Chapter 1

Danny ran out of his brand new bedroom and ventured out onto the landing of their new house. A wide pathway, a place perfect for make believe airport runways and alien landing docks. In the corner, where the staircase descended to the ground floor, provided a perfect cover for ground invasions against zombies and dinosaurs or even zombie dinosaurs! He imagined a gigantic Tyrannosaurus Rex with blood red eyes, ambling slowly towards its victim, green, scaly flesh dripping off as it went after its prey.

He was going to love living in this new house, it was enormous compared to their last home, a dingy one-bed roomed council flat on the outskirts of some decaying industrial dust-pit in Northern England. He concluded straight away that he wasn’t ever going to get accustomed to the fact it had so many levels, including an attic, something he had never encountered before. Later, he decided, this would be his next stop off point on his intended adventure around his new home. His mum called up:

“Danny! Come here lad, got summat to show you, I’m in the parlour!”

He quickly forgot about zombies and airports and ran to the anti-zombie zone at the top of the stairs, rounded the corner and tried to remember where the ‘parlour’ was and indeed what a parlour might even be.

“Where are you mummy?” He called out as he wandered aimlessly around the different rooms, he only called her mummy when he was excited, in trouble or scared.

“This way!” She replied.

Spinning round, he followed the sound of her voice into the parlour. She was leaning with her back against a huge desk. Danny noticed all the drawers were open, five in all apart from one on the bottom left which was still closed. In her hand he saw she had a pile of letters. He suddenly felt nervous and asked:

“What are those mummy? Are we in trouble again?”

He fidgeted nervously and noticed for the first time that they weren’t like the letters he was used to seeing back at their old home. Brown envelopes with horrible words inside that always made his mother cry. These letters were different though, they were different colours and different shapes, pink, yellow and blue. She looked at him and her eyes brightened:

“No, no, don’t panic my darling!” She grinned as she continued, “They’re birthday cards, for someone who lived here before by the looks of it, but guess what? he’s called Danny too!” She thrust the cards into his hands and said; “Well since it’s your birthday tomorrow and no one we know knows our new address, it would be a shame for you not to have these. What do you think son?”

He wasn’t so sure now he had them in his hands. When he first saw them he wanted to, but when he read the name and address on the front, he knew in his heart they were really meant for someone else; although it was actually his name and it really was his address. He looked at the cards with confusion and then looked at his mum and said thoughtfully:

“My birthday’s tomorrow perhaps I’ll know by then.”

His mum looked at him lovingly, he always did say things in such an odd way. She turned around and started to close the drawers while Danny continued to glance uneasily at the cards in his hands. She asked him how his ‘Revelations’ were coming along, chuckling to herself at his choice of word for his latest adventure: discovering all the exciting new places in their new home. He was to report back with exactly how many rooms he’d found and so far he’d got to six but still couldn’t decide if a ‘pantry’ which he found hiding behind a bead curtain in the kitchen was a genuine room or not; so it might be five.

Danny stopped puzzling over the pantry problem and informed her he wanted to discover this attic he had heard about. He could not stop fantasising about space observatories and landing docks for UFOs; but also probably zombie dinosaurs too. He listened to her instructions on how to lower the steps carefully and after promising profusely to be very careful, he set off on ‘Revelation Part 2.’

 

 

©CMA 2016

Cover: The life of animals