Charlie and the War Against the Grannies (5 page)

AAARCHOO!

Wow! You keep sneezing after you die. That is an interesting fact. I wish I could tell Hils that but I can't because I am dead.

‘Charlie? Charlie? Are you all right?'

I could hear Hils's voice.

I could sneeze, my eyes stung (because soon they were going to explode), everything was red (because I was going to Hell) and I could hear Hils's voice.

Being dead was a lot different than I thought it would be.

There was a lot more stuff going on.

‘Charlie. Charlie. Do you read me?'

‘Do you read me?' is army-talk for, ‘Can you hear me?'

‘Yes, Hils, I can hear you. Even though I am dead.'

‘You're not dead.'

Poor Hils. She was so sad that she would not accept that I was actually dead. That definitely meant she was secretly in love with me. Unfortunately, I was not secretly in love with her. I was not even un-secretly in love with her. I wasn't in love with anyone. Actually, that was a bit sad. I had died without knowing love.

‘I am dead, Hils.'

‘Negative.'

‘I am dead. Everything has gone red. I think that means I'm going to Hell.'

‘You are not going to Hell,' said Hils. ‘Everything has gone red because one of the grannies shot you in the face with a water pistol filled with chilli sauce. My intelligence suggests it was the stuff with a picture of a rooster on the bottle.'

That would explain why my eyes were stinging.

‘So my eyeballs haven't started growing really, really fast until they explode and splatter everyone with eyeball gunge?'

‘Negative.'

‘So I'm not dead?'

‘Negative.'

‘I've just got rooster brand chilli sauce all over my face?'

‘Affirmative.'

I was slightly disappointed that I wasn't dead.

‘Don't open your eyes,' said Hils.

I felt something wiping my face. Then I felt my eyes being flushed out with water.

‘Open your eyes,' said Hils.

I opened my eyes.

There was Hils.

Even though I wasn't even the tiniest bit secretly in love with her I was very pleased to see her.

I was slightly disappointed to see that she
hadn't
been crying. Even a little bit.

‘Why did those two grannies shoot me with a water pistol full of rooster brand chilli sauce?' I said.

Hils didn't answer.

She was too busy striding off down the street.

I jumped up and started to follow her.

It was good to be alive.

‘Hils? Where are you going?'

‘To track the enemy assailants back to their HQ.'

That's army-speak for ‘follow the grannies'.

‘Wait for me,' I said as I ran to catch up with her.

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.