Ivan Brett - Casper Candlewacks in Attack of the Brainiacs!

For Plato, Popper and Pop

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Map

Hello

Chapter 1

Bon Voyage

Chapter 2

Big Boys’ School

Chapter 3

Five Brewsters and a Brainiac

Chapter 4

The Battered Cod

Chapter 5

Best Served Cold

Chapter 6

The Guilt Box

Chapter 7

A New Dawn

Chapter 8

The Best Defence

Chapter 9

A Village of Brainiacs

Chapter 10

Humble Pie

Chapter 10

Rematch

Chapter 11

Deep Cover Dining

Chapter 12

Molecular Gastronomy

Chapter 13

What Happens Tomorrow

Chapter 13b

What Happens the Next Day

Chapter 14

Brain Food

Chapter 15

Breaking Bread

Mr Flanty’s Pi Song

Copyright

About the Publisher

More adventures with

Casper Candlewacks in Death by Pigeon!

Casper Candlewacks in the Claws of Crime!

Hello.

You’ve all heard of the old English tradition of the Village Idiot, right? No? Well then…

There’s this age-old law in Britain, passed through Parliament over one million years ago, that decreed the following (translated from caveman): ‘Every 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 – 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 ‘SSSS’ written below in curly writing. This stood for ‘St 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 ‘clothes, 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 ‘Bubbel Buggies’ and ‘Bluff 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.