Casper Candlewacks in the Attack of the Brainiacs! (9 page)

Casper threw his head in his hands. “You have to be joking.”

Lunch came and went, but the brutes' battering ram didn't run out of battery. Casper's stomach rumbled like a runaway wagon and, unlike Cuddles, he'd never developed a taste for tinfoil.

The fossilised teacher delivered his lecture on sewage systems three more times in the afternoon, and each time Lamp sat at the front nodding intently. By four o'clock, Casper was about ready to open the door and let the Brewsters bludgeon his ears off, but then the final bell rang and the fossilised teacher slumped to the desk one final time. The Brewsters instantly forgot what they were doing, cheered “'OME TIME!” and bundled
off home for milk and cookies. Once the coast was clear, Casper and Snivel tore Lamp and Cuddles away from books and mouse holes and scampered back to the bus. Anemonie trudged behind.

“D'you want to come back with us?” asked Casper, noticing the worry on Snivel's face. “You can help out at the restaurant, or—”

“It's fine,” said Snivel. “There's a l-lock on my b-bedroom door.”

“OK,” Casper frowned. “See you tomorrow.”

Snivel gave a pained smile and padded off.

The journey home was a very subdued affair, but Casper wasn't sure if it was because of the effects of the Brewsters' bullying, Cuddles's afternoon nap or the fact that most of the kids were reading dense philosophical texts. It was the first silence he'd had all day – finally, an opportunity for
another go at Friday's menu. He needed to think up something special; food so tasty it'd blow Jean-Claude out of the water for good. Inspiration didn't come, but Corne-on-the-Kobb did, and when Casper climbed off the train carriage, the paper was still blank.

Lamp hopped down behind Casper and galumphed away across the cobbles.

“Aren't you going to come and help at The Battered Cod?” Casper called after him.

“Can't,” shouted Lamp, over his shoulder. “Got inventions to invent.” And just like that, Casper was alone.

Jean-Claude sat hunched on the step of his restaurant, smoking a cigarette and kicking at any pigeons that dared to peck too close. He looked up at the sound of Casper's footsteps and hawked
back a noseful of phlegm to chew on.

“'Allo,
boy.
You are looking forward to Friday?” He chuckled and took a long drag on his cigarette.

How could such a small, hunched man make Casper feel so uneasy? “Can't wait,” he replied as boldly as he could manage. “Just planning the menu now.” Casper waved his piece of paper at Jean-Claude and stuffed it back in his pocket before the Frenchman could notice quite how blank it was. “What are you going to serve? More omelettes?”

“
Oui
.” Jean-Claude's gap-toothed smirk made Casper shiver. “Omelette and more.”

“Oh, yeah? What else?”

Straight-out asking was a direct tactic and one that Casper didn't expect to work. He was right. “You think I would be telling you? Ha!” The gritty laugh descended into coughing and Jean-
Claude doubled over, clutching his chest. When it passed, he rose, his smirk replaced by a dog's snarl. At standing height he only measured up to Casper's nose. “Leave me alone,
boy
.” Jean-Claude prodded Casper's chest. “I have ze… er… business to do.”

Casper stood by as the little chef flicked his cigarette to the cobbles and shuffled off away from his restaurant.

“What business is that?” thought Casper as Jean-Claude disappeared round a corner. Perhaps this was a chance to scope out the opposition, have a peek at what Jean-Claude was planning. Without really meaning to, Casper found himself tiptoeing from shadow to shadow, Cuddles jiggling around in his backpack, following Jean-Claude out of the square.

If Jean-Claude had turned round, he probably would have seen Casper following him. For all the leaping between shadows Casper was doing, he was no more invisible than when he walked normally, and Cuddles made squeaking noises every time she hit the roof of his bag. But Casper
felt like an action hero, and in the end that's all that matters, isn't it? Anyway, Jean-Claude was so determined to get wherever he was going that even if a herd of elephants with funny hats stood by the side of the road trumpeting the tune to
Dancing Queen
in full harmony, he still wouldn't have turned his head.

The grubby Frenchman shuffled onwards, turning right at the pelican crossing and heading towards Sandy Landscape's allotment by the churchyard. Casper followed (giving the pelican a tickle as he passed), diving behind a hedge to get a good view.

Through a hole in the foliage, Casper could see muddy old Sandy Landscape, just back from his tractor ride, scratching his head at the rows of vegetables.

“'Allo,
Monsieur Landscape
. What is being ze matter?”

Sandy barely looked up. “It's me veggibles. Woke up this mornin' with a few compostin' ideas in me 'ead, so I mixes 'em up and plants me seeds before I goes out on me errands. I comes back just now and, well, 'ave a look fer yerself.” Sandy reached down, tugged at some furry green stalks and unearthed a carrot as long, thick and orange as an orang-utan's arm.

Jean-Claude's eyes bulged greedily. He plucked the cigarette from his mouth and flicked it to the ground.

“An' what 'bout these?” An enormous knobbled potato followed the carrot, tomatoes the size of spacehoppers and a fully baked pumpkin pie snipped straight from its stalk. “I's never seen the loike.”

Jean-Claude smiled a knowing smile and nodded a knowing head. Then he coughed a knowing cough and lit another cigarette. “Zis is so very… er… unexpected.”

“I's better go an' write 'ow I mixed that compost afore I forget. An' that's the queerest bit of all,” chuckled Sandy as he lumbered away to
his rotting wooden shed, “I couldn't even write afore this mornin'!”

Once he thought he was alone, Jean-Claude let out a chesty chuckle, bringing up a fat flob of black spit. “It works!” he cackled. “
Mon Dieu
, it works!” Unfurling a black bin liner from his pocket, Jean-Claude hastily stuffed the carrot, potato, tomatoes and pie inside, as well as a grubby clutch of fat strawberries from their bush.

“D'you see that, Cuddles?
Thief!
” Casper wanted to leap from behind the hedge and alert Sandy, but already Jean-Claude was shuffling away down the road dragging his bin liner behind him. Who knew what Casper would miss if he blew his cover. He waited thirty seconds and slunk after Jean-Claude once more.

The Frenchman's next stop was the kitchen
window of Audrey Snugglepuss, where a dozen carrot cakes, cut into peculiar shapes, were cooling on the sill.

Casper hid behind a lamppost.

Through the window he could hear Audrey whistling Christmas carols, but when she saw Jean-Claude sniffing at her cakes, she stopped. “Aren't they a picture? I cut them to the shape of my twelve favourite irregular polygons. Look, I even iced in the interior angles.”

How odd. Audrey's cakes had come in circles for as long as he'd known her (or ovals if she'd dropped them) – never ever any of this irregular polygon stuff.

Jean-Claude's gasp sounded as fake as Betty Woons's wooden ear. “Zat is quite something,
Madame
.”

“I'm just going to check on the next batch. You watch the pigeons don't steal those cakes, will you?”

“Of course,” chuckled Jean-Claude, tipping the cakes into his bin liner as soon as Audrey's whistling faded from earshot.

“I can't believe this,” Casper whispered. But as his mission continued, things only got odder.

“'Ave a snifter of this whisky, Mister Claude!” squeaked tiny Mitch McMassive, who stood on a step by the door to The Horse and Horse. “Knocked a batch up this afternoon. Sped up the distilling process by piping it through me radiator. Course, it's more complicated'n that, but—”

“
C'est délicieux!
” exclaimed Jean-Claude, sucking up the final few amber drops through his cigarette like a tarry straw.

“You think so?” giggled Mitch. “Well, you'd better try this wine. Brewed it this morning in me teapot.”

Jean-Claude reached down to take the glass, knocked it back in one and rested on his haunches as his lips curled into a satisfied smile.

As Mitch scuttled away to fetch the teapot in question, Jean-Claude lugged the crate of wine and the remains of the whisky bottle into his bin liner and scarpered.

The afternoon continued in the same fashion.

Betty Woons was keen to tell Jean-Claude about her new creations – Mexican jumping jelly beans the flavour of fiery chilli that leapt into your mouth and burst whether you liked it or not. When Betty rolled off for a nap, Jean-Claude sneaked into her house and stole a whole bag.

Mrs Trimble had taught her cats to sniff for truffles (both the chocolate and the mushroom kinds) and filled three Tupperware tubs with the things, only to discover she was allergic to Tupperware. Jean-Claude gladly took them off her hands.

Mayor Rattsbulge had perfected a sausage-cloning technique at around lunchtime. By the time Jean-Claude shuffled past the mayor's house, it was so full that sausages were tumbling out of the open window. All he had to do was hold open his bin liner and let them rain down.

Casper watched from behind the statue as Jean-Claude dragged his bulging bin liner through the door of
Bistro D'Escargot
. In one afternoon of scavenging he'd successfully stocked his restaurant without lifting a finger. But more confusing was quite
how
all the villagers had produced their
foodstuffs. Sandy Landscape was a terrible gardener – he'd spent most of his adult years planting cornflakes and frozen chips in his allotment. Mitch McMassive had left his last batch of beer to ferment so long that it grew a brain, invaded his pub and only agreed to leave once he'd emptied the till and fed it all his pork scratchings. But here they were, distilling fine whisky in radiators and growing pumpkin pies with special fertiliser.

As Casper trudged home, his stomach grumbled loudly enough to wake Cuddles. Something was wrong and Casper felt sure as beans it was down to Jean-Claude. But what? And when? And whom? And why? And what?

Casper found his mum lying on the kitchen floor, bound from head to foot in a thick tangle of blue wool.

 

“Hello, darling!” Amanda sang, as if lying in a wool cocoon was the most normal thing to do on a Tuesday afternoon.

“What are you doing down there?”

“Learning to knit. How do I look?”

With a sigh, Casper plonked Cuddles down on the sideboard and set to work on the wool with a pair of kitchen scissors. “At least you gave it a go.”

“I was doing a dress, but I forgot the arms. But honestly, who needs arms, anyway? Not me!” she trilled.
“Where are your knitting needles?”

“Needles? Ooh, I knew I'd forgotten something.”

Cuddles burped.

“My little schoolgirl!” squealed Amanda, clambering free of her dress and trotting to the sideboard. “What did they teach you at school?”

Cuddles yawned and out of her throat came a strange noise – a tuneful sort of gargling
in a deep American accent.

“
Ooh yeah, ma darlin', your love is like a garbage truck
.” Cuddles snapped her mouth shut and the noise stopped.

Casper and Amanda stared at the baby, mouths agape.

She giggled and the noise started again. “
Collectin' ma trash on Mondays 'n' Thursdays, doo be doo
.”

“I… know that song,” said Casper. “It's on my—” he rummaged around in his backpack, but it was missing. Cuddles had eaten his TuneBrick™.

“
Garbage truck baby, except on bank holidays, garbage truck baby, yeah
.” Cuddles bopped along to the music in her belly, waving her little elbows around with glee.

Amanda's eyes had never been so wide. “My
baby can… sing now?” She broke into a grin. “Casper, that school is amazing!”

Casper grunted. “Amazing,” he repeated glumly. It wasn't worth breaking his mum's heart this afternoon, so he'd have to play along with it.

“She can even do the drum noises. Listen!”

Casper sighed. “Double music this afternoon. Must've learnt it then.” He couldn't afford a new one, either.

With his mum and his sister boogieing away, Casper pulled on his coat and trudged off to the restaurant. There'd be pans that needed cleaning, fish that needed filleting, and (unless Lamp had
finally
finished inventing that self-peeling parsnip) those parsnips weren't going to peel themselves.