"A Halloween Story - The Witch of the East: A Dark Tale From Oz..."

The Witch of the East: A Dark Tale From Oz
By: Lewis Breland

The Land of Oz is a most peculiar place.  It is, like most other places, divided between North, South, East and West.  And, like most other places - real and imaginary - there are rulers.  In the center of the Land of Oz sits a gorgeous city made of pure emeralds ruled by a Great and Powerful Wonderful Wizard.  To the North is a glittering land of bubbles and crystals, diamonds and tiaras ruled by a very good lady, Glinda.  She is a witch, but she is a good witch.  Her billowing gowns and golden locks attest to her glorious reign.  She is gilded gorgeousness in all its glory and attests to the greatness of Oz.  Her people are some of the happiest in Oz.

The south is a land of nature.  Wild, magical things grow here and the people live in harmony with the land.  Its rivers are clear, its flowers so beautiful that they defy description on the written page.  Its ruler is a green witch, made from plants and earth and water.  She is pure and cannot be defiled by any man.  Lush greenery grows abundantly here.

To the west lies a land of darkness, ruled over by a maniacally wicked witch who terrorizes and enslaves her people: the Winkies.  Her castle is enormous and hides untold horrors that are too ghastly to speak of.  Her skin is green and rotted since she is the most evil being in all of creation, possessed by many demons from hell. She travels around Oz on her broomstick with her flying monkeys summoning all the lesser witches of whatever country she is in, giving congratulations or punishments according to the witches' success in their ultimate mission: destroying children.  She teaches them such schemes as trapping children inside trees, turning them into insects so they can be crushed, or into food so that they will be eaten by their own parents. She is said to own a crystal ball that helps her to see everything, everywhere in the whole Land of Oz.  The darkest part of Oz alas has the darkest and most wicked ruler of all.

The East is a land of candies and is ruled by a very wicked woman indeed.  Desperate to please her sister, the witch of the East rules over the Munchkins and lives in a humble candy house to lure children, which she eats after fattening them up and turning their hearts into gingerbread children which she posts along the red brick road as warnings to parents in search of their missing children.  She is very powerful and has the ability to become young and beautiful, but only after bathing in the blood of newborn Munchkin infants... but this magic only lasts for a few hours.  With her power of youth, she lures the Munchkin men into her “slave spell.”  The men become zombies and are entirely loyal to her and do her bidding.  Lastly, she is able to turn people into metals such as gold and silver, but her favorite trick is to turn them into tin so that they might rust in time, unable to ever move again.  She can also conjure inanimate objects such as scarecrows, pumpkins, trees and plants as well as animals such as lions, birds and wolves to be her spies on the Munchkins.

Much has been said of the Wicked Witch of the West and the Good Witch of the North, but our story concerns another matter entirely... The Wicked Witch of the East and it begins in Munchkin Land where we come upon a very quaint house made of candy and flowers.  Inside, a family of two parents, a boy named Rigo and girl named Gertie are sweeping and moping and cooking and playing.  There is also a newborn baby girl cooing in her flower cradle.

Suddenly and without notice, a ghastly, elderly woman of no good hygiene and crooked teeth magically appears rocking in the candy cane chair in the darkened corner, holding the infant munchkin girl.  She has yellow, jaundiced skin, a nose with a hairy wart that claws towards her mouth like an eagle's talon.  Her pale-yellow eyes, her elderly woman clothes, her pointed hat and scraggly gray hair all bespeak a horror about to unfold for the unfortunate family.

She is cloaked all in black. She wears a forward-pointing black hat and has long skinny fingers with pointed yellow nails and a “mountain of a hunchback."  What’s most conspicuous about her are her striped stockings and ruby-red shoes.   She takes the infant with her after clicking her heels three times and saying the enchanted “There’s No Place Like Home” and laughing maniacally, leaving the family in fits of anguish and despair.

Rigo and Gerdie run away from home to seek out the Witch of the East in order to plead with her to give their baby sister back.  Along their way, they run into a talking raven who warns them not to go any farther.  The children tell the stange bird what they’re doing and the raven tells them that he was enchanted by the witch.  He was once a beautiful songbird before he was enchanted, but now that he is a raven he can no longer sing the birdsong he longs for because he is cursed to speak as her spy.

The childen describe that they are seeking the Wicked Witch who has stolen their newborn sister and that they are seeking her out to find the infant.  The raven tells them that the witch uses the blood of infants to become young and beautiful so she can seduce the munchkin men to be her zombie-slaves.  He asks to join the children in their quest to seek out the witch in hopes that she will at last give him back his birdsong.  The three stumble upon the Red Brick Road which is lined with macabre looking gingerbread men.  They resemble children’s dead bodies, but have eyes made of peppermints, smiles carved in their faces and hair made of liquorish.  They whisper warnings to turn back for the “Witch is the Eater of Children.”  They are advised not to walk along the red brick road, but to make their way through the forest.
 
The father of the Munchkin family is toiling in his candy-cane garden, fretting over the loss of his infant and the disappearance of his other two children, thinking about the day his newborn daughter hatched from her egg and came sprawling to life... just then a beautiful woman with a candy cane umbrella, a striped dress and ruby red shoes approaches him seductively.  She seduces him and enchants him with a spell and a click of her heels.  He follows her beautiful singing voice, an ethereal melody as if it were the song of a lovely bird, into the woods as his wife watches them disappear forever.

The children and their friend the raven have been walking through the dark forest for several days now and have not had food or water.  They come across some apple trees and eat of their apples.  The trees animate and become violently angry.  The bird pecks away at the trees as they try to crush and strangle the “intruders.”  A wolf emerges from the darkness with great ferocity and speaks reason to the trees, causing them to stop hurting the children.

The children explain that they are on their way to the Witch’s lair to ask her for their baby sister back.  The trees warn that it may be too late to save their sister.  They explain that the Witch has enchanted them and that they long to be trees growing in sunlight again.  The children remark that they would ask the Witch to return them to their natural state if the trees would helpfully give them some apples, which the trees do happily.  The trees promise to also protect the children as they move through the forest.

The children thank the wolf for his intervention and ask how he came to speak.  He tells his tale of being the witch’s slave once, having to track down children for her to eat.  However, once he was enchanted to speak, he gained knowledge by hearing others’ perspectives and being able to empathize.  He no longer wants to mangle children and bring them to the Witch.  He knows too much horror and wants to return to being a natural wolf so he can forget all that he has seen and learned about the terrible world.  He agrees to join them on their journey, but he warns that his only weapon is knowledge.  He no longer hunts or wants to harm any living thing.

The children and their friends arrive at a house made entirely out of candy.  The sky above is purple and pink.  The yard is decorated with giant lollipop trees and dum-dum shrubs.  The pathway is made of brittle and the stone foundation is made of white chocolate.  They all know this is the Witch’s lair.

Enchanted by a magic spell, the children begin to eat the house, the walkway and the trees while the wolf and raven warn them not to.  The children are now under a spell of gluttony when the Witch emerges in her full horror.  She lures them into the house while the wolf and raven hide in the woods, waiting to see what happens.

Inside, the Witch ties Rigo up in a chair and makes him watch as Gerdie is forced to cook enormous quantities of food.  Their father appears as a zombie and force-feeds the boy.  When Gerdie asks the Witch why this is happening, she replies,

“I eat Munchkin-boy Fwah Grah!   I especially love those who are fatty with ruptured insides!

My gracious!  Fwah grah!”

Gerdie then notices in the corner, the remains of an infant girl which she recognizes as her baby sister and begins screaming.  Rigo is covered in regurgitated food, still being force-fed by his father.  A sound from the red brick road, like that of a carriage passing draws the Witch to the window, where she thinks she catches a glace of small children riding with their parents. She commands the father to tie up his daughter Gerdie as well and then continue force feeding them as she leaves to investigate the passing carriage.

When the Witch is gone, the wolf comes to see the children.  He agonizes over their condition, being not able to save them, but the raven comes in through the open window and pecks the father’s eyes out so he can’t see to harm the boy or girl anymore.  The wolf then consults with the bird.  “What shall we do, fair raven?”  The two concoct a plan to have the girl, who is not under the slave spell, push the wicked witch into her own magic oven which will kill her magic through the purification of fire.

Witches can be killed by either fire or water, the wolf in his wisdom explains... but the most lethal way is by crushing or pressing under stones.  He says that hanging or stabbing them only brings them back at a later time, since they have time to concoct a spell.  But, fire and water melts them dead and crushing them also works. However, with crushing there is no purification and therefore, their spells can’t be undone.  So, they plot to have Gerdie push the Witch into the fire of the magic oven that allows her to bake children’s hearts into gingerbread children.

The Witch quickly returns empty-handed, but her powers are weak and she needs to “consume child-munchkin-flesh.”  She releases Gerdie and has the girl prepare the fire in her magic oven and stands hunched and ugly over it.  Just as the girl was about to push the Witch into the fire, a strong, strong wind comes along and blows it out.  When the Witch asks the girl to get into the oven and check the burning coals, the raven flies in and tells the Wicked Witch that there is trouble in Munchkin land.  She quickly ties up Gerdie and then clicks her heels and is rapidly taken to the center of Munchkin town where the residents hide from her.  Suddenly, out of thin air, a whistling sound appears far overhead.  Hunch-backed, the witch strains to look up at the sky and sees a strange, large dark object coming down right on top of her.  Before she can escape, a house drops and smashes the witch flat.  All that is left of her is her stockings and feet still wearing the ruby slippers.

The news of the Witch's death spread like wildfire throughout all of Muchkin land. When the news reaches the wolf and the raven, they decide to rescue the children. When they enter the house, they find the father, now blinded but still under the slave spell silently rocking in the corner near the remains of his infant daughter. The wolf frees the two Munchkin children telling them that they must quickly return home before the witch's sister arrives and they begin their voyage back to Munchkin land.

The two find a well-rusted tin woodsman amongst the forest of stumps where trees had once stood. The red brick road takes them quickly back to Munchkin Land where the entire town is in celebration.  Their mother rejoices at being re-united with her children, who tell their tale.  Their mother tell the children of the death of the Wicked Witch and shows them the slippers beneath the house. There is a strange girl standing with the Good Witch of the North.  Perhaps it is she who dropped the house on the wicked witch. As all who nearby are rejoicing, their mother says she hopes that the children's father will return soon, although the Rigo and Gerdie know he cannot.


Suddenly, the Wicked Witch of the West appears in a cloud of smoke and fire screaming at the
foreign girl from a place called Kansas, holding her little dog. She says that she is called Dorothy Gale and wants to know what strange place this is.  The witch has noticed that the Dorothy girl is somehow now wearing the magic ruby slippers and the wicked witch will stop at nothing, not even outright murder, to get them back.

This story was edited for content and continuity from its original version published here.