Crane Fly Crash (4 page)

“Danny! Josh!” shouted Mom, a bit louder. “I want you to go and clean your room. Get the stuff off the carpet so I can vacuum!”

Danny gulped. He looked at the crane flies skittering about on Jenny's bed. He shuddered, even though he knew they were his brother and sister. He had to stand here and wait until they got back safely to human form. He couldn't answer Mom and be told to go and clean his room.

Mom had reached the landing now, lugging the vacuum up with her by the sound of it. She switched the vacuum cleaner off and sighed. Then she called for her sons again. And then she called for Jenny. Nobody answered. Danny stood frozen on Jenny's bedroom carpet, his heart racing. What should he do?

Mom huffed loudly outside Jenny's door and muttered to herself. “Where have they all gone? Typical, when there's work to be done.”

Then she opened Jenny's door.

She looked around the room, shook her head, and sighed again. Danny stood rigid against the wall behind the door. He tried not to breathe. He'd be in big trouble if Mom found out he was hiding and not answering her. But worse, there was no way she'd let him stay in Jenny's room, guarding a couple of crane flies.

Mom's fingers curled around the edge of the door. She huffed again. And then—mercifully—the door was pulled closed.

Danny sprang toward the bed. He couldn't see the crane flies now. But a buzzy clicking noise told him they were flying against something. Ah! There they were, flapping around the lamp on Jenny's white-painted bedside table.

“Ooh, that's got to hurt,” winced Danny. He watched them ping against the hot bulb and do backflips away from it. They rebounded off the inside of the cone-shaped lampshade. “Josh!” he hissed, aware that Mom was still up on the landing. “Don't be an idiot. Stop head-butting the light!”

But they kept doing it. Again and again, even though it was clearly hurting them. Danny was about to reach out and switch the lamp off when he saw something shocking on the bedside table, next to Jenny's pink hairbrush. He hoped it was a funny shaped hair—but it was too dark. Jenny's hairs were blonde. This was dark colored and looked very much like …

“A leg!” gasped Danny. “One of them's lost a leg!”

“Stop! Jenny! Stop!” puffed Josh, lying in a bedraggled heap on her bedside table. “Look! You've lost a leg!”

He knew it wasn't his leg, as he'd just done a quick check and he still had all six. Jenny, though, had only five. One of her back legs was missing. And here it was, lying next to the big pink spiky thing that Josh had figured out was Jenny's hairbrush. He might not ever have noticed the leg if he hadn't got so exhausted. It was only because he
couldn't
fly at the light now that he had stopped. And resting had given him a moment to realize that he and his sister had gone nuts, just like the moth she'd tried to kill earlier. They had all thought the light was the moon and were instinctively trying to fly toward it to safety. But in fact, it was the bulb in the bedside lamp. Josh's head and feet were very sore with all the burns from smacking against the white-hot glass.

Jenny suddenly slapped down next to him, groaning. “What?” she said. “What did you say?”

“Look—I don't want you to get upset,” began Josh.

“About what? Hurry up—I've got to fly to the light!” She was pulling herself up again already. “The lovely light!”

“STOP!” yelled Josh. “Can't you see that's your bedside lamp? You're just banging yourself against a white-hot bit of glass!”

“What?” said Jenny, again. She had flopped down beside him once more.

“And look—you've lost a leg,” said Josh. He waved one of his own legs at the poor specimen lying by the hairbrush.

“Ooh,” said Jenny, checking her limbs and noting the stump at the back. “I thought something stung a bit.” She peered at the useless limb.

“Ah well,” said Josh. “You've got some more.”

But he gulped. Would he switch back and discover Jenny had lost an arm or a leg for good. Why did crane flies have to be so
flimsy
?

At this moment, Danny was reaching toward the bedside lamp. He was carefully avoiding the collapsed crane flies below it, trying to switch off the tormenting, dangerous light before any more legs fell off. Before he'd reached the switch, the bedroom door, which Mom hadn't completely shut, was suddenly knocked open. In trotted Piddle.

Piddle, a small terrier dog (called Piddle because of an unattractive habit he had when he got overexcited) was very pleased to see Danny. He was bored and wanted to play. He yapped and jumped up on Jenny's bed, even though he wasn't allowed to.

“Piddle! Get out!” hissed Danny. He couldn't shout. Mom was in the bathroom now and might hear him. But Piddle could see that Danny was playing with something. He was pointing his hand at the bedside table. What was going on?

“
OUT!
” hissed Danny, as loudly as he dared. Piddle heard him. But what he decided Danny was actually saying was “
LOOK! LOOK! TAKE A LOOK AT THIS!
”

“It's not good, is it?” said Jenny, booting her detached leg about with one of her attached ones. “I should be bleeding to death.”

“Nah—you're all right,” gulped Josh. He tried hard not to think of switching back to Stumpsville. “Crane flies lose legs like you lose a fingernail. It's a survival thing. If they get caught by a predator, they can just shake a leg off and escape.”

“Ugh,” said Jenny. She examined the stump where her leg had been. It wasn't oozing anything at all. She looked up at the light and sighed longingly.

“NO-OO!” warned Josh. “Don't fly to the light! You know it doesn't make sense!”

“But…” sighed Jenny. Then she snapped her head around to Josh and said, “Hang on—predator? You said predator! Are there predators in my dream? I hate dreams like that. I'm going to have to wake myself up if there's a predator after me.”

“We should be OK,” said Josh. “We're in your bedroom. I don't think there are any big predators there except you. And you're not around.”

Jenny nodded and then froze. Her big bulbous eyes seemed to get even bigger and more bulbous. A very loud gusty noise suddenly burst into their ears. Jenny stared in horror at something behind Josh. Josh spun around, his legs flapping, and stared too. A huge shadowy figure loomed high into the air. That was probably Danny, Josh told himself. What was far more terrifying was the smaller but still pretty enormous creature. It was suddenly springing up and down in front of the bedside table.

A blast of warm air, which smelled of rotten old meat, suddenly sent Josh and Jenny flying back toward the big yellow base of the lamp. Jenny screamed. Fair enough, thought Josh, and joined her. “AAARGH!” they agreed, as a pair of jaws the size of a tractor snapped shut inches away from them. Another blast of nasty warm, meaty air blew at them.

“OH NO!” shrieked Josh. “It's PIDDLE!” He stared at Jenny in horror. “Piddle EATS creepy-crawlies!”

With his front legs, Josh grabbed hold of Jenny by the wings. He dragged her around to the back of the lampshade. They huddled together on a large plastic tray filled with blue glitter. “Ooh,” said Jenny. “I wondered where my eye shadow had gone…”

“Jenny!” squawked Josh. “Don't you think there are more important things to worry about right now? We're about to be eaten by a giant Piddle!” He cringed back into the corner as a hairy white paw with thick yellow claws suddenly whacked across the table top to their left with a scrunch. It scratched four grooves in the paint. A terrible shrill sound ripped through the air, like a train crashing very fast over and over again. Piddle was yapping. The looming shadow that must be Danny was swooping down on top of Piddle. Would he manage to stop the energetic terrier in time?

“We won't be eaten by Piddle,” said Jenny, quite calmly, even though she was shaking as much as Josh.

“What? How do you know
that
?” gasped Josh. He dragged them both farther backward as a smelly pink tongue suddenly shot around the edge of the lamp.

“Because it's
my
dream,” said Jenny, shrugging with all five of her legs. “And in my dreams, whenever I'm being chased by a monster, it never
actually
gets me. I always wake up just before that happens.”

“B-but… ” Josh couldn't think of an answer to this. Telling Jenny this was all real probably wouldn't help much.

“Of course
you
might get eaten,” went on Jenny, with a cheerful chuckle. “You quite often do get eaten or squashed or thrown off a cliff or something, in my dreams. Although Danny is
usually
the first one to bite the dust. But not me. Nope. In fact, I've had enough of this dream now.” Jenny struggled to stand up straight again. “I'm just going around to face the monster and then I'll wake up.”

“JENNY! NO!” yelled Josh, horrified, trying to grab her. “YOU CAN'T! PIDDLE WILL EAT YOU!”

“No, he won't—you'll see,” said Jenny. She fluttered up above him. Then she scooted around to the front of the lamp again.