L ucy Gringe, soaking wet and filthy, came in kicking and screaming.
"Get off me, you weird cow!" she yelled, and swung a kick that landed hard on Linda's shins. The rest of the Coven - including the Witch Mother - gasped. Not one of them would have dared do that to Linda.
Linda stopped dead, and the Coven fell deathly quiet. Suddenly Linda yanked Lucy's head back with a vicious tug and twisted Lucy's braids up into a tight knot so that they pulled hard against her scalp. Lucy yelped, though Wolf Boy could see she tried not to. Linda narrowed her eyes, and twin blue needles of light shot through the gloom and played on Lucy's pale face.
"I'd do you for that if you weren't heading for the you-know-what - you dirty little ratbutt," the witch snarled. She gave another tug on Lucy's hair. Lucy twisted around and, to Wolf Boy's admiration, she tried to land a punch. This time Linda deftly sidestepped her.
Wolf Boy was shocked. It was Lucy Gringe - Simon's girlfriend. No wonder Simon hadn't been able to find her. He relaxed a little. Simon's girlfriend or not, at least he now had an ally, another human. There was something about the Coven that was not human. He could feel it: a cold disconnection, an allegiance to something else. He guessed that this was how people felt when surrounded by the wolverines in the Forest - totally alone. But now he wasn't alone...another human being was in the room. Linda dragged Lucy across the kitchen, kicking her way through the piles of trash. She stopped beside Wolf Boy and then, as though handing over the reins, she gave him Lucy's braids to hold. Wolf Boy took them reluctantly and flashed Lucy an apologetic glance. Lucy took in the glance, then glared at the surrounding witches and tossed her head angrily. She reminded Wolf Boy of an unpredictable pony. What bothered Wolf Boy was why the witch had given him Lucy's braids to hold - what were they planning? As if in answer, the Witch Mother teetered up to him on her spiked shoes and stood so close that he could smell her cat breath and see the red blotches deep inside the cracks in her makeup.
She pointed a grubby finger with a loose black fingernail at Lucy. "Feed that to the Grim," she spat at Wolf Boy. Then she spun around on her heel spikes and teetered back to the ladder.
Wolf Boy was horrified. "No!" he yelled, his voice shooting up an octave. The Witch Mother stopped and turned to face him. "What did you say?" she asked icily. The other witches shifted uncomfortably. When the Witch Mother spoke like that, there was going to be trouble. Wolf Boy stood his ground. He remembered what Aunt Zelda's letter said: You may refuse anything human.
"No," he repeated firmly.
"Witch Mother, let me feed the filthy little fleabrain to the Grim," said Linda. The Witch Mother looked proudly at Linda. She had chosen a worthy successor. "Do it," she said.
Linda smiled in her special ghastly way that the Witch Mother loved so much. Wolf Boy saw Lucy go tense, like a wolverine waiting to pounce. He could see she was scanning the exits from the kitchen, but he had already done that, and he knew there were none - except down to the cellar. Two witches had positioned themselves at the kitchen door and Dorinda was lurking at the foot of the ladder. There was no way out. In front of Wolf Boy and Lucy was a pile of stinking garbage, which Linda now began to demolish. Wolf Boy gently tugged Lucy's braids and they both stepped back from flying lumps of slimy turnip and decayed rabbit. Soon the kitchen was strewn with showers of trash, and Dorinda had a rotten chicken's head peering out from the folds of her towel turban. All that was left of the pile was a compacted black crust of ancient vegetable peelings and bones.
Linda surveyed her work with satisfaction. She turned to Lucy and pointed to the revolting mess. "Scrape it off, toad breath," she hissed.
Lucy did not move. Dorinda - who was terrified of Linda and always tried to be helpful - grabbed a spade from a pile of implements in the corner and handed it to Lucy. Linda glared at Dorinda; this was not how she had intended for Lucy to remove the mess. Lucy seized the spade, but Linda was no fool. She saw the way Lucy was eyeing her. "I'll do it," Linda snapped, snatching away the spade.
Linda's angry shoveling revealed a pressed dead cat, a rat's nest with three babies - which she flattened with the spade - and finally a massive rusted iron trapdoor.
"Oooh," Dorinda trilled rather nervously.
Silence fell and everyone stared at the trapdoor. No one - not even the Witch Mother - knew what lay beneath. Of course they had all heard stories, and if the stories were only a little bit true it was certainly not going to be anything soft and cuddly. Suddenly, very dramatically - because Linda liked a bit of drama - Linda raised her arms and began to chant in a high wail, "Mirg...Mirg...Mirg ekawa, ekawa. Mirg...Mirg...Mirg - ekawaaaaaaaa!"
Wolf Boy had learned enough from his time with Aunt Zelda to know that this was a Darke Reverse Chant. But even if he had not known, there was something about the weird, catlike way Linda sang the words that made the blood feel cold in his veins. In front of him, Lucy shivered. She glanced back at Wolf Boy, the whites of her eyes shining. For the first time she looked afraid.
The chant died away, silence fell once more and an unpleasant feeling of expectation filled the air. Suddenly a tremor ran through the floor and Wolf Boy felt something shift. It was not a good feeling - he knew the rotten state of the Coven's floorboards and joists. A small whimper escaped from Dorinda.
Linda's eyes shone with excitement. She took the spade and stabbed it at the edge of the trapdoor, dislodging a mummified black snake that was curled in the gap. The snake flew into the air and joined the chicken head on top of Dorinda's towel. Dorinda froze, not daring to move. With the snake gone, Linda got the spade under the gap around the trapdoor; she gave it a powerful shove, and the trapdoor began to rise. Wolf Boy discovered he had been holding his breath. He breathed out, and when he breathed in again the smell of old fish and dirty water filled his nose. As the trapdoor rose, a swishing, gurgling sound emerged, and Wolf Boy realized that there was water below - deep water, by the sound of it.
The measured rising of the trapdoor mesmerized the occupants of the kitchen, including the cats, which for once stopped their hissing. Everyone watched the trapdoor slowly travel through 180 degrees and silently lay itself flat upon the floor, revealing a large square hole covered with a metal grating. Linda kneeled down, heaved off the grating and threw it to one side. She peered into the depths. Ten feet below, water rocked gently to and fro, its oily black surface just visible in the dim light. All seemed surprisingly calm. Irritated, Linda leaned farther - where was the Grim?
As if in answer, the surface of the water suddenly broke, and with a tremendous swish, a long black tentacle snaked into the air and thumped down onto the kitchen floor. Dorinda screamed. Wolf Boy reeled back - the tentacle had a strong stench of the Darkeness about it. Laughing, Linda smashed her spade on the tentacle. Wolf Boy winced - Darke or not, that must have hurt. The tentacle slithered back through the trapdoor and fell into the water with a splash. The water rocked and rippled for a few seconds, a few bubbles erupted, and some lazy red swirls of blood drifted to its oily surface.
Linda turned to face Lucy with a triumphant smile. "That was the Grim, Rabbitface. It will be back soon. And when it returns you can say hello to it, can't you? And if you speak nicely, it might be kind and drown you before it smashes you to bits. Or not. Ha ha."
Lucy glared at Linda. This did not go down well with the witch; Linda liked her victims scared, screaming and begging for mercy. Preferably all three, but any one of those would do. But Lucy was not obliging and that was really getting to Linda. Angrily, she grasped Lucy's arm and dug her nails in. Lucy did not flinch. Wolf Boy was deep in feral mode and thinking fast. Any minute now he was sure that Lucy's defiance was going to get her thrown through the trapdoor - he had to do something. Wolf Boy realized what he must do, but the problem was he was pretty sure it was something that Lucy would not take to very well. But there was no choice. He took a deep breath and said again, "I have come to feed the Grim. What will you give me?"
Linda looked furious - what was the boy up to? But she knew the Rules of the Coven, and she wasn't going to break them, particularly as she already thought of it as her Coven. "May I answer, Witch Mother?" she asked. The Witch Mother was finding the whole Grim business rather a strain. Her memory was not so good nowadays. She was getting older and didn't like changes in routine. And she particularly did not like tentacles.
"You may," she replied, unable to keep the relief out of her voice. Linda bared her teeth at Wolf Boy, like a dog that knows it has won a fight but will still not back down. "We give you this," she replied, poking Lucy sharply with the spade.
"What say you?"
Wolf Boy took a very deep breath. "Yes," he said.
Lucy spun around and glared at Wolf Boy.
"Oooh," Dorinda trilled, overcome with admiration for Wolf Boy. "Ooooh!"
Linda looked somewhat deflated. She had decided to push Lucy straight in after the boy refused her - which she was sure he would - and she had been looking forward to it. She had, in fact, decided to push the boy in too. Linda read a lot of detective novels and knew all about how important it was to get rid of witnesses. But she knew the Rules. She sighed petulantly. "Then let her be yours for GrimFood. Hmph."
"Good!" said the Witch Mother cheerily, as though someone had just told her that supper was ready. "That's settled then. Come on, girls. Time to go."
Linda had forgotten this part - that the GrimFeeder must be left to feed the Grim alone. For a moment her self-control left her - believe it or not, Linda had been exercising a fair amount of self-control in her treatment of Lucy - and she stamped her foot and screamed, "Nooooooo!"
"Come along now, Linda," said the Witch Mother disapprovingly. "Leave the GrimFeeder to do his work." And then, in a loud whisper, "We'll go upstairs and listen. Much more fun that way. And less...messy."
Linda refrained from saying she liked the messy parts, that ever since she dragged Lucy up from the cellar she had been really looking forward to the messy parts. Sulkily she followed the Witch Mother up the ladder. She was not, she told herself, going to put up with being bossed around for very much longer - not very much longer at all. Wolf Boy and Lucy watched the spiky boots of the Witch Mother disappear through the hole in the ceiling. They heard Linda heave the Witch Mother onto the landing (the Witch Mother had trouble with her knees), and then they listened to the shuffling of feet as the witches gathered to hear the sounds of the GrimFeeding. Right on cue a great gurgling came from the pit below. Three tentacles snaked out of the black water and slammed down onto the edge of the trapdoor with a tremendous thud. Lucy glared at Wolf Boy. Her nostrils flared like an angry horse, and she tossed her head.
"Don't even think of it, rat boy," she snarled, "or it will be you in there with the tentacles."
"I had to say it," hissed Wolf Boy, "otherwise they'd have pushed you in. This way, we get some time - some time to think how to get out of here."
Wolf Boy knew that the witches were upstairs waiting for the sounds of him feeding Lucy to the Grim, and he knew that they would not wait long. If they came down and discovered Lucy still in an undigested state, he had a pretty good idea of what would happen - they would both be GrimFood.
"We haven't got much time," he whispered. "I've a plan to get out of here, but you'll have to do what I say. Okay?"
"Do what you say? Why should I?"
Suddenly, with a head-spinning lurch, the floor heaved and a wash of filthy water spewed through the trapdoor. The Grim had surfaced.
"Yes," Lucy hissed urgently. "Yes. I'll do what you say. I promise."
"Okay. Good. Now listen to me - you are going to have to scream. Can you do that?"
Lucy's eyes lit up. "Oh, yes. I can scream. How loud?"
"As loud as you can," said Wolf Boy.
"You sure?"
Wolf Boy nodded impatiently.
"Okay, here goes. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaagh!"
The Grim retreated in a flurry of filthy water. Darke creature though it was, it lived a quiet life in the watery wastes of the Municipal drain, which ran along Fore Street and widened out to a comfortable space below the House of the Port Witch Coven. The Grim's hearing was adapted to the gentle gurglings and gloops of the drain, not to the screams of Lucy Gringe. The Grim sank back down onto the muddy brick floor of the Municipal drain and stuffed the tips of its tentacles into its multiple hearing tubes.
"Aaah! Aaaaaaaaaaaaah! Aaah! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!"
In the darkness of the Coven's kitchen lurked thirteen cats. The Coven's cats were a litter of bloodsucking kittens - now grown - that had been thrown from an incoming ship after they had ambushed the cabin boy and drained him dry of blood. Linda had recognized them for what they were. She had snatched a small boy's fishing net, scooped the vampire kittens from the harbor flotsam and taken them triumphantly back to the Coven, from where they sallied out to prey upon babies and small children.
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaah! Aaaaaah! Aaaaagh! Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!"
From the piles of rotting garbage, the cats Watched Wolf Boy frantically search for something to feed to the Grim. Wolf Boy could feel the Watching of twenty-nine pairs of eyes crawling across his skin and, in his feral state, he sensed where they were coming from. In less than thirty seconds, he found two cats hidden in a giant fungus beneath the sink. Wolf Boy pounced.
"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow!"
"Aaahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!"
Lucy's screams drowned out the cats' yowls perfectly.
Holding the struggling, scratching beasts at arm's length, Wolf Boy ran to the trapdoor. The dark water slapped and slopped below, but there was no sign of the Grim. It could feel the vibrations of Lucy's screams and it was not coming up for anything - not even fresh cat.
Lucy's screams began to falter. "Aaaaa...aaa...ahem...uhurgh!" She coughed and put her hand to her throat. I'm losing my voice, she mouthed. In the depths of the Municipal drain, the vibrations from Lucy's screams faded. The Grim removed its tentacles from its hearing tubes - which doubled as its nose - and it now smelled food. Fresh food. The oily water below the trapdoor began to stir, and suddenly a great black glistening head broke the surface. Wolf Boy let the cats drop. The effect was impressive.
The Grim flipped backward, revealing a great, gaping serrated beak. A forest of tentacles enclosed the screaming cats, and the kitchen was filled with a revolting, sucking sound as the Grim set about eating its first meal of fresh meat in almost fifty years. (The last meat had been provided by a young Aunt Zelda. She had been offered the Coven's goat and had accepted it, thankful that they had not given her the boy next door, which they had done to her predecessor, Betty Crackle. Betty had never quite recovered from this and refused to tell anyone whether she had accepted the boy or not. Aunt Zelda rather feared she had.)
The Grim, excited by fresh food, put a few tentacles out the trapdoor and began searching for more. (This had, on occasion, been successful. Intended Keepers did not always return from their Task.) As the thick tentacles with their powerful suckers crept toward Wolf Boy, his first instinct was to slam the trapdoor shut and get out of the kitchen fast - but there was still something he must do. Bracing himself against the Darke, Wolf Boy kneeled beside the trapdoor and took out a small, silver pocket knife. And then, to Lucy's amazement, with one swift slice, he cut off the tip of its tentacle. The Grim did not notice. It did not notice anything much anymore as, due to some bizarre evolutionary blip, each tentacle held a portion of the creature's brain. And with each successful visit of an Intended Keeper, the Grim became just a little bit more stupid. Clutching the bloodied portion of Grim brain, Darke and dripping, Wolf Boy triumphantly slammed the trapdoor shut - and immediately wished he hadn't. At the clang of the door hitting the metal rim, a distinctive Dorinda squeal came through the ceiling.
"Oooh, he's done it. He's fed her to the Grim!"
Suddenly a great thundering of boots erupted on the ceiling above and a shower of plaster rained down on Lucy and Wolf Boy. The Coven was on its way.