Chapter Six

One step into a new world

Boogeymen, bugbears, shadows, nightmares. Boggarts were creatures that fed off of your fear and discomfort. Their presence was something that made your skin crawl and your spine tingle with shivers. They varied in appearance from small to huge to scraggly with rotting teeth in their mouth to obese with rolls of fat. A fey creature could be either born a boggart or could have been turned into one through their rage. Only one fey creature known to their kind could do option two, a brownie.

“How do we get rid of the literal boogeyman?” Avery asked before letting out a tiny scream as the rancid little thing launched itself at her, with the broom knocking it back into a wall.

“We gotta kill it before it kills us,” Aiden said as he watched it get back onto all fours with a tiny scream of its own before it started crawling rapidly towards them. Without much else to do, he sprayed it with the herbal mixture only for its skin to just turn red and become raw with open wounds.

He imagined that the boggart had to be in immense pain from the raw sores that started to form on its skin. But this pain only made it angrier as it attacked the two with more force than before with a noticeable increase in speed in its crawls. The two teenagers found themselves being chased around the kitchen as the creature snapped its mouth wider as it got closer to their ankles. It almost sunk its teeth into Avery’s but she kicked it away from her, panting as her face was flushed red.

They were running ragged, being chased and tackled by a creature that wasn’t even a third of their size. He thought of how ridiculous they might look to someone looking in from the outside. But the situation was becoming more serious as he watched the creature flex its rotted claws. It looked unstable, with its eyes bugging out of its sockets so far that puss was dropping with the drool in its mouth. If they weren't so busy trying to stay alive he would have thrown up at the sight of it.

“Try one of mom’s herbs!” He screamed looking around for something, anything to keep it at bay. Herbs could neutralize a boggart in a nasty way, his mother had only described it as being messy and gross. It would injure it and possibly kill it but you had to get a direct hit or else the roots would be wasted.

Aiden grabbed the nearest thing, the sink’s hose, and began spraying the boggart with it. He turned the knob as far as it would go so as much water as possible came out. As soon as the boggart tried to get back up it was hit with a gusher of ice-cold water right in the face. This smashed it against the wall, its arms wiggling helplessly as it tried to fight back. He hoped it would distract it long enough for Avery to find some type of herb their mother had to get rid of it permanently.

Because the longer they fought, the more of their anxiety it would feed off. A boggart used not only its brute strength but mental manipulation to get what it needed out of you. If they didn’t fix this soon, the room would become a buffet for it to feast upon. Sweat dripped down his forehead, the room feeling hotter as the area became more and more cramped from furniture falling every which way.

“Avery I need you to move a little bit faster,” The teenager yelled out seeing her hop over a chair in an attempt to reach some of the jars of herbs and roots that sat atop a cabinet. A shrill scream echoed throughout the room followed by unintelligible garbles. “It’s getting angrier!”

“Can’t you see I’m trying! The entire kitchen’s been turned into a labyrinth because of that thing!” She screamed back, desperately trying to reach the cabinet with her outstretched arms.

Aiden didn’t know what else to do besides get help. But he was stuck hosing down pest and saving what little spray was left for when it broke free from its watery prison. There was no way he’d be able to make a run for it and wake Posy up from the deep sleep she was in. Eyeing Avery attempting to balance on some of the chairs that were thrown on top of each other, he took in a shaky breath and closed his eyes. There was only one thing he could do but he doubted it would work.

None of them knew how telepathic abilities worked but Posy had theorized she could hear his thoughts better when he was emotional. She always seemed to know when he was upset and would appear by his side to comfort him. If he yelled out for her, she could lend a hand and help them smash the little pest before things got worse. But she was sleeping and they had never tested it out while she wasn’t exactly aware. And since she couldn’t hear Avery’s thoughts, he was the only one that could reach out.

The sight of his sister frantically trying to climb upwards made his stomach turn. The boggart began to fight harder against the hose, snapping its jaw so hard they could hear its bones breaking. His body shook with anxiety and the room began to close in but he fought. This wasn’t the time to have a panic attack. He needed to try and contact Posy before they lost complete control of the house itself.

‘Posy please if you can hear me wake up. Avery’s in trouble and I can’t fight much longer.’ Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Avery’s hands nearly grab one of the jars only for her to slip. “Posy listen to me!”

He kept repeating the same words from before in his mind, practically screaming them out. At this point, he wasn’t even paying attention to the room and its inhabitants. His mind was an endless room of white as his chest tightened to the point it was suffocating him. ‘Posy come into the kitchen hurry before it’s too late!’

“No! Aiden stop don’t get her involved she won’t be able to help!” Avery hissed watching his eyes lose focus, an obvious sign he was about to pass out from an attack. She looked down at the boggart and gasped before grabbing the jar and throwing it directly at it, hard as she could.

The creature let out a groan as whatever was in the jar splashed into its wounds. They began to sizzle as if they were being cooked from the inside, a terrible smell hitting their noses. A mixture of what could only be described as fecal matter with something that resembled mud began to spurt out in a thick, chunky guzzler. It was so bad that the two began to gag with Avery coughing up some of her dinners from the night before. It began to balloon out with its limbs swelling as more of the disgusting slime flew out.

“The mixture’s working!” Avery screamed quickly wiping off the vomit from her dress. Her expression changed from triumphant to shocked as she hopped down from the chairs. The boggart was a huge swollen black thing that struggled to even move.

She ran towards him with a panicked look on her face, her cheeks still green from puking. “Get down!” Her hand wrapped around his arm as she pulled him down to hide behind a fallen cabinet. There was glass underneath their legs from the broken tableware as they crouched down with their arms over their heads. Forks lay on the floor with some of their teeth bent backward while others had chips in their metal with shattered plates not too far. To make matters worse, a loud popping noise filled the room.

The boggart was no more as the windows shattered into millions of pieces. Thankfully, none of the glass or the boggart’s insides managed to land on them as they combusted against the kitchen’s walls. Bits and pieces slid down onto the now black floor and landed with a loud, wet thump before being followed by more pieces. The air was putrid with the smell of Avery’s vomit lingering as the grossness of the boggart’s remains stinking up the room to the point the two were struggling to breathe.

“Holy fuck!” The two turned to see their younger sister running down the stairs, a sleeping mask hanging on her neck as she came into the wreckage. In her hand was a taser indicating to Aiden she had heard his calls for help and managed to arrive when everything had finished. “It smells like sewage in here.” Quickly, she lifted her free hand to cover her lower face as she came over to them.