I cast my eye around and about. I viewed the paraphernalia. It all fitted so well. If you were going to adopt the persona of a witch woman you had to do the job properly. You’d need the scrimble stone and the alhambric and the mandragles and the postuleniums and also the fractible buckets.

Mother Demdike had the lot. She also had a great many ancient-looking tomes, several of which appeared to have the stamp of the Memorial Library’s Restricted Section upon their spines. I raised my eyebrows at this. This dishonest woman was helping herself to my reading material.

“Come closer, my dear,” said Mother Demdike.

“If I come any closer,” I said, “I’ll be behind you. Which, considering your pong, is no place I wish to be.”

“You’re a rather rude little boy. Do you know what I do with rude little boys?”

“Cook them up in your cauldron?” I asked, stifling a yawn.

“Cook ’em up for my dinner.” And the hag cackled. Cak-cak-cak-cak-cackle, she went.

“That’s a horrid cough you have there,” I observed. “You should take some linctus.”

“Come and sit beside me.” The crone extended a wrinkled claw and beckoned to me with it.

“Do you mind if I just stand here with the door open?” I asked. “I mean, I understand about the ambience and atmosphere and everything and I respect your right to behave like an old weirdo, but, well, you know.”

“Bugger off,” said Mother Demdike. “Bugger off or I’ll cast a hex on you.”

I scratched at my head. I’d got off on the wrong foot here. I should be polite. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m a bit nervous.”

“And so you should be. Don’t you know I’m a witch?”

“Wise woman,” I said.

“That’s just a euphemism,” said Mother Demdike. “I’m a blackhearted witch who’s kissed the Devil’s arse and suckles her familiars at her supernumerary nipples.” She stroked something bundled up in rags upon her lap. Her ferret, I presumed.

“Do you know anything about herbs?” I enquired. “Only, we’re doing this project at school and I need some special herbs.”

“Come a little closer,” said Mother Demdike. “Let me have a sniff at your aura.”

“My aura?” I said.

“Indulge me,” said the ancient.

I took a small step forward. “Sniff away,” I told her. “But I think your pong will overwhelm mine.”

Mother Demdike sniffed. “Oh dear, oh dear,” she said.

I lifted an arm and sniffed my armpit. “I had a bath last week,” I told her. “And I used soap and everything.”

“I think I’ve been waiting for you,” said Mother Demdike. “Tell me about these herbs that you need.”

So I told her.

Mother Demdike looked me up and down. “You’re a bad’n,” she said.

“I’m not so bad. I get most of my homework in on time.”

“You have bad intentions.”

“I have only good intentions. Do you know where I can get these herbs?”

“I have all of them.”

“Oh, good,” I said. “Now, as I’m doing this as a school project I’m sure you won’t want to charge me any money for them, so—”

“I won’t,” said Mother Demdike.

“You won’t? Oh, good.”

“All I want to do is to read your palm.”

“That’s fair enough.”

“So stick your hand out and let me take a peep.”

“Could I have the herbs first, before you do?”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“Well,” I said, “can I be completely honest with you?”

The hag cocked her head on one side, whereupon a spider ran out of her right ear-hole. She snatched it from her cheek, popped it into her mouth and munched upon it. “Go on,” she said, spitting out a couple of legs.

“It’s a rather funny thing,” I began. “You see, I woke up today … Or, rather, I think I did. But perhaps I didn’t.”

“You didn’t?” said Mother Demdike.

“Well, I’m beginning to wonder. Because everything today has been so absurd. My father claims that his bestest friend has just died. This bestest friend turns out to be my favourite author. I’m sure my father never knew this man at all. I went to the library and overheard these two men talking about a secret project. About how human beings are just receivers of mental waves sent from somewhere else in the universe. And now I’m in a witch’s house. Oh, and I’ve been thinking about reanimating this famous author. Bringing him back to life through voodoo, which is why I need the herbs. Now, you tell me, does this sound like normality to you, or is something really weird going on?”

Mother Demdike looked me up and down once more. “Oh yes,” she said. “You’re going to be trouble. You’re going to be big trouble.”

“Big trouble? What do you mean?”

“People sleepwalk,” said the ancient. “People drift through their lives, rarely paying attention to the fact that they are alive. Rarely, if ever, marvelling at their very existence. At the miracle of life, of awareness. That for a brief moment in time and space they exist.”

“I was only thinking that myself earlier,” I said.

“Life is incredible,” said Mother Demdike. “It’s unbelievable. It’s beyond belief. In a universe otherwise dead, we live. And what do people do with their lives? Waste them on everyday trivialities. On being part of a society. A little cog in a great big impersonal engine. But once in a while someone appears, out of nowhere, or so it seems, someone who’s different. These special someones add something to society. They give it something special. And this takes humanity forward. Towards what, I don’t know. Towards something, though, towards finding something out about itself and its ultimate purpose. Because everything must have a purpose. It wouldn’t, couldn’t, exist if it didn’t. It may well be that you are one of these special someones, Gary. That you have something very special to give to humankind. If this is true you will be aware. And if you are aware, you will experience life differently from the rest of humankind. To you it will seem unreal, as if you are in a dream. How could it be any other way for someone who is different from the rest?”

I stood there in the doorway of the little hut and I didn’t know what to say.

“Look at me,” said Mother Demdike. “Look at me and look at this little hut of mine. It’s an anachronism, a hangover from another time. Another century. I’m a piece of history. You will grow up and tell your children that, some time in the past, when you were young, an old witch woman used to live down the road from you. And you’ll point to the place where my hut once stood and there’ll be a block of flats or something here. And your children won’t believe you and even you will begin to doubt your memories, because how could you have really met an old witch woman in the nineteen fifties? That doesn’t fit with reality. In fact, you’ll begin to question a lot of your childhood memories. You’ll do what every grown-up does; you’ll reinvent your past, based on the logic of your present. You’ll say, ‘No, I didn’t really see that. I must have dreamed it.’”

“Dreamed it?” said I. “Like I feel that I’m dreaming this now, in a way.”

“You’ll never know what’s real and what isn’t,” said Mother Demdike. “Because no one has the time to find out. Life is too short. We all see a little bit of the whole picture. We all take in a little snatch of history, the bit we’re born into. Then after we’re gone, someone writes it down inaccurately. What really happened in history there is no one alive to know for sure.”

“Golly,” I said, as I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“You,” said Mother Demdike, “may be poised upon the brink of something big. Tell me that list of herbs once again. In fact, show me the book you got the list from. It’s there in your pocket, I believe.”

I took out my copy of Voodoo in Theory and Practice and handed it to her.

“You stole that from the library,” said Mother Demdike.

“I did,” I said. “I see you’ve nicked a few yourself.”

Mother Demdike chuckled. “All in a good cause,” she said.