Witch Baby and Me After Dark

by Debi Gliori

  The dogs slowly rise up into the air as if somebody has inflated them like balloons. Their leashes are still stretched tight, but now they are straining for the sky. One of the security guards yells, ‘Hey, Gonzo! Homer! Stop that. Get doon. DOON, BOYS, DOON,’ as his feet leave the steps. Then he lets go of the leashes and his two dogs sail off into the night sky, barking enthusiastically. The other two dogs are close behind.

  ‘WAY my WAAAAAYYY-Woooo?’ Daisy demands.

  The two security guards gape at her. Already confused by the disappearance of their dogs, they appear to be too stunned to do anything about the gatecrashing spider. Then, shaking their heads as if waking from a dream, they step forward, hands outstretched to grab Daisy.

  Uh-oh. BAD idea, guys.

  ‘Er – hang on!’ I squeak, but I’m too late. For a split second all the darkness around Daisy shivers and disintegrates into dazzling splinters of light. What on earth? What has Daisy done now?

  I blink, and there’s the SPIDER-Daisy at the top of the steps. She turns round and waves her furry legs at us, as if to say, Oh, come on, do keep up, then heads into the brightly lit hallway. The security guards have vanished into thin air. There is no sign of them whatsoever. However, there are two rather confused-looking geese waddling aimlessly up and down by the stone railings on either side of the stairs – but . . . surely . . . no. No way. Daisy wouldn’t have turned the guards into geese . . . would she?

  This question will have to remain unanswered for now, because Daisy has spotted a huge oil painting hanging over the fireplace in the hall. Oh, dear. What a dismal picture. It shows a man standing in the rain in the middle of a peat bog with his boot placed on top of an enormous dead stag. Obviously one dead deer wasn’t enough for him because there’s another slung across the back of his horse.* Yeeeeeeeurrrghhhh. And bad as this is, what is really upsetting Daisy isn’t the sight of the deer. It’s what the deer-killer is holding on the end of a leash.

  Yup. A hunting dog that bears an uncanny resemblance to our very own WayWoof. Oh, dear. I look at Daisy. Oh, double dear. Daisy isn’t a furry spider any more. Daisy has turned herself back into a little girl. A little girl who looks so woebegone, you’d have to have a heart of stone not to feel really sorry for her.

  Ah. Talking of hearts of stone, here comes Annabel, dressed as Mary Queen of Scots, sweeping downstairs in a long white dress. For a split second she looks really lovely; then she opens her mouth and turns back into herself.

  ‘What on earth do you think you’re playing at?’ she demands. ‘However did you manage to get past the security guards?’ Then, without waiting for an answer, she strides past poor little Daisy and heads for the front door. ‘I say. Are those your geese?’ Annabel’s voice climbs higher as she adds, ‘They’re making the most dreadful mess all over our steps.’

  We turn to look. While we’ve been inside Mishnish Castle, the geese have managed to dump what looks like their entire body weight in goose-poo onto the stone steps and are now busily paddling it underfoot.

  ‘Wow. What huge birds. I’ve never seen them before,’ Vivaldi says, waggling her eyebrows at me.

  ‘No. Don’t. I say, knock it orf. Stop that!’ wails Annabel.

  The geese have turned their attention to her and are making little threatening, darting movements at her knees.

  ‘OW!’ Annabel yelps, shooing frantically at the geese, but to no avail. The geese are winning. Hissing balefully, the birds are herding Annabel out of her house and backwards down the stone steps.

  ‘AH! OUCH! OOYAH! NO! HELP! DO SOMETHING.’

  Luckily, since we’re bandaged from head to toe, the geese can’t do too much damage to our knees or ankles so we wade in to assist Annabel. Daisy remains indoors, watching from the top of the steps. I am delighted to see that she has cheered up. This is probably because the geese have taken her mind off WayWoof, even if only for a little while.

  Eventually Vivaldi and I manage to persuade the geese to leave Annabel alone and waddle off down the drive, away from Mishnish Castle. Presumably in search of the guard dogs that Daisy turned into balloons . . .

  ‘Well, yes. Ah, um . . .’ Annabel seems incapable of telling us how hugely grateful she is to us for saving her from the geese – or indeed, how to get rid of us, since she’s obviously not going to invite us to her party.

  ‘OK,’ Vivaldi says. ‘Here’s what we do. We tell you a joke or two, Daisy sings a song, you give us some sweets, some money and anything else you can think of, and in return we promise to go away.’

  Annabel blinks, but before she can make even a squeak of protest, Vivaldi begins.

  ‘Who did the ghost invite to her party?’

  Annabel frowns. ‘Er . . . hang on . . .’

  ‘Anyone she could dig up,’ I say, and Daisy, bless her, joins in with a loud, ‘TA-DAAAAAA!’

  What a team. By the time we leave, Annabel has several jokes to tell the guests at her party, and we now have six chocolate champagne truffles, two packets of sweet chilli-flavour crisps, three pound coins and a furry toy dog with one leg missing because it turns out that Annabel’s heart isn’t entirely made of stone.

  * Dressed up? That’s what he thinks . . . heh, heh, mwoah, mwoah, mwoah.

  * Bet the Ancient Egyptians would have loved to own Ancient Mobiles. You can just imagine their texts: HI TUT I WILL B 2000 YRS L8 4 T XXX YR MUMMY.

  * Which isn’t very fast at all.

  * The dogs’ teeth, not the men’s.

  * How can Jamie and Annabel bear to walk past this kind of gore-bath every day? It is so gruesome it’s almost scarier than Halloween.

  Nine:

  My demon sister

  ‘Hello? Miss Chin? It is I, your good friend Hare.’

  Silence greeted Mr Harukashi, friend to the Hisses* and daddy to Yoshito.

  ‘Miss Chin, I am standing on your doorstep, waiting to invite you to a little party I am having tonight. You will be the guest of honour, if you would be so kind as to open your door?’

  Leaves swirled around Hare’s ankles, and the moonshadows of branches looked like the fingers of giant skeletons clawing at the silent door of Arkon House. A lesser man would have given up and gone home, but not Hare. Hare was deeply, fatally, madly, insanely in love with the Chin,* and thus was prepared to stand on his beloved’s doorstep for as long as it took for her to relent and open the door. Hare was almost one hundred per cent positive that the Hisses were at home, because when the wind dropped, he could sometimes hear little whispery sounds coming from the other side of the door.

  Hare sighed and turned the collar of his coat up against the cold. So shy, his beloved Miss Chin. Just like his dearest only child, Yoshi. They’d be sure to get on famously if only he could persuade Miss Chin to be his guest tonight . . .

  ‘You answer it,’ the Nose sniggered. ‘It’s you he wants to see. Ooooh, hoo hooo. TEE HEEE HEE . . .’ She staggered away from the front door, overcome with mirth. The idea of her ugly Sister becoming the pin-up witch of this ridiculous little man . . . Oh, HEE HEEE, TEE HEE HEE.

  The Chin gritted her teeth. Really. This was insufferable. That pesky Nose was behaving like an idiotic giggly schoolgirl. So undignified. And as for the Toad . . .

  The Toad was squatting on the doormat, gazing up at her Sister with liquid eyes, her webbed fingers clasping unclasping as if in prayer.

  ‘Oh pleeeeeeeease. Can I be first bridesmaid?’ she whispered, a look of such longing passing across her warty face that the Chin wanted to scream out lOUD, but of course she couldn’t do that, because then that infuriating Mr Harukashi would know that she was there, on the other side of the door.

  ‘I know you’re there, dear lady,’ Mr Harukashi breathed through the keyhole. ‘I know you’re there, on the other side of the door.’

  The Chin stuffed her hands into her mouth to stifle a yelp. How could he know?

  ‘I know what you’re thinking, dearest Miss Chin,’ Hare confessed, leaning his forehead against the door. ‘You’re
wishing I would go away and leave you alone—’

  The Chin rolled her eyes. This was beyond a joke. How could this persistent little human possibly read her mind?

  ‘So romantic,’ the Toad whispered, wiping a tear from her eye. Another tear rolled down her face and plopped onto the doormat.

  From the other side of the hall, the Nose sniffed. What a lot of tosh. What a pile of ridiculous fiffle-faffle. What a pair of soggy, sloppy, marshmallowy fluff-brains her sisters were becoming. If it was up to her, she’d have turned Mr Harukashi into a prawn a long time ago. She stifled a little voice coming from somewhere deep inside her that said, You’re just jealous, you crabbit old sourpuss, then flung open the door to the hall cupboard, picked up a vast china trophy,* held it over her head, winked at the Chin . . . and deliberately hurled the trophy onto the floor.

  Now someone would have to answer the door.

  *

  We are standing outside Vivaldi’s house, arguing with Daisy. It’s even more freezing cold than it was when we left my house, and to my horror, I discover that not only did I leave my pumpkin lantern in Annabel’s garden, but at some point between Mishnish Castle and Four Winds, Daisy has turned herself into a SMALL DEMON. A SMALL naked DEMON. She is bright red all over and is wearing nothing warmer than a pair of horns and a forked tail.

  ‘Come on, Daze,’ I try to reason with her. ‘Why not turn yourself into something warm?’

  Daisy merely rolls her red eyes and flicks her tail at me.

  ‘At least she’s not crying,’ Vivaldi hisses in my ear. ‘And besides, if she gets too cold, she’ll soon change into something different.’

  I don’t reply because all of a sudden I can smell a familiar whiff of cabbages and rotting fish; a dustbinny, gassy stench that can only be the perfume of . . . WayWoof!

  Brilliant. WayWoof must be in Vivaldi’s house. I sneak a glance at the Daisy demon, wondering if she’s noticed the smell, but she’s humming to herself as she winds her tail round and round her arm.

  ‘Ready?’ Vivaldi opens the door and we pile inside, picking our way through shoes, roller blades, pushchairs, school bags and all the stuff that Vivaldi’s family keep in their hallway. They are in the kitchen when we arrive, having supper by the light of several pumpkin lanterns. The twins, Mull and Skye, are banging their bowls on the table as if they can’t wait to be fed; Brahms, the baby, is fast asleep in his high-chair, and the only one missing is Mozart, Vivaldi’s little sister, who has gone to a Halloween party in the village. Vivaldi’s mum is dishing out pasta, while Vivaldi’s dad is spooning it into the twins as fast as he can. The twins flap their hands and crow with delight when they catch sight of Daisy the Demon, who leaps and spins, her tail spooling out behind her like the tail of a kite. Daisy loves this. She adores being the centre of attention, and while she is doing a DEMON-DANCE that makes the twins almost choke on their supper, I seize my chance.

  ‘Can you smell that?’ I whisper to Vivaldi.

  ‘What – that dreadful stink?’

  ‘Yes! It’s WayWoof. She must be somewhere in your house.’

  Vivaldi is just about to reply when Mull slides off his seat, trailing spaghetti behind him, and toddles over to stare at us. The closer he gets, the worse the smell becomes. Either WayWoof is just about to appear right under my nose, or . . .

  ‘Mull. Is that you?’ Vivaldi groans, adding, ‘Eeughhhhh. What have you done in your nappy?’

  There are some questions that you really don’t want to know the answer to. Vivaldi’s dad heaves a sigh, mutters something about it being his turn and hauls his smelly little boy off to the bathroom. Poor Mull. Poor Daisy too. I was so sure WayWoof was about to appear, a big pink grin smeared across her face, her teeth sunk into something horrible she’d stolen from a dustbin somewhere . . . Oh, WayWoof. Where have you gone?

  ‘Amazing costumes, girls,’ Vivaldi’s mum says, scraping spaghetti off Skye’s chin and re-inserting it in her open mouth.

  Daisy has finally stopped leaping around and is standing in front of the huge fish tank Vivaldi’s family have in their kitchen. ‘Ooooooo, fisses,’ she breathes. ‘Lookit fisses, Lil-Lil. No tuts fisses.’

  I’m torn between checking that Daisy sticks to her own rules and doesn’t touch the fishes, and making an attempt to distract Vivaldi’s mum from realizing just how amazing our costumes* really are.

  ‘Oh, Vivaldi, d’you remember the devil costume I made for you when you were still at nursery?’

  Vivaldi groans, ‘Mu-u-u-u-m,’ but her mum turns to me and carries on happily, ‘Oh, she looked so sweet. I made her a tiny little red jumpsuit and painted all the bits of her that stuck out with red stage make-up . . .’ Vivaldi doesn’t need any red make-up now; she is beet-red with embarrassment as her mum keeps going, seemingly unstoppable. ‘But her horns and tail kept on falling off.’

  Then, abruptly, Vivaldi’s mum stops spooning spaghetti into Skye and stands up.

  Uh-oh.

  ‘Can I have a wee look, Daisy?’ she says. ‘Can I see how your horns are held in place?’

  Aaaaargh. Vivaldi and I lock eyeballs in utter HORROR. Help. We have to stop this horn-investigation right now, before Vivaldi’s mum finds out that Daisy’s costume is the Real Thing. Then Vivaldi’s dad comes back into the kitchen, yawning widely.

  ‘Poor Mull,’ he says. ‘He’s gone to bed. Poor little chap is just dog-tired.’

  Daisy spins round, fish tank forgotten, her bottom lip popping out in warning. ‘Way is dog-tired?’ she demands, pushing past Vivaldi’s mum and heading for the kitchen door. ‘WAY gone, dog-tired?

  ‘WAYYYYYWOoOooOoOOOooOOoo?’

  Oh, good grief. Within seconds, Daisy’s wails set off first Skye, then baby Brahms, and suddenly the kitchen is full of sobbing tots.

  ‘WAY-hic-WAY-hic-Wooooo.’

  ‘Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.’

  ‘Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.’

  Vivaldi’s mum sits back down rapidly, and resumes spaghetti-spooning. Vivaldi’s dad goes to find some treats for the Guisers Who Made the Littlies Weep, and in the blink of an eye we’re back outside in the darkness once more.

  Phew. That was a narrow squeak.

  * Even if the Hisses don’t think so. Poor Hare has no idea what he’s dealing with. He doesn’t realize that his new neighbours, the two helpless old ladies with their pet frog, are actually three wicked witches.

  * I can hear you gasp, ‘Is he insane? Can’t he see that the Chin has a chin as sharp as a breadknife, and a nature to match? Doesn’t he realize that the Chin is hundreds of years old? Can’t he see that she is so ugly she makes mirrors smash? What is wrong with Hare that he cannot see the Chin for what she really is?’

  To which the only answer has to be: ‘Love is blind. Hare loves Miss Chin and there is nothing that anyone can do to change that.’

  * The hall cupboard at Arkon House is piled to the ceiling with stuff that the Hisses cannot bear to look at, but are unable to throw out. Old bristle-less brooms and dented pointy hats are crammed in beside rusted cauldrons, cracked crystal balls and chewed wands. The vast china trophy is a piece of ceramic nastiness and was won by the Nose when she came second in the South-western Soot-sweeping and Chimney-scaling Competition of 1827.

  * Well, Daisy’s costume really.

  Ten:

  Your personal maggot

  Waving goodbye from the door of Arkon House, the Nose forced herself to keep a smile on her face until Mr Harukashi’s car was safely out of sight. In the front passenger seat sat the Chin, wearing the expression of someone about to place her neck under a guillotine. All her cries of protest were to no avail. Every excuse she invented to explain why she couldn’t possibly be Mr Harukashi’s guest of honour was swept away by Hare’s determination that she should come to his house tonight.

  In vain she insisted, ‘I have to wash my hair,’ only to have Hare counter with, ‘Dear lady, you are perfect just the way you are.’

  Then the Chin tried, ‘Tuesday! Go
sh! That’s my night for . . . um . . . violin lessons.’

  Hare beamed. ‘You play violin? I too play a little. We will play duets together.’

  In utter desperation, out of earshot of her sisters, the Chin looked Hare straight in the eye and hissed, ‘Listen, mister. I’m over four hundred years old, I’m a witch, and if you insist on continuing with this ridiculous courtship, I’ll be forced to turn you into a maggot.’

  Hare burst out laughing, then took both of the Chin’s hands in his and said, ‘Hush, dearest lady. I do not understand your strange Scottish customs, but if you wish me to be your maggot . . . I would be honoured. I will try to be the very best maggot you have ever seen.’

  The Chin’s jaw dropped in disbelief. Never, in all her four hundred or so years, had she ever met anyone like Mr Harukashi. For spawn’s sake, she thought, is this human completely insane?

  ‘Your coat, dear Miss Chin.’

  In a daze, the Chin allowed herself to be coated, booted, hatted and accompanied out to Hare’s car, where she was placed carefully in the passenger seat and belted in.

  As Arkon House was swallowed up by darkness in the rear-view mirror, the Chin wondered just what exactly she’d let herself in for.

  As Mr Harukashi’s car disappeared into the night, the Nose slammed the front door shut and spun round to skewer the Toad with a glare. The smile she’d managed to keep on her face to fool Mr Harukashi had been wiped away. Now the Nose looked like a real witch. Her hair began to thrash and flail around her head, her hands twitched and sparks flew from her fingertips. To her horror, the Toad realized that at Halloween, without the Chin’s help, there was little she could do on her own to calm the Nose down.