WREN FINDLEY AND THE CALL OF THE PIED PIPER - Chapter 01 (Preview)

CHAPTER 01

A CHICKEN PROMISES TO KILL ME

I DON’T HATE BEACHES.

I just don’t like them at all. Sand, no matter what you do, finds its way into every nook and cranny. Then there is the disapproving look people give you when you say how much you dislike the beach. 

‘How can you not? You live right next to one!’ I point out that people live next to prisons. No one should enjoy them. 

Urgh. I sound like such a downer. Look, I’m fun, I promise. Most dinosaurs love me. According to my growing list of enemies, I am a troubling upstart too clever for my own good. That’s on them—if you point a laser gun at me, you deserve sass.

Stop! 

My stomach is lurching, my skin is prickling. I am going into panic mode. The voices will start soon. That was too many positive things about myself in a row. 

Don’t you dare give in, Wren! You’re stronger than this. No, I need to clear my head.

One spin on the spot. Two. Three spins. And now the shakes of my head. One. Two. Three. 

There, much better. 

It’s okay! I’ve got Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. OCD for short. Not to be confused with Obsessive Christmas Disorder. Xmas is supposed to be fun, but OCD is very much not. I guess they do have similarities, when you take being forced to spend time with annoying family members into consideration. Anywhos, before this is over, I’ll do more odd things. 

Am I meant to get so personal in these reports? Who else reads them? What are they going to think? I bet they’ll see how hopeless I am. 

Three spins on the spot to draw the negative energy back into me. And three shakes of the head to wipe the thoughts away—like clearing an Etch A Sketch.

That’s better. 

My name is Wren Findley. I’m fourteen years old and I am a time traveller. My unit is MR-1. This is my first field report. 

It is only six months late, but as my super best friend says: ‘It’s always best to put off paperwork or not do it.’ His sister has quite different feelings about it, so here we are. 

Like any classic adventure, mine began on a Tuesday morning. I was running alongside Petterton Beach. 

When people imagine the middle of nowhere, they usually think of deserts and grassed landscapes. If you load up a map of Australia and zoom in on the far north-eastern coastline, you might be able to find the town of Petterton. 

I doubt it. 

Surrounded by a thick rainforest on one side and an angry ocean on the other, this place was well and truly my prison. 

The fishing village was populated with people who are too odd for the rest of the world, or want to hide from it. That is exactly why my parents moved us there. 

They had failed to get rid of me, so quarantining me from the world was the next best thing. I couldn’t even remember the last time my mother had deigned to speak more than two words to me. 

Spin. Spin. Spin. Shake. Shake. Shake. 

I’m not trying to make you feel sorry for me. Honest. Spin. Spin. Spin. Shake. Shake. Shake. All these negative things are important to the story, I swear. 

Running alongside the beach, I must have looked strange with my regular shakes of the head and flamboyant spins on the spot. At least I had the lively company of a Skulduggery Pleasant audiobook. I’d lost count of the number of times I had listened to this series. It got me.

Still, it was near impossible not to think about how shitty my life was. It’s not easy being a fourteen-year-old  girl, let alone a lonely teenage girl stuck in a single supermarket town whose only claim to fame is the World’s Biggest Beach Chair. 

I dreamt of escaping my tropical lock-up. I wanted to travel the world and find a place I belonged. Somewhere I could be myself and not feel like a stranger in a normal land. 

Don’t get me wrong; there were upsides to living in Petterton. North Queensland is summer dress heaven. I could also get about in baggy outfits without drawing raised eyebrows from schoolyard Mean Girls. 

Fashion is important to me. The right outfit can rescue even the crummiest of days. Through my ever-evolving style, I show the world the flexible and fluid Wren I want to be. Rigid OCD black-and-white thinking be damned. 

Petterton had an awesome op shop. A huge plus. Another relief was that the locals didn’t know or care about my sister’s disappearance. It was refreshing not to have people recognise me from the news or a disturbing conspiracy website that shouldn’t exist. I slammed the side of my head six times, quashing unwanted feelings and voices.

Up ahead of me was an old man walking his pet lamb. It trotted behind him, led on by an offered tub of food. The animal and their human were nice enough, but I didn’t want to talk to anyone. 

I wanted to run. 

I always need to keep moving. It’s the only sure way to keep the past behind you. 

I waved at the wrinkled local and smiled to reassure him and myself that I didn’t think that he was a creep. Spin. Spin. Spin. Shake. Shake. Shake. 

Reluctantly, I veered onto the beach. Ever vigilant, I checked if the rocky mounds ahead of me were sun-baking saltwater crocodiles.

There are a lot of them in Northern Queensland, and it is super freaky at night. If you shine a torch on the surface of a dark body of water, don’t be surprised to find dozens of red eyes glaring back at you. 

Tourists often complained they never saw any on Petterton Beach, but I always encountered a few. I ran every morning and afternoon. 

Yet again, deadly, feathery, and slithery creatures were attracted to me. It’s all part of my charm, or as I call it: The Curse of Wren Findley. If something weird or dangerous happens, look for me. I’ll be standing there shrugging and apologising for existing. 

My therapist would say ‘Now, now, Wren. Do you remember when we talked about confirmation bias? I worry that you are conflating random events to enforce a negative self-perception.’ 

Random my ass. 

He wasn’t there when I woke up one morning to fiery sparks and mechanical grinding. A muscular firefighter was cutting away the metal bars blocking my window. An army of snakes had invaded the school overnight. They were massed up against my bedroom door. I barely escaped a tsunami of slithering bodies and fangs as it caved in. 

No matter how many snake catchers they got in over the next few weeks, the creatures would break in and try to bite me. Life Tip Number 24: always check inside the toilet bowl before sitting down. 

Sigh. So ended my first boarding school experience. I’m not proud of it, but I have been booted from five boarding schools.

That’s a lie; I’m a little proud.

Only one of those times was my fault. Honest. 

It was a super Churchie school, and they weren’t happy with me continually interrupting mass to point out reasons why God was fickle. The biological female reproductive cycle is evidence enough. I couldn’t stop my ranting there; it was a compulsion. The intrusive thoughts had to come out. 

So, that one wasn’t my fault either. Not entirely. God deserves some blame for making me that way. 

Spin. Spin. Spin. Shake. Shake. Shake. I added in a silent hand prayer to the heavens. With my luck, I needed to be careful. 

A sun baking five-foot saltwater crocodile rolled her eyes at me. 

‘Careful,’ I told it, ‘you don’t want to end up being someone’s handbag.’ It flicked its tail—a not-so-subtle warning for me to move on. 

‘You’re right, let’s continue to respect each other’s boundaries.’ 

I kept jogging past it, and other Salties disguised as rocky mounds. In hindsight, I should not have gotten so close to the creatures and should have kept a more cautious eye on them. For lumbering pieces of armour, they can move quickly.

Harsh static filled my eardrums. Goose pimples rose across my body. My head began to hurt, pounding as if an overenthusiastic drum circle was squatting inside my brain. 

My body was warning me that something unnatural was taking place. Something that shouldn’t be. 

The world around me now looked different—vivid, swirly, and abstract. Streams of light travelled through the air like radio waves. I honestly thought that I was seeing the world like Van Gogh. I did check to make sure that I had two ears.

The volume of the static intensified. My bones ached. About three hundred metres offshore, a green and white vortex drilled into our reality. It hovered above the water line, radiating power. 

A single piece of my fragmented memory puzzle slotted into place. I had experienced something like this before. Years ago, at the lake. It happened before everything went black. I woke up in hospital a week later to discover my sister had vanished. While my subconscious seemed to remember what happened—shown by constant night terrors—my consciousness remained clueless. I envy people who only have bad dreams; at least they can recall them.

I went to hit the side of my head, but stopped as the nauseating sensations cut out. My head and eyesight were back to their normal state of Wren Crazy. I looked about, only to find the saltwater crocodiles scrambling away on all fours. Tails dragging behind them, they climbed up onto the road running alongside the beach. No doubt heading for the safety of town. ‘Confirmation bias,’ I moaned. Behind me, more crocodiles ran out of the surf and onto the beach. ‘What could scare them?’ 

Dark blobs hovered beneath the water where I had seen the vortex. My stomach lurched as they started moving towards the shore. Whatever these somethings were, they were unwelcome news. 

WHOOSH! A comically large firework launched out of the ocean ahead of the blobs. Attached to the makeshift rocket was a purple object. It disconnected from its ride a moment before it exploded in a dinosaur-shaped light display. 

Plummeting towards the Earth, the purple object ejected a parachute. It jolted backwards and then floated towards the surf.

Keeping one eye on the descending object, I scanned the water for any trace of the dark blobs. I could now make out four distinct bulbous shapes. Each of them had to be about the size of a golf buggy. They were getting closer. 

To catch the purple object, I would have to move towards the oncoming danger. A part of my brain was urging me to run, but I couldn’t ignore my curiosity. I had to know what was going on, regardless of the risks involved. For me, uncertainty is worse than dying. 

Despite tendencies for the dramatic and my awareness that in a horror movie version of my life, people would undoubtedly question my smarts, I ventured into the shallows to catch the mysterious purple object. The parachute unclipped itself as it fell into my open hands.

The object appeared to be a cheap imitation of a Jurassic Park Velociraptor toy, donning a peculiar ensemble of a sweater and what resembled a lab coat. Strapped to its back was a rucksack. 

‘Believe it or not,’ said a strained voice from behind me. ‘The Fool looks less ridiculous in this form. At least we can’t hear his babbling.’ 

I spun around but couldn’t see anyone. The click of a revolver’s cylinder drew my gaze to the ground. 

Dressed in human-like military armour, a red chicken-sized theropod dinosaur casually loaded bullets into its modified .44 Magnum. 

I remembered the weapon from the eighties cop movies Dad loved to watch. It was too big for the creature. The eye-patch-adorned creature didn’t seem to be weighed down by it.

An awkward silence hung in the air. I was scrambling to think of a brilliant and witty remark. Simply saying hello wouldn’t do. Deciding on a joke to break the ice, I asked: ‘Chicken carry guns now?’ 

If flared nostrils and raised feathers were anything to go by, the chicken-sized dinosaur was not impressed. As per usual, my next question blurted itself out before common sense could interrogate its merit. ‘What happened to your legs?’

It looked even more unimpressed, hurt even. First contact with dinosaur life was going great. Spin. Spin. Spin. Shake. Shake. Shake. I needed to salvage the interaction. ‘Don’t worry, robot legs are all the rage these days.’

‘We don’t have time for this, Miss Findley.’

My mind figuratively exploded. ‘You know me?’

‘Unfortunately.’

‘No way!’

‘Yes… way.’ 

‘Nooo.’

‘Yes!’

I shook my head. ‘Look, I might not remember a week of my life—It is an ongoing frustration. You’ve got no idea. Unless you do.’ 

OCD fuelled internal voices screamed at me, reminding me of how awful and toxic I am. SLAM! SLAM! SLAM! I slammed the side of my head another three times. 

Satisfied, the voices retreated. The red eye-patch-wearing chicken-sized theropod scrutinised me with its single black eye. And yet, I was the weird one. 

‘My point is,’ I said, ‘I’m certain that I would remember meeting a talking dinosaur.’ 

‘So, you do know I’m not a chicken, then.’ 

‘Aren’t all birds dinosaurs?’ 

The eye-patch-wearing dinosaur snapped her revolver’s cylinder back into place. She pointed the barrel out towards the ocean. ‘You’ll find that Devil Frogs are not as patient as I am, Miss Findley.’ 

Mentally tucking away the intel that the whole ‘birds being dinosaurs’ thing is a sore point, I followed her instructions and stepped out of the surf. It was then that I realised that I had gotten my favourite trainers wet. ‘Damn it.’ 

‘I grieve for you.’ 

‘Is that sass? Are we bonding?’ 

Ignoring me, she spoke into a throat mic. ‘Move into position.’  

The desolate beach erupted into a hub of activity as twenty or so red and brown chicken-sized theropods leapt from hidden sand traps. Others, wearing grey camouflaged helmets, jumped out from rocks as if exploding from oversized birthday cakes. 

Covered in scars and tattoos, they were all heavily armed. Their combat uniforms were personalised with random objects and accessories. I squealed in delight at a rainbow flag pin, a rubber mallet, and a tiny Scottish bonnet. 

Some of them assumed defensive positions in the surf, rifles levelled at the approaching black blobs. Others planted explosives in the sand and stretched trip wires across the beach. They communicated through chirps and practised military signals. 

Their eye-patch-wearing leader motioned for me to follow her up the beach. ‘What’s a Devil Frog?’, I asked. 

‘Only one of the deadliest species in existence.’ 

‘T-Rexes’ being number one, right?’

The eye-patch-wearing dinosaur tilted its snout to the side and laughed. It felt off-kilter and experimental—like she had forgotten how to. A little disturbed by the dinosaur’s sadness, I decided to change track. ‘Who are you?’

‘We’re what’s left of the Compy Army.’ 

She was allergic to giving a straight answer. I searched my memory. 

Like most kids, I learned every single dinosaur by heart. Although pop culture, mental illness, and Skullduggery, had taken up much of that real estate, there were complicated scientific names ready to answer the call. Good luck getting me to say broccoli correctly, Compsognathus—no problem there. ‘You lot were—are scavengers. You have a venomous bite!’ 

‘What human scientists think is, and what is, are different things. Your species is good at naming things. I’ll give you that. Us Compies were once the mighty backbone of the Theropod Army.’  

‘The asteroid changed things?’ 

She shot me a single-eyed death stare. Spin. Spin. Spin. Shake. Shake. Shake. I filed talking about asteroids alongside comparing dinosaurs to birds on the list of topics to avoid bringing up.

‘I’m not here to become your friend, Miss Findley.’

‘Then why?’ 

Holstering her revolver on her back, the eye-patch-wearing Compy pulled out a triangular device. ‘To honour a debt.’ She pressed a button on its side, and a pool of orange light shot out from an orange crystal embedded in its centre. 

The light solidified into a lifelike hologram of a woman in her mid-twenties. Fit. Ginger. A rustic outfit suitable for adventure warriors. Except for a pair of haunted eyes, this was the hot future version of myself I used to dream of becoming.

‘It’s me...’

‘A possible you,’ the hologram said. ‘Trying to make sense of time travel gives you a headache. My advice, younger me, is to live in the moment.’ 

I scoffed and shook my head at the eye-patch-wearing Compy. ‘Now I know that it’s not me.’ 

‘You and Polly will learn to deal,’ interjected the hologram.

I stiffened and stared into the eyes of the hologram woman. She knew the code name for my OCD. My sister was the only other person who knew it, and she was de—No. She was missing. 

Spin. Spin. Spin. Shake. Shake. Shake. 

Possible Future Me, as if reading my mind, nodded. ‘Yes, Wren, I am you.’ 

‘Is this live? Like a Zoom thing?’

‘No! Hans would have to burn up a sun to pull that off. I remember being there when I’m here now.’ 

I groaned and felt my head. ‘I’m getting a headache.’

‘The weird hasn’t even started yet, Wren.’ 

I hold up the purple velociraptor toy. ‘I’m guessing that this thing injects a whole lot of crazy into my day.’

Possible Future Me smiled, life returning to her eyes. ‘Incalculably so. Get him to the Wi-Fi router in Dad’s shop and events will play out as they are meant to.’ 

Next to us, the eye-patch-wearing Compy growled. ‘That’s if she makes it off the beach.’ 

I looked back at the surf. Four monstrous shapes were breaking the surface. Smoke rose from their sizzling leathery hides. It made no sense. It was as if they had been swimming through acid instead of salt water. Compy soldiers opened fire on the newcomers, peppering them with laser fire. 

Possible Future Me shrunk down in size so that she was now at snout level with the eye-patch-wearing Compy. ‘Kriggs… I can’t even—’ 

It cut her off with a huff. ‘Deliver your message.’ 

Kriggs placed the triangle device on the ground and re-drew her beloved .44 Magnum. Her dark eye found mine. ‘My journey’s end is this path’s beginning. While I fight for you today, beware of the younger me you’ll next encounter. She is your enemy. I will be doing everything I can to kill you.’ With that joyous farewell, Kriggs ran down the beach. 

‘Pick me up,’ Possible Future Me said. ‘Run! Get back to town.’ She could have been supplying me with upcoming winning lottery ticket numbers, but it wouldn’t have mattered. I wasn’t listening. I was frozen on the spot, watching as Kriggs used her robotic feet to launch herself into the darkening cloud of sand near the surf. 

As a teenage activist, I had proudly reviled anyone who found a modicum of beauty in war. How can something so brutal, harmful, and evil be inspiring in any way? This sad creature and her people were fighting for me. It was noble. 

Behind me, Future Possible Me continued to scream at me, begging for me to run. My feet wouldn’t obey, and I couldn’t take my eyes off the violent storm. Laser beams shone like bolts of lightning, and the thundering eruptions of the Compy’s planted explosives vibrated the sand. I had to help. 

‘Don’t make me play the sister card,’ Possible Future Me pleaded. I snapped my gaze to the hologram. ‘You found her?!’

Her face was stern, devoid of all emotion. ‘You’ll never have the chance if you don’t pick me up and run as fast as you can back to town.’

‘I hate you.’ 

‘I know,’ Possible Future Me replied. Pocketing the purple velociraptor toy, I scooped up the triangular device and ran towards town. Behind me, more explosives went off. Compies screeched in pain. Amongst the uproar, I made out feral croaking. CRAWWWWK! CRAWK!! 

‘Wren, someone is messing with our Timeline. We need to stop them. I’ve got to be cryptic about how, sorry. Too much knowledge could influence your decisions and—trust me. You don’t want that.’

‘Aren’t you doing that now?’

Possible Future Me shook her head. ‘I got this same message from another version of us. And they got it from a different Wren. This is a fixed point. It is on us to save all of existence.’ 

‘No pressure,’ we both said at the same time. 

Petterton’s main street came into view. It was already in chaos thanks to the crocodiles stampeding through town. One brave woman stood guard at the foot of the World’s Biggest Beach Chair, brandishing her sandals. 

Tourists, taking shelter in their cars, filmed on their phones. They laughed at the woman, and I willed the saltwater crocs to wreak vengeance on them. 

Spin. Spin. Spin. Shake. Shake. Shake. 

‘Focus,’ Possible Future Me said. 

‘A lot is going on.’

‘Try. Listen. The Piper’s call sow’s despair. When the maestro’s scythe falls, only the broken will see true. To Chaos or Order, time shall fall. Hope lies at the end of the trickster’s labyrinth. Wounds can be cured, but beware the doctor’s claws. In the darkness before the dawn, only a true song can save us all. Triple crud! This bit hurts. DIVE!’

‘What!?’ 

‘Hit the deck!’ I dived, getting a painful introduction to the pavement. It had that fabulous mouldy sunscreen and trodden on by countless pairs of thongs taste. Bitumen is a fitting breakfast for the teenage girl on the run. 

At least it was a better alternative than the spiked amphibian tongue tasting the air above me. Wider than my waist, it was covered in Compy parts. They were in the process of being melted down and absorbed into the creature’s mass. 

As quick as a tape measure, the tongue reeled back into the jaws of the devil-horned prehistoric frog staring down at me. It was a lot bigger than a golf buggy now, and the acid-like scars I had spotted earlier were healing. CRAWWWKKKK! 

The tongue snapped out, veering towards me. BLAM! A huge chunk of it vanished in a spray of goo. Kriggs, limping on a broken robotic leg, fired her .44 Magnum again as the prehistoric frog bounded towards her. 

Kriggs shot me a savage grin. ‘I will try to kill you.’ 

GULP! The prehistoric frog devoured her. Using sass to tamp down grief, fear, and shock, I made a mental note to ensure that I got the Kriggs in my future to workshop her goodbyes.  

‘WREN!’ Future Possible Me shouted from the damaged triangular device lying on the ground next to me. Orange sparks spluttered from its cracked side, the holographic image flickering. ‘Show the devil your softball arm.’

Allowing instinct to take over, I pegged My Possible Future self at a monstrous frog. It landed in its gaping maw. 

BOOM! In an explosion of orange light, the prehistoric frog blew apart—literally, not figuratively. Goo and chunks of meat rained down on me and the street. 

CRAWWWKKK! CRAWK! CRAWK! I didn’t have time to be disgusted. The three other prehistoric frogs bounced into town, and they were hungry.