Casper Candlewacks in the Time Travelling Toaster. Ivan Brett

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      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 СКАЧАТЬ