Casper Candlewacks in the Time Travelling Toaster (4 page)

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.

The pigeons that had bank accounts swooped down to catch some cash in midair, but most of the notes fluttered away on the wind, up past the trees and away.

Briar upturned his wallet and let a shower of coins clinkle to the ground. He stamped on the coins, threw his empty wallet over his shoulder, where it bounced off a hopeful pigeon and landed in a puddle. “What’s it matter? I’ve got billions of quid in millions of wallets. I’d have thrown it away at the end of the day anyway. A Blight never reuses his wallet.”

Judging by the sparkle in Anemonie’s eyes and the glint in her nose, the girl was impressed. “Only a true Blight’d do something
that
wasteful. Welcome to the family.”

“Yeah, thanks.” Briar wrinkled his pointy nose, just like Anemonie always did.

Casper wondered how he’d not seen it before.
Those noses!
Who else but Blights would be so reckless with their belongings, so threatening with so little provocation?

Lamp shuffled up behind Casper and cleared his throat. “Casper,” he whispered, “I’ve been doing some counting and I think we’ve got them outnumbered. I’ll take the boy, you take Anemonie, I’ll take the girl and you take the boy and the girl. Then I’ll hold the rear and you watch for pigeons while I take Anemonie.” Lamp grinned with pride at his tactics.

“Let’s hold back on a battle for now, Lamp.” He smiled at the three Blights, knowing full well they’d heard every word of Lamp’s plan. “We’re all friends here, eh? Any bad blood between the Blight family and us is just water under the bridge. Ain’t that right, Anemonie?”

“Whatever, Candlewacks.” She snatched a look to see if her new cousins approved of her put- down.

Anemonie and the Blight visitors had already started up the road towards the park and Casper didn’t want to get left behind – not this morning, anyway. There was no question about it – the village felt distinctly odd.

“Hey! Where are we going?” shouted Casper, scuttling to catch up.

“
We’re
going to my house to laugh about the lower classes,” sneered Anemonie. “You can waddle off home for all I care.”

“No, no, cousin, what sort of courtesy is that?” Briar fixed a firm gaze on Anemonie and, for the first time in her life, she submitted. “We could at least offer them tea. They won’t have had the pleasure of real scones before.” He made
scones
rhyme with
bones
.

Lamp’s face crumpled in confusion. “What’s
scoenes
, then?” he said.

“It’s what the well-bred eat in place of your, huh,
scons.
” If Briar had said the word any more hatefully, scones everywhere would have risen up and revolted.

Lamp, however, didn’t get the tone of voice and took it as a valid answer. “Oh,” he said, nodding. “They sound rich.”

“Shouldn’t we take your car?” asked Casper, looking back at the smoking wreck outside Lamp’s garage.

“Phh,” spat Briar. “I’ve got loads more at home. Have it, if you like. Sell it. Looks like you could do with some new clothes.”

Anemonie guffawed as if Briar had just told the funniest joke since a chicken crossed a road, but Casper hadn’t noticed one at all. Chrys chuckled along too.

“I’ll have it,” chirped Lamp. “I can use the windscreen wipers for my hamster submarine.”

In the park, the slide and swings had disappeared, and Sandy Landscape’s flowerbeds had been replaced by sludgy heaps of mud.

I don’t understand
, thought Casper.
We were only here this morning. What’s happened?

The feral pigeons had flocked after the group, perching on nearby trees and keeping their distance, but Casper could feel their beady eyes hungrily watching his progress.

Anemonie strode ahead purposefully. “I’ll show you the family portraits and the torture chamber and the trophy cabinet. I’m the five-times Kobb Heavyweight Champion, featherweight class, and I’m Miss Corne-on-the-Kobb twenty-twelve.” She simpered at Briar. “See? Strong
and
pretty.”

Casper remembered the Corne-on-the-Kobb beauty pageant like a bad, bruised dream. “Didn’t you win that one by fighting too?” Anemonie had given all the other contestants black eyes, or worse, and won by default. Teresa Louncher was still growing back an ear.

“Shut up, Candlewacks. I won that pageant fair and square. Not my fault if the other girls bruise easily. Should’a worn more make-up. Face it, you’re never gonna win any beauty pageants and you’re just jealous. I’m pretty and you’re ugly. I’m rich and you’re poor. I’m everything and you’re… uhh?”

She’d turned the corner to approach the grounds of Blight Manor, took one look at her house and stopped, dumbstruck, scratching her pointy nose in confusion.

“Ah,” said Briar, patting his distant cousin on her bony back. “Yes, sorry, old girl. We’ve… made a few changes.”

Chrys snorted. “You can say that again.”

This made no sense. Casper recognised the same old black stone manor house, crumbling and crooked, a holey slate roof and withered stone tower climbing wearily towards the clouds. But now from two sides shot an enormous perimeter fence rimmed with barbed wire, behind which Casper could see three long, depressing concrete warehouses belching black smoke from sooty chimneys, and two gigantic watchtowers stretching higher than the house. The warehouses were enormous, cutting through most of what was Kobb Wood, meeting the perimeter fence again as the hill began. To Casper’s left, along Long Lost Drive, came a bubbling torrent of water down a wide concrete channel where the road had been. The channel bent left as it reached the drive of Blight Manor, narrowed and then swallowed the gurgling water underground just as it approached the perimeter fence.

This
was
Blight Manor, yet it
wasn’t
Blight Manor. This
was
Corne-on-the-Kobb, yet it really
wasn’t
. A pigeon landed on Lamp’s head, ragged and wiry. Its eyes glinted black as it watched Casper, chipped beak cocked sideways.

“Briar, sorry, but… where are we?”

“Aha,” Briar chuckled, turning to look Casper straight in the eyes. His nose wrinkled, his lips curled into the patronising grin only given by a teenager in a suit. “I think the question you meant to ask, Casper Candlewacks, was ‘
When
are we?’.”

Lamp looked at his watch.

When.
That one word sent a shiver of understanding down Casper’s spine.
When are we?
Not the twenty-first century, that’s for sure. But that meant… The Time Toaster… Had it worked after all?

“And if I did ask that question…” Casper’s voice fluttered like a butterfly with wind. “What would the answer be?”

“Why,” smiled Briar, “the year of our lady 2112, November, just before lunchtime.”

“Lunchtime?” Lamp’s ears pricked up. “That’s my best time of all!”

“Master bedroom.” Briar Blight swept into a luxurious velvet-clad room, complete with a four-poster bed.

But Casper had hardly noticed.
The future
,
he kept saying to himself.
We’re in the future.
He touched surfaces as he passed to see if they felt the same as in the present. Generally, they did. Leather felt a bit softer.

Lamp didn’t seem to mind much that he was in the future, as long as he was getting lunch. Anemonie’s jaw hadn’t closed since she stepped inside the grand palace that she’d known as her home for the last twelve years, but which had never had so much as a carpet for furniture.

The tour was carried out with grandeur, pride and a little script that Briar kept hidden in the palm of his hand. “This room comes equipped with walk-in wardrobe, en-suite bathroom, en-suite television and twenty-four-hour en-suite maid service.” When Briar pulled out a TV remote from his pocket and pressed the buttons for channel 114, a hatch in the ceiling flipped open and a blonde-haired woman about the age of Casper’s mum tumbled out and landed on the floor.

“Cool!” breathed Anemonie, closing her jaw for the first time, and only because she was dribbling. “Still, mine’s better.”

The woman leapt to her feet and curtseyed. “Sorry m’lord. Came as fast as I could, m’lord.” She curtseyed again.

“Maid, our guests need refreshment. I want cream tea for five in viewing gallery two.”

“Yes, m’lord; sorry m’lord,” gasped the woman, curtseying like crazy and brushing down her crumpled clothes.

“Well? Don’t just stand there. Get to it, woman!”

“Yes, m’lord!” She curtseyed, dashed to the door, curtseyed again, closed the door as she left and then came in one more time to curtsey before slamming the door and sprinting away down the corridor.

“Who’s that, then, and why did she do all that bouncing?” asked Lamp.

“She’s staff,” said Briar dismissively. “I assume you don’t have any of your own.”

Lamp scratched his head. “There’s a swan who helps me with my laundry.”

“I’ve got loads of servants!” shouted Anemonie. “They live downstairs and cook my chips. I mean… they did. I mean… they do, but not here. Well, here, yes, but not
now
here.
Then
here.” Anemonie blinked hard and pretended she knew what she was talking about by nodding earnestly at Briar.

In all honesty, Casper was still about as confused as Anemonie. Here he stood in the future
,
taking a tour round a future
house
owned by a future
boy and
girl. The Time Toaster had worked after all. One hundred years had passed in the time it took to burn some bread. Of everything Lamp had invented, this outshone them all. It was incredible. Amazing. Too good to be true. Casper checked the floor once more to make sure it was still solid. He pinched the skin on his arm. It stung; this was no dream.

“Lamp,” he hissed. “You’re a genius.”

“No, I’m a Lamp,” said Lamp. “But my mum says if you rub me three times, a genius might come out.”

“That’s a genie,” said Casper, “and… never mind.”

“Come on, chaps,” Briar clapped his hands. “Plenty more to see.”

Chrys’s room was tiny in comparison: smart, neat and fairly dark, without a maid in the ceiling. The girl kept quiet for most of the tour, preferring to snarl and shuffle along behind everyone else. If she ever did speak it was to correct Briar’s mistakes, and in those cases she’d get a dismissive nod or a clip round the ear.

The dining room was lavish and wood-panelled, the kitchen a buzz of activity as dozens of cooks prepared untold quantities of delectable dishes. The sitting room was a picture of luxury with velvet curtains and silken sofas, a flat-screen telly the size of Casper’s house, and a fireplace complete with real fire.

“The only types of fuel we use are banknotes,” Briar explained, tossing on a few hundred quid to stoke the flames. “They really are the least efficient. How wonderfully wasteful.”

“Quite!” cackled Anemonie, sweeping up the thirty or so pounds that had fluttered back into the room and stuffing them into her pockets.

“Onwards!” Everywhere Briar went he used his remote control to open doors, to flick on lights, to summon maids. He had a channel to turn the stairs into an escalator, a channel to turn his shoes into rollerblades and even one that played his bank statement via a tannoy system into every room of the house.

“I suppose you’re wondering,” said Briar, pointing his remote at a pair of grand French windows, “how I could afford all this.” The windows swung open and Briar led the others through into a drab courtyard that led to the three warehouses. He swung his arm proudly about the view. “THIS is my fortune. My family fortune.” Briar winked at Anemonie. “
Our
fortune. Come, come.”

They climbed a set of clangy metal steps that led up the side of the middle warehouse – all apart from Briar, that is, who had a servant to carry him up. At the touch of channel 782 a thick iron door flipped open, and Casper and the others walked through.

“Urgh!” The height was dizzying. Casper stood in a globe-shaped glass room that hung above the warehouse’s interior. Beneath his feet, only a see-through floor stood in the way of a good fifteen-metre drop to ground level. Below, a factory floor throbbed with workers, busying about in white overalls. Casper swayed, nauseous, as he tried to swallow his fear of heights. “It’s certainly… erm… high.”

“The perfect place to watch my minions do their duty,” announced Briar. “It brings a tear to my eye just to see it.” He chuckled. “Not really, of course. I had my tear ducts removed when I was six. Crying is a weakness, and what do we say, Chrys?”

Chrys’s lip curled. “Weakness is for the lower classes,” she said.

“Too right it is. We Blights, we’re the cream that rises to the top, the dog that gets the bone, the lion that eats the panda. We are strength!”

Casper stuck up his hand. “Lions don’t eat pandas.”

Briar exploded. “THEY WILL IF I TELL THEM TO!”

“Yes, sorry, yes.” Casper backed away towards a glass wall.

“Anyway…” Briar took a deep breath and his face returned to a normal colour. “There’s a reason for my saying this. You see, for all those poor lower-class serfs around the world, we have a solution.” A maid ran in carrying a silver tray, upon which stood five plastic bottles with navy blue labels, the words
E
SSENCE OF
N
OBILITY
written on them in fine ivory letters.

“Take one,” said Briar, “and drink. It’s delicious.”

Casper waited until Lamp had gulped down a mouthful of the clear liquid in his bottle before he took one himself. It tasted of water; slightly chalky with a hint of fish, but mostly just water.

“
Essence of Nobility
,” Briar said grandly. He took a hefty glug and wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “A little drop of nobility in every bottle. Pure filtered mineral water from the River Kobb, with a dash of my secret ingredient. Guaranteed to make you feel twenty per cent posher in twenty-eight days or your money back!*”

Casper heard the asterisk in Briar’s tone of voice, but couldn’t find any small print. He took another glug. It wasn’t too bad, as water went. “So what’s the secret ingredient?”

Briar smiled. “My spit.”

Casper’s mouthful splashed on to the glass floor. “Ack! That’s disgusting!”

“I quite like it,” said Lamp, and he took another gulp.

Anemonie, who’d not opened her bottle and was now glad of it, cackled. “Drop of nobility in every bottle? You sneaky sneaker. You’re a true Blight, Briar Blight.”

“A true Blight I am, Gran… er… Anemonie. And as family, you can be part of this. In fact, I’m feeling kind today. You all can!”

Casper shared a look with Lamp. “Thanks, but we should really—”

WAANG. WAANG. WAANG.
An ear-shattering alarm split the air with its screaminess.

Briar’s smile froze on his face. His nose twitched.

“Escape?” muttered Chrys.

“YES, THANK YOU, CHRYS,” he bellowed – then added quietly, “I know what it is, sweet sister. Now let’s go and sort it out before someone gets hurt.” His courteous smile returned as he faced his visitors. “Come,” he said, “I’ve got something to show you. Mr Flannigan, I think you in particular will enjoy this.”

The Blights rushed out and down the steps, followed by Casper, Lamp and Anemonie. Out in the courtyard the alarm
WAANG
ed even louder. Everywhere, guards with black hairdryers tore about, shouting orders at each other or themselves or anything that would listen. The flock of feral pigeons had settled on perimeter fences all round the compound.

Briar grabbed the nearest guard. “Where are the escapees?”

“Dunno, boss.” The guard shrugged, cowering from Briar’s grip. “Please don’t hurt me.”

Briar thought about it, but chose to let his grip loosen. “Find them. GO!”

“This way,” he snapped to the others, hurrying back into Blight Manor.

Briar led them up two flights of stairs, along a tiny corridor and up into the tiny tower that poked out of Blight Manor’s roof. The dusty room at the top had barely enough space for the five of them, but once Lamp had stopped dancing they could all squeeze inside. A large window faced down towards the redirected River Kobb that flowed into Blight Manor, and Casper could see a man in sopping white overalls climbing out of the water, dripping wet and tiny.

“There’s the fool!” cried Briar. He drew his remote from a pocket, pointed it at the man, tapped in a three-digit channel and pressed
PLAY
.

Instantly the man collapsed to the ground, twitching and shaking like he’d been struck by lightning.

Casper gasped. “What are you doing?”

The smile on Briar’s face was halfway to demonic. He held
PLAY
with a steady white finger, but beckoned Casper with the other hand towards the window. “Shh. Listen.”

Casper did as he was told. Through the opening in the window, all the way down on the grass, Casper could hear strained bursts of… laughing. The man down there wasn’t in pain, he was being…

“Tickled,” said Briar, reading Casper’s mind. “It’s harmless. Just a little deterrent. They love it, actually, but you try running away while being tickled.”