12

  THE CHASE

  Hils was already way ahead of me.

  Then she started running.

  I don’t really run. Once, after I had been watching the Olympics, I thought that I would become a famous runner. I even got a book out of the library about running. All I remember about it is that there are some people in South America who never stop running. That is an interesting fact.

  Hils ran past the entrance to one of the cobbled alleyways which run between the bigger streets in my neighbourhood. Just as she passed the alley she skidded to a stop and ran back.

  ‘I just saw the grannies. This way,’ said Hils and ran off down the alleyway.

  I thought about the South-American-never-stop-running-people and ran after her.

  If you walked past one of the alleyways in my neighbourhood and had a quick look, you’d think they were normal old alleyways. They’re not. They’re weird places. They’ve got all the regular alleyway stuff: cobblestones on the ground, the back bits of houses on either side, rubbish bins, old televisions, a few trees that have given up trying to grow leaves and have just settled for bare branches, and dark blue men’s underpants. (Dark blue men’s underpants turn up in the strangest places. I know you don’t believe me. Look around the next time you’re out for a walk and you will see at least one pair of dark blue men’s underpants just lying around, unoccupied, on the street.)

  The weird thing about the alleyways in my neighbourhood – apart from the underpants thing – is that, no matter what the weather is like everywhere else, it always feels like it’s winter in there. Like it’s about to snow. Even though it never snows around here.

  Even though the always-winter-alleyways make me feel a bit freaked-out, I really like them. I like them because they make me feel like I’m somewhere else. Somewhere a bit magic.

  Sometimes the normal world is not all that great. Like when my parents are so busy on their iPhones they forget to buy groceries and I have to take three Weetbix and a shrivelled old lime to school for lunch. When that happens I like to go somewhere that feels a little bit magic. Wouldn’t it be great if there were at least some magic somewhere? Especially if that somewhere was close to my house.

  ‘Charlie. Double time or we’ll lose them,’ said Hils from halfway down the alleyway.

  ‘Double time’ is the army way of saying, ‘Hurry up!’

  I ran, double time, towards Hils. As I got to her I caught a glimpse of the two grannies who had attacked me.

  Suddenly I was really angry.

  ‘There they are, Hils. Let’s get ’em.’

  I was angry at the grannies but I was also angry with myself for not having gone after them straight away. I was angry that Hils was the one who had got angry first. That didn’t seem right. The grannies had attacked me. They had squirted rooster brand chilli sauce in my eyes. What if I got eye-poisoning and died? That would be a really embarrassing way to die.

  All I’d done was ask about a paper round and they had tried to kill me.

  ‘Come on, Hils. Triple time,’ I said as I ran off.

  I didn’t know what we were going to do when we did get them. How do you even ‘get’ a granny? I couldn’t think about that now.

  ‘There’s no such thing as “triple time”,’ said Hils as she ran after me.

  We ran to the end of one alleyway, across the street and into another alleyway.

  ‘There they are,’ I said.

  We were getting closer.

  Suddenly the grannies disappeared again.

  ‘They’ve gone down a really little side alleyway,’ said Hils.

  Just next to a recycling bin into which someone had stuffed a life-sized cardboard cutout of Brad Pitt, there was a really small side alleyway filled with overgrown bushes. The grannies had headed down there.

  Another thing I like about our neighbourhood alleyways is that when you’re in them you get to see the backs of people’s houses. The bit they don’t think anyone is really going to look at. I think the back of someone’s house shows you what the person who lives in that house is really like.

  The front of their house might be all tidy and bright with carefully trimmed hedges, but the back of the house is overgrown with weeds, scattered with empty bottles and the last resting place of an old exercycle which is slowly rusting to death. The person who owns that house isn’t all tidy, bright and carefully trimmed. No, they’re messy, miserable and wild.

  When I have a house I’m going to make sure I keep the back of my house really tidy so no one knows what I’m really like.

  Hils and I got to the entrance of the really small side alleyway that the grannies had gone down.

  There they were.

  They glanced behind them.

  I glared at them.

  They glared at me.

  I knew straight away that their glare was a lot scarier than mine.

  Then I noticed something I didn’t think the grannies had noticed.

  ‘This alleyway is a dead end,’ I said to Hils.

  ‘We’ve got them cornered,’ said Hils.

  ‘What are we going to do now?’ I said.

  Hils and I turned to each other. We both had no idea what we were going to do now.

  It didn’t really matter because when we turned back to where the grannies were – they had gone.

  The grannies were nowhere to be seen.

  They had been at the dead end of a really small dead-end alleyway. They had gone somewhere. But there was just no somewhere they could have gone.

  ‘It mustn’t be a dead end,’ said Hils.

  We both ran down to the end of the alley.

  ‘There must be a door here somewhere,’ said Hils.

  We both looked.

  ‘There’s just a brick wall,’ I said. ‘It really is a dead end.’

  ‘Negative. They’re here somewhere,’ said Hils as she started looking behind the prickly bushes that covered the ground in the alleyway.

  ‘Maybe they flew away,’ I said.

  ‘In what?’

  ‘A miniature hot-air balloon they had hidden down here in case they ever got stuck.’

  We both looked up. The grannies were not escaping in a miniature hot-air balloon.

  ‘They can’t just have disappeared,’ I said.

  ‘They have,’ said Hils.

  ‘How do grannies just disappear?’

  ‘We could ask them. If they hadn’t just disappeared,’ said Hils.

  ‘MARK MY WORDS,’ I shouted really, very, super loud. ‘WE WILL FIND YOU AND WHEN WE DO . . .’

  ‘You will regret the day you ever squirted me in the eyes with rooster brand chilli sauce,’ said Hils quietly.

  ‘YOU WILL REGRET THE DAY YOU EVER SQUIRTED ME IN THE EYES WITH ROOSTER BRAND CHILLI SAUCE,’ I shouted.

  Hils always knows the right thing to say.

  ‘Hello,’ said a very granny-like voice behind us.

  Hils and I froze.

  I froze quite a bit more than Hils. Hils doesn’t really freeze. Not even during the game Freeze. She says she always needs to be in a state of heightened operational readiness. In army-talk I think that means, ‘I don’t like to freeze.’

  It was the grannies. They had somehow got behind us.

  Hils and I turned around.

  Slowly.

  I covered my eyes ready for another attack with rooster brand chilli sauce. I didn’t know what Hils was doing. I’d covered my eyes and couldn’t see her.

  13

  THE FEAST

  Nothing happened.

  Well, nothing involving rooster brand chilli sauce being squirted.

  I opened my eyes and standing in front of us was a granny. Just not the granny we were expecting.

  There was only one of her and she didn’t have a super wrinkly neck or too much bright red lipstick. She was the loveliest looking granny I had ever seen. Her face was as round and as bright as a sunflower. Her skin was the colour of scones fresh out of the oven. With butter smothered all over them. She looked as warm and snuggly as the warmest ever quilt. She smelled like breakfast in bed on a cold winter’s morning.

  Then she smiled at us.

  She had the ultimate granny smile.

  It was a smile that said ‘yes’ to everything.

  ‘Can I eat chocolate until I’m sick?’

  Yes, said her smile.

  ‘Can I watch movies that Mum and Dad would never let me watch?’

  Yes, said her smile.

  ‘Can I stand on the roof and do a wee on the postman?’

  Yes, said the smile.

  ‘Lawks, but if you two don’t look famished,’ said the loveliest looking granny. ‘I wager you two ragamuffins haven’t had a skerrick of breakfast. Can’t have that. Growing bodies and all. Always room at table with me. Enter, rejoice and come in.’

  Suddenly I could smell the most amazing breakfast-type smells which seemed to be coming from a small door behind the loveliest looking granny (from now on I’m just going to call her the LLG).

  She turned and walked through the door.

  ‘Hils, should we go in?’

  The LLG popped her head out.

  ‘It’s not getting any warmer,’ she said.

  Then she vanished through the door again.

  Hils and I walked through the door and saw that the amazing breakfast-type smells were coming from an actual amazing breakfast.

  Sitting on a bright yellow kitchen table in the middle of a bright yellow kitchen were two bright yellow plates just waiting to be filled from bright yellow platters of bacon, eggs, hash browns, muffins, buttery toast, grilled tomatoes and glossy mushrooms. There was also fruit. There were also, also cakes. There were also, also, also biscuits. Fresh warm biscuits.

  Hils and I sat down in front of our bright yellow plates and the LLG put two bright yellow mugs down in front of us.

  ‘Hot chocolate,’ she said. ‘You can drink it straight away. It’s just the right temperature.’

  I tried mine. She was right. It was just the right temperature. That never happens.

  ‘Eat up. There’s plenty more where that came from.’

  We did eat up. And up and up and up and up and up and up and up.

  The LLG was right. There was plenty more where that came from.

  After we had eaten a bit of everything that was on the table – quite a big bit of everything actually – Hils and I were full. Perfectly full.

  Not too full. Not sick full. Just right full.

  ‘Here we are then,’ the LLG said to us as she sat down at the table with a cup of tea. ‘What’s given you two scallywags such an appetite?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to get a paper round,’ I said.

  The LLG’s face changed.

  It had been bright and round like a fresh lemon tart. Suddenly it was long and dark. Like a walk through a graveyard at night.

  ‘Oh dearie me,’ she said. ‘Oh dearie, dearie me.’

  I didn’t know exactly why the LLG was saying ‘Oh dearie, dearie me’ but I knew it was something to do with me. I always do things that make people ‘oh dearie, dearie me’.

  It wasn’t Hils. Hils never made people ‘oh dearie, dearie me’.

  ‘What have I done?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, Lumpkin, you haven’t done anything. It’s just I’d hate to see you get hurt.’

  ‘How would I get hurt?’

  ‘Heavens above. On a paper round of course,’ said the LLG. ‘Paper rounds are extremely dangerous.’

  ‘They are?’ I said.

  ‘Yes indeedy. A paper round is the most dangerous job in the world.’

  ‘More dangerous than being a volcano cleaner?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ said the LLG. ‘If you get a paper round you could get struck by lightning and blow up. You could ride your bike into a puddle that was much deeper than it looked and never be seen again. Your bike tyre could explode and shoot a fragment of rubber straight up your nose and into your brain.’

  ‘Does getting a fragment of rubber in your brain make you super-intelligent and give you special powers?’ I said.

  ‘No,’ said the LLG. ‘It makes you dead!’

  ‘I thought so,’ I said.

  ‘To make sure you don’t accidentally get a paper round, you and your parents should move away from here. Far away from here. If you don’t move away YOU WILL SURELY DIE.’

  ‘Wow!’ I said.

  ‘Gracious, look at the time. You two had better hustle your bustles and get yourselves along to school,’ said the LLG.

  As Hils and I walked back out into the alleyway the LLG handed each of us a bag of freshly baked scones.

  ‘Have a lovely day,’ said the LLG, her face beaming. ‘And remember to move far away from here. SO YOU DON’T DIE.’

  14

  THE TEAM

  Hils and I were hustling our bustles and getting ourselves along to school.

  ‘That granny is up to something,’ said Hils. ‘Something bad.’

  ‘But what?’ I said.

  ‘I have no reliable intelligence on which to base an answer to that question.’

  That’s the army way of saying, ‘I don’t know’.

  ‘Take us through the facts of the case so far, Hils.’

  Hils is good with facts.

  ‘Fact one,’ said Hils. ‘You want to get a paper round.’

  ‘Check,’ I said.

  ‘Fact two, you went to see Peter the newsagent – who isn’t scared of anything – and when you mentioned you wanted a paper round he ran off down the road screaming.’

  ‘Check.’

  ‘Fact three, two grannies deliver the papers in our neighbourhood.’

  ‘Check.’

  ‘Fact four, when you asked them about a paper round they squirted you with rooster brand chilli sauce.’

  ‘Are you sure it was rooster brand?’

  ‘Affirmative.’

  ‘Then, check.’

  ‘Fact five, we chased the two grannies but they disappeared.’

  ‘Check.’

  ‘Fact six, we met a lovely looking granny who gave us breakfast and then told us that paper rounds were the most dangerous job in the world.’

  ‘Check.’

  ‘Fact seven, the LLG told us to move far away from here or we will surely die.’

  See. Hils is good with facts.

  I am good at working out how all those facts fit together.

  ‘The grannies,’ I said, ‘are witches and they need newspapers to start a roaring fire underneath their cauldron where they are going to make a stew out of rooster brand chilli sauce and children.’

  ‘Negative. That doesn’t fit with all the facts.’

  ‘It does.’

  ‘It doesn’t.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t.’

  I don’t always get it right first time.

  ‘An evil scientist is poisoning newspapers and the grannies are secret agents trying to stop him. The evil scientist doesn’t like spicy food so they are going to spray him with rooster brand chilli sauce to stop him poisoning the newspapers and the grannies don’t want kids anywhere near the newspapers because they’re poisonous.’

  ‘Negative.’

  ‘That fits all the facts.’

  ‘Why does the evil scientist have to be a man?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Women can be evil scientists. Women are just as evil as men.’

  ‘Okay, maybe the evil scientist is a woman.’

  ‘Negative. That doesn’t fit all the facts.’

  ‘The newspaper round in our neighbourhood was built on the site of an ancient burial ground. The grannies aren’t real grannies, they are ghosts. They are doomed to wander the Earth delivering papers until we help them find peace by letting them taste rooster brand chilli sauce for one last time and then they will give us the paper round and return to the spirit realm.’

  Hils said nothing. I think she had stopped listening to me.

  ‘The grannies are ancient space gods whose favourite food is newspapers covered in rooster brand chilli sauce.’

  Hils said more nothing. I knew she had stopped listening to me.

  She had started thinking about her favourite thing.

  Blowing up a tank with a bazooka.

  ‘Their home planet has run out of newspapers and chilli sauce so they have come to Earth to steal all our newspapers and chilli sauce and scare some newsagents.’

  Hils had definitely stopped listening to me.

  Now she was thinking about her second favourite thing.

  Blowing me up with a bazooka.

  15

  THE MAN

  ‘Why are we out here again, Hils?’ I said.

  ‘Zzilleeeennnzz,’ said Hils.

  It was the next morning. It was five o’clock. Hils and I were both crouched behind my letterbox waiting for the grannies to deliver my paper. We didn’t have a new plan. We didn’t have an old plan. We hadn’t even agreed we were going to do it. I’d just walked out to my letterbox and found Hils waiting there for me.

  Hils was dressed in an ankle-length camouflage raincoat and was wearing a helmet and her anti-chemical-weapons gas mask. Without saying anything she handed me a green suit a bit like a fighter pilot wears. After I put on the suit-a-bit-like-a-fighter-pilot wears, she wrapped a camouflage scarf around my mouth and over the top of my head. Then she gave me a huge pair of goggles to cover my eyes.

  We squatted down behind the letterbox and waited.

  ‘What are we going to do when the killer grannies come?’ I said.

  ‘Nuuuy squuutted chulli zuuzzz unnn oooo. Thuuuuy duuddddinnn kuuuullll oooo,’ said Hils.

  It is very difficult to understand what someone is saying when they are talking to you through a gas mask, but I had spent enough time talking to Hils while she was wearing a gas mask to kind of know what she was saying.

  ‘Not yet they didn’t. Who knows what they’re capable of?’ I said.

  ‘Guuuudddd puuunnnttt,’ said Hils.

  Hils and I maintained radio silence for a while. Even though we didn’t have any radios.

  ‘Have a look and see if they are coming,’ I said eventually.

  ‘Nuuuuuuuu,’ said Hils.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Ieeeee duuunntt wuuunntt ooo oooozzz thuu ullllummmmmunnt ooo zuuuupuuuuzi!’