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, with 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.
Was it my imagination, or had it moved towards me …?
Charlie jumped up and sniffed around the book’s metal edges – but, straight away, he started hissing and spitting and going mental. I looked at the silver letters on the book’s cover.
‘Ancient Evil: Spells for All Occasions,’ I read.
Great. A magic book. And not just any old magic book – an evil magic book. It was plain that this was where all Grizz’s stupid recipes and potions came from.
I opened Ancient Evil in the middle, and started reading.
Broomstick Potion
At dead of night, dig up three weeds,
Combine with blood and river reeds,
Add beetle brain and lizard jaw,
Add snotflakes, wee and one rat’s paw;
Paint your bot with all this mix
To give some speed to your broomsticks!
‘Paint your bot?’ I said. ‘That’s just plain disgusting.’
I turned the pages. What a load of rubbish! Witchcraft – ha! As if anyone in the twenty-first century was going to fall for that!
‘Watch me, Charlie,’ I said.
I started to cackle and rub my hands together, just like a real witch. Charlie’s round eyes went rounder. I picked up the heavy book and walked around with it, reading aloud another spell in my best cracked, witchy voice:
‘To see what kind of witch you are,
Stand inside a pointed star.
Read this spell out loud and clear,
Making sure no humans hear;
If you feel the shaking earth,
It means you’ve been a witch since birth!’
I looked down at Charlie and laughed. We had wandered inside one of the chalk stars on the floor, so I raised my foot to step out – and then I felt it.
A burning sensation started in the soles of my feet, and worked its way up into my whole body.
‘Whoah!’ I shouted. ‘What’s happening?’
An electric shock shot through me. I screamed and looked down.
The ground beneath me had started to move!
Charlie yowled and leapt onto my leg, as the floor began to shake more and more violently. The floor churned up and down, and glass bottles crashed from the shelves to the ground.
‘Charlie!’ I shouted. ‘Get out! Get out of the star!’
I dropped the book and stumbled out of the star, with Charlie still digging his claws into my leg. Instantly, the ground stopped shaking.
But I didn’t. Not for a long, long time.
