Casper Candlewacks in the Time Travelling Toaster (3 page)

Once Anemonie’s steel-toed footsteps had faded far into the distance, Casper began to pick up the shattered pieces of what used to be Lamp’s Time Toaster, and place them on the central workbench. “So… how bad is it?”

Lamp hadn’t spoken yet. In fact, he hadn’t even moved. He was still in the same stretched position as he had been when he threw the Time Toaster, like a statue of the world’s worst ballerina. Slowly, he let his arms drop and his gaze fix on the pile of scrap. At the top of the pile, a single green light was flashing: the bottle cap marked
BROKKIN
.

Lamp smiled weakly. “At least that bit’s still working.”

And so the boys began the painstaking task of fitting the Time Toaster’s pieces back together. Casper had to pop over to Mrs Trimble’s shop to buy two more pots of glue and a yo-yo. By the time he came back, the queue at the bus stop had mostly filtered away. Sandy Landscape, the village gardener, who’d joined at the very back, was now taking his turn to sniff the brand-new seats and knock on the glass walls. Happy all was in order, he murmured some words of approval and strolled back up the street.

Casper smiled as the muddy man passed.

“Mornin’, Casper.” Sandy Landscape doffed his floppy hat. “You ent seen me goat, ’ave yer?”

“Have you checked your goat pen?”

Sandy looked impressed. “Now that I ain’t. But I shall check there next. Thankee, Casper.” And he trotted off to look in the place where he always found his goat.

Back in the garage, Casper found Lamp doing a little jig. “What’s going on?”

“I did a clever!” Lamp wiggled his hips and waved a spanner around. “Remind me to thank Anenemy for breaking my Time Toaster.”

“Why on earth would you want to thank her?”

“I think I put it back together wrong. Now it sends stuff rather than receives it.”

“That’s good!” said Casper. “I guess. Still just toast, though…”

“Not if you don’t want toast. I can send anything!”

“As long as it fits in the toaster.”

“Not any more.” Lamp waddled across to a dark corner of his garage and returned with a tartan tin full of old biscuits. He stretched two red wires from one of the many holes still left in the Time Toaster and stuck them to the tin with two squares of tape. With a flourish of his hand and a shout of “
Let’s TIME!
”,
Lamp tugged down on the toaster handle and the machine coughed into action.

When the smoke cleared this time, however, there was no toast. In fact, rather than anything new, something was missing. The biscuit tin, and the biscuits inside it, had completely vanished.

At first Casper thought Lamp had scoffed a secret snack under the smokescreen, but then he would have had to eat the tin too, and tins aren’t that tasty.

“Someone in caveman times is gonna have a lovely treat,” smiled Lamp.

The biscuit tin had gone. Through time. Casper found himself short of breath. “But this is…
amazing
! Will it send anything?”

“So far I’ve tried it with a colouring pencil, that biscuit tin and one of my shoes. I think that covers most things.”

Casper hadn’t noticed until then that one of Lamp’s sponge shoes was missing.

“All you need is a big enough container to put stuff in, and it’ll send that stuff through time! Including us!” Lamp couldn’t help but start his jig again.

“Including us? But that means…” Casper’s mind raced with the possibilities. “But this is huge!” he gasped. “Lamp, this is
proper time travel
, not just prehistoric toast.”

“I know!” Lamp beamed. “I’m going to go and cuddle a Viking!”

“We’ve got to be careful here.”

History was being made in this garage. Casper just wanted to make sure they knew exactly
what
history they were making before they blundered through time and killed Henry VIII or something. “Do you have any control over where we go?”

“Course!” said Lamp.

“And if something goes wrong we could come right back?”

“S’pose,” Lamp shrugged.

“So all we need is a big enough container. Something that can carry us both, and the Time Toaster itself, through time.”

“Yep; it’s got to be big and made of glass.”

“Why glass?”

“So we can see where we’re going.”

Casper thought for a long second. “Then I know just what we can use.”

Lamp lugged the Time Toaster under one arm. “Is it far?” he huffed.

“Just round the corner.”

One step out of Lamp’s garage and a turn to the left, and Casper could see it: Corne-on-the-Kobb’s oven-fresh bus shelter.

Glinting in the autumn sunlight like Mrs Trimble’s lost glasses, the brand-new bus shelter was the perfect vehicle for Lamp’s Time Toaster. Casper trailed down the road after Lamp, picking up the bits that fell off his friend’s invention.

“Do you really need this?” asked Casper, scooping up a party blower that had dropped out of a singed crack in the toaster’s base.

“Only if we’re having a party.” Lamp wheezed onwards, a mostly melted toothbrush rattling out of the Time Toaster as he went.

The installation was simple enough, but it took time. Lamp had to glue the Time Toaster snugly to one glass wall and feed the red wires into the timetable board. Just as he was about halfway through, the shape of a girl appeared round the corner.

“Oy!” came the ear-splitting screech of Anemonie Blight. “Wotcha doing?”

This time Casper was quick off the mark. “Don’t tell her, Lamp! Pretend it’s something else.”

“Got it,” grinned Lamp, turning to call back to Anemonie. “It’s not a time machine any more, Lemony. It’s a…” Lamp’s tummy rumbled. “Casper,” he whispered, “I can’t think of any things that aren’t time machines.”

There was a long moment of silence before Anemonie began to march towards the bus shelter.

“Oh, cripes.” Casper’s heart raced as his eyes flicked from Lamp’s unfinished upgrade job to the stomping girl. “If you can’t get this working, we have to run now.”

“I can do it,” Lamp assured Casper. “Just takes time, that’s all.”

“We don’t have time!” cried Casper. Anemonie had passed Lamp’s garage now. She was close enough for Casper to see her necklace of wolves’ teeth that clacked together as she stomped.

“How much time don’t we have?” asked Lamp.

“Most of it!”

“Gimme that time machine!” roared Anemonie, her teeth bared hungrily. She was wrinkling her pointy nose, her fists clenched and shaking, her eyes filled with the fire of a thousand suns. “I want it! It’s mine!”

“Hurry, hurry, hurry!” Casper hopped from foot to foot like a cat in a fireplace.

Lamp stood back proudly, wiping oil down the legs of his boiler suit. “There. Now all we need to do is choose a date.” He sucked his finger thoughtfully, looking at all the buttons he could twiddle.

“Anything!” shouted Casper. “Just choose your favourite numbers and let’s go!”

“I don’t know many numbers.”

Lamp licked his lips and turned the dials to
21/10/2112
(he wasn’t a fan of anything past three) shoved down the handle and grinned. “Hey, Casper.”

“What?” He couldn’t keep still. She was metres away now. “What is it?”

“
Let’s TIME!
”

The Time Toaster churned as it set to work, vibrating through the glass panes of the bus shelter until the whole structure began to hum. It was an odd noise, serene and formless, like a choir of ghosts who’d all forgotten the words.

Anemonie was close now. “Your bus ain’t coming, Candlewacks,” she smirked. “I’m gonna be rich!”

“It’s working!” cried Lamp.

“Not quickly enough! Come on, come on…”

The air was growing cloudy, the glass singing more loudly, but Anemonie had reached the shelter and was barging towards the Time Toaster that was glued to the wall.

“Give it here. Hey, it’s stuck!” Batting away Casper’s protective arms, she tugged with all her might at the Time Toaster, planting one boot on the wall for purchase. “Nnnnngh!” she nnnnnghed, but it didn’t break free.

The bus shelter screamed now, the air thick with the smoke from burning toast.

“It’s doing it!” shouted Lamp over the din. “I told you it would, Casper!”

Casper’s eyes stung. He coughed as the smoke filled his lungs and he backed into a corner.

“Whassit doing?” shrieked Anemonie. She carried on tugging at the Time Toaster, but her head was buried in her jumper to block out the smoke. “Is that you, Candlewacks? Who’s burning?”

As the ground began to rumble, Casper lost his footing and fell on to a plastic seat. “Lamp! Is it broken?”

“We’re travelling through the… which dimension is time again?” Lamp’s voice was coming from the wrong side of Casper’s head and he realised he was on the floor. “Whichever it is, it’s a bumpy dimension,” Lamp added.

“The smoke,” choked Casper. “My eyes sting!”

“It’s the mists of time!” Lamp took a deep breath. “Mmm, toasty.”

Somewhere in the mists of time, Anemonie squealed. “We’d better not be time travelling, Flannigan! If we end up in dinosaur times I’m gonna break your legs off and throw ’em to a T-Rex.”

The bus shelter spun. Casper lost his sense of direction and bonked his head on the floor. Anemonie screamed, Lamp practised his handshake, Casper wished he’d had some lunch so he could throw it up, and then…

SPRUNGG!

The screaming was no more. The ground stopped shuddering and returned to its rightful place. Smoke still filled the air, but now it just hung there. All Casper could hear was his own coughing and the short, determined breaths of Anemonie Blight somewhere nearby.

“Well, I think that was a success,” said Lamp, from somewhere.

Casper groped around on the floor until he found Lamp’s remaining sponge shoe. He pulled himself up blindly, not quite trusting the ground beneath his feet. By the time he was standing, the smoke had thinned a little. He saw Lamp beside him, rubbing the soot from his face with an equally sooty hand.

“Did it… work?” Casper’s eyes still stung and the smoke was thick.

“I thought the future would be less smoky,” said Lamp. “Also, I hope they sell Time Toasters because mine broked.”

Most of the watch faces had fallen off, there was a small fire licking out of one side and the alarm clock on the front had melted. Anemonie was still pulling at the Time Toaster, but the fight and the sense of direction had gone out of her. Dizzily, she tripped backwards, skittered around the smoky shelter, found an exit and fell through it.

“Future? This ain’t the future…” murmured Anemonie. “Ooh, my head.”

“What’re you talking about?” Casper fumbled for the edge of the glass. His fingers found freedom and he staggered, coughing, out into… well… the very same place they had been before. There was Lamp’s street in Corne-on-the-Kobb, the same wonky houses and cabbage patches, the same scruffy hedges and big glass bus shelter, smokier, but in the same place. Casper felt his shoulders droop. “She’s right, Lamp. It didn’t work.”

Lamp bonked against the glass wall, bonked against the other glass wall, bonked against the first glass wall again, then emerged from the bus shelter in a cloud of smoke, rubbing his thrice-bonked nose.

“Oh.”

If a face had ever looked disappointed, it was Lamp’s face right then, all droopy-eyed and slack-lipped.

Casper scoured the scene, hoping to see a hover-car or cyber-donkey or something to prove the Time Toaster had worked, but there really was nothing out of the ordinary.

“Hang on,” Lamp chirped, suddenly brighter. “There
is
a difference. My nose hurts more in the future!”

“Isn’t that because of all the bashing it’s taken?”

“Oh. You’re too clever for your own good, Casper.” Lamp scuffed his shoes at a pebble, but it didn’t explode, or soar into the distance, it just skittered away like pebbles would do in the present day. What a disappointment.

“Tell you what.” Casper clapped Lamp on the back. “We’ll let the smoke clear, have a biscuit and try inventing something else.”

Lamp smiled weakly. “I like biscuits. Ooh, and water slides. Do we have any water slides?”

“Might do. Let’s have a look in your garage.”

“Wait up!” Anemonie’s screech disturbed the peace. “Please don’t leave… I mean… c’m’ere or I’ll thump ya.”

Casper looked back at the girl stumbling behind with fear in her eyes. But… fear?
Anemonie?
That was something he’d never seen before. “What’s wrong? Are you scared?”

“Ha! As if I’d be scared!” Anemonie laughed cuttingly, but her eyes darted around as if she was looking for somebody. “It’s just… it’s all quiet. I dunno.”

She was right. Corne-on-the-Kobb was as quiet as a trombone stuffed with socks. The only things Casper could hear were the dim hiss of Lamp’s Time Toaster and Anemonie’s heavy breathing.

But then Corne-on-the-Kobb often was quiet on a Sunday afternoon.
Perhaps everyone’s asleep, or at church
, thought Casper.
Or asleep at church
. (That did happen a lot when Reverend Septum was preaching. Even the old vicar himself had been known to have a cheeky snooze in the middle of his own sermons.) But no, there was something odd about the village this morning. Did the air taste different? Was the ground bouncier? Were the trees a little greener or the houses a little taller? “It’s probably nothing.”

“Yeah,” agreed Anemonie, “so stop being such a wimp, Casper.” But she looked no happier. She kept looking over her shoulder and she wouldn’t stop fiddling with her gold signet ring.

Lamp tugged open the rusty door to his garage and breathed in a gulp of the familiar air inside. “Home sweet home!” he cheered. “Who’s for— Oh. I think someone’s got angry in my garage.”

“What?” Casper dashed over to join him by the garage entrance. “Oh my. What a mess.” Clutter and broken gadgets littered the floor around Lamp’s upturned fridge, its door hanging open and a swarm of flies buzzing about inside. The workbenches round the walls had lost legs or given way in the middle, tipping their smashed contents on to the floor. Dust covered every surface, dank water dripped from a hole in the ceiling and the cheese piano and lobster tank, which had taken up most of the floor space last time Casper looked, were nowhere to be seen.

Lamp sniffed at the chaos with a bewildered nose. “It’s a bit messy. I’d better invent a big hoover.”

“Hah!” cackled Anemonie as she caught the others up. “Couldn’t have wrecked it better myself. Just look at that destruction! I should learn some tips from this job.” She poked her pointy shoes around in the rubble, scratching her chin and occasionally nodding.

But in Casper’s mind something didn’t add up. “But we just left here a minute ago,” he said. “It was fine. How could somebody cause so much havoc in so little time?”

VRMMMMMSKREEECH!

Casper spun round in time to see a sleek black convertible scream round the corner, brake violently, spin a shrieking circle with its front wheels locked and slam side-on into a lamp-post. Casper jumped backwards and Anemonie leapt for cover behind a pile of used doorknobs.

From the smoking car, a door was thrown open and two figures strutted out, both in smart suits.

“Are you guys all right?” shouted Casper.

A wirily built young man with a pointy nose laughed back. “Cracking piece of parking, Chrys,” he announced. “Lucky we’ve got a dozen more in the garage.”

The other stranger snarled – a girl, younger than her partner; she had short dark hair and a similarly pointy nose. She drew a black hairdryer from a holster on her belt and aimed it at Casper. “Stay where you are,” she grunted. “This thing’s loaded.”

“What with?” chuckled Casper. “Hot air?”

The girl cocked her head, confused. “Don’t joke with me. You know what this does.”

“Course I do. My mum’s got one. She uses it after a shower.” Casper felt a little bolder now. Two kids with a crashed car and a hairdryer weren’t much of a threat, however you looked at them.

“She uses it after a shower? On herself?” The girl’s frown got frownier. “How odd…”

“Chrys!” roared the taller stranger. “How many times? Rule one – never turn your back on the enemy. Rule two – never engage them in small talk!” He rounded on the girl, turning his back on Casper in order to discipline her further.

Casper tapped the lad on the shoulder. “Can I help you at all?”

He whipped round, enraged. “DO NOT TOUCH ME!” Reaching for his own belt, the lad snapped a matching hairdryer from its holster and pointed it at Casper’s head. “Don’t you know who I am?”

“Not… exactly…” By this time, Lamp and Anemonie had emerged from the garage and were watching the situation keenly. “Are you from… around these parts?” asked Casper.

“Around these parts?” The lad chuckled softly to the girl called Chrys, lowering his aim with the hairdryer. “I AM THESE PARTS!” The hairdryer was up again, closer this time, the end almost touching Casper’s nose, and the lad’s face shook with rage. “State your name and business or FEEL MY WRATH!”

Something about the way the lad held his hairdryer, how smartly he was dressed, the fact that he’d just crashed a sports car into a lamp-post, hinted to Casper that it might be best to tell this madman what he needed to know.

“I’m Casper Candlewacks.”

A dirty smirk appeared on the lad’s face. “And I guess that makes the fat lump Lamp Flannigan, does it?” He tilted his hairdryer at Lamp.

Lamp checked the name label on his boiler suit and nodded.

“You think this is funny?” The lad swooshed his hairdryer to the left and pulled hard on the trigger. A
WHOOSH
of hot air sent
a slew of breadcrumbs blowing from the bell, zooming to the left of Lamp and scattering on the grass behind him. Casper only had a second to snigger at the hopelessness of the lad’s weapon before a tearing screech from the sky froze the laugh in his throat.

Dark shadows stretched from the trees and lifted into the air with ragged wings. One screech became one hundred as the air grew thick with the flapping of feathers. Casper lifted his eyes just in time to see clouds of shrieking birds blocking out the sun as they soared and circled, screaming, then plummeted down towards the patch of grass to snap at the breadcrumbs.

Lamp screamed, spun and jumped for the comfort of Anemonie’s arms, but missed and flew headfirst past her into the garage. Anemonie paid no attention to Lamp, watching the birds with her hateful eyes as if weighing up an opportunity, while the two smartly clad strangers chuckled to each other.

“Not laughing now, are we,
Candlewacks
?” laughed the lad, putting too much emphasis on the word ‘Candlewacks’ and doing bunny ears with his fingers. “You see, the local wildlife’s got a little hungry recently. Fewer people around to feed them bread. And then we came along with these little things.” He rattled the hairdryer to show there was plenty of bread left inside. “Just imagine, a smattering of bread over that little round face of yours.” He smirked. “Dinnertime! And those beaks are ever so sharp, you know. So… you want to tell me your real name now?”

“What?” Casper’s mouth was full of feathers and his mind was full of claws and beaks. (Not literally, of course. That would be bird-brained.) “I… er…” But he’d forgotten his name. All he could think about were the vulture-like abominations fighting for bread on the lawn. With savage beaks and dark wiry talons, the birds clawed for the breadcrumbs, pecking, scratching, cooing…
Cooing?

Casper gasped. “Those are just pigeons?” The bread was long gone, as was the grass, but the birds still clawed away at the mud as if they’d not had a square meal, or a circular meal, or triangular, or any shape of meal at all, in years. Either that or they were digging for Australia. “But they’re so… savage,” said Casper, disgusted. “And look at the state of their feathers. What’s happened to them?”

The lad laughed bitterly. “Times are tough for all of us, not least the pigeons. When they sniff bread they get a little… frantic.”

“What do you mean ‘times are tough’? Times have never been better. Why, trade’s booming at my dad’s restaurant, Mrs Trimble has started stocking milk again and the mayor just opened our first bus shelter! Look, I don’t know who you are, but—”

The hairdryer was pointing at Casper’s head again, and this time he knew to shut up.

“What mayor? Which restaurant?” The lad’s lip quivered. “You’d better stop lying, sir, cos my trigger finger’s getting awfully itchy. So tell me again… who are you?’”

“I’m Casper!” Casper cried. “How can I make that any clearer?”

The lad looked like he was finding it tough not to explode. But then the girl called Chrys gasped, leant over and whispered something into the lad’s ear. His face changed, softened, and he cocked his head to one side, blinking. His eyes flicked to Anemonie, and then to Lamp in the garage, and then back to Casper.

“I’m gonna ask you this only once, and your answer will directly affect whether you get eaten by pigeons or not. So tell me,
Casper
, what year is this?”

“Ooh! Ooh!” squeaked Lamp, who’d stuck up his hand and was now hopping on the spot. “I know this! Pick me!”

Was this a trick? Casper examined the strangers’ faces: snarling, doubtful, but deadly serious. Either they didn’t know, which wasn’t that unusual for Corne-on-the-Kobb, or it was a test. And with their hairdryers raised and loaded, the pigeons perched on nearby gutters watching the exchange hungrily, it wasn’t one Casper wanted to fail. “Twenty twelve?” he said hesitantly.

The strangers shared a look, then turned back to Casper. “So it’s true…” gasped the one called Chrys, staring at him as if he was encrusted with diamonds.