. The Voyajer was like a friend to them. She had taken Hugo and Boone on their best adventures—finding an Ogopogo, sailing to the haunted Craggy Cavern.

  Boone walked up to his beloved boat and knelt beside her. He ran his hands over her injured hull.

  “Can you fix her?” Hugo asked.

  Boone hesitated. “Maybe,” he said, but Hugo thought he didn’t sound very hopeful.

  “How did you wind up here, anyway?” Gigi asked Boone.

  “It was all Roderick’s idea,” said Boone as he plopped himself down beside the Voyajer glumly. “The whole time we were bimbling, Roderick wouldn’t even talk to me. Then he got really annoyed because I was the one who found our ‘something healing’ and our ‘something useful.’ All we needed was our ‘something tasty.’ That’s when I spotted the huckleberry bushes on this island.”

  The mention of huckleberries reminded Hugo of the five acorn butter–and–raspberry cream sandwiches in his backpack. His stomach rumbled. But he told himself that this probably wasn’t the right time for a snack.

  “There was a big tree on the riverbank that had fallen over,” Boone continued. “It was so long that it reached across the water and onto the island like a bridge. Roderick said that if I crossed it, he would hold it steady for me. So I did. I collected loads of huckleberries. But when I was ready to go back to shore, Roderick gave the tree a shove, and it floated away. He just stood there and laughed at me like it was a great prank. But then he must have spotted something in the woods that scared him, because suddenly he screamed and ran away. I haven’t seen him since.”

  “Maybe something happened to him,” said Gigi ominously.

  “Maybe he ran into a Human,” Hugo suggested.

  “Or maybe he ran into a Bog Beast,” said Gigi in a strange voice.

  “But you said Dr. Feathergill never mentioned Bog Beasts in his book,” said Hugo.

  “Maybe Dr. Feathergill doesn’t know everything,” Gigi replied, squinting at the water and frowning.

  Hugo and Boone looked, too. Something was floating in the river. Something big and green and slimy. At first Hugo thought it was a large clump of weeds. But then he saw a pair of clawed hands paddling at the water.

  The Bog Beast was headed right for them.

  11

  The Bog Beast

  They watched the creature swim closer and closer, skillfully weaving its way through the current.

  “What do we do, Gigi?” Hugo said.

  “I don’t know.”

  Those were words Hugo had hardly ever heard come out of Gigi’s mouth. And this was the very worst time to hear them.

  Hugo remembered what Mrs. Nukluk had told them to do in an emergency.

  Don’t panic, take a deep breath, then make a plan.

  So that’s what Hugo did. He took a deep breath. Then he thought. And finally, he came up with a plan.

  “Everyone, grab your Human Repellant!” Hugo said. His voice was very sure and loud. It sounded like someone who was taking charge.

  In fact, it sounded very much like a Team Captain.

  “Do you think Human Repellant will work on a Bog Beast?” Gigi asked as she took out her spray can.

  “Of course. Skunks smell bad to everyone, and we’ll be spraying three cans at the same time,” said Hugo confidently as he took his spray out of his backpack. “Get ready, everyone!”

  They all held up their cans. The Bog Beast was so close now that they could see the green tendrils of its body rippling in the water as it swam.

  “Get set!” Hugo yelled. They put their fingers on the spray buttons. The Bog Beast reached up out of the water, its clawed hand grabbing the bottom of a huckle berry bush.

  Now they could see the beast clearly. It had green twists of weedy hair that hung over its forehead and coiled around its head, then draped all the way down its thick body, dripping with river water.

  “Should we spray now, Hugo?” Boone asked.

  “Oooh, I wish you wouldn’t,” the Bog Beast said in a fast, breathless voice. “Human Repellent makes my eyes swell up.”

  It’s a very shocking thing for a monster to talk to you. Hugo was s
o surprised that he forgot to yell “SPRAY!”

  “How does it know this is Human Repellant spray?” Gigi wondered out loud.

  That’s a good question, thought Hugo. He wished he had asked it, especially if he wanted to keep being Team Captain.

  “It says so right on the cans,” the Bog Beast replied.

  Which was very true.

  “But how do you know it makes your eyes swell up?” asked Boone.

  Another excellent question! thought Hugo. As Team Captain, he should probably think of something clever to say, too.

  And suddenly he did.

  “I know how,” Hugo announced.

  Gigi and Boone looked at him with interest, which made Hugo feel more like Team Captain again.

  Hugo turned to the beast and glared at it. “You know about Human Repellant because Annabelle Loody sprayed you with it, didn’t she? Right before you ate her.”

  “Ate her? Ooooh, no, no, no,” the Bog Beast said in its peculiar breathless way. “That’s not true, not true at all.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Hugo said, raising his can of Human Repellent and aiming it at the beast.

  “Don’t spray!” Gigi cried, jumping between him and the Bog Beast. “The Bog Beast didn’t eat Annabelle Loody. The Bog Beast is Annabelle Loody.”

  12

  Sticky Grass

  Hugo and Boone looked from the Bog Beast to Gigi and back again. That made no sense. The Bog Beast was green and slimy and had claws.

  “Um, Gigi,” Boone said quietly, “I think you may be wrong about this one.”

  “I’m not. Look.” Gigi pointed at the Bog Beast’s left hand. One of its claws was missing. In its place was an ordinary-looking fingernail with a thick black splotch on it.

  “That black stuff is pine sap glue,” said Gigi. “You use it to glue on fake fingernails. Or claws, in this case.”

  “Are you sure?” Hugo asked.

  “Of course I’m sure. I read it in . . .” Gigi muttered something.

  “What did you say?” Hugo asked.

  Gigi looked at him squarely and said, “I read it in Squoosh magazine.”