AN
BOOK!
A BOOK OF MISCHIEF AND MAGIC …
For Isabel, Eoin, Fabio and Adriana
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
1. Leaving Sunny Hills
2. Anna’s New Home
3. The Cellar At Crag Road
4. Meeting Mary
5. The First Spell
6. St Munchin’s
7. Grizz’s Revenge
8. Mrs Winkle’s Visit
9. Wormella’s Secret
10. Anna Fights Back
11. More Magic
12. Mrs Winkle’s Secret
13. Anna Goes Home
I. ANNA’S MAGIC MISTAKE
About the Author
‘ANNA THE WITCH’ BOOKS
Copyright
1
LEAVING SUNNY HILLS
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I first saw number 13 Crag Road. No wonder everyone at the Sunny Hills Children’s Home had sniggered when I’d said it was going to be my new home.
Everything about number 13 was crooked. Its walls were crooked, its chimneys were crooked. Even its doors and windows were crooked.
It looked like it was going to fall over any second.
But crooked or not, number 13 was my new home. You see, the two ladies who owned the place, Grizz and Wormella Mint, had adopted me.
My name’s Anna Kelly. I don’t have any parents, and I have never had a proper home. I’ve been at Sunny Hills Children’s Home since I was a tiny baby. By the time I was nine, so many people had decided NOT to adopt me that I had grown used to the idea of spending the rest of my life at Sunny Hills.
But I wasn’t happy about it, not one bit. Well, you try sleeping six to a room in a big old barn of a place, and see how much you like it. You couldn’t call anything your own at Sunny Hills!
So when Grizz and Wormella turned up, promising me a pink-and-white bedroom with its own private bathroom, a posh new school, new clothes, weekly pocket money and my own TV, I felt like I’d won the Lotto!
They had been so sweet in Mrs Pegg’s office. So sweet and so keen to have me. Very, very keen.
‘Anna, darling,’ the skinny one had cooed. ‘You’ll have the run of the house! You’ll be able to do exactly as you like!’
‘Thanks, Miss!’ I said.
‘Call me “aunty”, dear,’ she crooned.
The run of the house! Able to do what I wanted! That suited me just fine. I was used to a lot of rules and regulations at Sunny Hills. It was porridge at 7.00am, lights out at 9.00pm, that kind of thing.
But now! Now life was looking up! The two old dears’ only wish was to pamper me. I’d get new clothes, new toys … and I’d be going to the nicest school in town, St Munchin’s!
I’d always really wanted to go there. The place had everything – outings, after-school clubs, and sports. Lots and lots of sports. This was brilliant because I was mad keen on football – and I wasn’t bad at it either, if I do say so myself.
All in all, St Munchin’s sounded like something out of a storybook.
‘It’s a brand new start for you, Anna Kelly,’ Mrs Pegg said, as she bundled me into the cab with the two ladies. She bent and put her lips close to my ear.
‘Don’t muck it up!’ she hissed. ‘Do as you’re told. Keep your room tidy. And above all, Anna …’ Mrs Pegg’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Try to keep that stubborn streak of yours under control!’
Stubborn? Me? Just because I had staged a sitdown protest to force the management to give us chips every Friday. It wasn’t my fault the whole of Sunny Hills joined in …
So I promised Mrs Pegg I’d be a model child – and I had every intention of keeping that promise. This was my big chance, and it was going to get me out of Sunny Hills for good.
I must admit, though, I had a lump in my throat when I looked out of the back window of the car, and saw Mrs Pegg wiping her eyes with her hanky. She wasn’t a bad old stick, after all – and she was the closest thing I had to a mother.
But I swallowed hard, faced the front, and thought about the fantastic new life ahead of me.
It took exactly a minute after arriving at number 13 Crag Road for me to realise I’d made a mistake. A big, BIG mistake.
* * *
As soon as the front door slammed behind me, my two new aunts changed. Especially Grizz, the skinny one.
In Mrs Pegg’s office, Grizz had been kindness itself, all smiles in every direction. Now she planted herself in the hallway and pointed a long fingernail up the gloomy stairs.
‘Right,’ she barked. ‘Show the girl to her room, Wormella.’
The girl? Was that meant to be me? What happened to ‘Anna, darling’?
‘Yes, sister,’ piped Wormella.
In contrast to Grizz, who seemed to have grown taller and pointier since she got home, Wormella seemed to shrink into a small, pudgy ball. She pattered up the stairs in front of me, leaving me to carry my heavy bags by myself.
My bedroom turned out to be a tiny, dusty little attic with bare floorboards. No TV, no wardrobe, and no bathroom. Just a hard little bed and a battered cardboard box to keep my things in.
I was horrified.
‘Aunt Wormella,’ I began – but she had disappeared down the stairs without another word.
It didn’t take long to settle in – there wasn’t room to swing a hamster, let alone a cat. I wandered back downstairs to the brown, dirty kitchen and peeped through the open door.
The two sisters were sitting hunched over a wooden table, giggling like naughty schoolgirls. The air was foggy with the steam that poured from a huge, black cauldron bubbling on the cooker.
‘Now that we’ve got a dogsbody to do all the dirty work,’ Grizz was saying to Wormella. ‘Our spells are bound to start working!’
Dogsbody? Dirty work? Spells? What were they talking about?
‘Ahem!’ I coughed.
The aunts looked up, startled.
‘Have some nettle tea, dear,’ said Wormella quickly. She handed me a chipped mug and a plate. ‘Help yourself to bread and butter.’
I sat down and took a bite of the bread. It was gritty like it was made out of gravel or something, and the butter on top wasn’t yellow – it was grey.
I gulped a mouthful of tea. That was disgusting too, and tasted like nettles mixed with wee, but at least it washed down the bread.
‘Thank you,’ I said, and tried to smile as I pushed the mug and plate away.
‘Right, girl, rules of the house,’ barked Grizz. ‘Number one: you will work hard. Number two: you will work hard. Number three: you will work hard.’
Grizz howled with laughter at her own joke and then folded her arms.
‘That’s all,’ she said. ‘Goodnight.’
And that was that. The end of my first day in my new home.
2
ANNA’S NEW HOME
That was six weeks ago, and since then, things have gone from bad to worse.
Instead of the new trainers and jeans I was promised, I was black hat, black dress, black apron and black boots.
Instead of going to St Munchin’s and making lots of new friends, I was up at dawn every day, working. I’m only nine, and even I know that’s against the law.
The aunts didn’t care. They had me cleaning the house, digging up the garden, and slaving over the cauldron. They made me cook really horrible food, such as beetle legs in jelly and toenail toffee, and then bottle it. The food we ate was disgusting too. On a typical day, we would eat fish eyes on toast, live worm salad, and eel pie with slime on the side. There was never a sausage or a chip in sight.
But worst of all, I never got to speak to a soul, except Grizz and Wormella. Th
e only friend I had was Charlie, a black cat. He took a liking to me after I gave him my fish eyes.
Sometimes, when I was working in the kitchen, I’d look out of the window and see a blonde girl, about my own age, walking down the street. She wore a St Munchin’s blue uniform and she looked really cool. I’d see her playing with friends or riding her bike, and I’d wave and try and get her attention, but she never saw me. So I’d sigh and carry on working.
One morning, in the kitchen, the aunts were hunched over some stained yellow papers, and I was stirring the boiling black cauldron as usual.
‘This one sounds good, Wormy,’ said Grizz, licking her thin lips. ‘Tree-beetle custard. Yum yum. It’s been ages since we had some of that.’
‘Yes, sister,’ twittered Wormella, who rarely said anything else.
Grizz shot me an evil look.
‘We can send the girl out to get tree beetles tonight,’ she said. ‘She can go after dark, when it’s nice and quiet in the woods.’
My grip tightened on the wooden spoon. This was the last straw: Nice and quiet? More like spooky and DANGEROUS! I stopped stirring, whipped out the spoon and flung it across the dingy kitchen.
It soared over the heads of Grizz and Wormella, and missed Charlie by a whisker.
‘That’s it!’ I shouted. ‘That is finally, definitely, totally IT!’ I took off my pointy black hat and threw it on the floor.
‘What did you say?!’ roared Grizz. She pointed one of her talons at me. ‘How dare you!’
‘If you think I’m going to spend my life stirring beetles in this stupid cauldron – you can think again!’ I shouted.
‘Pick up that spoon and get on with your work, girl!’ said Grizz. ‘Or else!’
‘Or else what?’ I was so cross I didn’t care what I said. I made two fists with my hands.
‘I won’t do it! I’ve had enough!’ shouted. ‘I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m just an ordinary girl and I should be in school, not boiling to death in this dump!’
Grizz leapt from her seat and stalked towards me, while Wormella hid her fat face in her frilly apron.
‘School?’ shouted Grizz. ‘Do you think we adopted you from that dirty little kid’s home so you could swan about at school?’
That was typical. She was always going on about how I should be grateful for being rescued from Sunny Hills. As if it was my fault I didn’t have any parents. As if Sunny Hills wasn’t much, much nicer than Crag Road.
‘At least at Sunny Hills, I had friends,’ I shouted. ‘But here, I have nobody except Charlie – and he’s not even human!’
Charlie jumped from his seat and wound himself around my ankles.
‘No offence, Charlie,’ I said.
‘Friends?’ said Grizz. ‘We’re witches! We don’t have friends, we have victims!’
She threw her head back and cackled long and loud. My blood froze in my veins and even Wormella seemed to cower away from her sister.
So that was it. Grizz had finally admitted what we were all doing. Witchcraft! And I was helping! I tried to face Grizz down.
‘Look at this kip!’ I said, waving my arms around the kitchen. ‘It’s disgusting! And I don’t believe you have the first clue what you’re doing. Witches – ha! – you’re rubbish!’
I took off my black apron, threw it on top of the black hat and stamped on them both.
There was a sharp intake of breath from Wormella. Grizz’s face darkened in fury and her eyes narrowed to slits.
‘Ungrateful little …!’ shouted Grizz. ‘Wormella made that specially!’
‘And that’s another thing,’ I said. ‘We all look like we’re at a funeral. What have you done with my real clothes? Where are my jeans?’
‘Witches don’t wear jeans, dear,’ said Wormella.
Grizz whipped a black wand out of her apron pocket, and pointed it at me, chanting:
‘Short and freckly on the rug,
Turn this girl into a slug!’
Nothing happened – if you don’t count the fact that my heart nearly stopped in fright. You see, although I didn’t believe in witchcraft, these two looked pretty convincing.
Still, I needed to put on a brave face, so I cocked my head on one side and folded my arms.
‘Told you so,’ I said. ‘You’re not very good, are you?’
‘Oh, hellfire!’ shouted Grizz. She threw down her wand and rushed at me, seizing me by my ponytail and dragging me towards the stairs. Wormella trotted after us, getting in the way.
‘Oh dear, Grizz,’ Wormella said. ‘You’re not going to leave her in the cellar?’
‘Stand back, Wormella,’ Grizz said. ‘This little twerp needs taming. A few hours in the dark should do it.’
I stifled a whimper. Oh no, I thought. Not the dark – anything but the dark …
Grizz pushed past Wormella, opened the cellar door and threw me down some stone steps into a black, musty dungeon.
‘School, indeed! Waste of a young witch’s time!’ said Grizz.
‘I’m … not … a … witch,’ I shouted, thudding to the bottom of the steps. ‘And neither are you, Grizz, whatever you may think!’
‘Don’t touch anything!’ said Grizz. She flounced out, slamming the door and bolting it on the outside. I sprang to my feet, ran to the door and pounded on it.
‘Let me out!’ I shouted. There was no answer, except the sound of laughter …
3
THE CELLAR AT CRAG ROAD
I slid to the floor and hugged my knees, feeling the cold seep into my bones. It was completely silent – except for something scuttling somewhere in the dark. A chill shot up my spine.
‘Hello?’ I said in a quavering voice. ‘Anyone there?’
A soft miaow broke through the darkness. An instant later, two golden eyes and a black, furry shape crept out of the gloom.
‘Charlie!’ I said, breathing a sigh of relief. ‘You nearly gave me a heart attack!’
I settled Charlie on my lap. He gazed up at me and purred.
‘You do understand, don’t you, Charlie?’ I whispered. ‘It’s nothing personal, but I need to make friends of my own kind.’
Charlie nuzzled my chin in reply.
I peered into the dark and wrinkled my nose. The whole place smelt rotten, like a dead hedgehog that’s been out in the sun too long and has gone all maggotty. I slid my hand down to the floor. It felt slimy …
I leapt to my feet and Charlie fell off my lap, yowling in protest.
‘It’s all right for you, grumpy,’ I said. ‘Us mere humans can’t see in the dark. I could be sitting in anything.’
Charlie padded down the steps, towards the middle of the room.
‘Hey, wait for me!’ I shouted after him in sudden panic. I followed the sound of purring until I heard him jump onto something. His eyes gleamed in the darkness, guiding me towards him. I groped the flat surface around Charlie until I found a box that rattled. ‘Please let this be a box of matches, and not a box of rat bones,’ I muttered.
They were matches. I lit match after match, until I found a dusty candle. I lit it and my mouth fell open as I gazed around the cellar in the flickering light.
Brownish liquid was running down the walls and cobwebs hung in long strings from the ceiling. The scuttling sounds I’d heard were cockroaches feasting on piles of rubbish. There were large stars and circles chalked all over the stone floor.
In one corner, hanging from the ceiling like a mobile, was a human skeleton. A fat, hairy spider sat in the centre of its web between the rib bones. Both spider and skeleton swung slowly, back and forth, back and forth …
What a dump! This must be where Grizz tried out her spells. I started shivering – and not just from the cold.
Charlie miaowed. He was picking his way along some kind of worktop. As he stepped over a massive jumble of jam jars and sauce bottles, one of them spilled over and some stinky, green, gooey stuff oozed out. It smoked and sizzled on the worktop.
I watched, wit
h fingers pinching my nose. The green goo ate its way right through the solid wood and dripped onto the stone floor.
‘Come away now, Charlie!’ I shouted. ‘That’s acid!’
I hopped over the acid puddle to the worktop. On it lay a huge, black book with sharp, metal corners. It had silver letters on the cover, and it bulged with stained, yellow pages.
I inched closer and reached out my hand to open it …
Just then, Charlie yowled and leapt off the worktop. He flattened himself to the floor and crept towards a dark corner, tail waving. I put the candle on the worktop and crept after him.
‘What is it, boy?’ I said. ‘Can you smell something?’
In the corner were several large, square shapes, under filthy covers. I lifted a corner of one cover and peered underneath.
Six pairs of beady yellow eyes stared back at me through the glass wall of a fishtank.
I leapt back so fast I fell over Charlie, who arched his back and spat at the tank. I picked myself up and pulled off the cover.
The tank was home to at least a dozen hissing green snakes. I pulled off more covers to discover heaps of cages and buckets and tanks. They were packed with animals of all shapes and sizes.
Some of the cages held black rats, some held white mice, and some held scraggy-looking guinea pigs. The other tanks were full of slithering worms and snakes.
One of the snakes was eating its breakfast – it turned to stare at me and I saw the tail of a rat sticking out of its mouth.
But the last bucket I uncovered was the worst. It was full to the brim of wriggling, squirming maggots.
I put my hand over my mouth and backed away fast – I was sure I was going to be sick. I turned from the animals to the worktop. Once again, the black book caught my eye.
The Witch Apprentice Page 1
