Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

'You mean… there might be swarms of them all around us this very moment?' Charlie asked.

'There might,' said Mr Wonka.

Charlie felt his skin beginning to creep. 'Do you die at once?' he asked.

'First you become subtracted… a little later you are divided… but very slowly… it takes a long time… it's long division and it's very painful. After that, you become one of them.'

'Couldn't we shut the door?' Charlie asked.

'I'm afraid not, my boy. We'd never see her through the glass. There's too much mist and moisture. She's not going to be easy to pick out anyway.'

Charlie stood at the open door of the Elevator and stared into the swirling vapours. This, he thought, is what hell must be like… hell without heat… there was something unholy about it all, something unbelievably diabolical… It was all so deathly quiet, so desolate and empty… At the same time, the constant movement, the twisting and swirling of the misty vapours, gave one the feeling that some very powerful force, evil and malignant, was at work all around… Charlie felt a jab on his arm! He jumped! He almost jumped out of the Elevator! 'Sorry,' said Mr Wonka. 'It's only me.'

'Oh-h-h!' Charlie gasped. 'For a second, I thought…'

'I know what you thought, Charlie… And by the way, I'm awfully glad you're with me. How would you like to come here alone… as I did… as I had to… many times?'

'I wouldn't,' said Charlie.

'There she is!' said Mr Wonka, pointing. 'No, she isn't!… Oh, dear! I could have sworn I saw her for a moment right over there on the edge of that dark patch. Keep watching, Charlie.'

'There!' said Charlie. 'Over there. Look!'

'Where?' said Mr Wonka. 'Point to her, Charlie!'

'She's… she's gone again. She sort of faded away,' Charlie said.

They stood at the open door of the Elevator, peering into the swirly grey vapours.

'There! Quick! Right there!' Charlie cried. 'Can't you see her?'

'Yes, Charlie! I see her! I'm moving up close now!'

Mr Wonka reached behind him and began touching a number of buttons.

'Grandma!' Charlie cried out. 'We've come to get you, Grandma!'

They could see her faintly through the mist, but oh so faintly. And they could see the mist through her as well. She was transparent. She was hardly there at all. She was no more than a shadow. They could see her face and just the faintest outline of her body swathed in a sort of gown. But she wasn't upright. She was floating lengthwise in the swirling vapour.

'Why is she lying down?' Charlie whispered.

'Because she's a Minus, Charlie. Surely you know what a minus looks like… Like that…' Mr Wonka drew a horizontal line in the air with his finger.

The Elevator glided close. The ghostly shadow of Grandma Georgina's face was no more than a yard away now. Charlie reached out through the door to touch her but there was nothing there to touch. His hand went right through her skin. 'Grandma!' he gasped. She began to drift away.

'Stand back!' ordered Mr Wonka, and suddenly, from some secret place inside his coat-tails he whisked out a spray-gun. It was one of those old-fashioned things people used to use for spraying fly-spray around the room before aerosols came along. He aimed the spray-gun straight at the shadow of Grandma Georgina and he pumped the handle hard ONCE… TWICE… THREE TIMES! Each time, a fine black spray spurted out from the nozzle of the gun. Instantly, Grandma Georgina disappeared.

'A bull's eye!' cried Mr Wonka, jumping up and down with excitement. 'I got her with both barrels! I plussed her good and proper! That's Vita-Wonk for you!'

'Where's she gone?' Charlie asked.

'Back where she came from, of course! To the factory! She's a Minus no longer, my boy! She's a one hundred per cent red-blooded Plus! Come along now! Let's get out of here quickly before the Gnoolies find us!' Mr Wonka jabbed a button. The doors closed and the Great Glass Elevator shot upwards for home.

'Sit down and strap yourself in again, Charlie!' said Mr Wonka. 'We're going flat out this time!'

The Elevator roared and rocketed up toward the surface of the Earth. Mr Wonka and Charlie sat side by side on their little jump-seats, strapped in tight. Mr Wonka started tucking the spray-gun back into that enormous pocket somewhere in his coat-tails. 'It's such a pity one has to use a clumsy old thing like this,' he said. 'But there's simply no other way of doing it. Ideally, of course, one would measure out exactly the right number of drops into a teaspoon and feed it carefully into the mouth. But it's impossible to feed anything into a Minus. It's like trying to feed one's own shadow. That's why I've got to use a spray-gun. Spray 'em all over, my boy! That's the only way!'

'It worked fine, though, didn't it?' Charlie said.

'Oh, it worked all right, Charlie! It worked beautifully! All I'm saying is that there's bound to be a slight overdose…'

'I don't quite know what you mean, Mr Wonka.'

'My dear boy, if it only takes four drops of Vita-Wonk to turn a young Oompa-Loompa into an old man…' Mr Wonka lifted his hands and let them fall limply on to his lap.

'You mean Grandma may have got too much?' asked Charlie, turning slightly pale. 'I'm afraid that's putting it rather mildly,' said Mr Wonka.

'But… but why did you give her such a lot of it, then?' said Charlie, getting more and more worried. 'Why did you spray her three times? She must have got pints and pints of it!'

'Gallons!' cried Mr Wonka, slapping his thighs. 'Gallons and gallons! But don't let a little thing like that bother you, my dear Charlie! The important part of it is we've got her back! She's a Minus no longer! She's a lovely Plus!

'She's as plussy as plussy can be!
She's more plussy than you or than me!
The question is how,
Just how old is she now?
Is she more than a hundred and three?'

18 The Oldest Person in the World

'We return in triumph, Charlie!' cried Mr Wonka as the Great Glass Elevator began to slow down. 'Once more your dear family will all be together again!'

The Elevator stopped. The doors slid open. And there was the Chocolate Room and the chocolate river and the Oompa-Loompas and in the middle of it all the great bed belonging to the old grandparents. 'Charlie!' said Grandpa Joe, rushing forward. 'Thank heavens you're back!' Charlie hugged him. Then he hugged his mother and his father. 'Is she here?' he said. 'Grandma Georgina?'

Nobody answered. Nobody did anything except Grandpa Joe, who pointed to the bed. He pointed but he didn't look where he was pointing. None of them looked at the bed - except Charlie. He walked past them all to get a better view, and he saw at one end the two babies, Grandma Josephine and Grandpa George, both tucked in and sleeping peacefully. At the other end…

'Don't be alarmed,' said Mr Wonka, running up and placing a hand on Charlie's arm. 'She's bound to be just a teeny bit over-plussed. I warned you about that.'

'What have you done to her?' cried Mrs Bucket. 'My poor old mother!'

Propped up against the pillows at the other end of the bed was the most extraordinary-looking thing Charlie