CHAPTER NINETEEN: TRANSFORMATION IN THE DARK

Griselda uses her brains to escape from a nasty situation.

There is no darker corner of Mother Earth than the dark corners of an old witch's mind, and for a moment Griselda retreated into one of those dark corners. She had seen many things in her life, learned to manipulate both others and her environment, learned to always look after number one. And, she told herself, this was a time when all the lessons she had learned must come together in the shape of a plan or else!

She was somewhere she didn't understand with enemies around she couldn't comprehend. She was used to having some enemies, of course, occasionally they had seemed to number most of humanity, but they had been human foes she could easily defeat with the application of a little of her own brand of magic, which was in reality little more than a cheeky kind of subversion of reality than genuine Gandalf stuff.

But, being Griselda, she couldn't stay in a dark corner for long. Despite her advanced years she had both an active and an agile mind and she knew it was time to use it. And one thing she was certain of: that Janitor who apparently had an appetite for blood must be avoided at all costs.

Which was something uppermost on her mind when she heard the almost familiar sound of a voice.

“So where you are, my little pretty,” hissed Hagman, the Janitor. “I've been looking for you! Tell me, where is that pretty little skirt you were wearing? I thought you looked … desirable … in the pretty little skirt. It �" excites me, it reminds me that I was once a man with normal human appetites.”

His voice was coming from the shadows and she stared at the direction it was coming from. There was something wrong. It was his voice, all right, but even though she could hear it she got the impression that he wasn't quite sure where she was. The temptation was to shrink into a corner, further into the shadows than she already was, to become one with the gloom, but she pulled herself back in time because that would involve movement and movement would almost certainly give her away. He obviously knew she was quite close or his voice wouldn't have come sliming towards her through the dark shadows of the subterranean passage she found herself in. So, fighting natural instincts, she remained totally still, glad that she was no longer wearing the skirt he alluded to. She liked herself in it, but she didn't want him to find anything about her attractive. Not now. Not with his apparent appetites.

His voice continued. “Such pretty legs,” he mused aloud, “such a pert little bottom! So sweet a neck, a nice long neck so filled with juicy veins and arteries, and poor old Hagman is all alone in this University, lost to time, he is, all alone and thirsty for the sweetness of a young girl's blood...”

There was another silence and she could almost imagine him searching around with eyes that couldn't quite see into the shadows of that dark place, eager, maybe, for the least of movements, a shift from one leg to another, a sharp intake of breath, the beginnings of a sneeze, they would be enough to give his victim away.

“I saw you,” he hissed. “I saw you at the gate and I wanted you then! I should have taken you, yes I should, should have supped of your young blood before it grew toxic and old. Now old blood, that's a different matter, that is. Old blood's not for me! Bitter it is, like acid, and it burns and burns old Hagman's tongue! Hagman has no time for old blood!”

The pervert! she thought, the nasty, nasty little pervert! The sweetness of a young girl's blood indeed! Well I'll show him, watch me if I don't! I won't be a meal for the Hagmans of this world, I most certainly won't! Now let me see. If he gets off on a young woman's blood and finds the stuff that ought to be flowing through my old veins toxic, let's see what he intends to do to an old bird like I can be!

He might have noticed the transformation as Griselda swiftly morphed from a young woman wearing reinforced and somewhat tatty jeans into the old hag she surely was, with ragged old skirts sweeping the near-invisible ground round her feet, her angular features like forgotten bits and pieces stuck on a sallow face by some prankster and the air suddenly filled with the almost sickening aroma of an old woman running out of time. Even she felt her breakfast rising up into her throat as the fragrance of her own ancient body hit her.

“Is that you, Haggy dear?” she croaked when she was sure the transformation was complete. “Are you there waiting for your little Griselda and her bright red blood? Do you want her now? Do you want to find a juicy vein in my long, long neck?”

There was a sudden silence as the Janitor obviously stood as still as a mortal can and searched with both eyes and ears for the source of the voice. It was as if he was blind and deaf to her.

“Come to dadda,” he croaked, and he actually took a step towards her, blindly following the sound of her voice, or where he thought it had come from..

I'm not out of the fire yet, she thought, I might have saved my blood from premature consumption, but I must remember the rest of me. I think it might just be time for a little light on the scene. I wonder if I can create light like I used to be able to in the good old days?

She concentrated all of her mind and failed to produce the least flicker of illumination . Once she had been able to create just about anything by just requesting it of an unknown satanic force, but since her first entry into the University that skill (if skill it was) had deserted her, and she had been left with her shapes.. She tried, anyway.

“The devil make it light in here!” she almost hissed, but nothing happened save maybe the echo of a sardonic laugh from the depths of nowhere sounding in her mind as though it had come from an alien world a Universe away.

I'm on my own, then, she thought. Well, I always did believe there is more than one way of skinning a cat!

“What does a fine fellow like you want of little me?” she asked of the darkness, “and why the threat in your voice? I wish I had a torch in this darkness...” and her mind tried to create the shape of a torch in the air in front of her, the tubular body, the bright shining head, the little sliding switch

And, almost (but not quite) unexpectedly she felt her hands suddenly enclosing on something cold and steel and tubular. A torch, she thought, the kind of torch I'd have given a year's pocket money for when I was a kid … I never had a torch and I really, really wanted one...

It had been true! All children have a wish list and hers had included, among a vast collection of unsavoury things, a battery operated torch. This time, though, she was no child, and she switched the torch on, hoping it was as real as it felt and that it would actually work.

So that's all I have to do, she thought to herself. I made a torch out of shapes,

The beam shot out and landed firmly on the Janitor's face and his constantly moving hair. He took a step backwards, shocked by the sudden light, One hand flew up and shielded his eyes. The sudden light would have been bright enough to shock anyone, coming at them out of the darkness and shining into eyes with huge pupils trying to get more and more adapted to that darkness.

Griselda took a step towards him. “What's that about my nice young blood?” she asked. “What's that about you being thirsty for a young maiden's voice, little Haggy? Will I do, eh? Will little Griselda and her hooked nose and witch-like chin suffice? And my ancient, ancient blood?

She turned the torch onto herself so that he could see who he was talking to.

And he did. He took in her long black dress, the way its frayed hem reached down to the dusty floor of the hewn passageway, the cord that was loosely tied around her waist, the floppy black hat with its wide brim on her scrawny head, hiding thinning untidy hair.

Then, to her huge surprise, the watched as he fell onto the floor on his knees and clenched both hands in front of his face. The wretch was shaking like a nervous fig-leaf and he turned his sallow face towards her.

“Tell me, mistress,” he squawked, “tell me what to do, dear mistress, tell me how to worship you, and I will do it, for I am yours to command!!”