Puddlebrain

Chapter Nineteen

In the dusty, dingy cellar, Puddlebrain scratched her ear.

"Nits?" asked Edna.

Puddlebrain glared at her sister. "A fly or something, actually."

Edna raised her eyebrows questioningly. Hmmm. Not convinced. Something bothered her and she couldn't quite remember what it was.

"Anyway," continued Puddlebrain. "We've got more important things to think about. We've just been spared a good roasting for one thing. Brenda Corrigan might well have followed Quentin, but I'm pretty sure the rest haven't and they'll be baying for our blood before too long."

Billy nodded his head. "The lady speaks sense. Amazing."

Puddlebrain ignored the gnome's comment and carried on.

"We have to either get out of here or find out what really happened."

Gemini shook her head vehemently. "Why should we care about that lot?" she wanted to know. "After what they just did? Let them disappear themselves off if they feel like it! Good riddance to bad rubbish, that's what I say"

Edna leaned forward. "I agree, Gemini. But if it's the only way to prove we didn't do it, we might have no choice." She leaned back again, confidently. "Besides, we've got our magic back now. If they don't believe us in the end, we'll disappear them off after their friends ourselves."

Billy frowned. "And back to your natural form you slip," he sneered. "That sort of talk is how you got into a mess in the first place. You need to..."

Billy stopped. The furrow on his forehead deepened. He was staring at the locked and bolted doorway.

A black shape, man-size and menacing, had just melted through the door.

"What...?"

The witches looked at him. Edna opened her mouth to speak, but the shadow touched her on the back of the head and she vanished. The thing rippled. Gemini went to scream, her eyes wide, but she didn't get the chance. Moving like water across glass, the black mass slid over and touched her too. She disappeared.

There was no sound. There was no flash. They were there, and then they were not.

Billy scrambled backwards as it moved towards him, but it ignored the gnome and headed for the remaining witch.

Puddlebrain knew she didn't have anywhere to run to. The cellar was too low and cramped to do anything, not that she would have known what to do anyway.

A glob of night stretched out from the shadow and reached for her. Instinctively she raised her arm, her finger pointing.

There was a flash and a shriek and the thing was gone, hit by a shot from Puddlebrain's hand.

The shriek faded slowly, almost dripping from the witch's ears. Billy crawled forward, for the first time having nothing to say. Puddlebrain lowered her arm carefully. Her ears were ringing from the sound the thing had made before it disappeared –like a thousand people all screaming at once. She looked around her. Apart from herself, the gnome and a few hundred dizzy specks of dust, the cellar was empty.

"W...?"

"Indeed," answered Billy. "I think we've just seen what happened to Mr. Bopsidy."

Puddlebrain shook her head to try and rattle some sanity back in. It didn't seem to work. Her sisters really had departed. She really had blasted a walking shadow into nothing – although how nothing could be blasted into nothing... It dawned on the witch that she may well have just destroyed the only thing that might have been able to bring her sisters back. Puddlebrain began to cry.