CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE PROFESSOR

For the first time ever Griselda comes face to face with someone a great deal more magical than herself.

“By the devil, go away and stay away!” hissed Griselda angrily to her horned visitor as he stood suavely, red-suited and swishing his gorgeous tail next to her small bed. The draught was annoying her and anyway she was still in the guise of her own niece and was beginning to wish she could let her wrinkles sag back into place, her bra become less restrictive and more familiar, and her varicose veins start twitching like they should.

No sooner had the words left her mouth than her unwelcome visitor started wibbling again, like he had when poor old Henrietta had morphed into him, but “You're being very silly,” he said as he started wobbling into nothing. “You'll regret this, there are very dark days ahead,” he added, his voice fading to silence as his corporeal image dissolved into non-existence. And then there was an emptiness in the small room, a gap where her visitor had been standing, yet still the all pervasive stench of Henrietta Blackboil's farts lingered unwholesomely, like the aroma of fresh sewerage on a summer's day. It was both familiar and unwelcome.

For the barest minimum of moments she regretted the absence of the stinking old Henrietta - but only for the barest minimum of moments because whatever she was thinking together with the unfamiliar stillness was interrupted by another knock at her door.

She clicked her tongue against her teeth impatiently and stomped to the door. This is getting to be beyond a joke, she thought almost savagely. Can't a girl have any time to herself? She flung it open and stared out at the oddest individual she had seen for a very long time. She couldn't remember how long, but she must have been a child having a nightmare.

“And what do you want?” she decided when she finished staring rather rudely at the ogre of a man, hunch-backed and with a stranded beard that seemed to sweep the floor in front of him wherever he walked.

“Excuse me,” he said, his voice quavering as if it might have been around in his throat for an unnatural number of years and was struggling to find its way out.

“Well?” she asked.

He shuffled backwards and forwards and almost got one of his feet tangled into the wispy end of his beard, which made him stagger. “Excuse me,” he repeated, his eyes seeming to be simultaneously brightly alive and lifeless. Yet she thought she could see into them, beyond them, and she shivered for a moment.

“Okay. I excuse you. What's next?” growled Griselda, forgetting for a moment that she wasn't her familiar, wrinkled and irascible old self but still in the delightful shape of the girl she called her own niece. It was a favourite guise after all, one that she had used on and off for some time, especially when it came to exposure to Constable Lockemup and his caring private parts!

The old man (if man he was) looked at her and grinned behind his grizzled beard. That grin was both unexpected and, in its own way, spooky. Griselda fought back a shiver, and scowled instead.

“Ah, yes. Excuse me,” he said, coughing nervously. “And many thanks for being so trusting, and letting me in. I thought I'd better come and face the enemy before things get too far.”

“So who are you?” demanded Griselda, peeved that she had been stopped yet again from stretching out on the bed and resting her weary limbs, this time by the presence of a second unwelcome guest.

“You'll get to know me,” replied the strange little man. “I'm Professor Stroggleoff, and I'm in charge of this little house of learning and everything that goes on here, so you might say that I was in charge of you!”

Griselda recognised the name from somewhere, possibly one of the papers she had mysteriously received through the post, offering her a place at this very institution. “Professor Stroggleoff? I wasn't expecting to meet you until tomorrow,” said Griselda, surprised. “That's what it says on all the bumph on the notice board for us new students to try and soak up! Fancy that! Do you go to the trouble of meeting all your new students personally?”

“I do not,” responded the professor, “I am usually very distant and never meet some of them, but as I said, I decided to come and meet the enemy before things go too far.”

“Enemy?” whispered Griselda, suddenly hearing his words and not understanding. “We're not enemies, surely? I thought I'd come here to learn … to be a student so that I can become a Priestess and do something about the wretched Right Reverend Ian Nigel Thybottom and his fixation with that fat McMudd woman!?”

“Most people might take you at face value, but I'm too old and wise to do that,” replied Professor Stroggleoff drily. “I can see unearthly powers without having to look, Miss Entwhistle, “and I see them in you! But first, shall we see you as you ought to be seen? There's no need to be ashamed of your years, dear lady. So Karrumph! Griselda Entwhistle, be yourself!”

It had never happened before.

Griselda had always been in charge of what she looked like and had, from time to time, stripped the years off her appearance when it had seemed, to her, to be desirable. But now something was happening. Her whole body was tingling without any input from herself, and she could actually feel the wrinkles she had recently wished were hanging from her face like they should be actually returning. And the bra that had formed itself round her firm young breasts and pert n*****s was suddenly half empty as her real bosom collapsed into a pair of gravity-driven sacks of nearly nothing. The tartan mini-kilt grew long and dark and almost ragged and regained its old familiar aroma of dust and moth balls and the salty tang of sweat. Her shiny young hair became grey and coarse, and seemed to sprout tufts as it snuggled under her pointed hat. Yes, proud of her reputation as a witch she made sure she dressed the part, especially when she was out to impress new people!

In short, Griselda suddenly found that she was her old self, and without any whispered entreaty from dark powers to bring that state of affairs about. And she had never experienced it before. It had always been she who had instigated change by a whispered word to whatever force in the Universe responded to her demands. For the first time since her childhood she felt out of control, maybe even for the first time in her whole life, and the feeling was uncomfortable..

“Hey! What you done, you scarrap!” she demanded.

“I like to see people as nature intended them to be seen,” he replied quietly. “Delightful as you look when you disguise yourself as a pert young woman, a pert young woman is something you are not and I rather suspect have never been. I know it's a tragedy, but ladies who inhabited your neck of the woods have hardly ever been either pert or young. Born old, they are destined to die old. It has to do with reality.”

“You scarrap!” snapped Griselda for a second time. “The devil make your beard curl up and your willy shrink and put you in your place, you frightful little ogre!”

She was, of course, expecting things to happen as a result of her entreaty, but to her dismay nothing did. At least, the hunchback's beard remained the same as it had been before her utterances and even though she couldn't see what was going on inside his pants she was pretty sure nothing was.

“Don't be silly, dear!” he snapped, anger suddenly shining from eyes that had hitherto looked relatively lifeless. “You are in the presence of one of the Old Masters and your silly spells and chants will do nothing now! I, my dear, am Professor Stroggleoff and I am the Power of Gish! I can raise demons! I can create storms! I can destroy nations! So sure as sure I can neutralise the silly tricks you have got used to playing with in order to get your pathetic way! So there's no sense in you trying. The only way you will ever be able to get close to equalling my powers is to get powers of your own, and look at you! A feeble creature, one foot in the grave, old and pathetic and useless and with no trace of real magic about you!

“So be warned, Griselda Entwhistle. Your magical days are over and you are an old woman who can only continue to grow older and older until you die like old women everywhere die, whereas I will slowly gain ever more strength until I am the most powerful man on Earth.

“Then, and only then, I will become the Pope!”