George’s Marvellous Medicine by Roald Dahl. Part 8.
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Then a funny thing happened. Grandma’s body gave a sudden sharp twist and a sudden sharp jerk and she flipped herself clear out of the chair and landed neatly on her two feet on the carpet.
“That’s terrific, Grandma!” George cried. “You haven’t stood up like that for years! Look at you!
You’re standing up all on your own and you’re not even using a stick!”
Grandma didn’t even hear him. The frozen pop-eyed look was back with her again now. She was miles away in another world.
Marvelous medicine, George told himself. He found it fascinating to stand there watching what it was doing to the old hag. What next? he wondered.
He soon found out.
Suddenly she began to grow.
It was quite slow at first… just a very gradual inching upward … up, up, up … inch by inch … getting taller and taller… about an inch every few seconds … and in the beginning George didn’t notice it.
But when she had passed the five-foot-six mark and was going on up toward being six feet tall, George gave a jump and shouted, “Hey, Grandma! You’re growing!
You’re going up! Hang on, Grandma! You’d better stop now or you’ll be hitting the ceiling!” But Grandma didn’t stop.
It was a truly fantastic sight, this ancient scrawny old woman getting taller and taller, longer and longer, thinner and thinner, as though she were a piece of elastic being pulled upward by invisible hands.
When the top of her head actually touched the ceiling, George thought she was bound to stop.
But she didn’t.
There was a sort of scrunching noise, and bits of plaster and cement came raining down.
“Hadn’t you better stop now, Grandma?” George said. “Daddy’s just had this whole room repainted.”
But there was no stopping her now.
Soon, her head and shoulders had completely disappeared through the ceiling, and she was still going.
George dashed upstairs to his own bedroom, and there she was, coming up through the floor like a mushroom.
“Whoopee!” she shouted, finding her voice at last.
“Hallelujah, here I come!”
“Steady, Grandma,” George said.
“With a heigh-nonny-no and up we go!” she shout-ed. “Just watch me grow!”
“This is my room,” George said. “Look at the mess you’re making.”
“Terrific medicine!” she cried. “Give me some more!”
She’s dotty as a doughnut, George thought.
“Come on, boy! Give me some more!” she yelled.
“Dish it out! I’m slowing down!”
George was still clutching the medicine bottle in one hand and the spoon in the other. Oh well, he thought, why not? He poured out a second dose and popped it into her mouth.
“Oweee!” she screamed, and up she went again. Her feet were still on the floor downstairs in the living room, but her head was moving quickly toward the ceiling of the bedroom.
“I’m on my way now, boy!” she called down to George. “Just watch me go!”
“That’s the attic above you, Grandma!” George called out. “I’d keep out of there! It’s full of bugs and bogles!”
Crash! The old girl’s head went through the ceiling as though it were butter.
George stood in his bedroom gazing at the sham-bles. There was a big hole in the floor and another in the ceiling, and sticking up like a post between the two was the middle part of Grandma. Her legs were in the room below, her head in the attic.
“I’m still going!” came the old screechy voice from up above. “Give me another dose, my boy, and let’s go through the roof!”
“No, Grandma, no!” George called back. “You’re busting up the whole house!”
“To heck with the house!” she shouted. “I want some fresh air! I haven’t been outside for twenty years!”
“By golly, she is going through the roof!” George told himself. He ran downstairs. He rushed out the back door into the yard. It would be simply awful, he thought, if she bashed up the roof as well. His father would be furious. And he, George, would get the blame. He had made the medicine. He had given her too much. “Don’t come through the roof, Grandma,” he prayed. “Please don’t.”