CHAPTER FOURTEEN: NEW IMPROVED MAGIC AND A DEATH

A Chapter by Peter Rogerson

Griselda should really learn not to interfere with the lives and loves of strangers....

No sooner had Griselda been left on her own than she started to experiment with her new and improved powers. She might have been tired and aching to go to bed, but she knew she'd never be able to actually get to sleep until she'd resolved a few matters that were starting to whip round her mind in tormenting circles, particularly questions like “how do I do it without the evil power helping me?”

In the past all she'd had to do is start a request with the words “by the devil” or something similar, and an unknown force had come to her assistance and wonderfully impossible things had happened. Now whatever had made the improbable happen in the past seemed to have deserted her but somehow she had managed to dig deep into her own psyche and find the strength to make desirable things still happen in a gorgeously unnatural way. Using whatever it was inside her she had become her own niece again in front of the hunchbacked professor, much to his astonishment " and her own, if the truth were to be told.. Now she needed to experiment in order to check that it hadn't been a one-off due to the tension of the moment, which it might so easily have been.

A simple task, she thought, would be to return to her own natural and aged self, so she furrowed her brows and muttered “come on, Griselda, become your crotchety old self,” and no sooner had the grizzled command escaped her lips than she felt it happening " and much more swiftly, this time, as though familiarity with her powers eased whatever path they took between her brain and the outside world. Even though she was really very tired she was having a new kind of fun, and enjoyed it.

And there she was, within mere fractured moments, her ancient self. She looked into the mirror on the wall and nodded, delighted. That reflection was beautifully familiar! The wrinkles were exactly where they should be, her hair was as untidy and knotted as it usually was, pale grey and wispy and untidy, and her breasts were sagging like empty plastic bags inside what was now an oversized bra. And her bones started aching like old bones should, and although she grimaced as old familiar sensations flooded through her she was really delighted. Sometimes, she thought, an old person needs to feel old!

Now let me see, she thought, let's see if I can go riding through the night with the freedom of a bird! That would be the perfect proof that I don't need any daft old devil!

She looked around her room and nodded to herself with a pleased smile on her face. Leaning against one corner was one of those long poles with a hook on the end, the sort that are used for opening and closing windows that otherwise would be out of reach of even a tall person. She supposed that all the room must have one because all the rooms had really high windows.

“Just the job!” she muttered, and grabbed hold of it, holding it firmly besides her, her knuckles white as she made sure it didn't slip from her grip. “Just the job again,” she repeated, and she put one leg over it until she was sitting astride it, the very image of a picture-book witch. She glanced again into the mirror and cackled with delight when she saw her own reflection. Just beautiful, she thought. And although she still felt really tired she knew there were some things she should do before she would be able to get any sleep

“Now then, Griselda, off we go,” she breathed.

And the window-pole lifted into the air! It twitched a little to start with, maybe, but it lifted away from the floor and with her weight on it.

“Right, then,” she whispered. “Window open!”

And without needing the window-pole to do the task for which it had been designed, the sash window screeched its way downwards as if it hadn't been opened in years, and settled when it was wide open.

“Now for it,” she mouthed, and the pole and herself rose until she was level with the open window and sailed through it into a starlit night with the yellow moon hanging overhead in the sky like a great big melon accompanied by a myriad twinkling little stars. The air was refreshing, cooling as the night took command of the world, and the worst of her weariness seemed to dissolve away.

“Beautiful,” she whispered, and with a twitch of her bony backside against the wooden pole she sailed upwards until she was only a tiny witch-like figure high in the skies above the University buildings.

This is it, she thought, this is what life ought to be about, soaring here and there with the freedom of a bird, seeing what few mortals ever see, hidden from the common view and like a ghost in the night! She shivered. Like a ghost in the night, she thought again.

She tried a variety of manoeuvres, making the window pole climb and fall and twist and spin until the was almost dizzy, and then, unable to stop herself, she gave out a huge and very scary cackling laugh. It escaped from her thin old lips and echoed like the shriek of a dreadful demonic bird of pray from hell across fields and through villages, sweeping like a wall of evil sound down narrow streets and across oceans of forest.

She may have been virtually invisible, but she wasn't out of earshot, not when she was going to cackle like that!

“What in the name of goodness was that?” asked Sally Nickerless as she and Sammy Brummel sauntered hand in hand along the edge of a field where they were pretty sure any fumblings and letchings on their part would stand very little chance of being detected by those who might disapprove. They both had it in mind that a few horizontal gymnastics might be on the agenda before long, especially Sammy, who found that he had a suddenly and very large irritation in his underpants, which were too tight anyway for a big boy like him.

“If I didn't know it was impossible and there's no such thing I'd say it was a witch,” he replied, pausing and gazing around him. “Crikey, it sounded evil!”

“It's scary,” shivered Sally, “I'm frightened! I believe in witches and I don't like 'em!”

“It was most likely a bird of prey,” assured her gallant beau, changing his mind in order to calm her down. “They say there are quite a few eagles in the mountains, and they can't half make a din if they want to...”

“It didn't sound like any eagle to me,” whispered Sally. “Hold me, Sammy: keep me safe from bad things.”

It was at that point that Griselda noticed the two youngsters and decided to have some fun. It wasn't that she was really intent on doing them any harm, but the night air, still warm from the heat of the day, had refreshed her and she was feeling as frisky as a very old woman can feel when she's soaring over the countryside perched on a window pole with a freshening breeze on her face and mischief in her heart.

“Come closer then, Sal,” whispered Sammy. “I'll protect you from whatever evil is about, just you see if I don't.”

“You're big and strong and wonderful,” breathed Sally. “I'm glad you're my boyfriend and not that awful Eustace Cobblebum. He wouldn't be able to save me from whatever made that dreadful screech, not like you, he wouldn't!”

“I wouldn't have anything to do with him,” advised Sammy. “They say he's diseased in the trouser department. They say he's got the pox!”

“So someone told me,” murmured Sally. “I think it was you.”

“Me?” asked Sammy

“Yes. Who told me about Eustace Cobblebum being filled with pox.”

“Oh that. Yes, it's what I heard. In the trouser department.”

“It's a foul lie!” hissed Griselda from the shadow of an old oak tree, unaware of whether it was or not but determined to have her fun. And anyway, she could see what Sammy was up to. It was her kind of trick, which meant she didn't like it when it was used by others.

“Who's that?” whispered Sally, her heart pit-a-pattering in her chest as if it was about to burst.

“Who's there?” called Sammy, a little less nervously despite the sudden dryness in his mouth.

“I'm here!” squawked Griselda. “Your fiend from Hell, So boo! So burn me at the stake if you can!”

“It's a witch! I know it's a witch!” gabbled Sally. “I've heard there are witches in this village and that's exactly what they sound like! All squeaky and creaky and evil!”

“Beware!” squeaked Griselda. “Beware the voice of doom! Beware the Necromancer! Beware the spirit that pulls naughty boys' willies and tweaks naughty girls' t*****s!”

“I'm scareder than scared and I'm off!” yelped Sally, and she pulled free from Sammy before he could do anything to stop her and raced off, along the narrow pathway that lined the field and through a gap in the hedge until she reached the road...

...at precisely the same moment as Farmer Blackpants, sitting astride his tractor and humming a raucous little melody about the obscene antics of Old King Cole, came hurtling down a well-used lane on his journey from The Bear's Arse, a pleasant enough little country pub, on his way home.

One Sally Nickerless and one tractor can never, ever successfully occupy the same space on Mother Earth, so they didn't. And mere seconds later Sally lay bleeding profusely into the dried-mud of the road and Farmer Blackpants saw, with horror, that he would almost certainly lose his driving licence again, and started weeping into a crisp white handkerchief he always kept in his breast pocket for just such a purpose, him being of a sentimental nature.

“Cripes! What have I done?” muttered Griselda from her perch behind the old oak tree. “Serve them right, but why in the name of goodness did I have to interfere?”

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