Sam turned his head sharply and the boys watched in horror as the tower tumbled down. Despite Sam’s desperate dive to stop them, two of the bowls exploded onto the hard kitchen floor. Smash!
Danny’s little dough head lay among the ruins of the ancient city. The nose was flat and one of the eyes had pinged across the room.
Cringing, the boys exchanged horrified glances. There was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
They heard the phone slam down. Clunk! Then stomping footsteps pounded an angry rhythm, not the Beatles’ Love Me Do, along the passageway. Their mother was on her way.
The boys swallowed. Uh oh!
The next few seconds were frozen in time. Their mouths hung open, they stood perfectly still and their eyes, wide with shock, rolled to the sound of footsteps.
Keen not to miss anything, Vicki appeared at the kitchen door. Danny caught a glimpse of her horrified expression as she saw the evidence shattered in a thousand pieces on the kitchen floor. Vicki quickly moved to one side as her mother neared.
Danny’s mother stopped at the doorway. ‘What happened?’ she screamed. ‘Who did this?’ She looked to the sink and saw Danny’s small dough head.
She glared at Danny, took a step forward and grabbed his arm. ‘Are you deaf? Answer me!’
Danny was startled by the ferociousness in his mother’s voice and the firmness in her grip. She was never this angry, ever.
He looked at her free hand, the one that had been kneading the dough so gently only a few minutes before. The same one that held the telephone and listened in disbelief at what the bank had to say.
Danny didn’t understand how such a gentle hand had bunched suddenly into a tight, white-knuckled fist. He hadn’t heard her growling angrily into the phone. The eyes he had only ever seen sparkle with gentleness now glistened with anger.
She wrenched him wildly. ‘Are you stupid? You know you don’t play games in the kitchen!’ She pointed in the direction of the mess. ‘Look what you’ve done! Look!’
Danny wanted to say that it was just a couple of bowls, that’s all, just two bowls, but he was too afraid to say anything.
She slapped the kitchen bench. Danny jumped. ‘You don’t think! Do you?’
Tears welled in Danny’s eyes. The lump in his throat choked him. His lips quivered and so did Vicki’s. Their mum suddenly stopped. She looked at Vicki, then to Sam, who had taken a step back, and to Danny again. There was a strange silence. She took some deep breaths. She let her hands drop limply to her sides. Her eyelashes fluttered. Her eyebrows twitched and her lips moved but she said nothing. She had changed suddenly. The untamed wildness in her face crumbled away. Her shoulders dropped and she folded to her knees to look into Danny’s eyes.
‘I’m sorry, Danny,’ she said.
When she moved to place her hands on his shoulders, gently this time, Danny pulled violently away. He turned and ran before the tears could roll all the way down his cheeks.
Breaking the silence he shouted, ‘It’s not fair! Sam started it!’ He pointed at his mum. ‘I hate you!’ he yelled and he flew from the kitchen into the shadows of the passageway.
He turned back as he pulled the front door open. He looked down the passageway at the lonely figure of his mother standing in the kitchen doorway. ‘I’m going and I’m never coming back!’ he bellowed at her. ‘Never! Ever!’
Danny slammed the door so hard – bang! – that the windows rattled.
He leapt from the verandah and moved threateningly at the chickens, kicking and stomping. They scattered noisily. Sniffling, he stopped for a second, scanned the yard and called for Tippy. ‘Tippy! Tippy! Where are you? Come on, boy!’
But Tippy didn’t come. He wasn’t home. He was over visiting Mark Thompson.
Danny couldn’t wait. Feeling completely abandoned, he ran off.
He ran across the road, past the Mundowie Institute Hall, ignoring the white soldier statue standing guard, and off to the big creek. There was only one place for him to go: his secret place. The place he had discovered only a few weeks before after Sam and Mark were mean to him. They had been racing their bikes up and down the banks of the creek in a pedal-power motor cross, Sam had called it. They had made a great track that twisted and turned through the creek bed and up and down some of the banks. But Danny found it hard to keep up in the races so they said he couldn’t join in.
‘You’re too slow,’ Mark grumbled. ‘You just get in the way.’
Danny was deeply hurt when Sam agreed. ‘Yeah, go home.’
Danny had thrown his bike to the ground and sulked away. He wandered along the banks of the creek throwing stones and kicking dirt. When looking up at some nests in a tree he stumbled over a branch that lay hidden in the grass. He fell flat on his face.
‘Oomph!’ While on the ground he peered through the grass and had an ant’s-eye view of things.
Ahead of him was a huge old tree, rotten and decaying. At the base he spied a hole big enough for him to squeeze through. Curious, he cautiously poked his head in to take a peek. He found the tree was burnt out and hollow. He squirmed all the way in and managed to stand. It was like a tiny cave. The top of the tree was crumbling, allowing fine fingers of sunlight to spear into the shadowy place. Danny imagined they were spotlights for performing ants. Spider webs wrapped his face and bugs crawled along his arms. After brushing them away madly Danny had decided then and there that he would clean this tree cave out and create his secret crypt.
That was where he would live from now on: no brothers, no sisters and no mums!
He marched to the edge of the creek, kicking stones. He was wearing his old sneakers with the holes in the toes. He could hear his mother’s voice in his head. Don’t forget to wear your boots. There are snakes about. Danny kicked the ground hard and made a dust cloud. ‘What do you care, Mum?’ he sniffled.
At a narrow section of the creek Danny went to a gum tree on the very edge of the bank. The spot was a long way down from where he and Sam normally crossed. His hide-out was on the other side. Danny had a rope tied to an overhanging branch. He could swing like a monkey from one side to the other.
The first time he’d tried swinging he wasn’t too successful. He hadn’t bothered measuring the rope. It was too long and he went crashing, head first, into the opposite bank. There was a lump on his head the size of a golf ball and the cut on his knee made blood maps on his jeans. Danny didn’t give up; he soon got it right and hadn’t had any problems since.
He loved to swing through the air. Danny thought it was as close to flying as he could get. The wind would push through his hair and he could look down into the creek far below at the huge fallen trees, boulders and cliff faces. The feeling of adventure was one that seemed to belong far away in bigger, more important places than Mundowie, places like the Grand Canyon that he’d seen on the TV. Mundowie would never be on TV.
As soon as he was under his swinging tree Danny took the rope in his hands. There was a huge knot at the end upon which he could put his feet. Wrapping the rope around his hands he took a few steps back, hung on and ran off the edge of the creek.
‘Yahoooo!’
The branch above creaked as Danny became airborne. Away he flew, spinning. The breeze cooled his face as he looked down into the creek bed. There were weeds, stones and a tangle of rusty barbed wire. The flight across the creek was even more exciting when the heavy rains came and wild water rapids surged below. Debris then included logs, pieces of iron and old doors sailing beneath him at great speed. The wild currents then were like giant veins and the water was the colour of gravy.
But not today, the creek was dusty dry. The smell of dust filled Danny’s nostrils as he landed, skidding, safely on the other side. Some interested sheep stopped what they were doing and watched him tie his rope to a fallen tree. He would need it for the return journey.
He wiped his dribbling nose with his sleeve, leaving a silver trail, then he walked the narrow grassy track to his secret tree. It was bare. The
re was only the trunk and one branch remaining on the grey skeleton. Danny dropped to his knees and began to crawl in through the hole at the base – the entrance was hard to see because Danny kept it camouflaged with leaves and grass. He squirmed into the shadowy sanctuary of his secret place. The sheep stood and watched with interest as his wriggling bum disappeared.
Inside his small tree cave he kept all the treasures he collected around the farm. Things like snakeskins and sheep skulls.
The sheep skull was a real prize. It had belonged to a ram. The curling horns and dirty teeth were awesome. He had used the skull once to scare Vicki. He had sat it in the grimy tractor-shed window one dark night and placed a candle inside. When the candle was lit the rotten teeth and the eye sockets glowed with an eerie yellow light. It was brilliant!
He couldn’t let such a good thing go to waste and so, standing outside the back door, he had called Vicki out into the velvet darkness. ‘Hey Vicki! Come out here for a minute.’
She came skipping happily outside. ‘Yeah, what do you want?’
Danny pointed to his unearthly creation. ‘Look.’
Vicki launched herself into the air. ‘Aagggghhhhh!’ She covered her eyes and ran back into the house. ‘Agggghhhh!’ Through the kitchen. ‘Aghhhhhh!’ And up the passageway. ‘Aghhhhhh!’ She didn’t stop screaming until she found their mum trying to watch the news.
Apparently, poor Vicki still had nightmares about the glowing sheep’s head. It was pretty good though. Even Sam had been scared.
The sheep’s skull had a decaying snakeskin lying beside it and was staring up at Danny as he crawled inside the trunk. Danny thought of Vicki and wondered what she was doing. She hadn’t been mean to him; he still liked Vicki. Maybe she was out looking for him . . . but no, not if there was a feast on.
‘I bet they’re all sitting in the kitchen laughing now,’ he thought. ‘Laughing and having the feast without me.’
Danny sighed as he realised he might be missing out on the feast. Food was one thing he hadn’t thought about. There was nothing to eat in his secret place. Danny shook himself as he stood. Feast or not, it didn’t matter; he wasn’t going back, no way.
Fingers of sunlight with floating specks of dust drifting around within them poked through from above, offering enough light to take away complete blackness. There wasn’t a lot of room. Danny could stand in the middle and easily touch both sides.
Danny looked down as he waited for his eyes to adjust. A shaft of sunlight shone on his sneakers. Danny’s toe was sticking out. He gave it a wriggle.
Danny heard a sound on his left, where the sheep skull sat in a bed of dead leaves. The sound was soft like a whisper. Shhhhh.
Danny froze. He stared at the spot. Behind the skull there was a small hole to the outside world. The leaves around the hole were moving. Shhhhh.
Rolling his eyes he listened to be sure he wasn’t hearing things. Danny heard it again, the sound of something moving. Shhhhh.
He blinked his eyes furiously and although he didn’t see anything, he knew what it was. A snake!
His heart pounded and his breathing quickened. Danny dared not move. Like his sinister visitor, he was cornered.
Nothing likes to be cornered.
Danny’s quivering lips were suddenly dry. He swallowed nervously, eyes still staring hard.
Shhhhh. There was more movement, this time slow and sneaky, as though searching for something. Searching for Danny?
Danny backed up against the crusty wall of the old tree. He pushed back hard and froze as if standing on a very narrow ledge outside the window of a skyscraper. He spread his fingers across the roughness of the decaying tree. His eyes darted left, right, left, right.
Where is it? Where is it? he thought.
Time slowed. A single second dragged.
With wide eyes, Danny listened intently and tracked the soft sounds. Shhhh . . . crackle.
Then, he saw something through the shadows behind the ram’s skull. It looked cold, round and beautifully brown. He stared hard.
He didn’t see the head or the tail, just the fattest part of the curling body as it slithered through the eye socket of the skull and moved slowly beneath one of the sunbeams. The sunlight shone on the snake highlighting the glistening skin. It was moving slowly and as far as Danny could tell it didn’t know yet that he was there. He glanced down at his twisted shorts and his exposed legs. If only he were wearing his boots.
Something crawled down his neck. A beetle? Cockroach? Ant? Spider! The crawling thing moved into his shirt and across his shoulders, exploring. Danny flinched. His feet shuffled. He couldn’t help it.
Mistake! His sharp movement startled the snake.
With a whip of its body, its tail darted from the eye socket of the skull and it turned to Danny with its tongue flicking menacingly.
Feeling threatened, the snake lifted its head instinctively, ready to strike. Its head hovered in a sunbeam like a marionette on an invisible string. It was so close, with wicked eyes and a wicked tongue ready to fight.
Danny had never been face to face with a snake. He’d seen plenty by the tractor shed, in the chicken yard and near the creek, but had never been close enough to eyeball one. The head was small and the mouth thin. The skin, with its fine scales, was shiny, well polished for a creature that slid about in dirt. Danny stared for an instant into its piercing eyes and he shivered. This was just like a Mark Thompson snake story.
Mark was always telling scary snake stories. His recent favourite was the story of the brown snake that jumped up off the road and into the open car window of a guy driving down a gravel road near Port Bilton. In a vampire-like attack it sunk its fangs into the neck of the driver. They found him slumped over the wheel and the snake hiding under the bonnet coiled around the engine where it was nice and warm. But it got away before anyone could catch it. And to put it in Mark’s words, ‘Just think, that snake is still lurking out there somewhere, so beware, boys.’
And in his next breath Mark had turned to Danny and said, ‘It’s probably the same snake whose old skin you stole over near the Miller homestead. He’ll be after you, Danny boy. I don’t reckon they’d like you taking their old skins.’
Danny suddenly thought that if this was the leaping vampire snake out for revenge because of the stolen skin then it could easily jump at him and sink its fangs into his neck.
The thought of fangs sinking into his neck made Danny’s breathing quicken even more. He wanted to cry out. He wanted to be home in the kitchen, feasting. He opened his mouth to call for help, but no sound would come. And even if it did, he knew no one would hear him.
He was on his own, just as he’d wanted only a few minutes before. Survival was in his hands. Escape! He had to escape! Danny’s mind raced with foolish thoughts.
He eyed the small entrance. It was so close. He thought about making a dive for the door, but then he had visions of the snake sinking its fangs into his bum as he struggled on all fours to pull himself to freedom.
He knew enough to realise that if he were bitten, the farmhouse was a long way away. If he had to walk that far the poison would surge through his body. He wouldn’t survive.
With his back pushed hard against the trunk of the tree Danny’s squirming hands felt the roughness, the coolness of rotting wood. The creature crawling across his back moved over his shoulder, down his arm and rested on the back of his hand. It was probably a red-back spider. If the snake didn’t kill him, the red-back would.
Danny’s body shivered as he thought that maybe the words he had screamed at his mother in the kitchen would come true. He would never come home, ever. No one knew where he was. They would never find his body. His sad spirit would wander the fields like the headless Miller woman.
The snake kept still, as though waiting for Danny to make the first move. Its tongue tasted the air. Perhaps it could taste Danny’s fear.
Danny’s next passing thought was to arm himself. He looked for a stick. He looked for a stone. H
e looked for anything. The ram’s skull caught his eye. The foolish plan he made in a split second of panic was that he would dive across, scoop up the skull and throw it. One of the horns would stab the snake.
That’s how things happen in movies, he thought, and that’s how things will happen here. It isn’t difficult – a quick dive and then throw.
Before Danny could put his master plan into action the head of the snake suddenly dipped low. There was movement. Shhhh.
Danny closed his eyes tightly and braced himself for the needle of a fang to spike his leg or his arm. He felt nothing.
He opened his eyes again. His head flicked in all directions. Where is it? Where’s it gone?
Terrified, Danny tried to trace the telltale sounds of movement. He looked down at his feet. He saw something brown, but couldn’t tell what it was. Leaves? Bark? Or was it the snake?
Don’t lift the feet. Don’t tread on anything. Keep still, Dad always says. If you see a snake just keep still. Huh! That’s easy to say.
Danny wanted to run, jump, kick, stamp and scream, all at once.
He gasped as the tip of the snake’s moving tail touched the toe that protruded from his sneaker. He kept his eyes glued on the tail as it slid, twisting and curling, out of the entrance and away into the open sunlight.
Relieved, he slapped the crawling thing from the back of his hand. ‘Get off!’
Then he suddenly found his voice. ‘Heeeelp!’
His mournful cry died in echoes. No one heard him.
Danny suddenly felt weak and floppy. He dropped to his knees, breathing hard. The flaking snakeskin that he had collected from the rocks near the old Miller homestead lay next to the sheep skull. Danny gazed at it and it set him thinking. He wondered about the snake and if it was in fact the jumping vampire snake. Danny picked up the decaying skin and it flaked away in his fingers. Flakes drifted to the ground and he thought of the broken plates in the kitchen and his mum. He wouldn’t tell her about the snake; she might yell at him for not wearing his boots. He decided he would go, but not yet.
Danny Allen Was Here Page 8