Excerpt:

'Alright Quigley?'

Ramon and I looked at each other over Tim's head. This was the first time we had heard Steampunk Paul speak. He was talking to someone who had come up to the depot from the opposite side of the yard than we had been sitting behind a small tree. Tim's eyes went round, and when I thought he was going to say something, I clapped my hands over his mouth quickly.

The person had ambled in so quietly across the darkness that we had not noticed them until Steampunk Paul spoke. Quigley sat against a pile of old rail pieces. His figure seemed bulky, and he was wearing a blanket over his regular clothes. He spoke too softly for us to hear, but he'd obviously replied because Steampunk spoke again.

'Yeah, it's going alright here. Just putting the finishing touches on the engine now.' he said. 'Sounds like you had a few too many at the pub this evening.' They lapsed into a quiet silence.

Just as I'd given up hope of hearing any more out of Quigley or Steampunk Paul, I heard some movement and murmuring from them. Our nearly frozen ears perked up, trying to make out what they were talking about. We heard a squeaky noise, that I finally realised was Quigley's voice, and Steampunk laughed at something.

‘You're welcome to stay. It's quite cold tonight, but at least the moon is shining brightly. And you never know, I may have something soon.’

Quigley said, ‘I'll stay. It's not every night I get to watch your work.’

Steampunk Paul got right back to his work. Whatever could he be building out here, and why did Quigley know about it? We were holding our breath in anticipation. He sounded pretty positive that it was going well, and the engine was nearly finished – engine for what?!

Very soon Steampunk let out a whistle. 'Hot damn,' he said. 'I think it's ready for testing.'

I felt my jaw drop. I read about jaws dropping but I never knew they actually did drop like that. I looked around and saw that everyone else's jaw had dropped too, and that we were jumping up from our hiding place to get a better look. Whatever it was, this was the right night to be out here watching.

Steampunk Paul's movements went quickly, and determinedly to finalise whatever it was that he needed to prepare for the test of his machine.

The wind seemed to get up at that moment, and a cloud raced across the moon, briefly blocking out some of the light. The wind was rustling some of the debris in the yard, and we all shivered. Will whispered, 'Wow, what's going on?' and Ramon and I shook our heads. Danny stood up, but Steampunk and Quigley were so intent on what they were doing that we were no longer afraid they would see us. I stood up too, and Tim climbed up on the tree for a better view. All our eyes were trained on the massive lump of machinery that was the centre piece of what Steampunk had been working on for all these long weeks.

Quigley squeaked, 'Is it working?' as Steampunk Paul switched something. We heard a hum growing louder, emanating from the machine. Steampunk Paul was shouting now, and his words carried over to us. 'It's.... working...'

Quigley danced around, watching but careful not to touch anything. They didn't look toward us, and we got braver, edging closer, the hum enveloping us so that we were no longer aware of the darkness or the cold or the fact that we weren't even supposed to be there. We felt ourselves drawn to the machine.

The machine was about the size of a small fridge, and it had levers and tubes and small lighted buttons of various colours. There were several dials, with guages to measure... something. The tubes were spewing out steam, and the lights blinked.

The hum gained in intensity, squealing into a high pitched noise that jarred my insides. I put my hands over my ears. Quigley had also covered his ears, but Steampunk was intensely staring at the dials and levers, his hands working over the machine like a man possessed.

We had inched closer and I could see the sweat dripping on Steampunk Paul’s face, a sheen of wetness reflecting the lights as they blinked on and off like a Christmas tree. Quigley was shouting something, still holding his hands over his ears so that his elbows stuck out at sharp angles. Steampunk Paul started running around the machine. He knelt down with his back towards us, then stood up quickly and grabbed a large lever.

He yanked it down, with all his might, his body bending down, so that you could tell the lever was difficult to maneuver. It didn’t seem to move at first, but it slowly gained momentum, going from pointing into the sky until it was nearly perpendicular to the ground.

Steampunk gave another mighty pull with both hands, the lever moved down, easing towards the ground, and then Steampunk Paul vanished from sight.

His disappearance was even more noticeable because the noise, the lights and the steam all stopped at the same time. The five of us kids lunged all at once, and then we were running toward the machine and the spot where Steampunk had been. Quigley, who had been watching Steampunk move the lever, seemed frozen. Then he started screaming and jumping up and down. He seemed to look through us, then he realised that we were there, people who probably shouldn’t have been, but other witnesses to what Steampunk Paul had done.

'He did it!' he screamed at us. And we cheered, gathering around Quigley and the machine.

Close up, I realised, startled, that Quigley was a woman. She had big brown eyes with tears threatening to fall out of them. She was still saying 'He did it,' over and over, like she was in a trance and had forgotten how to say anything else.

Her knees were knocking, and she seemed on the verge of collapse, so Will and I helped her to sit down. She put her face in her hands. We looked at each other with wide eyes. Was she going to yell at us for being there? Was she going to faint? This new dilemma had somehow made the really big question fall out of our heads for the time being: Where the heck had Steampunk Paul gone?

As I patted Quigley on the back, like I’d seen my mom do to Tim when he was upset, I noticed that she wasn’t wrapped in a blanket at all. She was wearing a red cape. She was the strangest woman I’d ever met.