Danny lifted himself to his knees, the sting of his grazed hands making him wince. He glanced back toward the tunnel, puffing hard. The short, mysterious winged figure with the enormous head had melted back into the darkness.
‘It’s gone, Thommo!’ Danny called, standing up.
Thommo slowed and took a terrified peek over his shoulder. ‘Where?’ he called loudly, sucking in air. ‘Where . . . is . . . it?’
Danny shrugged. ‘I dunno. It just vanished.’
The two boys stood and waited.
‘Is Sam still at the other end?’ puffed Thommo.
Danny took one step toward the tunnel. He cupped his hands around his mouth. ‘Saaaam! Are you still there?’ he hollered. ‘Saaam!’
Thommo and Danny waited at least a second for a response. The response that came was not what they were expecting.
They were both surprised to hear laughter, Sam’s laughter, reaching out from within the darkness of the tunnel. ‘Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!’
Danny and Thommo stood aghast as they watched two swaying figures wander slowly from the mouth of the tunnel. There was no beast, no werewolf. Sam was leaning on a familiar figure. They were supporting each other to save them from dropping to their knees in laughter.
‘Hey, boys,’ Sam laughed. ‘I found the tunnel beast.’ He waved a hand as if performing magic. ‘Tah dah!’
Laughing so hard he couldn’t speak, Eddie Fogarty slapped Sam’s back and took a bow. Eddie, the seventh child in the large Fogarty family, was the same age as Sam, but short for his age: destined to become a jockey.
‘You should’ve seen your faces,’ laughed Sam. ‘Eddie was wearing his bike helmet and carrying a huge kite.’
Sam wiped his eyes. ‘I have to say that in the darkness he looked pretty scary, but boy, you guys . . .’
Thommo looked bewildered. Danny could tell he was trying desperately to think of something to say that would stop him from looking like an idiot, but couldn’t think of a thing. Danny was stunned. For the first time in living memory, Thommo was speechless.
Still puffing, Thommo swallowed his pride and wandered back towards the tunnel and the laughter of Sam and Eddie.
Danny followed behind, feeling foolish but still bemused that Eddie Fogarty, half Thommo’s size, had managed to get the better of his big buddy. It didn’t happen often. Thommo usually had bragging rights on such escapades. Danny wondered how Eddie had planned such an incredible sting. It turned out he hadn’t.
Eddie had used the huge pipe halfway along the tunnel as his hide-out. Thommo didn’t know he was in there. He thought he had the pipe all to himself when he crawled inside, but his plan to jump out at Danny and Sam had backfired badly. When he crawled in and felt a hand on his shoulder he was so scared he broke wind involuntarily and took off under a burst of personal jet propulsion. Danny couldn’t remember ever seeing Thommo so terrified. He had never really believed that Thommo was afraid of anything.
As he walked by, mumbling to himself, Thommo looked different somehow. When Thommo walked toward Sam and Eddie, Danny fixed his gaze on Thommo’s broad shoulders. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
‘Hey, Thommo! Thommo, wait,’ Danny called.
‘No,’ growled Thommo, marching on. ‘I’m going to get those guys.’
‘But Thommo, you’ve . . .’
‘Shut up, Danny! Leave me alone.’
Thommo obviously had no idea what was on his back. Danny quickly scoured the nearby grass for a weapon. He saw the other half of the sign he had found earlier. This sign said ‘CROSSING’. Although rusty and twisted it was perfect for Danny’s needs. He took it in his hands like a baseball bat and set off after Thommo.
Danny’s feet crunched on the stones and Thommo glanced back over his shoulder. Danny lifted his weapon above his head, ready to strike a fearful blow.
Thommo spun round, his hands shielding his face. ‘Argh! What are you doing? Don’t hit me!’ Thommo started to run. ‘Get away, Danny!’
Danny followed him. ‘Keep still, Thommo!’
‘Noooo! You’re nuts!’
Danny ignored the raucous sounds of Sam and Eddie, who could only look on through tears of laughter. Danny kept tracking Thommo as he turned in desperate circles to avoid being struck. ‘Take it easy, Danny Allen! Calm down!’
Danny, weapon poised to whack, spun with him. Dodging and spinning, snaking and weaving.
‘You’ll die, Thommo!’
Thommo stumbled and dropped to his knees. ‘I don’t want to die,’ he whimpered.
He wrapped his arms over his head and doubled over as Danny took aim and whacked him on the back, not too hard, just hard enough to do the job. Thwack.
‘Ooof!’
Danny examined Thommo’s back. ‘You can get up now. You’re safe.’
Thommo cowered away from Danny. ‘Well, you’re not, Danny Allen! You’re mad. And I’m going to get you for that. That hurt, you know. No one hits me and . . .’
Thommo stopped in mid-sentence when Danny used his weapon to scrape the squashed guts of two red-back spiders from his back. Thommo’s eyes crossed as Danny held the evidence under his nose.
‘They were on your back heading for your neck. I had to stop them before they got down your shirt. If they’d sunk their fangs in, you could’ve died.’
Thommo stared at the spiders, the bright red dot on their backs clearly visible amid the brown squish of their guts. Thommo hated spiders, especially red-backs.
‘You . . . you saved my life, Danny Allen.’
Danny shrugged. ‘I’m sorry I had to hit you, though.’
Thommo straightened himself. ‘Didn’t hurt,’ he lied, rolling his shoulders. He rose to stand next to Danny. ‘You’re a good mate, Danny Allen.’
He patted Danny appreciatively on the shoulder.
Danny tried in vain to puff his chest up to the size of Thommo’s. The two friends walked off together, having lived a moment never to be forgotten.
The sound of the blaring truck horn pulled Danny back to the present day: silent fields and the railway track that snaked away to Howler’s Tunnel.
Danny took a deep breath. He was sad thinking that the adventurous days like those at Howler’s Tunnel were gone.
The truck bonnet slammed with a loud clang.
‘Come on, Danny, we’re right to go,’ his dad called.
Danny clambered back into the truck. ‘All right, champ?’ his dad asked.
Danny nodded unconvincingly.
With a roar, jerk and crunching of gears they were off again. Danny folded his arms on the open window and rested his chin. Daylight was giving way to darkness.
The cool air was thick with the smell of dry grass and dust.
The rhythmic vibration of the truck was soothing, but the singing from his dad and Mr Thompson wasn’t. They sang ‘Lights on the Hill’ by Slim Dusty.
Danny didn’t mind. If there were any night-time creatures lurking near Howler’s Tunnel they wouldn’t dare come anywhere near this horrible noise. It was worse than the wailing of werewolves.
With the sky darkening and stars blinking to life, Danny’s thoughts turned to the city. There would be no moon tonight so the stars would be at their brightest, everywhere except the city. Butterflies filled his stomach. According to Thommo, the brightness of the city lights meant that the stars wouldn’t be as bright.
Thommo had told Danny heaps about the city, about how sunsets were impossible to see, unless you lived in a very high building or drove through smoke and grime to the edge of the city to see one. How the city streets were dark with shadows in the daytime and darker than Howler’s Tunnel at night, especially if there was a blackout! And how the seedy streets were swarming with shadowy people.
Thommo had thrust a chubby finger into Danny’s chest and pushed his nose close to Danny’s to ensure he heeded his warning. ‘Don’t trust any city dwellers, Danny Allen,’ he had said throatily. ‘There are muggers, thieves, you name it. They are all up to no good
.’
Danny had been to the city, but never really noticed the things Thommo had noticed. The more he thought about it, the more he knew he was going to hate living in the city.
‘I’m going to hate living in the city,’ he whispered to the howl and whistle of the cool air around his ears.
2
The New World
The old truck growled through the city streets that twisted and turned like intestines. Night had fallen. Confusing clusters of neon signs flickered, shone and screamed for Danny’s attention. Red, blue, orange, purple, yellow: there were so many, zooming by too quickly for Danny to see. Rows of powerful lights illuminated fanciful images on huge billboards. There was so much to see, so much to confuse and bewilder.
Mr Thompson drove patiently through the mayhem of city traffic, pumping his leg on the clutch, constantly crunching gears. Above the loud orchestration of tooting horns, roaring trucks and the growl of wildly weaving cars, Danny’s dad said, ‘I hate city traffic.’
Danny looked at his dad’s tired eyes and gaunt face. There were long spells of silence. His dad was wearing his farm hat, the one with the oil stain that looked like a tiny map of Africa.
The hat was the same, but Danny’s dad hadn’t been ever since the guy from the bank visited for the last time. Danny’s dad called him Adolf, but that wasn’t his real name. His black shoes were so shiny that even the Mundowie dust couldn’t dull them. After Adolf’s visit Danny’s dad had gone to fix the fence by the creek alone and didn’t come back until after dark. He was quiet and distant when he came back. To Danny, it felt as if the dad he knew had gone away and another one, maybe controlled by aliens, had returned in his place.
Now that they were in the city, Danny understood why his dad was quiet. Driving through a maze of busy black roads was all so strange. All the things that were a part of their lives, the old truck, the sad furniture and the farm hat, didn’t belong. Danny didn’t belong. He looked down the throats of narrow lanes that were dark with seemingly no end. Howler’s Tunnel still haunting him, he wondered what might lurk within the darkness of such lanes.
Danny’s feelings were all jumbled, as if stacked in awkward, precarious piles like the furniture on the back of the truck. If one rope should break, then everything would tumble down in a mad avalanche.
The city was so big, a kid from Mundowie could easily be swallowed up and lost in the crowd of people scurrying about like monkeys at the zoo. And there was no hall, creek, cemetery or church, no easily recognisable landmark to help track a way home. Everything looked the same.
Danny tried to ignore the song on the radio: ‘Homeward Bound’ by Simon and Garfunkel. Homeward bound, thought Danny. Home? He wanted to go home. He looked around at the blinding lights, black tar roads and faceless people. This would never be home.
The traffic lights ahead turned red. Mr Thompson arm-wrestled the gear stick and revved the old truck to a rattling, clanking, squealing halt. Surprisingly, although the city was a noisy place, the truck attracted a lot of attention. Despite the fact that he obviously didn’t know a soul, Danny was too embarrassed to look anyone in the eye. He was too afraid as well that they might be muggers, like Thommo said.
Danny looked straight ahead, staring blankly through the steam drifting across the front of the windscreen. He could sense the people in the shiny red BMW next to them staring at the truck, with its furniture piled high, its plume of dark-blue smoke coughing from the exhaust and its rising ribbons of steam.
Danny was relieved when the lights turned green. Mr Thompson grated the truck into gear and the plume of blue smoke at the back thickened, blanketing the BMW. They turned, lurching and leaning precariously, into a narrow street. Danny read the street sign: Old Kings Lane.
In the fanning beam of the headlights Danny spied a familiar figure springing and spinning, white dress twirling, on the pavement ahead, as if in a spotlight on the stage. His sister, Vicky, had travelled a few hours ahead with Danny’s mum and Sam in the station wagon. She waved, spun and screamed. ‘Hey! Danny! Dad! Here we are. This is us here!’
Danny shook his head. How embarrassing!
When the truck pulled over, Vicki was still dancing.
‘Yay! Danny Allen is here!’ She looked up excitedly at Danny leaning out of the truck window. ‘We live up high, Danny,’ she announced, ‘on floor number three. It’s the top floor.’ She spun round fast enough to ensure her dress would fan out and pointed upward. ‘There it is!’ she cried. ‘Waterford Towers, that’s where we live, in a tower, just like princesses do.’ She clapped her hands.
There was an advertising sign at the front of Waterford Towers. The words ‘Apartment to Let: No Pets’ had a No Vacancy banner pasted across them.
Danny looked up at the old, grubby, red-brick building. It looked squashed, like a person wedged between two fat passengers on a bus seat. On one side was a huge run-down old theatre called the Old Kings Theatre and on the other a sparkling Mercedes car dealership.
The tall, narrow windows, two on each floor, were bordered by ornate, white stone carvings of mysterious snake-like vines that were cracked and crumbling. At the very top was a large gargoyle blackened with city grime. It had obviously been white once, like the soldier statue in the front of the Mundowie Institute Hall. A brave graffiti artist had somehow managed to scale the building and paint some red glasses around its eyes.
The short-sighted gargoyle sat between the two windows of Unit 3, Waterford Towers. One of the windows would soon have Danny’s bed next to it and offer Danny a bird’s-eye view of his strange new world.
Danny studied the dilapidation of Waterford Towers. It didn’t look much like the home of a princess to him. Danny considered Vicki to be fortunate to see a dump in such a regal light.
As soon as Danny and his dad alighted from the truck, Danny found himself lost in the wrap of an Allen family embrace. His mum wrapped her arms around Danny and his dad. She whispered a warm greeting in Danny’s dad’s ear. They smiled at each other. Danny smiled too.
Vicki bustled her way in. ‘I love everybody,’ she cried, wriggling and squirming.
‘Where’s Sam?’ asked Danny.
‘He’s up in the princess tower,’ said Vicki, motioning up to the yellow light in the windows. ‘He’s going to make the TV work. He said there are heaps more channels than we had back in Mundowie.’
‘Come on, let’s start carting stuff up the stairs,’ ordered Danny’s mum.
‘Stairs?’ said Mr Thompson.
‘You mean there’s no lift?’ said Danny, glancing up.
‘No lift,’ said Vicki, still bouncing. ‘The stairs are fun. Towers always have stairs.’
‘And princesses,’ added Danny’s dad as he scooped her up, smacking a big kiss on her cheek and twirling her so fast she giggled.
Danny looked at the soles of her grubby little bare feet: the colour of the footpath. Some princess!
The carting began. Danny’s mum had deliberately parked their battered station wagon, caked with red Mundowie dirt, right in front of the Mercedes showroom. The car was a sorry sight. They had lost the right-hand back-wheel trim, exposing a black rim, and every door squealed when opened.
Danny’s mum lifted a box from the back seat. She slammed her door. It had to be slammed otherwise it wouldn’t lock. ‘The car fairy might come and change our old bomb into a brand-new Mercedes tonight,’ she winked.
‘Really?’ Vicki gasped, skipping free of her dad’s loving grasp. She looked longingly at the showroom and wondered which car they would own in the morning. ‘I like the red one,’ she said. ‘Red ones go fast!’
Danny had to avoid her as she flew into a spin.
‘What a good fairy!’ she cried.
Her excited face suddenly buckled into a disgruntled frown. ‘Better than the tooth fairy,’ she sulked. ‘I only got fifty cents last time and it was a good tooth.’ She opened her mouth and stuck a finger in to point at the spot where the good tooth had once been. She tried to sp
eak with her hand halfway down her throat. ‘It oosed too be ight ere.’ She dribbled.
Danny’s mum raised her eyebrows. ‘Yes, well,’ she said. ‘I know for a fact that the tooth fairy has hit hard times.’
‘What are hard times?’ puzzled Vicki.
‘Never mind.’
Vicki wiped her wet finger on her dress. ‘And how do you know the tooth fairy, Mum?’
Danny’s mum rolled her eyes. ‘No more questions; we’ve got work to do.’
Danny watched Vicki as she eyed her mum suspiciously and said, ‘You aren’t supposed to keep secrets, Mum.’
They didn’t have far to walk but Danny’s feet dragged and his eyelids were incredibly heavy. The city world moved far too fast for him. Pushy people scurried by like frenzied termites from a rotted stump disturbed by Thommo’s boot. They pushed, bumped and cajoled. Danny felt like a silver ball in a pinball machine. They were all obviously in a hurry to get somewhere very important.
Danny tipped his head back. He gazed up at a man-made canyon of sharp-edged city buildings. Next door, the name of the old theatre was in lights, well, old globes, most of them broken. The words were incomplete. Danny read the funny words that remained. ‘O_D _I_GS TH_A_ _E,’ he said to himself.
At the theatre’s entrance there were old billboards with strips from shredded posters hanging limply. The once-shiny handles of the huge doors were sadly tarnished. ‘The Old Kings Theatre’ was etched into the glass of the doors, under which the word ‘Closed’ was written untidily in large red letters on a banner.
The Mercedes dealership, on the other hand, was so sparkly that it looked as if it had burst from a dream. Or, as Vicki probably thought, been created with the glittering magic of fairies. The lights were blindingly bright and everything was polished. The windows didn’t look as though they had glass in them. And how, Danny wondered, as he looked from the new cars to his parents’ car, do you keep cars that clean?
Strangely, Danny liked the look of the old theatre better. It looked . . . more . . . well, warm and inviting, despite its sad state of disrepair. There was no way cars could always stay as clean as they were in the Mercedes showroom. It wasn’t real, they were fooling people, and he only had to look at his car to see that.
Take it Easy, Danny Allen Page 3