Danny, Lenny and Me

By S.D. Gripton and Sally Dillon-Snape

Danny, Lenny and Me, are Private Investigators of the Exceptionally Weird, and not much comes more weird than a flesh-eating monster in an English river and Morgan la Fey, the psychopathic half-sister of King Arthur stepping out of a cave in North Wales with her white Dragon a thousand years out of her time, threatening to wipe out the Welsh nation. Perfect jobs for Danny, Lenny and Me because we will investigate them all. A North Wales horror fantasy for our time

• Language: English
• Publisher: S.D. Gripton
• Release date: Mar 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215812525

S.D. Gripton

S.D. Gripton novels and real crime books are written by Dennis Snape, who is married to Sally who originate from North Wales and Manchester respectively and who met 18 years ago. I work very hard to make a reading experience a good one, with good plots and earthy language. I enjoy writing and hope readers enjoy what I have written. I thank everyone who has ever looked at at one of my books.

Book preview

Danny, Lenny And Me

Investigate Extremely Weird Things

A North Wales

Fantasy Horror Novel

By

S.D. Gripton & Sally Dillon-Snape

Copyright © Sally Dillon-Snape & Dennis Snape (2024)

The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with

The Copyright Act 1988

All characters and events in this publication other than those of fact and historical significance available in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons living and dead is purely coincidental

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher

The writers apologise if their Welsh translations are not accurate – they tried their best

cover is by Snape

This novel is dedicated to

Sally’s mother and father

Who would have been so proud

**

Chapter 1

Alien in Wales

Sometimes, parents should listen to what their children say; sometimes, what they have to say is extremely important. If, for example, the parents of Eugen Shulze; an eight-year-old floridly-dressed German tourist in the Roman city, walking the streets and bored with his parents’ habit of window-shopping; had listened to their only son, they would have heard something that was absolutely amazing, and seen something somewhat horrifying. For Eugen had noticed something that no one else had ever seen before, something unique in the history of the world.

Papa, dass der Mensch kein Schatten, young Eugen said, as he pointed his outstretched finger.

Papa, that man has no shadow, was what Eugen said, as he pointed; but all he received for his brilliant and luminous observational skills was a rather vicious swipe across the back of his pointing hand from his mother.

Nicht zeige, Eugen, es ist sehr unhőflich.

A mother’s eternal admonishment.

Don’t point, Eugen; it’s rude; or thereabouts in translation.

Eugen cried out when the swipe arrived and withdrew his arm and finger immediately, though he was most confused; it was a sunny day in the Roman city, many tourists were around, the footpaths were crowded with people, and every single one of them, male, female child and other, tall and short, old and young, thin and not so thin, had a healthy dark shadow following them. Even Eugen had one, when he turned his head to gaze upon it. But the man definitely (definitely being a word he had only recently learned how to use) did not; not that Eugen would be mentioning it again.

But it was most weird.

The man in question, Allan Llewellyn Jones, from across the border in the Northern part of Wales, did not know that he did not have a shadow (who looks for their own shadow, we simply assume that they are there, hovering around us; other than Eugen Shulze who turned his head to confirm he had one?). Allan Llewellyn walked confidently through the Roman city with his wife, Gwyneth, not so much a tourist, but not a resident either; just a visitor from across the border, the Roman city being somewhere to visit on a Sunday when most of the northern part of Wales was closed for business (never argue with vicars and Chapels within the Principality, Sunday was a day of rest and that was that); though the pagans of England could shop and enjoy themselves almost anytime they wished. Allan Llewellyn had no idea what he was actually shopping for; the day out being his wife Gwyneth’s idea.

It’s such a lovely day, she’d said, upon rising from her cosy double-bed in her shared small home, in her tiny village, in the northern part of the country of Wales. We should go out, meaning we are going out, get used to it.

She spoke in the English tongue for she could not speak the Welsh; who in their right mind would want to, all that spitting and ch’s and ll’s and stuff? Neither she nor her husband with the Welsh name, Allan Llewellyn Jones, spoke the language, so it made things much easier when communicating with each other. Gwyneth, also of a classical Welsh name, knew of families, husbands and wives, who communicated only through their bilingual children; the Welsh being an odd lot in general.

And at the moment Allan Llewellyn was odder than almost any other Welshman; he was, in fact, unique. There was no other single Welshman who was inhabited by a demon from outer space; one that had fallen to earth during the night of Saturday, fallen with some providence through Allan Llewellyn Jones’ and Gwyneth Jones’ open bedroom window, and thence to a place of warmth inside Allan Llewellyn’s body, which it entered through his wide-open mouth. Gwyneth slept, needless to say, tight-lipped, as did most Welsh ladies of a certain age.

The demon alien, from a place so far away that it did not even have a name, had been rather ill-fated in its travels. On its home planet it had been regarded as a straight-up kind of entity; just like all the other non-breathing, eyeless, faceless entities that resided there; a thing that was neither male nor female, nor anything else come to that; it was just one of those things that could inhabit any other living entity, large or small, and it was not just for that reason that the residents of the unnamed world could not make up their minds about what they wanted to be, it was just the way of things, and the alien was just one of millions trying to get through its days.

Being a planet of no name was a problem though, because in unnamed dark places of the universe terrible things happened, demons; such as the non-shadow-casting demon slowly absorbing Allan Llewellyn Jones from the inside; were slaughtered in great numbers and reacted by slaughtering even more; they all lived on a war-fuelled world. And the weather was of such extremes that it was almost impossible to believe; but things like that happened all the time, and were most common, on planets that were unnamed. No one cared; the universe did not care for places without names, or for entities that could never make up their mind, if only they had one, about what they wanted to be, or inhabited each other at will, or who could be demons of legend. So, it was no surprise to the residents of the unnamed planet when, during a period of great winds; fantastic gales rarely seen on planets with names and identities; that several thousand of its residents were swept up into space by winds of such ferocity that one hundred times one hundred years of cultivation was swept away in one single night. Our demon, which was between identities at the time, and was simply wandering, was swept up from its place on the unnamed planet and blown off into the universe. It took the natural reaction when such disasters happened, it shrank itself into a miniscule, atomic size; all the better for survival out there in the nothingness of the Universe. It travelled on the back of swirling intergalactic interstellar gales, and was swept past thousands of planets upon which it wished to land but could not, eventually being blown towards the blue planet; the only one of such in the universe; thumping into the thick atmosphere much as a human of the planet would feel when walking into a stout wooden door. The alien’s speed reduced dramatically, it flared briefly and, completely accidently, was blown into the country of Wales, as the result of a very heavy blustery rainstorm raging there (Wales received a lot of very heavy blustery rainstorms; ask any English tourist); in a country where legends and myths were countless and endlessly relived; into the small village in which the Joneses lived, and into the bedroom of Allan Llewellyn and Gwyneth.

An open bedroom window was to blame, Gwyneth delighting in fresh Welsh air, even during the night hours; even during the winter; but this desire would be her husband’s undoing. From the expanse of the bedroom, the tiny alien demon floated down into Allan Llewellyn’s open mouth, causing him to cough gently but not to wake; and the alien, after travelling so far from his unnamed planet, finally discovered somewhere safe and warm to live; inside the body of Allan Llewellyn.

This act would have been of no consequence or importance, the alien could have lived within Allan Llewellyn for some years, if only it had not been so very hungry; and who wouldn’t be, after being blown across the universe on the fiercest winds imaginable, answer me that? As it was recovering from its flight, growing as it began to absorb Alan Llewellyn from the inside, then growing more as it attempted to make some sense of the place in which it had landed. It was a place, it discovered, where the female of the species was dominant and bullied the receptacle in which it found itself. Do this, the female shouted in a loud screeching voice; do that, get dressed, we’re going out.

These, of course, were all familiar words to Welsh men who had overbearing dedicated Methodist mothers and wives, they number in the many thousands in the lives of Welsh men; and the receptacle obeyed. The next thing the alien was aware of, was being marched along what could only be called walkways; he could think of no other description for them; there were similar things on its unnamed planet though they tended to be muddier and narrower and filled with danger, but they did aid the receptacle and the dominant female in getting around.

Although the dominant female was undoubtedly a bully, there was something rather delicious about her in the alien’s opinion. There was the hint of the aroma of the rare and delicious antyxx savoury jelly about her, or was it the glimmering taste of a flying ten-legged eel of great delicacy. The alien couldn’t quite put its finger on it; if it ever had any fingers; in fact, if it ever had anything that could be identified as slightly human.

And it was such delicious temptations felt by the alien that accounted for the screams emitting from the Roman city’s riverbank on that glorious summer’s day. It happened as Gwyneth reached out to Allan Llewellyn so that he could help her aboard a tourist boat about to depart for a short river cruise (all the river cruises on the Roman city’s river were short; they always had been; it was a great way of fleecing tourists and the city had been doing it since…since…well, since Roman times, probably). As Gwyneth reached out with her right hand, the alien within Allan Llewellyn smelled her and believed it was being offered a meal and, as such, took a hefty bite out of Gwyneth’s long-fingered hand.

Her ex-long-fingered hand.

Because the alien was using the biting tools of the receptacle, which were none too sharp, the bite, by definition, becoming a tearing type, much as a shark rips apart the carcass of a dead whale. The problem being that Gwyneth was neither dead, nor was she a whale, no matter what female neighbours said about her.

All the other tourists on the boat noticed was a balding middle-aged male, who would later be identified as Allan Llewellyn Jones, gripping Gwyneth Joneses hand with his teeth, shaking his head vigorously and tearing flesh away, including one or two fingers. Tourists on the boat, some from very far away, screamed along with Gwyneth.

The alien, using Alan Llewellyn’s teeth, made it all the way up to Gwyneth’s elbow before the ship’s captain, a hefty male by the name Mackie McDonald; not an original resident of the English Roman City; knocked Allan Llewellyn Jones unconscious with a huge blow with the flat side of a heavy metal shovel. Allan Llewellyn slumped forward unconsciously but his teeth kept biting. Another hefty thump with the shovel prompted a heart attack in the human form of Allan Llewellyn Jones, and he shuddered and convulsed and, eventually, without medical attention, died.

But his teeth keep feeding on Gwyneth.

The captain leaned forward and down and looked into Allan Llewellyn’s mouth, reeling back when he realised that something was in there; something terrible, something horrible, something awful, something demonic, and it was working those teeth; the teeth of the dead Allan Llewellyn. It was too awful to describe to his horrified passengers, who all stood around wondering if the cruise would ever get under way, even as they screamed in horror at Allan Llewellyn’s teeth continuing to carve up Gwyneth’s right arm. Eventually, to spare her any further pain, the captain silenced Gwyneth by killing her with his multipurpose assassin’s shovel.

Dead Allan roared nastily at her unconsciousness and death; the taste of her had altered for the demon; the food had changed; the great aroma of her had ended. It was time to leave and discover more delights in this warm and blue land, the demon believed, and it slid slowly from Allan Llewellyn’s mouth.

Several human females and males fainted at the sight of the long ugly faceless grey reptilian form that seemed to be twice the length of Allan Llewellyn Jones, as it slid out of him, and the remaining humans aboard the boat simply backed further away and screamed loudly. As it slithered over the deck, the captain, a well-built individual in his fiftieth year, hit the demon with the shovel. With a loud hissing and shrieking sound, the Monster slithered off the boat into the river; the once mighty river that had in times past been busy with trade and was not just used as a tourist rip-off spot, with its bank lined with ice-cream parlours and bars and restaurants and cafes and a footbridge that could be crossed but which led to nowhere of any great significance; which was now home to an alien monster from an unnamed planet in outer space, which was filmed on the camera phones of those brave humans who managed to remain conscious throughout the whole of Gwyneth Joneses ordeal.

Over the many years since its founding, the Roman city had experienced many awful and terrible experiences; the loss of Roman soldiers to the barbaric Celts; deaths by disease and war and fire over the decades until the final home-going, away from the wet and dreary military town they had founded. Many had died in the town over the years and, later, millions of tourists would tramp along their renovated wall and dig up what was left of them; they would take selfies with ordinary citizens dressed as Roman legionnaires, and measure their time by the clock high above their heads. The Roman city, complete now with its cathedral, revelled in the delights of its history; it would overcharge and rip-off humans from all points on earth; no nation was more deserving than any other; all could be taken for their very last coin.

The city had almost always been wealthy and continued along this road for decade after decade; the Romans of biblical times would have been mightily proud of the residents; they would have admired the castle; the proud shops, the number of inns and public houses (almost one for every day of the year); yes indeed, the Roman city loved its tourists.

It did not wish to love them to death however, and the thought of a human-hungry alien reptile living in its river was most discombobulating to the authorities. The monster destroyed the tourist boat trade almost immediately, as the story and images were uploaded and circulated. In fact, all trade along the riverbank died a proverbial death, especially after the demon attacked and attempted to feed itself upon two further females (quite a difficult thing to achieve when someone else’s teeth were required to fulfil the dream) over the following weeks, always slipping back, unfed, into the river. Tourism in the Roman city began to expire and the Council; those individuals with the desire to make as much money as possible from serving the public; realised something needed to be done.

Something serious.

A senior official who-knew-how-to-get-things-done (there was almost always one on every Council) was ordered to make a call.

And that call was made to Danny.

Of Danny, Lenny and Me fame.

And that was us.

***

Chapter Two

Alien in England

Of course, when I say fame, we weren’t really famous; only inside my own heads, or around our dining table; by the way, I’m the Me of the partnership; pleased to meet you; and we never set out to investigate weird things, it just kind of turned out that way.

We began as quite ordinary Investigators.

Nothing more and nothing less.

That’s what it says on the white plaque on the wall, next to the door to our office, which stands between shaded windows and across the road from the old fire station and the closed Council Offices, and the really famous swimming baths; Danny, Lenny and Me; Investigators; Nothing More; Nothing Less. That’s what it states; it doesn’t say a thing about investigating weird things.

The plaque also notes the opening hours of the office, and a single out of hours mobile number for emergency purposes only, and you’d be surprised by the things people thought were an emergency; the dog just got out and it’s dark; I’ve just burnt my husband’s dinner, what can I do; I’ve smashed my bottle of wine trying to open it where can I buy another; my baby has woken up his sister and she’s crying; shit like that. We get that kind of stuff all the time, but when the man who-could-get-things-done called from the Roman city, Danny knew it was for real.

So, who are we, where have we come from? We have, after all, just arrived like ghosts through a wall, one minute we weren’t here, next you were reading about us, and I was saying that we were famous?

When we weren’t.

Well, not that famous anyway.

A great start, huh; me a liar, and admitting it right from the off, and we’ve only just met.

There were much more famous trios than us of course; The Bee Gees (though there were four of them, originally, if you counted the drummer; and he was an actor who played The Scamp in a British movie); the Three Stooges (who only earned a fraction of the money Hollywood owed them); the Three Musketeers (plus D’Artagnan without whom the story would have been shit); The Three Amigos (don’t know anything about them); The Three Tenors (old guys who sang at football matches); but that’s enough examples, I won’t gone on; The Jimmy Hendrix Experience (the greatest rock band the world has ever known); no; stop, I must stop; and there, right at the bottom of the list is Danny, Lenny and Me.

We were a little bit famous in the small grey, hilltop town in which we lived, which would never have existed had it not been for coal and clay, and that might not have been a bad thing. Danny, Lenny and me were famous for a few things, not least for the fact that we all lived together, and almost always had.

Since we were seventeen anyway.

And that was fifteen years ago.

But we hadn’t really been apart since the day we were born, and we were not triplets, or even related. We were just three babies who were born within six minutes of each other, our mothers all labouring together at the same time in what must have been the last remaining Cottage Maternity Hospital in Wales, all the mothers screaming in unison in adjacent beds, me being born first in the middle bed to the oldest mother at twenty-eight; Danny following two minutes later to a mother who was younger at twenty-five; and Lenny arriving last, two minutes later, to nineteen-year old Andrea,