Witchy and the Stack

by Zeb Rafferty

  If she wants me to let go, to drift away and forget, then I’m definitely not doing it. That’s the last thing I should do, thought Charli.

  “You know Charlotte; you never need to feel like this. Nobody needs to tell you to do anything ever again,” said Witchy.”

  Charli tensed. Don’t relax, wake up, she thought. Go back, go back to my body. Listen, I can hear my breathing. With a whoosh, she could feel the warm, wet heaviness of her body. She was back in the room with Witchy.

  “Charlotte, why do you always do the wrong thing?” Witchy rasped.

  Charli’s eyes sprang open. Witchy was bent over her peering into her face.

  “Close your eyes right now and-”

  Charli stood up. She clenched her fists and looked back at Witchy defiantly.

  “Why don’t you leave me alone?”

  “So you want to be alone do you?” Witchy’s voice became silky and sweet but not in a nice way. “Perhaps you should have some time to yourself to think about how you’re hurting me? Yes, about how you only think about yourself.” She began to rub her hands together, faster and faster until they began to glow red.

  Then she blew on them.

  Charli could feel the heat radiating from Witchy’s hands. Then there was a sickening lurch. The walls and floors seemed to wobble, then bend and finally disappear.

  Chapter 14

  Charli was back in her own room in the Stack, lying on the large soft bed. She looked up at the ceiling. She yawned and settled comfortably into her pillow. As she closed her eyes she reached out and pulled the teddy bear into her arms.

  “You know Ted, I think she’s only nice to me because she wants me to do what she tells me to. But guess what…..” Charli leaned closer and began to rapidly whisper into his ear.

  That night when it was dark in the room Charli woke from a deep sleep. She didn’t really know whether it was a sound or a movement but her attention was fixed on the corner of the room where there was a small window which looked out onto the hallway. At first she couldn’t see anything but she knew something was there. She tried to sit up to get a better view but she couldn’t. It was then she realized that she was paralyzed. Apart from her eyes, she couldn’t move a single muscle in her body.

  Everything seemed to slow down to a sluggish, coiling undulation. Then it seemed to speed up so that Charli felt as though time itself was crushing her back against the bed.

  Next there was the scrape of fingernails on the window pane. Then, although she couldn’t be sure, she thought the window was beginning to open. It was! Every single fiber of her whole being wanted to get out of that room and away but she couldn’t.

  Charli watched helplessly as a hand pushed through the open window. The long-nailed fingers felt the wall, and then groped for the lock of the door.

  With a deft twist, it opened. Charli managed to scream. Her shriek seemed to break the spell of paralysis and she was able to sit up.

  “We know everything,” said Ted stepping into the room. Then he began to stretch and grow, and change.

  The bear elongated and flickered and then became Madeleine.

  “We told her everything.” Madeleine’s face began to distend. With a shimmer of light she was gone and standing there instead was Witchy, her long, shelly fingernails clicked together, as she came closer.

  “You know Charlotte, I don’t know if you can become one of us.” Witchy’s hair was a mass of coiling black eels, which darted instinctively in Charli’s direction.

  “I don’t want to be like you, you’re old and stupid,” Charli said. She wanted to poke her tongue out at the witch but Witchy’s furious glare stopped her.

  She grabbed the girl by the arm and threw her off the bed and onto the floor. Charli looked for a moment as though she were going to cry.

  “You could have joined us, could have been one of us. It’s exactly the same when you argue with your father.” Witchy took a step closer. “You only want to do what you want, don’t you; you only care about yourself!”

  “No!” shouted Charli Then a look of realization spread across her face. Witchy was trying to trick her. Again she heard the curse that Witchy had made as she and her father had escaped in the kayak from the Stack.

  No, thought Charli, she’s trying to trick me. She’s pretending that she doesn’t want me to be selfish, when that’s exactly what she does want me to be.

  Charli began to imagine her dad, looking for her all over the house, frantic with worry. She thought about her friends and teachers at school missing her, looking sadly at her empty chair in the classroom. Then she looked at Witchy. If only I could understand what poor Witchy has been through. She’s lonely. She needs a friend. Charli looked at the old woman and reached out her hand.

  “Witchy, I can’t stay with you all the time. But I could come and visit you if you like. We could be friends.”

  Witchy looked at Charli with horror. “No! Don’t think about me, or your dad, or the others.”

  She tried to smile. “It’s much better if you only think about you, about what you want. You understand that don’t you?”

  But it was too late. The magic that was holding Charli seemed to be weakening. At once the Stack began to shake.

  Witchy, whose lips had parted into a frozen grimace, turned her head to stare at Charli. Charli gazed back at her and realized in fright for the first time, that the old woman was truly out of her mind. Witchy slowly bent down and drew a circle on the floor with her long fingernail. The floor began to melt away.

  “No, we’re not going to be friends, not now,” she hissed. “But you will stay here with my other pets, until you change your mind, even if we have to wait until you become an old lady.”

  Witchy cupped her hand, her long fingernails touching each other. Then she reached out and grabbed the air in front of her. Charli was sucked towards Witchy like dust into a vacuum cleaner. Then she toppled down the hole.

  Chapter 16

  Charli hit cold water with a splash. While still under, she opened her eyes and looked around. Although it was dark, she could see the inner walls of the Stack. I must still be inside but somewhere at the bottom, she thought. Beneath her long strands of seaweed rippled lazily. She poked her head above the surface and took a deep breath. Then something touched her leg. Charli began to flail and thrash. Was it a shark? Then she felt it again, squishy and alive. Reluctantly she looked down into the water. A transparent mushroom-shaped cap over glowing tendrils stretched down into the deep.

  Charli stopped struggling for a moment. She gazed at it in wonder. She put her face back into the water and took it straight out again. There were hundreds perhaps thousands of them. It was a bloom of jellyfish.

  Then a searing pain prickled along her leg. She’d been stung. A bluish tentacle was wound around her knee. She swallowed a mouthful of water as she backed away. It was no good, she was surrounded. She swam down, desperate to get away but there were pulsating jellyfish all around her. They were coming closer and closer. For a moment she could hear Witchy’s cackle in her mind.

  She felt one of the jellies touch her foot. She waited for the agonizing burn of its sting but there was nothing. She saw that it was a giant stingray. It seemed to be smiling as it flapped its wings at her. Charli gazed warily at its giant black barb which she knew could kill but in spite of this; she sensed that the ray was friendly and that it had come to help her.

  Charli hesitated for a moment then grabbed the sting ray’s back with both hands. With a mighty swoosh of its wings it took off straight towards the jellyfish. At the last minute it darted to one side then shot out of the water. Charli held on for dear life and only just had time to take a deep breath before they plunged back into the water. They hurtled straight down twisting first to one side then to the other to avoid the poisonous tendrils of the jellyfish.

  Down and down they went to the very bottom of the Stack. Just as it seemed that there was nowhere to go, the stingray flipped over and they lurched to the
side into a dark tunnel. I just can’t hold on much longer, I am going to drown down here, thought Charli as she watched her breath begin to escape in bubbles from her mouth. Ahead of them, it was lighter but her heart dropped when she could see that the way was blocked by iron bars. There was no way out. Her eyes rolled upwards as she started to pass out.

  Just then the sting ray flipped onto its side and they were through the grate and out, out of the tunnel and into the open sea.

  With three swift strokes they were up to the surface. Charli coughed for a long time but she could feel the warm sunlight on her skin, and she knew that she was alive.

  At that moment, though her eyes were still closed she felt a shadow pass over them.

  “So you got out did you Charlotte?”

  Charli opened her eyes. It was Witchy. She was shrouded in mist. Although, she seemed to be quite a distance away, she was standing on a plank of wood, paddling easily and within a moment she was suddenly much closer.

  She pointed at the sting ray with her paddle.

  “Give up now or I’ll kill it. Come here!”

  Charli stroked the rough back of the sting ray. “Thank you for trying” she whispered into where she thought its ears might be. “As soon as I jump, I want you to dive and get as far away from here as you can, OK?”

  “Grab this.” Witchy extended her paddle.

  Charli noticed the yellow and black markings almost too late. She jerked backwards. The sting ray disappeared beneath the waves. The paddle was a sea snake. Its tongue flickered out sniffing the air. Witchy lifted it to strike at the ray again but then something happened.

  It started to rain. Not water mind you but something else. At first Charli couldn’t understand what they were. White and yellow, much larger and faster than droplets of rain, then she knew. They were gannets!

  The gannets were swarming and diving at Witchy. She swung her paddle trying to hit them but could only bellow in frustration and fury as the angry birds struck at her again and again.

  Right, thought Charli, I’ll swim for it. She looked at the shore, far in the distance and bit her lip doubtfully.

  Then out of nowhere, the sting ray returned and nudged her gently with its head.

  “You’re all right?” cried Charli, flinging her arms around the ray with joy. She looked back to where Witchy had been but she was gone. The gannets were gliding on the wind, watching and waiting, then diving like arrows into the water.

  “She must be under the water. They’re hunting her!” cried Charli. She swam over and settled onto the sting ray’s broad back. Before long Charli was standing on the beach looking sadly at the stingray in the shallows.

  “I’ll never forget you, or what you did for me,” said Charli, looking as if she was about to cry. The sting ray waved one of its wings, then the other and slipped under the water. Charli watched as it shot out of the water with a massive splash of spray and foam and then disappeared for the last time.

  Chapter 17

  She could hear the delighted shouts of children and laughter of grown ups all around, playing on the beach. It seemed to Charli that she had returned to the normal world.

  “Now time to go home,” she said softly to her self. She spun around smiling but her blood turned to ice.

  “It is time to go home now Charli. To our home.”

  Witchy was standing there on the beach. Her seaweed hair and seashell face had gone now. In fact she looked completely human, although to Charli there would always be something about her that was not human at all.

  “I’m not going with you!” Charli folded her arms and stamped one of her feet on the hard sand.

  Just then a mother and father walked past them, hand in hand. The woman raised an eyebrow and smiled at Witchy in sympathy. The man looked intently at Charli obviously thinking that she was a naughty little girl who didn’t want to leave the beach with her mother.

  “Come here,” Witchy said, louder this time.

  “No!”

  A figure stepped up from behind Charli.

  “Get away from her.”

  Charli whirled around. “Dad? Is that you?”

  “Ha, you’re going to save her like last time are you?” Witchy began to laugh. “Believe me, there is nothing, absolutely nothing you can do to stop me.”

  Witchy hesitated and looked strangely at Charli for a moment. Then she seemed to recover and rubbed the fingers of her left hand together and flicked dust at Charli’s dad. The dust glittered as it seemed to move and surround her father like a sparkling aura. His eyes grew dark and hooded. He was bewitched.

  “Bring her,” commanded Witchy.

  Dad took a jerky step forward. But all at once Charli understood. She clapped her hands together in delight. She knew why Witchy had given her that strange, hesitant look just a moment before.

  Dad stretched out to grasp Charli’s shoulder but she shook her finger at him.

  “No!” She bent down and picked up some sand and threw it at her father.

  “You will not be her slave. You will not be under her enchantment here.” The aura around dad glistened one last time then faded to nothing.

  Charli turned to Witchy. The sky darkened. Suddenly they were the only people on the beach.

  “This is not your place. You will not have power over me anymore.”

  Huge black clouds rolled in. The wind whipped at Charli’s hair. Witchy began to change. Her hair became wet, slimy seaweed. Her face, hands and fingernails began to calcify and become shell.

  “Just go!” shouted Charli at the witch as loudly as she could.

  Witchy made a diagonal cross with her arms in front of her. She clicked her fingernails three times against each other as she gave a piercing scream.

  Charli and Dad huddled together trying to close their eyes and ears against the angry shriek. And then, Witchy was gone. They looked at each other in relief. They were safe.

  Chapter 18

  Later that night, after a hot bath, and a huge meal, Charli told her Dad everything that had happened in the stack. Now she was lying in bed, sinking luxuriously towards sleep.

  Outside her window though, there was a fluttering noise. Charli became fully awake immediately. She lifted her blind. Just outside standing on her gutter was a small seagull. It squawked once and turned its head to the side and looked at Charli with one eye.

  “It’s just like…….Witchy,” muttered Charli as she looked into its cold black eye. Suddenly she seemed to be zooming over the sea. The Stack was there but it was shaking, breaking apart, then crashing down into the sea. She flew over it and continued to speed into the distance. Ahead of her was an island, a sharp rocky pinnacle that rose out of the ocean.

  A black shadow stood at the top, shrouded in a dark cloak. It looked back at Charli and seemed to smile. In Charli’s ear she heard Witchy’s soft voice.

  “We are not finished you and I. I’ll return to tell you a secret on your birthday.”

  Charli blinked and then she was back in her room. The seagull had gone. She rubbed her eyes and let the blinds fall down. Maybe I was just dreaming, she thought as she got into bed. She pulled the covers completely over her head, shivered once and then went to sleep.

  The End