The Witches Read online

  ‘I am having my breakfast this morning,’ cried The Grand High Witch, ‘and I am looking out of the vindow at the beach, and vot am I seeing? I am asking you, vot am I seeing? I am seeing a rrreevolting sight! I am seeing hundreds, I am seeing thousands of rrrotten rrree-pulsive little children playing on the sand! It is putting me rrright off my food! Vye have you not got rrrid of them?’ she screamed. ‘Vye have you not rrrubbed them all out, these filthy smelly children?’

  With each word she spoke, flecks of pale-blue phlegm shot from her mouth like little bullets.

  ‘I am asking you vye!’ she screamed.

  Nobody answered her question.

  ‘Children smell!’ she screamed. ‘They stink out the vurld! Vee do not vont these children around here!’

  The bald heads in the audience all nodded vigorously.

  ‘Vun child a veek is no good to me!’ The Grand High Witch cried out. ‘Is that the best you can do?’

  ‘We will do better,’ murmured the audience. ‘We will do much better.’

  ‘Better is no good either!’ shrieked The Grand High Witch. ‘I demand maximum rrree-sults! So here are my orders! My orders are that every single child in this country shall be rrrubbed out, sqvashed, sqvirted, sqvittered and frrrittered before I come here again in vun year's time! Do I make myself clear?’

  A great gasp went up from the audience. I saw the witches all looking at one another with deeply troubled expressions. And I heard one witch at the end of the front row saying aloud, ‘All of them! We can't possibly wipe out all of them!’

  The Grand High Witch whipped round as though someone had stuck a skewer into her bottom. ‘Who said that?’ she snapped. ‘Who dares to argue vith me? It vos you, vos it not?’ She pointed a gloved finger as sharp as a needle at the witch who had spoken.

  ‘I didn't mean it, Your Grandness!’ the witch cried out. ‘I didn't mean to argue! I was just talking to myself!’

  ‘You dared to argue vith me!’ screamed The Grand High Witch.

  ‘I was just talking to myself!’ cried the wretched witch. ‘I swear it, Your Grandness!’ She began to shake with fear.

  The Grand High Witch took a quick step forward, and when she spoke again, it was in a voice that made my blood run cold.

  ‘A stupid vitch who answers back

  Must burn until her bones are black!’

  she screamed.

  ‘No, no!’ begged the witch in the front row. The Grand High Witch went on,

  ‘A foolish vitch vithout a brain

  Must sizzle in the fiery flame!’

  ‘Save me!’ cried the wretched witch in the front row. The Grand High Witch took no notice of her. She spoke again.

  ‘An idiotic vitch like you

  Must rrroast upon the barbecue!’

  ‘Forgive me, O Your Grandness!’ cried the miserable culprit. ‘I didn't mean it!’ But The Grand High Witch continued with her terrible recital.

  ‘A vitch who dares to say I'm wrrrong

  Vill not be vith us very long!’

  A moment later, a stream of sparks that looked like tiny white-hot metal-filings came shooting out of The Grand High Witch's eyes and flew straight towards the one who had dared to speak. I saw the sparks striking against her and burrowing into her and she screamed a horrible howling scream and a puff of smoke rose up around her. A smell of burning meat filled the room.

  Nobody moved. Like me, they were all watching the smoke, and when it had cleared away, the chair was empty. I caught a glimpse of something wispy-white, like a little cloud, fluttering upwards and disappearing out of the window.

  A great sigh rose up from the audience.

  The Grand High Witch glared around the room. ‘I hope nobody else is going to make me cross today,’ she remarked.

  There was a deathly silence.

  ‘Frrrizzled like a frrritter,’ said The Grand High Witch. ‘Cooked like a carrot. You vill never see her again. Now vee can get down to business.’

  Formula 86 Delayed Action Mouse-Maker

  ‘Children are rrree-volting!’ screamed The Grand High Witch. ‘Vee vill vipe them all avay! Vee vill scrrrub them off the face of the earth! Vee vill flush them down the drain!’

  ‘Yes, yes!’ chanted the audience. ‘Wipe them away! Scrub them off the earth! Flush them down the drain!’

  ‘Children are foul and filthy!’ thundered The Grand High Witch.

  ‘They are! They are!’ chorused the English witches. ‘They are foul and filthy!’

  ‘Children are dirty and stinky!’ screamed The Grand High Witch.

  ‘Dirty and stinky!’ cried the audience, getting more and more worked up.

  ‘Children are smelling of dogs’ drrroppings!’ screeched The Grand High Witch.

  ‘Pooooooo!’ cried the audience. ‘Pooooooo! Pooooooo! Pooooooo!’

  ‘They are vurse than dogs’ drrroppings!’ screeched The Grand High Witch. ‘Dogs’ drrroppings is smelling like violets and prrrimroses compared vith children!’

  ‘Violets and primroses!’ chanted the audience. They were clapping and cheering almost every word spoken from the platform. The speaker seemed to have them completely under her spell.

  ‘To talk about children is making me sick!’ screamed The Grand High Witch. ‘I am feeling sick even thinking about them! Fetch me a basin!’

  The Grand High Witch paused and glared at the mass of eager faces in the audience. They waited, wanting more.

  ‘So now!’ barked The Grand High Witch. ‘So now I am having a plan! I am having a giganticus plan for getting rrrid of every single child in the whole of Inkland!’

  The witches gasped. They gaped. They turned and gave each other ghoulish grins of excitement.

  ‘Yes!’ thundered The Grand High Witch. ‘Vee shall svish them and svollop them and vee shall make to disappear every single smelly little brrrat in Inkland in vun strrroke!’

  ‘Whoopee!’ cried the witches, clapping their hands. ‘You are brilliant, O Your Grandness! You are fantabulous!’

  ‘Shut up and listen!’ snapped The Grand High Witch. ‘Listen very carefully and let us not be having any muck-ups!’

  The audience leaned forward, eager to learn how this magic was going to be performed.

  ‘Each and every vun of you,’ thundered The Grand High Witch, ‘is to go back to your home towns immediately and rrree-sign from your jobs. Rrree-sign! Give notice! Rrree-tire!’

  ‘We will!’ they cried. ‘We will resign from our jobs!’

  ‘And after you have rrree-signed from your jobs,’ The Grand High Witch went on, ‘each and every vun of you vill be going out and you vill be buying…’ She paused.

  ‘What will we be buying?’ they cried. ‘Tell us, O Brilliant One, what is it we shall be buying?’

  ‘Sveet-shops!’ shouted The Grand High Witch.

  ‘Sweet-shops!’ they cried. ‘We are going to buy sweet-shops! What a frumptious wheeze!’

  ‘Each of you vill be buying for herself a sveet-shop. You vill be buying the very best and most rrree-spectable sveet-shops in Inkland.’

  ‘We will! We will!’ they answered. Their dreadful voices were like a chorus of dentists’ drills all grinding away together.

  ‘I am vonting no tuppenny-ha'penny crrrummy little tobacco-selling-newspaper-sveet-shops!’ shouted The Grand High Witch. ‘I am vonting you to get only the very best shops filled up high vith piles and piles of luscious sveets and tasty chocs!’

  ‘The best!’ they cried. ‘We shall buy the best sweetshops in town!’

  ‘You vill be having no trouble in getting vot you vont,’ shouted The Grand High Witch, ‘because you vill be offering four times as much as a shop is vurth and nobody is rrree-fusing an offer like that! Money is not a prrroblem to us vitches as you know very vell. I have brrrought vith me six trrrunks stuffed full of Inklish banknotes, all new and crrrisp. And all of them,’ she added with a fiendish leer, ‘all of them home-made.’

  The witches in the audience grinned, appreciating this joke.

  At that point, one foolish witch got so excited at the possibilities presented by owning a sweet-shop that she leapt to her feet and shouted, ‘The children will come flocking to my shop and I will feed them poisoned sweets and poisoned chocs and wipe them all out like weasels!’

  The room became suddenly silent. I saw the tiny body of The Grand High Witch stiffen and then go rigid with rage. ‘Who spoke?’ she shrieked. ‘It vos you! You over there!’

  The culprit sat down fast and covered her face with her clawed hands.

  ‘You blithering bumpkin!’ screeched The Grand High Witch. ‘You brrrainless bogvumper! Are you not rrree-alizing that if you are going rrround poisoning little children you vill be caught in five minutes flat? Never in my life am I hearing such a boshvolloping suggestion coming from a vitch!’

  The entire audience cowered and shook. I'm quite sure they all thought, as I did, that the terrible white-hot sparks were about to start flying again.

  Curiously enough, they didn't.

  ‘If such a tomfiddling idea is all you can be coming up vith,’ thundered The Grand High Witch, ‘then it is no vunder Inkland is still svorming vith rrrotten little children!’

  There was another silence. The Grand High Witch glared at the witches in the audience. ‘Do you not know,’ she shouted at them, ‘that vee vitches are vurrrking only vith magic?’

  ‘We know, Your Grandness!’ they all answered. ‘Of course we know!’

  The Grand High Witch grated her bony gloved hands against each other and cried out, ‘So each of you is owning a magnificent sveet-shop! The next move is that each of you vill be announcing in the vindow of your shop that on a certain day you vill be having a Great Gala Opening vith frree sveets and chocs to every child!’

>   ‘That will bring them in, the greedy little brutes!’ cried the audience. ‘They'll be fighting to get through the doors!’

  ‘Next,’ continued The Grand High Witch, ‘you vill prepare yourselves for this Great Gala Opening by filling every choc and every sveet in your shop vith my very latest and grrreatest magic formula! This is known as FORMULA 86 DELAYED ACTION MOUSE-MAKER!’

  ‘Delayed Action Mouse-Maker!’ they chanted. ‘She's done it again! Her Grandness has concocted yet another of her wondrous magic child-killers! How do we make it, O Brilliant One?’

  ‘Exercise patience,’ answered The Grand High Witch. ‘First, I am explaining to you how my Formula 86 Delayed Action Mouse-Maker is vurrrking. Listen carefully.’

  ‘We are listening!’ cried the audience who were now jumping up and down in their chairs with excitement.

  ‘Delayed Action Mouse-Maker is a green liqvid,’ explained The Grand High Witch, ‘and vun droplet in each choc or sveet vill be qvite enough. So here is vot happens:

  ‘Child eats choc vich has in it Delayed Action Mouse-Maker liqvid…

  ‘Child goes home feeling fine…

  ‘Child goes to bed, still feeling fine…

  ‘Child vakes up in the morning still OK…

  ‘Child goes to school still feeling fine…

  ‘Formula, you understand, is delayed action, and is not vurrrking yet.’

  ‘We understand, O Brainy One!’ cried the audience. ‘But when does it start working?’

  ‘It is starting to vurrrk at exactly nine o'clock, vhen the child is arriving at school!’ shouted The Grand High Witch triumphantly. ‘Child arrives at school. Delayed Action Mouse-Maker immediately starts to vurrrk. Child starts to shrrrink. Child is starting to grow fur. Child is starting to grow tail. All is happening in prrreecisely tventy-six seconds. After tventy-six seconds, child is not a child any longer. It is a mouse!’

  ‘A mouse!’ cried the witches. ‘What a frumptious thought!’

  ‘Classrooms vill all be svorrming vith mice!’ shouted The Grand High Witch. ‘Chaos and pandemonium vill be rrreigning in every school in Inkland! Teachers vill be hopping up and down! Vimmen teachers vill be standing on desks and holding up skirts and yelling, “Help, help, help!’ ”

  ‘They will! They will!’ cried the audience.

  ‘And vot,’ shouted The Grand High Witch, ‘is happening next in every school?’

  ‘Tell us!’ they cried. ‘Tell us, O Brainy One!’

  The Grand High Witch stretched her stringy neck forward and grinned at the audience, showing two rows of pointed teeth, slightly blue. She raised her voice louder than ever and shouted, ‘Mouse-trrraps is coming out!’

  ‘Mouse-traps!’ cried the witches.

  ‘And cheese!’ shouted The Grand High Witch. ‘Teachers is all rrrushing and rrrunning out and getting mouse-trrraps and baiting them vith cheese and putting them down all over school! Mice is nibbling cheese! Mouse-trrraps is going off! All over school, mouse-trrraps is going snappety-snap and mouse-heads is rrrolling across the floors like marbles! All over Inkland, in everrry school in Inkland, noise of snapping mouse-trrraps vill be heard!’

  At this point, the disgusting old Grand High Witch began to do a sort of witch's dance up and down the platform, stamping her feet and clapping her hands. The entire audience joined in the clapping and the foot-stamping. They were making such a tremendous racket that I thought surely Mr Stringer would hear it and come banging at the door. But he didn't.

  Then, above all the noise, I heard the voice of The Grand High Witch screaming out some sort of an awful gloating song,

  ‘Down vith children! Do them in!

  Boil their bones and fry their skin!

  Bish them, sqvish them, bash them, mash them!

  Brrreak them, shake them, slash them, smash them!

  Offer chocs vith magic powder!

  Say “Eat up!” then say it louder.

  Crrram them full of sticky eats,

  Send them home still guzzling sveets.

  And in the morning little fools

  Go marching off to separate schools.

  A girl feels sick and goes all pale.

  She yells, “Hey look! I've grrrown a tail!”

  A boy who's standing next to her

  Screams, “Help! I think I'm grrrowing fur!”

  Another shouts, “Vee look like frrreaks!

  There's viskers growing on our cheeks!”

  A boy who vos extremely tall

  Cries out, “Vot's wrong? I'm grrrowing small!”

  Four tiny legs begin to sprrrout

  From everybody rrround about.

  And all at vunce, all in a trrrice,

  There are no children! Only MICE!

  In every school is mice galore

  All rrrunning rrround the school-rrroom floor!

  And all the poor demented teachers

  Is yelling, “Hey, who are these crrreatures?”

  They stand upon the desks and shout,

  “Get out, you filthy mice! Get out!

  Vill someone fetch some mouse-trrraps, please!

  And don't forrrget to bring the cheese!”

  Now mouse-trrraps come and every trrrap

  Goes snippy-snip and snappy-snap.

  The mouse-trrraps have a powerful spring,

  The springs go crack and snap and ping!

  Is lovely noise for us to hear!

  Is music to a vitch's ear!

  Dead mice is every place arrround,

  Piled two feet deep upon the grrround,

  Vith teachers searching left and rrright,

  But not a single child in sight!

  The teachers cry, “Vot's going on?

  Oh vhere have all the children gone?

  Is half-past nine and as a rrrule

  They're never late as this for school!”

  Poor teachers don't know vot to do.

  Some sit and rrread, and just a few

  Amuse themselves throughout the day

  By sveeping all the mice avay.

  AND ALL US VITCHES SHOUT HOORAY!’

  The Recipe

  I hope you haven't forgotten that while all this was going on I was still stuck behind the screen on my hands and knees with one eye glued to the crack. I don't know how long I had been there but it seemed like for ever. The worst part of it was not being allowed to cough or make a sound, and knowing that if I did, I was as good as dead. And all the way through, I was living in constant terror that one of the witches in the back row was going to get a whiff of my presence through those special nose-holes of hers.

  My only hope, as I saw it, was the fact that I hadn't washed for days. That and the never-ending excitement and clapping and shouting that was going on in the room. The witches were thinking of nothing except The Grand High Witch up there on the platform and her great plan for wiping out all the children of England. They certainly weren't sniffing around for a child in the room. In their wildest dreams (if witches have dreams), that would never have occurred to any of them. I kept still and prayed.

  The Grand High Witch's dreadful gloating song was over now, and the audience was clapping madly and shouting, ‘Brilliant! Sensational! Marvellous! You are a genius, O Brainy One! It is a thrilling invention, this Delayed Action Mouse-Maker! It is a winner! And the beauty of it is that the teachers will be the ones who bump off the stinking little children! It won't be us doing it! We shall never be caught!’

  ‘Vitches are never caught!’ snapped The Grand High Witch. ‘Attention now! I vont everybody's attention for I am about to be telling you vot you must do to prepare Formula 86 Delayed Action Mouse-Maker!’

  Suddenly there came a great gasp from the audience. This was followed by a hubbub of shrieking and yelling, and I saw many of the witches leaping to their feet and pointing at the platform and crying out, ‘Mice! Mice! Mice! She's done it to show us! The Brainy One has turned two children into mice and there they are!’

  I looked towards the platform. The mice were there all right, two of them, running around near The Grand High Witch's skirts.

  But these were not field mice or house mice or wood mice or harvest mice. They were white mice! I recognized them immediately as being my own little William and Mary!

  ‘Mice!’ shouted the audience. ‘Our leader has made mice to appear out of nowhere! Get the mouse-traps! Fetch the cheese!’

  I saw The Grand High Witch peering down at the floor and staring with obvious puzzlement at William and Mary. She bent lower to get a closer look. Then she straightened up and shouted, ‘Qviet!’