Read Online Casper Candlewacks in the Time Travelling Toaster by Ivan Brett - Free Book Online Page A

open and a pair of wide green eyes peeped out. “Who goes there?”
    “Ahem. The golden eagle flies at midnight .”
    There was a pause. The eyes behind the letterbox blinked. “What time’s it now, then?”
    Chrys closed her eyes. “That’s our password, Flanella.”
    “Oh, right. Our password.” The eyes looked out at her two visitors. “Good. What do we do now?”
    “You let us in,” snapped Chrys, looking around for pursuers.
    “How do I know it’s you?”
    “I gave you the right password, that’s how.”
    “I didn’t even know we had a password.”
    “ The golden eagle flies at midnight! That was our password. Just let me in, they’ll be on us any moment.”
    “OK, you may pass,” said the eyes. The letterbox clanged as it dropped and everything went silent.
    Chrys sighed. “Oh, for goodness’ sake. Flanella?”
    The eyes reappeared. “Yes?”
    “Are you going to let us in or not?”
    “Oh, yeah. I knew I forgot something.”
    The door swung open, Casper was pushed inside and the door slammed shut. Two smiling faces greeted him in the gloomy hallway. One was young, one old. One stood, one sat in a blooping, humming wheelchair. One was a stranger to Casper and the other was so very familiar.
    “Hello, Cashper,” grinned Betty Woons toothlessly.
    “Hello, Betty,” said Casper, hardly believing the words as they came out.
    She held up a crumpled brown paper bag. “Jelly bean?”

“This him?” The head of a chubby middle-aged lady poked out from the living room.
    I’m home , he thought.
    “He don’t look like much.” A younger, taller woman trotted down the stairs. “I thought he’d at least have muscles or horns or somethin’.”
    Except it’s not home. It’s more… broken.
    “Thish ish the feller.” Betty Woons reached out her withered arm to give Casper a pat, her watery eyes twinkling. “Our little shaviour.”
    The ladies gasped and watched Casper adoringly, waiting for some sort of speech.
    “Erm, hi.” Casper smiled awkwardly. “I’m Casper. I used to live here. In the past, I guess. I’m not your saviour, though. And Betty… sorry, but how can you be here?”

    The old woman looked no wrinklier than the morning at the bus stop, yet a hundred years had passed. She just winked knowingly and said, “I could ashk you the same question, Cashper.”
    “Lamp made a Time Toaster, and then we got imprisoned by the Blights. But Chrys freed me, and I don’t know why she did that. I’m just a boy.”
    “That you are, Cashper,” sang Betty wobbily. “An’ a very speshal boy at that.”
    Apart from the cluster of grinning ladies standing in his hall, Casper’s house hadn’t changed that much in the last hundred years. There was still that faint smell of nappies. Casper’s shoes stuck to the carpet just as they used to, and the same recognisable bite marks from his sister, Cuddles, still dotted the same wonky furniture. Mice still occupied the gap behind the floorboards, but judging by the two squeaking guards with tiny helmets protecting their hole, they’d developed considerably since Casper lived here.
    “This is all very well, and thanks for bringing me home,” Casper started, “but… can someone tell me what’s going on?”
    “Plenty of time for that.” Betty waved her aged hands dismissively. “Come on, we’ll get you out o’ that tag.” She whirled her wheelchair in a circle and barged straight through the other women using the plough attachment she’d fitted on the front. Hesitantly, Casper followed.
    The ladies bustled after Casper, pushing him into a chair and rolling up the bottom of his overalls, lugging his leg on to another chair and inspecting the tag fearfully.
    The young girl who’d been at the door, Flanella, galumphed away only to return with a thick black laptop computer, covered in wires of all colours, and various bleeping attachments. “Right then, Malcolm,” she said, “let’s see what you can do.” She stretched one red wire