Dedication

For Amy

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 18 - The End

Chapter 2 - The Bus Stops Here

Chapter 3 - The Time Toaster

Chapter 4 - Upgrade

Chapter 5 - Spot the Difference

Chapter 6 - Family Reunion

Chapter 7 - Men O’ the Manor

Chapter 8 - Casper Gets a Job

Chapter 9 - Blight Betrayal

Chapter 10 - The Unemployed

Chapter 11 - Know Thyself

Chapter 12 - The Legendary Casper Candlewacks

Chapter 13 - Mission: Implausible

Chapter 14 - Sweeping Up the Crumbs

Chapter 15 - The Time Toaster Flies Again

Chapter Minus 637 - Sir Gossamer

Chapter 17 - The Battle of the Kobb

Epilogue

Another Epilogue

Chapter 1 - The Big Dog Who Wouldn’t Stop Eating Muffins

More adventures with

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Copyright

About the Publisher

PS Oh dear. This book seems to have developed the capability of time travel. It’s actually a pretty common thing, especially when there’s time travelling going on within the book’s pages. The story gets ideas of its own, you see, and soon you’ve got Chapter 1 following Chapter 12, Chapter 4 hiding in the middle of Chapter 5, and Chapter 7 fighting barbarians somewhere in the Middle Ages. It’s a nightmare, I tell you.

Listen, the best thing to do is just ride it out. I’ll fill you in as we go along, OK?

Oh, that’s close enough. I mean, ideally you’d start with Chapter 1, but not much happened, really. There was this big dog that wouldn’t stop eating muffins, but it’s not central to the story. So let’s just begin from here.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this may be the proudest moment of my life.”

Mayor Rattsbulge wiped a greasy tear from his enormous cheek and licked his finger.

“To be standing in the shadow of such a majestic structure, and to have that structure named after little old me? Well, few people in this world could feel as proud as I do now. To have our very own bus shelter here in Corne-on-the-Kobb.” The mayor trembled. “To enjoy its many uses, such as, well, actually… what does a bus shelter do?”

A murmur of confusion spread through the crowd. Beards were scratched, shoulders were shrugged. The 107-year-old Betty Woons gasped and almost rocked her wheelchair over, but then her smile wrinkled up and she shook her head. This was a problem. Nobody had a clue what a bus shelter did, and if nobody knew, what was the point in having one?

In truth, this sort of thing happened quite a lot around these parts. You see, Corne-on-the-Kobb was what’s known in the trade as A Village of Idiots. With an average IQ of just under fifty-six, and an average reading age of minus three, the villagers of Corne-on-the-Kobb weren’t the shiniest spoons in the drawer. If left to their own devices they’d often end up stuck in a tree, buried neck-deep in a vegetable patch or sleeping inside your washing machine. But that’s exactly what makes Corne-on-the-Kobb brilliant.

“Somebody must know,” groaned Mayor Rattsbulge. “Where’s that clever lad? The one with the face. Oh, what’s his name – Camper Catalogue or something. He’ll know.”

The name spread through the crowd like Chinese whispers.

“Find Catcher Capricorn!”

“Where’s Candy Calculator?”

“Get Calcium Carbonate!”

At the very back of the crowd, Casper Candlewacks sighed. “You mean me?”

Heads nodded eagerly and the crowd parted to let Casper through.

“Ah, just the fellow,” said Mayor Rattsbulge, ruffling Casper’s scruffy blond hair. “Got any idea what this chap actually does?” He gestured to the shiny new bus shelter.

The wide-eyed crowd looked on expectantly. Noise trickled down to silence as they waited for the boy’s verdict. Even the pigeons stopped pecking to listen in.

Casper pointed inside to the wooden seats. “Erm… you sit here to wait for a bus.”

“HOORAY!” The crowd exploded with joy and Casper was promptly forgotten.

Not being an idiot in a village full of idiots was a full-time job, as Casper would tell you (between bouts of averting disasters and saving days). It meant late nights, early starts and a terrible pension package. But deep down, Casper loved it.

He wandered off to sit on a bollard just as the mayor asked, “What’s a bus?”

Casper picked up a soggy copy of Corne-on-the-Kobb’s weekly newspaper, the Daily Kobb, which floated on a puddle. On the front page Casper could still read the headline, the story that everyone had been talking about (until Mayor Rattsbulge announced the opening of his bus shelter):

Below the headline was a picture of Blight Manor, a once-great mansion, now old and crumbling, with missing windows, half a roof, and walls that had buckled and bent more than a bent buckle.

The Blight dynasty existed long before Corne-on-the-Kobb had even been thought of. A baron of Blight ruled the Kobb Valley after the Norman Conquest, and the family have held the seat with their cold-knuckled fists ever since. But in the years that passed, the Blights’ hold on the Kobb Valley slipped, their lands shrank and their finances dwindled. The last Lord Blight died under mysterious circumstances – after his daughter poisoned him. It’s not that mysterious, really. Now Lady Lobelia Blight and her daughter, Anemonie Blight, resided in Blight Manor, desperately clutching at the embers of their once-great empire. With the sale of Blight Manor, the lordship would slip away and the estate disappear, leaving nothing in its place but a nesting-place for the pigeons.

A steel-capped black leather boot slammed down on the soggy paper, splashing a muddy puddle all over Casper’s trousers.

“Oy!” Casper jumped back to avoid more wetting. Then he looked up to see the owner of the boot… and shivered. “Anemonie Blight. What d’you want?”

“It’s all lies, Candlewacks!” shrieked Anemonie, her oh-so-noble pointy nose red with shame. “How many times do I have to punch you before you understand that?”

Casper shuffled back further as Anemonie advanced, fists clenched. “Look, I don’t care how much money you have.”

“Lots of money!” she shouted. She had long dark hair and a threatening squint. “Rooms full of it, in fact. An’ if you say we don’t, I’ll bite you.”

“OK!” Casper held up his hands. “I believe you! You’re still rich.”

Anemonie stopped and smirked, but her eyes stayed steely cold. “Good. Make sure you tell everyone.” As she turned to leave, she spotted a two-pence piece on the ground and bent down to snatch it like a pigeon to a breadcrumb. She straightened up and looked around to check nobody had seen.

Casper pretended to watch a tree.

Once Anemonie had stomped round the corner, Casper gave a sigh. However much he despised the little bully and her pointy nose, watching Anemonie’s downfall was a pitiful sight. A few generations back, a Blight’s packed lunch would contain caviar sandwiches and cartons of alcohol-free champagne. But now Anemonie was eating free school lunches and getting caught stealing cabbages from Mrs Trimble’s shop.

The crowd from the ceremony was filtering away gradually, although many villagers had formed a long line stretching from the bus shelter and away down the road. As old Betty Woons trundled by, she gave Casper a knowing wink. She always did. It was unnerving.

“Casper! Casper!” A sooty-haired, lumpy chap in a blue boiler suit and sponge shoes came galumphing out of a garage at the end of the street. He spotted Casper, gasped, and galumphed in his direction. He only fell over twice on the way, which was a new record. “Casper, I did it! I really did it!”

“What did you do, Lamp?”

Lamp Flannigan, Casper’s best and only friend, was red-faced and puffing from his run. He was eleven, the same age as Casper, with a dongle of a nose, wide, round eyes and a funny way of standing that always made him look as if he was about to sit down. He also had toes that glowed in the dark ever since he let a small family of fireflies live in his shoes, and the world’s first elephant-repellent boiler suit. Lamp was an inventor by trade… but we’ll get to that.

“I did my Time Toaster! Look…”

Lamp crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue with concentration as he fumbled around in the pocket of his boiler suit. Finally his eyes lit up and he pulled out a blackened, crumbling piece of toast.

Casper waited for the toast to do something amazing.

It didn’t.

“So…” Casper shrugged. “It’s just toast.”

“Not just toast, Casper,” Lamp grinned, relishing the words on the tip of his tongue. “This is toast from the future.”

Casper was a good fifteen centimetres taller than Lamp – and a good fifteen centimetres better at spelling, for what it’s worth. Casper was a dab hand at sums, a keen reader and he could list the kings and queens from 1066 to the present. Lamp could just about list the numbers from one to two, but he struggled to open books the right way up and he didn’t even know when history was. Casper’s clothes were scruffy hand-me-downs from his dad’s rock-band phase, while Lamp only wore his boiler suit. When it got dirty, he wore it backwards to save on washing. The two made an unlikely pair, but because they’d saved the village three times since June, and it was only a quarter past eleven on the sixth of October, nobody was complaining.

Lamp’s one and only strong point was inventing, but, boy, was he good at it. He’d invented just-add-water moustaches, hind wheels for donkeys and a torch that glowed dark in the day. The thing is, when Lamp Flannigan says a piece of toast is from the future, you’d do well to believe him. He’s not normally wrong about that sort of thing.

Lamp’s house sat at number 1 Corne Approach, a charming two-bedroom property, just a stone’s throw from the new bus stop, complete with a garage, good access to the town centre and stunning views into the window of the house across the road.

But who’d want to look outside when the interior held such wonders? Lamp’s garage was dark, gloomy and absolutely wicked. Here, amongst piles of scrap metal and buckets of leftover doorknobs, Lamp let his inventions take form. Today, at centre stage on the workbench, sat a brushed-steel, four-slot toaster with a dozen metal springs boinging outwards at jaunty angles, each with a watch face glued to the end. Most of the watches were cracked, bent or missing vital numbers, like three etc. The hands weren’t turning, either, so Casper guessed they were just for decoration. Multicoloured wires sprouted from inside the toaster and wound about in scruffy coils, meeting again as they stuffed inside a digital alarm clock strapped on to the toaster’s front face. A series of buttons ripped from Lamp’s mum’s cardigans had been installed in a long line below, each labelled with things like SEKUND, MINIT, and MUMF.“It’s my Time Toaster.” Lamp proudly patted it, making the little watch faces wobble. “It steals a piece of toast from any toaster through time and space.”

“Oh…” Casper let that flow over him. “But why would you want toast from anywhere through time and space?”

“If you’re hungry, of course.”

“Couldn’t you just make some real toast?”

Lamp blinked. “Didn’t think of that. But listen, this is way better.” He pulled out the crumbling slice he’d shown Casper earlier. “Sniff this.”

He did. It smelt of toast.

“See?” grinned Lamp. He took a bite. “Mm, futurey.”

Casper waited patiently while Lamp invented a jam magnet.

When the toast was finished and the jam wiped off the walls, Lamp licked his lips and said, “So. Fancy a slice?”

“I... er…”

“Me too!” Lamp bounced across the garage to his Time Toaster and twizzled some buttons. “Ready?”

Casper took a few steps back and shoved on a motorcycle helmet that was lying on its side. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

“Then Let’s TIME!” Lamp did a heroic pose involving pointing one finger at the ceiling.

“Wait!” shouted Casper. “Can we think of a better catchphrase first?” He was worried that Let’s Time would stick.

“Erm…” Lamp chewed on his tongue. “How about ‘Let’s Hope We Don’t Get Sucked into the Time Vortex and End Up Getting Trampled On by a TRICERATOPS!!’”

Casper shuddered. That was a hope that he too shared, but he didn’t want to think about it every time Lamp made toast. “Shall we stick to the first one, then?”

Lamp nodded. “In that case, Casper, there’s no time to lose. Let’s TIME!” He pushed the toaster’s lever down with a geeky flourish and the alarm clock went off. A dim, pulsing buzz came from the toaster’s bowels. The watches began to tick round now, slowly at first, but speeding up and up, until the springs shook and the hands were a blur of minutes and hours.

Smoke poured from the machine, and Casper smelt toast. A lick of flame danced from the top of the slot, then a crackle and hundreds of little clangs as the whole machine shuddered and the watches clashed into each other.

The cloud of smoke engulfed Lamp and his Time Toaster. Casper coughed into his shirt, his eyes stung, the smoke plumed across the garage and surrounded him too.

“Lamp!” he coughed. “Has it gone wrong?”

Through the smoke Casper saw somebody stumbling about inventing a fire extinguisher, but there was no response.

“Turn it off!” Casper shouted. “Turn–” but his lungs filled with smoke and he bent double, coughing. He longed for fresh air, for a cool breeze, for a friend who didn’t burn things down all the time.

Then… SPRUNGG!

Something popped up. The cacophony ceased, the flames died and the smoke began to thin. Through Casper’s watery eyes he could see Lamp plucking something from the toaster’s tray and blowing it out with sharp puffs. Little cinders still burnt at the corners, so he threw it to the floor and gave it a good stamp.

“You can have that slice,” said Casper, straightening up and rubbing the ash from his eyes. “Not a big fan of stamped toast.”

Lamp picked it up and gasped. “But, Casper, this isn’t toast!”

“More like charcoal.”

“No, no, look. This is writing! It says…” He scratched his nose, leaving a black smudge. “Casper, can I read?”

“Not often, no. Give it here.”

The oily boy was right. He held out a charred strip of paper, yellow and curled and peppered with cinder holes. Most of the blackened bottom half melted away into ash as Casper took it, but some words at the top were still visible through the soot. A title, an author and a date.

Casper’s brain twisted the wrong way up. “What? But…” He read the paper again. And again. He rubbed his eyes. He looked at the date, and the name, and the title. Then he pinched himself. He asked Lamp to pinch him. He asked Lamp to punch him. He asked Lamp to stop punching him now, because six times was quite enough.

“What’s it say, then?”

Whichever way Casper read the paper, the words written on it were impossible. Firstly, it seemed to be an article written… written… by Lamp. This in itself was beyond belief. Only once in his life had Lamp spelt a word correctly. (He wrote ‘fish’, which is more of an achievement when you don’t know that it took him a week and he was trying to spell the word ‘the’.)

But more importantly, the date said 18 November 2112. That would make Lamp 111 years old when he wrote it. Now, Betty Woons was 107 and going strong, but she didn’t get blown up nearly as often as Lamp. And anyway, Betty was probably lying about her age. She’d been 107 for as long as Casper had known her. Sure, she was old, but in all likelihood she’d lost count at around 80 and just picked her favourite number.

And even if Lamp had grown to 111 years old and learnt to write, why would he discredit his own time machine, of all things? It was Lamp’s ultimate goal! With this toaster he was halfway there! Why ever would he criticise something like that?

“I think your machine’s broken, Lamp.”

“Can’t be. If it was broken then this light would come on.” He pointed to a green bottle cap on the top of the alarm clock marked BROKKIN.

“But this is written by you, in the future, and it says the Time Toaster should never have been invented.”

“Don’t be silly,” chuckled Lamp. “I can’t write.”

“Well, that’s what I thought.”

“So what’s that writing mean, then?”

“I haven’t a clue.” Casper chewed his lip, but that didn’t help at all.

Lamp thought for a minute, then snorted. “We should go and find out!”

“To the future?” Casper’s heart beat faster. “But how?”

“All we’ve got to do is climb into the Time Toaster. Then the me in the future will pull the switch.” Lamp was already trying to force his foot into the tray. “Gimme a push, Casper.”

“Lamp, you’ll never fit!” Casper gave his friend a shove, but his toes barely passed the lip of the toaster. “You’re just not toast-shaped.”

“I could be,” Lamp piped up. “As long as I bring some glue with me, I could travel in slices.”

“Not sure that’s wise.”

“But I want to go time travelling, Casper! I could be a knight, and a spaceman, and – ooh! – I could be a postman!”

“You could be a postman now.”

“Not a proper postman, Casper. In the olden days they rode horses and fired guns at deserts.”

“That’s a cowboy.”

A gasp came from the garage doorway.

Both boys spun round and one squeaked. There stood Anemonie Blight, her greedy eyes wide. She pointed a black-nailed finger at the Time Toaster. “Wassat, then?”

“Nothing,” snapped Casper. “Go away.”

“Not until you tell me what it does,” the girl smirked. “Fly, does it? Will it do yer homework?”

“It’s not finished,” lied Casper, “and even if it was, it still wouldn’t do anything.”

“Actually –” Lamp stepped forward proudly, clasping his hands together and closing his eyes like a museum curator describing Picasso’s bogey – “it’s a time machine.”

Anemonie’s ears pricked up.

Casper’s heart leapt.

Lamp’s tummy rumbled, so he took a bite of toast.

“Time machine, is it?” Anemonie’s body had tensed, her eyebrows raised.

“No!” cried Casper. “You heard him wrong. He said… erm… prime gravel. That’s it! It makes gravel for your garden path, that’s all.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Lamp frowned. “It makes time travel.”

Casper winced. He jabbed his friend twice with an elbow, to the rhythm of Shut up, but by the look on Anemonie’s face, he knew it was too late.

“The things I could do with a time machine,” the girl murmured, inching forward with a wild look in her eyes. “Go back and buy last week’s winning lottery tickets; take a telly back in time and pretend I invented it…” She giggled. “Or I could just sell the time machine. Reckon it’s worth a hundred pounds at least.”

“A hundred pounds?” chuckled Lamp, shaking his head. “Not likely. My Time Toaster’s more valuable than all the money in all the piggy banks in all the world.”

That was enough. Pound signs flashed in Anemonie’s eyes and she launched at the boys, fingernails first.

Lamp spun protectively and grabbed the Time Toaster while Casper stepped forward to block Anemonie’s path. She deftly dodged him, leaping to one side and bouncing at Lamp. Turning away just in time, Lamp found himself holding the Time Toaster at arm’s length as Anemonie pushed into him, screaming with envy.

“Lamp! Over here!” Casper was unmarked at the entrance to the garage, and he’d played enough rugby to know this was a good thing. “Chuck it!”

Anemonie lunged, but not in time to deflect Lamp’s mighty lob as the Time Toaster soared into the air…

…and landed with a CRASH! about fifty centimetres in front of Lamp’s feet.

“You broke it.” Anemonie sneered with disdain at the crumpled heap on the floor. “How’m I gonna sell a big lump of broken metal?” With a huff, she stomped from the garage, spitting on the floor as she left.

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.

And just like that, the hairdryers were down and the lad had proffered a gloved hand for shaking. “Sorry about all that, old boy. Can’t be too careful these days. I’m Briar.”

They shook. Briar’s grip was cold and glovey.

“Briar Blight.”

Crunch. Briar Blight squeezed Casper’s hand far too hard, pulverising his bones into soup. The lad smirked, but didn’t loosen his grip. “And this is my sister, Chrysanthemum Blight, but she likes to be called Chrys. Pretty name, ugly sister.”

Chrysanthemum smirked sarcastically at Briar.

Confusion and shattered bone surged through Casper’s veins. “Blight?” He winced, pulled his hand free and turned round to see Anemonie stepping forward, grinning like a minx. “D’you know them?”

Anemonie ignored Casper’s question and shoved straight past. “Blights, eh? Well, I’ve not heard of you, and I’m a Blight. I’m THE Blight. Anemonie Epiphany Hookworme Blight. Heir to Blight Manor, owner of a hundred slaves and the last hope for the upper classes. What’re you, then? Second cousins on my dad’s side?” She crossed her arms challengingly.

Briar’s eyes grew wide. Next to him, Chrys watched Anemonie in awe, her snarly mouth agape. “Granny?”

Anemonie tipped her head back and guffawed. “HAH! What are you, stupid or somethink? You ain’t my granny. I met both my grannies. None of ’em had that hedgehog barnet, and both of ’em are dead.”

Chrys touched her hair protectively.

“What she meant to say –” said Briar, digging the steel cap of his boot into Chrys’s ankle, which made the girl squeak – “is that your granny is our granny’s first cousin’s nephew’s… er… dog. We’re distant relatives, but just as posh, and we’re well rich. Look.”

Briar produced a black wallet with a gold rim from his suit pocket. He popped it open, pulled out a fat wad of banknotes between thumb and forefinger and cast them off into the breeze without a second thought.

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