Special Effects: Chicken Pox

something, it becomes an obsession to do it!

So anyway, we waited till a really decent bit of bad weather came along and went round again. It was night, and there was hardly a star in the sky. Big, heavy-looking clouds rolled over our heads, and the wind was thrashing the trees. It made a real racket. Leaves and dust kept swirling up and hitting our faces, and big, wet drops of rain hit us like bullets.

The three of us climbed up one side of the wall, standing on each other's shoulders, then we tied a rope to a branch and got over the top. The wind whistled and howled. It was so noisy we could have played a brass band and not been noticed!

We got up to the house and went round it, trying to see through the windows. There were some lights on, but all the curtains were pulled. We weren't criminals or anything, but we were a bit scared. It would have been a bit embarrassing if the cops had turned up! All we wanted was a look into the house. That's all. Then we were going to run for it.

We found a curtain with a crack of light down it, so we did the circus trick again and peeped through. We had to take turns because only one of us at a time could get high enough. When it was my turn I looked through the slit and saw a room with heaps of machinery. Gears and wheels, and cogs and springs, and computers and tools, and stuff I didn't know the name of. It was incredible!

"What's are they doing in there?"

"Who knows!"

"Is they inventors?"

"What?"

I had to yell above the storm.

"They're making robots or something!"

"Could be!"

We stood there for a while, yelling stupid things at each other, then we took off because we were getting scared, and cold, and we didn't know if Brain's place had a dog or not, or maybe some robot guard or something. I for one didn't want to be bitten by a Doberman let alone a robot!

Next day we ribbed Brain about machines and stuff, but we kept the jokes vague. We didn't let on how much we knew about what he had in his house. We just wanted to test him. See if he'd tell us something.