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, appreciat