Welcome to Book Launch!

Chapter 1 An Arrival

We live in an old house and at nighttime, especially on cold, windy winter nights, it sounds like the soundtrack of a scary movie. You might know what I mean. The floorboards squeak mysteriously, the windowpanes rattle in their frames as if shaken by giant hands that try to force their way inside and the branches of the old pohutukawa tree knock rhythmically against the wall behind my bed, as if somebody outside seriously tries to get your attention. I’m not kidding: I had mates wanting to go home in the middle of a sleepover, because they couldn’t handle it anymore.

The night my life took a rather unexpected turn, was one of those nights. It was cold in my room and I had wrapped my blanket tight around me to keep me warm. I was just dozing off, when my sister’s voice interrupted my pleasant half-dream of becoming the youngest All Black of all times. “Matt. Wake up!” she whispered. I tried very hard to ignore her and was quite happy with my attempt to pretend that I was sleeping, when she started hitting my head with Rupert the bear, her favourite soft toy and all time companion.

“Matt, wake up! I’m scared! There is a monster under my bed! Really, you have to let me sleep in your bed”, Vicky whispered urgently and uncomfortably close to my ear.

“GO AWAY!” I grunted in the most unkind manner I could muster.

See, I don’t mind Vicky much. She is a pretty okay kid, for a five year old. But that very day she had managed to do incredible harm to my All Black sticker collection with a black permanent marker and I was still fuming.

“Matt”, she whimpered and I could hear she was very close to crying, “please, Matt, can I stay with you?”

“I don’t think so. Go back to bed. There are no monsters and there is no monster under your bed.”

“I’m sorry I drawed on your special book, Matt, but there is a monster and you can’t be mad with me anymore, because if the monster eats me up, mum will so tell you off.”

“Go and see mum then and sleep in her bed!” I suggested, knowing only too well that Vicky would never walk all the way to my parents’ bedroom on the far side of the house, not in the dark with the wind howling and the house groaning and sighing. Actually, I was surprised she had even made it next door into my room, coming to think of it. I opened my eyes and sat up with a sigh.

“Okay. I will take you back into your room, we will turn on the light and check under your bed. You will see there is no monster and you can go to sleep.”

Vicky shook her head vehemently. “No. I’m not going. I tell you: There is a monster and it is under my bed. Rupert falled down and I picked him up and I saw it. It is blue and stinky.”

“Nonsense!” I said with my big boy voice and took her hand to take her back to her room, while she was trying her best to wrestle out of my grip. It was about that moment in time, when I realised how upset my little sister was. Tears were running down her face, as she was clinging on with all her might to my writing desk.

“Vicky, stop it!” I said with a stern voice, “You will wake up mum and dad. Come with me and if there is a monster” – I didn’t think for a moment there was a monster, but sometimes one has to be the responsible older brother who humours his little sister – “I will scare it away and you and Rupert can sleep in your special princess bed. Okay!?”

Vicky loves her bed. It is rather ridiculous, a pink four poster bed with a white canopy that mum decorated with flower and butterfly ornaments.

She looked at me with big, teary eyes and nodded reluctantly. “Okay.”

The moment I opened the door to Vicky’s room I knew something wasn’t quite right. I could sense that there was something or somebody in the quiet, dark room and I could feel the hairs on my back standing up. I lifted my finger to my mouth and gestured to Vicky to be silent, then I left her standing by the door and walked slowly towards her bed. I went down onto my knees and carefully lowered my upper body until I could look underneath the bed. I could see something glowing, lighting up the space behind my long lost rugby ball in a faint blue light.

For some reason I knew that whatever generated this light was a living being and I had no idea how to proceed from here. Should I call my parents? Or 111? Or should I simply grab a broomstick and poke about the dusty space under Vicky’s bed a bit, until whatever was hiding in that corner would pop out? In the end I went with the broomstick, especially, because Vicky looked at me with so much trust in my monster chasing abilities that I really didn’t want to disappoint her.  

We tiptoed through the darkness to retrieve the broom from the hallway cupboard and then I took a deep breath, stretched out on the floor in front of the bed and started to push the broom towards the light source. Within seconds the most vile stench filled the room, Vicky and I could hardly breathe and tears were running down our faces, as I retreated full speed, coughing and spluttering in a mad dash to open the window. A violent gust of wind blasted cold night air, beautiful fresh night air into my face and Vicky and I inhaled deeply.

“What on earth is that?” I asked her as both of us stared in wide eyed disbelief at her bed.

“I don’t know. But it’s not nice. I don’t like it”, Vicky whispered and took hold of my hand. That was the understatement of the century. Even our old dog, Hunter, wasn’t capable of stinking out a room like that and his nickname was Stink Bum.

I was still holding Vicky’s sticky little paw in mine, when suddenly the whole room seemed to be lit up in this unworldly blue light. I could feel her freeze and I couldn’t move a single muscle in my body either, let alone think of anything clever to do. I mean what do you do, when there is some sort of alien invasion happening in your sister’s bedroom and your parents sleep happily through the whole thing?

While my brain was not spitting out any useful suggestions as to how to handle this situation, my eyes were adjusting slowly and after a while I could make out a small, blob like body taking shape in the centre of the blue halo that illuminated the room.

And then the blob spoke.

“Missa hello youssa! Missa sorry and apologissa! Missa smelly windypoppa - so sorry! Missa very upset, because of crash. Missa ship crash, boom! Missa not good at speaking earth talk. Youssa speak Pluto talk? Missa needs help, pleassa!”

At this point the blob stopped talking and started to shake and sob miserably. Vicky was the first to move. She ran straight over to the blob, gathered it up in her arms and cuddled it like a little kitten.

“Don’t cry, Missa! It’s okay. We are not angry.”

I must admit I wasn’t quite so ready to be friends with this weird creature and I purposefully strode over to the bedside lamp to switch on the light. Both Vicky and the blob squinted their eyes, only the blob’s eyes were the most amazing, round, purple eyes I had ever seen. The whole creature looked most peculiar. It didn’t seem to have a clear body structure, but resembled a pot of blue jelly with a face. Beneath the wobbly, blue surface you could see all sorts of colourful, flashing, moving body parts, some of them looked very much like computer circuits.

What on earth did we have here?