An eight-year-old boy goes to live with his Norwegian grandmother after his parents are killed in a car crash. The grandmother is a wonderful story teller. He loved all the stories, but he was enthralled by the ones about witches, which she says are horrific creatures who seek to kill human children. She tells the boy that she knows of five children who were cursed by witches and tells him how to recognise them. She had an encounter with the witches, where she lost her thumb. While witches look and act like human women, they are actually "demons in human shape." They have bald heads that they hide with wigs, clawed hands that they usually hide with gloves and toeless feet that make it extremely painful to wear pretty shoes.