The Witches

During a vacation with his grandmother Helga in Norway, eight-year-old American boy Luke Eveshim is warned about witches, female demons with a boundless hatred for children and who use various methods of destroying or transforming them. Helga tells Luke how to tell a witch from an ordinary woman: real witches have claws instead of fingernails which they hide by wearing gloves, are bald which they hide by wearing wigs that give them rashes, have square feet with no toes which they hide by wearing plain shoes, have blue spit which they use for ink, have a purple tinge in their pupils and have large nostrils which they use to sniff out children; to a witch, children stink of dog's droppings. Helga says her childhood friend Erica fell victim to a witch and was cursed to spend the rest of her life trapped inside a painting, aging gradually until finally disappearing a few years earlier.