The Witch With the Glitch Read online

  Contents

  chapter one - the hidden room in the lost bookshop

  chapter two - magic in the woods

  chapter three - ghostly goings-on

  chapter four - what does a gingerbread house taste like?

  chapter five - follow the pebble people-path

  chapter six - nina goes batty

  chapter seven - help is at hand

  chapter eight - where wolf?

  chapter nine - if the wind changes you'll stay like that

  chapter ten - ghost-girl, wolf-boy and bat-girl

  chapter eleven - follow that owl

  chapter twelve - the castle of van helsing

  chapter thirteen - van the scaredy cat man

  chapter fourteen - you're coming with us

  chapter fifteen - time is running out

  chapter sixteen - what colour are witches?

  chapter seventeen - back to the lost bookshop

  the end?

  thank you

  about the author

  chapter one - the hidden room in the lost bookshop

  The children had come to the Lost Bookshop looking for an adventure. It wasn’t every weekend that Nina, her best friend Ivy, and Oswald (who Nina used to know as ‘that boy who hangs around the bookshop’) were all together in the shop. But on this particular Saturday, they were.

  And on this Saturday, Nina’s Uncle Bill had them all working hard, tidying up different sections of the bookshop. Ivy had arrived as the shop opened, her parents dropped her off as Nina turned the sign on the door from ‘closed’ to ‘open’, and Oswald had turned up not long after. Oswald took the bus in spite of being a year younger than the girls. He always said that his parents didn’t care what he did. Nina thought that might be because they were the sort of parents who were safe in the knowledge their son was the sort of boy who hung out in bookshops and libraries.

  Well, that’s what they thought anyway.

  Nina and Ivy knew differently because they had been on the adventures too. Taming lions, Wild West shootouts, pirates, ninjas, fairies, lost castles, found treasure, under seas and over skies. If the grown-ups had known anything they would have…

  Well, they probably would have made the children tidy up the bookshop instead of going into the hidden room.

  “What I don’t understand,” said Nina, as she poked her head through a doorway to see Ivy moving a dusty stack of books from one side of the room to the other, one or two at a time, “is how he can tell if we’ve tidied up at all.”

  Ivy smiled and pushed her blond hair out of her eyes as she looked up at her best friend. “I don’t know,” she replied. “But somehow he knows.”

  “He has no idea about this, though.” Nina waved a silver key at Ivy. It hung from a chain around her neck.

  Ivy knew it was the key to the hidden room. The room that had remained undiscovered until Uncle Bill had found it behind an ancient bookshelf. The room that only the children had ever entered. The room that led to untold adventures.

  “I’ve still got to sort all these books out,” said Ivy, pointing towards the stacks and stacks of unsorted hardbacks and paperbacks all piled precariously on the floor. “How did you finish so quickly anyway?”

  “Oh it was easy,” said Nina with a wicked grin.

  “Tell me!”

  “How many rooms are in the bookshop?” asked Nina.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Ivy, standing up and dusting herself down. “It’s impossible to say. Sometimes I think I know, and then I turn down a corridor and it’s like I’ve never been there before. It’s as if they move.”

  Nina laughed. “Exactly,” she said. “So the chances of Uncle Bill remembering which room he asked you to tidy are this big…” Nina held up her index finger and thumb and showed Ivy a gap so small they almost touched.

  Ivy nodded.

  “And,” Nina continued, “when you’ve finished tidying how do the rooms look?”

  “Pretty much the same,” said Ivy with a smile.

  Nina nodded.

  “But just in case, give me a hand and we’ll do one little thing...” Nina trailed off as she got down on her hands and knees next to the stacks of books Ivy still had to sort out. “Well...come on!”

  Ivy realised what her friend was up to and hopped down next to her. The pair of them carefully pushed the stacks of books across the floor from one side of the room to the other.

  Nina hopped to her feet. “There!” she exclaimed. “All done. And no-one will be any the wiser.”

  “No-one will be any the wiser about what?” said a voice.

  Both of the girls jumped in fright and spun around to face the door. They breathed a sigh of relief when they saw it was Oswald.

  “Oswald!” said Ivy.

  “Don’t sneak around like that,” said Nina. “You gave me a fright!”

  “Did you cheat as well?” asked Ivy sheepishly.

  “Cheat at what?” asked Oswald. Then, noticing what the girls were doing, he added, “Certainly not! I did it quickly. I know where all the—”

  “Okay, okay we get the idea,” Nina interrupted. “Anyway, let’s go!”

  Nina shoved past Oswald and out into the corridor, picking up speed as she did so. Ivy followed suit and Oswald twisted around, nearly losing his small, round glasses. He pushed them back up onto his face before jogging after the girls.

  It was surprising how quickly they could move, considering all the obstacles that surrounded them. You see, the bookshop wasn’t simply filled with books. Oh no. It was bursting with them. The shelves that had originally lined the walls of each of the rooms and side rooms had spread to the corridors, and eventually to every upright surface in the shop.

  And then more bookshelves had grown from the floors in the middle of room until they too had filled with small books, large books, paperback books, hardback books, books with pictures, books with only words, long books, short books. Books, books and more books!

  Once the shelves had been filled, they piled the books by the sides and on the floors until it was difficult to step anywhere without your foot or your leg nudging the edge of a story. But because it was Nina’s Aunty Ann and Uncle Bill who owned the Lost Bookshop, Nina had been there on and off for her whole life. The gaps between the books were practically her footsteps and so she stepped fast and sure, moving purposefully forward with Ivy and Oswald struggling a little to keep up.

  Soon they skidded around a corner and reached an old wooden door with a sign that said ‘staff only’. Nina flung it open and ran through, stopping suddenly at the top of a wooden spiral staircase. Her eyes flashed as she hopped up onto the bannister and slid, round and round, down and down, all the way to the bottom.

  “Come on!” she cried, waiting for her friends to follow.

  Ivy hopped on and sped down the bannister, giggling as she spiralled down, round and round, hopping off at the bottom more than a little dizzy. Oswald shook his head and ran down the steps, taking them two at a time.

  “Scaredy cat!” said Nina, sticking her tongue out at him.

  Oswald crossed his eyes and stuck his tongue out right back at her.

  The three children laughed as they pushed open the downstairs door and found themselves in Uncle Bill’s office, an open fire roaring in the hearth opposite the door.

  “I didn’t realise this door came out here,” said Oswald, scratching his head.

  Nina shrugged. “Apparently it does today.”

  There was a cough from the other side of the room. It was Uncle Bill, sat behind a large wooden desk piled high with books.

  “Mischief?” was the only word he said.

  Nina didn’t answer. Instead she shook her head before running over to him
and planting a great big kiss right on his cheek.

  “Your beard tickles,” she giggled. “And we’ve finished tidying, so can we play now?”

  “There’s no way you lot—” he began.

  “Billy, if they’ve finished let them have some fun!” Aunty Ann’s voice floated in from somewhere nearby. “What mischief could they possibly get up to in the bookshop? And anyway, the kettle’s just boiled.”

  Uncle Bill nodded, stood up and scratched absently at his grey beard. “A nice cup of tea wouldn’t go amiss about now,” he said.

  The children looked at one another excitedly, but when they turned back Uncle Bill had vanished.

  “How does he do that?” asked Oswald.

  Nina shrugged, then sneaked stealthily out of the room with the other two children creeping after her.

  A twist and a turn later and Nina, Ivy and Oswald were standing in front of the door to the hidden room. Nina whipped the key out, jammed it in the lock and turned it. A familiar rusty, clanking noise shuddered through the air as the old mechanism unlocked the door.

  There was a loud creak that the children could feel in the pits of their tummies as Nina pushed it slowly open, followed by a strange hiss that sounded a little like a snake sighing. The children could smell dust, and something else. Something that was different. Chocolate? Or sweeties perhaps?

  Whatever it was, they didn’t have time to stop and think about it – the grown-ups might find them at any second. The three friends piled into the hidden room and slammed the door, shutting it tight.

  Usually there was light in the hidden room, trickling down through the dust from windows high above the shelves. But today, as the door clunked closed, the children couldn’t see their own hands in front of their faces. Oswald took a tentative step forward but tripped over Ivy’s foot. He tumbled forward, putting out his hands to break his fall, and as he did so his fingers caught a book, falling too.

  “Uh oh,” he said, holding the book in front of his face and trying to make out what it was

  “What?” one of the girls asked, but it was too late. Dust swirled around the room, picking up speed, spinning and spinning. The room lurched and the children staggered, stumbling forward as the world spun round and round until, with a thunderous bang, the spinning stopped and everything went dark.

  chapter two - magic in the woods

  The children walked forwards in the darkness for a few steps and almost at once became aware that the ground under their feet, which should have been solid wooden floorboards, now felt more spongy and springy.

  A few more cautious steps and the light had returned, ever-so slightly. Beneath their shoes they could see what looked like grass and patches of brown earth.

  Nina pushed forward, moving something out of the way, and, just like that, sunlight came streaming down. She looked at what she had moved and found a bunch of overhanging branches and leaves. Turning around, she could see the others behind her. They were coming out of deep, dark woods and into a clearing in a forest.

  “A forest,” Ivy nodded. “That’s new.”

  “What did you expect?” Nina’s eyes flashed with mischief. “A room full of books?”

  Oswald ducked a low-hanging branch, but a twig caught his glasses, whipping them off and boinging them forward past Nina and into the clearing.

  “Oh great,” he grumbled. “Can anyone see where they went? I can’t find them without them.”

  Ivy darted forward, her blonde ponytail narrowly missing getting caught too. She spotted the glasses lying next to a cluster of bright red toadstools.

  “Here they are!” she said, picking them up and giving them a wipe on her t-shirt just like she’d seen Oswald do so many times before. But her mouth fell open in surprise and she pointed at something on the edge of the clearing. “Oh my goodness. Look at that!”

  “What? What?” cried Oswald. “I can’t see.”

  He grabbed his glasses, popped them back on, and immediately everything came back into focus. But it wasn’t exactly what he had expected. On the edge of the clearing was a house. It had a brown door, as you might expect, but the walls were bright pink with white spots all over and the roof…well, the roof was like a multi-coloured mixed-up rainbow of bobbles and swirls. Oswald blinked and gave his glasses another rub just to be sure, but it didn’t make much difference. No matter how hard he stared, he was one hundred per cent sure that the house was made of sweets.

  As the children edged closer and closer they could see it in better and better detail. The door was made of chocolate, the walls covered with cake icing and spotted with white chocolate buttons. Candy rock and candy canes framed the windows and in every available gap there were lollipops and sugar dusted jellies and...

  “Wow,” said Nina. “That’s a lot of sweets.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many sweets in my whole, entire life,” added Ivy.

  “What do you think happens when it rains?” asked Oswald, who was a practical-minded sort of boy. “Do you think it all melts?”

  “I expect it’s magic,” said Nina. “You can’t just build a house out of sweets. Something like this has to be magic.”

  Ivy nodded. “And I expect they’ve thought of the whole rain issue.”

  “So if it’s magic I expect we shouldn’t eat it then?” asked Oswald as he edged closer to the house. “Not even a little bit?”

  He reached out his hand, but Ivy gave it a little smack.

  “No!” she snapped. “You’ve read fairytales before. If we eat the house—”

  But Ivy didn’t get the chance to finish because suddenly the candy house made a noise that sounded like whurp ping! The children turned to see what was going on and, as they did, a pink mist flew out of a window and zapped straight into them.

  Nina, Ivy and Oswald were knocked to the ground like pins in a bowling alley.

  “Ow!” said Oswald, rubbing his chest where the magical force had hit him.

  “What was that?” asked Ivy.

  “Urrrgh,” grumbled Nina. “Magic, I guess. And we didn’t even do anything.”

  The children got to their feet and Oswald and Nina dusted themselves down. But Ivy didn’t. She swayed slightly and rubbed her head. Something wasn’t right. Something was different. And not in a good way.

  Ivy was about to tell the others how funny she felt, but when she looked over she saw Nina leaning towards Oswald’s neck. It was as if she was in a trance – her mouth was wide open and, if Ivy wasn’t mistaken, Nina had developed two long, pointy fangs.

  “Hey!” she shouted. “What are you doing?”

  Nina looked up, distracted and confused. Ivy ran towards them, but Oswald had obviously got a fright when she shouted. He jumped out of the way, then something even more peculiar happened.

  Oswald’s nose began to grow, his chin too, in fact his whole body seemed to shift and, as it did, a thick grey fur developed. His clothes began to stretch, almost bursting at the seams as he dropped down on to all fours, no longer looking much like the friend they knew. Now he looked more like a wolf. A werewolf.

  “No, no, no!” said Ivy and, staggering forward, she tripped over her own feet. She tumbled head over heels but, instead of bumping into Nina and Oswald, she passed straight through them. As she fell further forward she closed her eyes, expecting to hit the hard candy of the walls, but instead she passed straight through them too.

  Ivy came to rest in the parlour of the gingerbread house. She stood still for a moment, trying to work out what had happened.

  “Oh great,” said a voice she didn’t recognise. “A ghost. That’s all I need. Go on, get knotted, you can’t come in here to haunt my house! Go on, shoo!”

  chapter three - ghostly goings-on

  Ivy reached up and touched her brow. It felt normal. A little cold perhaps, but a moment ago they had been outside in the woods. She seemed quite solid.

  Which was more than a little worrying since all the evidence was pointing to the fact that she cou
ld no longer touch anything. For instance, at that very moment she wasn’t just standing in the parlour of the candy house. No. She was standing in the middle of a table in the parlour of the candy house.

  Her legs and her feet were underneath the table. The tabletop passed straight through her tummy and the top of her was above the table. Ivy moved her hand towards one of the chairs, hoping to push it out of the way, but her hand passed right through as if it wasn’t there at all.

  “Are you quite finished?” the voice piped up again. “I’m actually in the middle of something important here.”

  Finally, Ivy turned around and, by the fire on the other side of the parlour, was a woman in a rocking chair. She was almost normal looking, young-ish and pretty, but there were three slightly odd things about her.

  Firstly, her skin was bright green like the colour of leaves on a tree. Secondly, she wore a black, pointed hat and, thirdly, in her hand was a long, wooden stick. A wand, Ivy thought.

  “You did this!” Ivy snapped, suddenly getting very cross at the woman, who might have been a witch.

  “What?” the witchy woman shouted. “No! Why would you say that?”

  Ivy stormed over to the green-skinned lady and pointed a finger towards her.

  “Why would I say that?” Ivy shouted. “Why? Well, that’s quite simple. Because a moment ago me and my two friends were outside admiring your candy house and whoosh – some magical force wallops us and... and... something has happened to all of us.”

  Ivy stood waving her finger at the witch. She was so cross her face had turned bright red.

  “Ah,” said the witch quietly. “That might have been a little bit to do with me.”

  “A little bit?” Ivy snapped. “You turned me into a ghost!”

  “Ah.”

  “I’m not even dead!”

  “Oh.”

  “And I think my best friend might be a vampire.”

  “Erm.”

  “And my other friend is probably a werewolf.”

  “Oops.” The witch lifted the front of her pointy hat and scratched her head. “Yes, that sounds a bit like something that was possibly completely my fault.”