Casper Candlewacks in the Attack of the Brainiacs!
Read Casper Candlewacks in the Attack of the Brainiacs! Online
Authors: Ivan Brett
Bon Voyage
Big Boys' School
Five Brewsters and a Brainiac
The Battered Cod
Best Served Cold
The Guilt Box
A New Dawn
The Best Defence
A Village of Brainiacs
Humble Pie
Rematch
Deep Cover Dining
Molecular Gastronomy
What Happens Tomorrow
What Happens the Next Day
Brain Food
Breaking Bread
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Casper Candlewacks in the Claws of Crime!
Hello.
You've all heard of the old English tradition of the Village Idiot, right? No? Well thenâ¦
There's this age-old law in Britain, passed through Parliament over one million years ago, that decreed the following (translated from caveman): âEvery collection of stone huts shall, at all times,
contain one idiot.' It's thought that this law aimed to cheer up the people's boring lives, giving them something to laugh at between sessions of boar-hunting or wheel-inventing.
Fast-forward to the present day and if you visit any English village you'll still find their idiot. Follow the curious smell and muddy footprints, look out for the man in a bobble hat chasing pigeons. Throw him a penny and the rest of your sandwich and thank him for his hard work â people like him are what make Britain great.
But there's one village where things are slightly different. You see, in Corne-on-the-Kobb, a pretty little village with a pretty little cobbled square hidden away in the picturesque Kobb Valley, there isn't an idiot. In Corne-on-the-Kobb there are about two hundred. In fact, every single person
who lives in Corne-on-the-Kobb is a magnificently, hilariously wonderful specimen of a village idiot, all apart from one blond-haired scruffy boy called Casper Candlewacks.
Casper is the only non-idiot in Corne-on-the-Kobb, and that's why he's interesting. When an arrogant Italian magician cursed the village, only Casper could un-curse it. When an evil cat burglar stole the village's precious bejewelled sword, only Casper could steal it back. When somebody filled their trousers with custard, only Casper could work the washing machine and tumble dryer and get the trousers back to them, custard free, in under forty-eight hours.
You get the point. Corne-on-the-Kobb is a village of idiots, and that's the way it'll always be. Or is it?
(Yes, it is.)
But is it?
(Yes.)
Look, have you read this book?
(Not yet, no.)
Well, get on with it! You might learn something.
(Sorry. I'll read it now.)
“Lamp? You up yet?” Casper Candlewacks hauled open the corrugated door, flooding the garage with the morning's sunlight. “It's gone half seven and we really shouldn't miss the bus. Not on our first day.”
There was a loud bump upstairs as Lamp Flannigan fell out of bed. “Casper?” came the muffled reply. “Where are you? All I can see is carpet.”
“You're on the floor, Lamp. Come on, we haven't got long.” Casper wriggled in his starched black blazer and loosened his tie. The emblem on Casper's breast pocket showed a snake strangling a bear, with âSSSS' written below in curly writing. This stood for âSt Simian's School for Seniors' (not the sound the snake was making, as Casper had first thought).
Casper hated the idea of school uniform. Until the start of the summer he'd been at Corne-on-the-Kobb Primary, where the dress code was âclothes, if you have them'. But, just like Free Envelope Week at the Corne-on-the-Kobb Envelope 'n' Bin Liner MegaMarket, all good things must come to an end. St Simian's demanded a white shirt, black blazer, stiff grey trousers that creased like cardboard and shiny black shoes, all topped off
with a mustard-yellow tie. Casper's mum had forgotten about the shoes until last night so she'd dipped his trainers into a tin of black paint. They felt crispy. Casper had had a go at taming his bushy mess of blond hair, but after losing two combs and a metal fork he decided to leave it as it was.
To Casper, Lamp Flannigan's garage felt just like home. He'd spent the whole summer here, building âBubbel Buggies' and âBluff Boilers' and getting progressively oilier day by day. But a newcomer to the garage would struggle to believe this magical junkyard kingdom was even real. Piles of metal, batteries and raw pasta littered the floor next to boxes filled with wires and bleeping circuit boards. Mad contraptions the shape of armadillos or saxophones (or both) whirred, clicked and honked from every worktop. A pot of
smoking silver stuff bubbled away on the edge of a wooden shelf, while a robot with three wheels and a tennis racket for a head trundled in wobbly loops across the floor after a squealing self-bouncing tennis ball. Under a shelf full of wrenches sat a large chicken hutch with a Do Not Disturb sign hanging from the front.
Two things had changed since yesterday. First, there was a new heap of scrap metal in Junk Corner, which was the place Lamp liked to keep his stuff when Bric-a-Brac Basket was full. Along with the usual old tat was a huge blue canister with a nozzle at the top and Helium printed on the front. But the second new thing really captured Casper's attention. A pulsing, wheezing contraption took up most of the space on the workbench, replacing the gearbox filled with jam that had sat
there yesterday, but now sat on the floor, gathering ants. Casper didn't mind; this new machine was miles more exciting than Lamp's jammy gearbox. A set of red bagpipes floated in the air like a tartan zeppelin, tethered in place by several lengths of string reaching up from a heavy iron rack. Strapped tightly round the bagpipes' belly was a bleeping calculator fastened on to a leather belt; the mouthpiece had been extended up into a big yellow bowl that waggled in polite circles above the rest of the machine. The instrument had three wooden pipes, two of which were connected to each other with a length of rubber tube, while the third was taped to the long black neck of a vacuum cleaner that swung about close to the floor like a clumsy tail.
“It cooks omlits,” said Lamp. “D'you want one?”
Casper jumped. “Crikey! How did you get down here?”
A short podgy boy with a scrub of soot-black hair and a pear-shaped dongle of a nose stood in the far corner of the garage. In his left hand was a huge red helium balloon; in the other was an anchor on a string. He wore a blazer just like Casper's (except the arms went down to his knees), his trousers were three sizes too small and his tie was made of yellow sofa fabric, looped twice round his neck and knotted in the middle. “I built a lift!” grinned Lamp.
“Ah⦔ Above Lamp's head there was a hole in the ceiling, just the right size for a large red helium balloon, a boy and an anchor to fit through. “Ahh.”
“Look.” Lamp let go of the anchor and the balloon lifted him into the air.
Casper giggled. “Come back down here!”
Lamp disappeared through the hole in the ceiling. “Hang on,” he called. “I need another
anchor.” There was some clunking, and a moment later down he floated with a second anchor on a string. “It's for when the stairs are broken,” said Lamp, tethering his balloon to a handy knob he'd glued to the wall. “I get through a lot of anchors, though.”
“Can't you reuse them?”
Lamp chuckled. “Don't be silly.”
“Anyway, what did you say this thing was?” Casper turned back to the captive bagpipes.
“It's my Omlit Gun,” smiled Lamp. “It makes lovely omlits and shoots them out here.” He waggled the head of the vacuum-cleaner neck in Casper's direction.
Casper ducked, just in case. “Omelettes? I should've guessed.” He was used to Lamp's eggy inventions by now. Two months ago Lamp had
found Mavis and Bessie, the two egg-laying hens, sitting on his doorstep with a note saying they were his distant cousins. He took them in and gave them a coop, and in return the girls always made sure he had a surplus of eggs to invent stuff with.
The bagpipes let out a weary wheeze.
“So? Does it work?” asked Casper, slightly fearing the answer.
“Dunno,” shrugged Lamp. “Let's give it a try. Ladies?”
Mavis and Bessie, Lamp's two prize egg-laying hens and long-distant cousins on his mum's side, popped their rubbery heads out of the coop and clucked sleepily. Mavis, the darker one, flipped over the Do Not Disturb sign with her beak. The other side said The Hens Are In. Please Knock.
Lamp lifted the lid of the hens' coop to pick
out two speckly brown eggs. “Watch this!” He did a little trot on the spot, galumphed over to the Omelette Gun and cracked both eggs into the yellow bowl.
The machine wobbled into motion, a nauseous groan from the belly of the bagpipes tightening into a tuneless wheeze. The strings grew taut, the bag puffed fuller and the eggs slipped down the mouthpiece and out of view. Then the pipes began to whistle a screeching, tuneless tune, a melody of such demonic ugliness that even when Casper blocked his ears, he could smell how bad it sounded.
Lamp did a highland jig around the garage.
The screech rose louder, the bag pumped fuller, the strings stretched and frayed to hold it still, and then when Casper was sure the thing was
about to explode, there was a tremendous rattle as something shot down the vacuum-cleaner neck and spat across the garage, splurging against the far wall and sticking fast.
Casper dared to unblock his ears. “Wow.”
Lamp grinned. “Wait for it⦔
CHOO!
With a final sneeze, the vacuum cleaner belched a cloud of herbs after the omelette, which filled the air like edible confetti.
Casper could do nothing else but clap. “Amazing!” he cheered. “
Encore!
”
Lamp bowed deeply. “I thank you,” he said. “Want one? There's plenty more eggs.”
Before Casper could answer, Lamp was already back at the coop, rooting around in the straw. His face crumpled into a frown. “Strange⦔
“What's up?”
“I can't find any more eggs. What with the two I've already got this morning that means today they've only laid⦔ Lamp pulled his arm from the coop and counted up on his fingers, “â¦six. I mean ten.”
“Two,” said Casper.
“Exactly. Three. That's the lowest yet.”
Apart from the counting part, Lamp was absolutely right. Until a couple of weeks ago, Mavis and Bessie were prize egg-layers. They'd pump out eggs like faulty bubblegum machines, filling their coop right to the top and proudly sitting on the lid. But something had changed because each morning the boys would find fewer and fewer eggs, with no explanation why.
“I don't like this,” said Casper suspiciously.
“Maybe they're ill or something.”
“Chicken pox?” said Lamp.
“Do chickens get chicken pox?”
“Er, yeah.” Lamp clicked his teeth. “Clue's in the name, silly.”
Bessie pecked at a little vending machine. It gave a
bloop
and its dispenser scattered a handful of seeds on to the garage floor.
“Come on, Lamp, we've a bus to catch.”
“Ooh!” Lamp squealed. “We're going to big boys' school!”
The pit of Casper's stomach wiggled. He wished he shared his friend's enthusiasm, but in truth, he was terrified. Corne-on-the-Kobb wasn't big enough to have its own senior school, so once the kids were old enough, they were shipped off to the sprawling city of High Kobb. You could
see its grey towers from the top of the Corne-on-the-Kobb village hall, climbing high into the clouds and beyond, probably into space. Casper had never been to High Kobb, or any city, as a matter of fact. The villagers had told stories and Casper had listened, quivering: the never-ending traffic, murderers on every street corner and giant alligators that crawl out of the sewers and eat your firstborn. Cities struck fear into Casper's heart. And now he had to go to school inside one!
If Casper survived the day, though, he'd have worse waiting for him back in Corne-on-the-Kobb. Tonight was the opening of his dad's brand-new restaurant, an event two months and three kitchen fires in the making. Casper was to be head waiter and mopper of spills, his least favourite job since nappy-recycling.
“Oh, Casper, aren't we gonna have so much fun?”
Casper was jolted back to reality as Lamp stuffed a handful of marbles and an iron into his oil-stained backpack.
“D'you think they have chairs there? Otherwise I'll take this one with me.”
“They've already got chairs. I think. Come on, we're going to be late.”
“Race you to the bus!” Lamp galumphed out of the garage and veered left down the road.
“This way, Lamp.”
“Righty-ho!” He wheeled round and galumphed back into the garage.