Chapter Five

Jennifer took the bag of apples and went upstairs to look for her great-grandfather. She knew his room was up in the attic somewhere, but she wasn't quite sure how to find her way. She stopped at the top of the front stairs and looked uncertainly down the long hallway that led to the back of the house. There were a number of doors along the wall. She didn't know if any of them led to the attic so she started off down the hallway to see.

"Creeeeak!" went a floorboard.

Jennifer stopped in mid-stride and blinked in surprise. The board that was creaking was not the one she was stepping on. She frowned and stepped back down again.

"Creeeeak!"

The floor creaked again but the sound came from one of the boards way down the hall in the other direction. All at once she realized what was happening.

"The house wants to show me the way to go!" she said.

She turned around and went down the hallway the other way. The floorboards creaked encouragingly just a few steps ahead as she walked. Then all at once they stopped by a door. Jennifer stopped too and opened it. Sure enough the attic stairs were there.

"Hello up there, it's me," called Jennifer.

"Hello me, it's you," called back Moffat. "Come on up.

So Jennifer did; she climbed the stairs, but when she got to the top she stopped and stared. Her great-grandfather's bedroom was a large open space that ran the whole length of the attic. The place was filled with the most amazing stuff. Some of it was so weird Jennifer could not describe it, while the rest was only just strange enough to be beyond belief. There were crystal balls and balls of wax, bowls of lemonade, the remains of an entire ticker tape parade, a pot of pickles, some hockey tape, every single leaf that had fallen that fall from a maple tree, some of the more essential parts from a zamboni machine, a small trombone, a large baloney, and a quantity of Royal Canadian mounted moose heads.

There were also a number of inventions. They used an impressive array of wires and springs and other things, and they all appeared to do something though it wasn't quite clear just what. One of the more elaborate contraptions featured some plastic tubes which came in through the windows. A thick gluey blue substance was dripping down through a few of them and into a pot to the left of the bed. The other tubes carried some golden goo which dripped slowly down to the pot at the right.

Did Moffat catch the sunlight and pipe it on down to his bedroom somehow? Was the blue stuff the sky?
"I made it myself," said Moffat proudly.

"It's very nice," Jennifer told him . "What is it?"