Free Charlie and the War Against the Grannies by Alan Brough Page B

Hils.
    â€˜I’ll miss you too,’ I said.
    Saying that made us both feel nice and uncomfortable at the same time.
    Maybe slightly more uncomfortable than nice.
    Yes, definitely more uncomfortable than nice.
    We kept walking for a while.
    In silence.
    â€˜We haven’t seen any animals with more heads than they should normally have,’ I said.
    â€˜And they haven’t talked to us out of any of those more than normal heads,’ said Hils.
    â€˜They haven’t told us to follow them.’
    â€˜They haven’t told us to go back from whence we came.’
    â€˜Nice use of the word “whence”,’ I said.
    â€˜Thanks,’ said Hils. ‘“Whence” is a very secret-tunnel word.’
    â€˜True,’ I said.
    That’s when we saw it.

28
THE POSTERS
    Stuck to the wall of the boring secret tunnel was this poster.

    We walked a little bit further and there was another poster stuck to the wall.

29
THE DUMBNESS
    â€˜What does that mean?’ I said.
    â€˜I don’t know,’ said Hils.
    â€˜How can anything be located between “rude words” and “unexpected hellos”?’ I said.
    â€˜I don’t know,’ said Hils.

    Hils kept on walking down the tunnel.
    I stayed in front of the poster.
    It had to mean something and I had to know what it meant.
    Maybe I just needed to look at it harder.
    I looked at it harder.
    My eyes started to go a bit blurry.
    I looked at it even harder.
    My eyebrows started to hurt.
    I looked at it even, even harder.
    I got cramp in my ears.
    The ear-cramp really hurt. I had never had cramp in my ears. I didn’t know how to make it stop. It was really hurting.
    People often got cramp while we were doing PE. Maybe people got ear-cramp. Maybe the PE teacher Mr Hardy-Soul had explained how to stop ear-cramp. Maybe I needed to start listening in PE.
    The ear-cramp was really hurting. I had to do something or I might lose the use of my ears. I grabbed my earlobes and started flapping them about. The ear-cramp went away. I had cured ear-cramp. That made me pretty proud. Maybe I didn’t need to start listening in PE.
    I looked at the poster. I still didn’t know what it meant.
    â€˜You are a dumb poster,’ I said. ‘You’ve given me cramp in my ears and I still don’t know what you mean, also, I think it is cruel to make an innocent kitten hang from a rope just so it can be on a dumb poster that doesn’t mean any-dumb-thing.’
    â€˜I’ve found something,’ shouted Hils from further down the tunnel.
    â€˜I hope someone draws all over you,’ I said to the poster.
    I ran down the tunnel towards Hils and the something she had found.
    The tunnel made a sharp right turn and as I came around the corner the tunnel started to get wider. I ran under a thick wooden arch. Beyond the arch the walls weren’t rocky any more. They were smooth and white. The flaming torches had disappeared and now the tunnel was lit by large fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling.
    Hils was standing under another thick wooden arch. She was staring into an enormous room that couldn’t have looked less like a secret tunnel.
    It looked like an office.

30
THE OFFICE
    It was an office.
    A normal sort of office with desks and computers and fuzzy nothing-coloured walls that didn’t go all the way up to the ceiling and coffee mugs and things Blu-Tacked to other things and bored people sitting in office chairs doing boring office stuff.
    It looked like the sort of place where a whole lot of mums and dads would work EXCEPT that it was underground and at the end of a secret tunnel.
    â€˜Sign. Two o’clock,’ said Hils.
    In the army ‘two o’clock’ means that something is up and to your right.
    I looked up and to my right.
    Hanging from the ceiling of the office was a sign that read:

    Behind that was a sign that read:

    Behind that was yet another sign:

    â€˜Eleven