Lizard's Leap: Chapter Three: Sand Lizard, Sand Lizard

Chapter Two: Liberty Island

Sunday morning squeezed itself through the chink in the dinosaur curtains. It landed squarely on Mark and Kerry’s bedroom carpet waking Kerry up and demanding an early start to the day. She knew what day it was because she could hear the church bells. She loved Sundays; they were different from any other day and had a special feel about them. However, the other sound in the room wasn’t as nice as the tolling of the bells.

Mark was snoring. Kerry remembered that they had stayed the night at Nana and Grandad’s house and she had to share a room with him. She hated that.

The Taylors and the Forests were an extended-but-close family. The hub was the big house on the hill where the children’s grandparents lived. They had their own bedrooms. Mark and Kerry shared one room because they were the youngest, and Vicki and Emma had another.
Kerry had some strange interests for a girl of her age. She was fascinated, by dinosaurs, reptiles and fossils and soaked up any morsel of information on her pet subjects, storing it in her mind to mull over and play with later. She would sit for hours reading and learning all about the things that interested her. She was going to be a scientist—a palaeontologist, in fact, and that meant that she wanted to study dinosaurs and fossils and primitive man. 'But I'm not sexist,' she'd say when asked, 'I'll study primitive lady, too.' She was eight and could spell palaeontologist without looking in a dictionary. The other three children were envious, and, although they teased her about it, they would like to be able to do it too. The other big love in Kerry’s life was ballet. She went to lessons every week, and practiced daily. One day Kerry aimed to write her own ballet. She was going to call it "The Dinosaur Valley Ballet".

She looked at the cast iron fireplace. These days it was just kept for ornamental value as no fire had been lit in it for years and the hearth was filled with a cascading dried flower arrangement. This morning it had a new decoration on the top. The wooden frame sat on the mantelpiece and set off the fireplace. All it needed was a new picture to replace the awful Statue of Liberty print. Kerry couldn’t wait to give it a good clean to make it shine. She hoped that there would be something of the right size around the house. If not, she was happy to wait until she could find just the right picture.

At the weekend, breakfast wasn’t put on the table until half past nine. It was a Sunday tradition that they sat down to a large cooked breakfast. This made Sunday Mark’s favourite day: a big breakfast, followed by buffet lunch and a huge roast dinner in the evening. He looked forward to Sundays above all other days. Breakfast consisted of cereal or porridge, followed by bacon, eggs, sausage, tomatoes, mushrooms and fried bread. They always sat around the breakfast table chatting for ages and Kerry talked about the picture frame until the others got fed up hearing about it.

After breakfast the children watched a video, but Kerry’s mind was on the picture and she couldn’t concentrate on The Aristocats. As soon as the video came to an end she jumped up, anxious to get back upstairs. If she was quick she would just about have time to finish it before lunch at twelve thirty. She begged a soft duster, polish and some furniture wax from her Nana.

Vicki knocked on the bedroom door and wandered in. ‘Do you want to listen to my new Dance Mash album, Kez?’ Without waiting for an answer, she found what she wanted on her IPod and turned up the volume.

‘Turn that music down, right now.’ Nana’s voice floated up the stairs and Vicki pulled a face. She reluctantly turned the music down, but not very much.

Kerry sat cross-legged on the floor turning the frame over in her hands, feeling the grain. She enjoyed the smooth finish of the wood and the knobbly contrast when her fingers ran over the lizards. She had neither looked up nor spoken since Vicki had entered the room.

Vicki was used to being ignored. Kerry often absorbed herself in what she was doing to the point that she was unaware of anything taking place around her.

It didn’t bother Vicki; she chatted away in a one-way conversation unaware that she was talking to herself. She lounged back on Kerry’s bed and broke off her string of chatter with the odd blast of singing along to the songs as they played.

Kerry rocked herself, enjoying the lead up to the moment when she would clean the frame and let the dirt-hidden beauty of the wood shine through as the muck was removed.

Emma wandered in without knocking. ‘Kerry, can I borrow your Ghost Stories book?’ She got no response so shouted loudly, ‘Kerry. Can I borrow your book, please?’

‘What?’ said Kerry, shaken from her daydream? ‘Oh, yeah, okay. It’s on the bookcase. Make sure you put it back in the right place when you’ve finished with it.’ She turned back to the picture.

The table hadn't been cleared yet and Mark was still sitting in front of the television downstairs. Periodically he'd wander into the dining room to help himself to another leftover sausage or piece of bacon. He was playing with a plastic figure from the box of Coco-Pops that had caused a huge argument at breakfast. Nana had stepped in and decreed that it was Mark’s turn to have the cereal box gift.

Basking in his moment of glory, he heard the heavy bass of the dance music coming from upstairs. Looking around, he realised that he was alone and several thoughts tried to form themselves in his mind. The first of these was, I wonder what they’re doing up there? Closely followed by, they’d better not be messing with my stuff. Then, I bet they’re only talking about boy bands and kissing. Finally he thought, but what if they’re doing something interesting? Or, what if they have some sweets stashed that they don’t want me to know about?

With the last thought he shot off the chair and pounded up the stairs.

Bursting through the door out of breath and panting, he was disappointed to find that Kerry was looking at that dumb old picture frame and Vicki and Emma were sitting on Kerry’s bed singing to their dopey music. He shuffled over to his bed and flopped down onto it.

‘I’m bored.’ This was Mark’s second most often used phrase, the other was, ‘I’m starving.’ Nobody answered him.

Mark was a pain and his passion in life was to wind up the girls. His other great love was food and he believed that life should be a perpetual running buffet.

He thought that he might like to be the Prime Minister one day, 'When I'm Prime Minister,' he announced, 'all sweet shops will have to give their sweets to boys for free—but, not to girls.' Mark thought they were a different species and should have to pay extra and get a smaller share to boot. He didn’t think much of boy bands but he liked computer games and fighting with his sister. None of them rose to the bait. 'I'm bored,' he repeated.

Kerry squirted some furniture polish onto the top left-hand corner of the frame. She breathed in the smell and loved the familiar woodiness. She wrapped the duster around one of her fingers. Then she rubbed the wood with small circling movements. Her dad had taught her to clean her school shoes this way and they always came up shiny.

Adding more polish as necessary, she worked her way down the left-hand side of the frame and along the bottom.

At the centre point of the lower edge her fingers found a small irregularity in the wood. She turned the frame over and noticed that hidden at the back of the mount was a three-inch long notch in the wood. Her fingers probed the opening.

She pulled her hands back with a gasp.

Something was moving.

Shocked, Kerry watched as a small drawer dropped from the bottom of the frame. ‘Wow. Come and look at this, you lot.’

Alerted by Kerry’s surprised gasp the other three had jumped off their beds and were already crowding around Kerry on the floor. They stared at the little drawer.

‘Look,’ Vicki said, stating the obvious. ‘There’s something inside.’

Kerry’s fingers trembled as she lifted a tiny, rolled tube of yellowed paper from the small drawer. It looked very old. Vicki, who was the undisputed boss because she was the oldest, took it from her and opened it. Her tongue shot out of her mouth in concentration because she didn't want to rip the fragile paper. The old-fashioned writing was difficult to understand but Vicki managed to read it out loud, deciphering the words as she went:

Here is an image for you to keep -
Follow where the lizards leap.
Move with caution, take a peep,
Beware! Do not get in too deep.

Repeat the words inscribed below;
Take a breath and off you go.

Sand Lizard. Sand Lizard, cautiously creep.
Shim. Sham. Shally wham. Lizards leap!

As she read the last word the room began to spin. It was slow at first. Then it rotated faster and faster until the children were inside a lightning-fast vortex. They were in a spinning world similar to the centre of a tornado. They spun and spun, unable to get enough breath to scream, unable to think, let alone have the time to be scared…

Then, as suddenly as it had moved, the vortex world slowed and came to a stop. The children were sitting on a grassy area facing the sea.