Jake and the Giant Hand Read online

  For Ben, the king of weird stories

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  This Part Is Also (MOSTLY) True …

  Also by award-winning author Philippa Dowding

  Copyright

  Introduction

  This Part Is (Mostly) True

  You should know, before you even start this book, that it’s a little scary. And parts of it are even a bit sad. I wish I could make the story less scary and sad, but this is the way I heard it, so I really have no choice.

  It starts like this:

  A long time ago, a little old lady disappeared.

  She lived on a farm around here, then her husband died and her children moved away, and she took to wandering. One moonlit summer night, she just vanished. Some say she wandered into the fields and no one ever found her. (This is definitely the sad part). Others say she went to live at her brother’s farm in another county, and still others say she joined the circus and lived out her days in warmth and comfort.

  People had lots of ideas about what happened to her. Whatever the case, one day her son came to visit and found the house empty and dark. The back door was banging in the wind. People looked for months and years, but they never found her.

  Do you want to know what I think? I think she wandered into the swamp. Once you go in … you sometimes never come out.

  Here’s the scary part. A little while after she vanished, people started to hear … noises coming from the swamp. Howls, cries, weird shrieking. Right around then, some say a face began to appear in windows at night and scared perfectly nice people half to death.

  Some say it was her face. The little old lady who disappeared.

  You don’t have to believe this story. But just because things are odd or a little strange or unbelievable doesn’t always make them untrue. Truth is an odd thing; one person’s truth can be another person’s lie. That’s the most important thing to remember about this story: sometimes things that seem like lies are actually true. And sometimes you never can tell.

  That’s the spookiest thing of all.

  Chapter 1

  Dis-GUS-ting

  Jake hung on. It wasn’t easy.

  The old pickup truck almost veered off the winding gravel road, and Jake bumped up and down on the front seat. His teeth chattered.

  “Sorry, Jake,” his grandpa grunted. “That fly was BIG!”

  His grandpa got the truck back on the road, and Jake settled down in the front seat again. He’d be at his grandpa’s farm soon.

  “Did I ever tell you about the time I hunted the biggest spider in the world, Jake?” his grandpa said after a minute.

  Oh, no. Jake could feel a grandpa story coming. An exaggeration. Or more often, a huge, impossible lie. The thing you have to know about Jake’s grandpa is he told stories. Too many stories.

  “No, Grandpa. You haven’t told me that one. Maybe some other time? I’m kind of tired right now.” Jake leaned against the door of the pickup and tried to look like he was going to sleep.

  Which was fine. Until Gus tried to lick Jake’s face.

  What you have to know about Gus is that he smelled. Awful. Not only was he a giant, slobbering hound dog, he also wanted to lick everything.

  Gus looked sad all the time, with big floppy ears and droopy eyes and a huge, panting tongue. Jake had seen that tongue-of-death lick a dead, smelly rabbit plus lots of other gross things that a tongue has no business being near. Like garbage and horse poo.

  Jake wasn’t too interested in having it touch his face.

  “Move over, you smelly dog!” Jake gave the old hound a shove down the seat. The dog wasn’t used to two people in the front seat of the truck. Whenever he went anywhere with Jake’s grandpa, he pretty much had it to himself.

  Except when Jake came to visit for two weeks every summer.

  Jake looked out the window. It was dark out there in the fields and trees. Every once in a while, he could see a kitchen far back in a field, with a light on. Someone was having dinner in a farmhouse. But everything else was black, much darker than in the city, where Jake lived with his mom.

  It was a little spooky, all those dark trees, all the empty black fields.

  Jake fiddled with the old radio, but he couldn’t find a station. Gus breathed in his face, so he squirmed away and looked out the window again. His grandpa was silent, staring straight ahead. Jake couldn’t stand the darkness and the silence any longer.

  “So, Grandpa, what are we going to do for the next two weeks?”

  “Digging. This year we’re building a shed,” his grandpa answered with a grunt. He leaned over the steering wheel.

  Shed. That was a new one. Jake was going to have to swing a hammer. Last year it was painting the barn red.

  Maybe it won’t be so bad. I’ll build some muscles at least.

  Then Jake recognized a turn in the dirt road. They were getting closer to his grandpa’s farm. He looked through the darkness and could make out the trees in the distance that stood near the … swamp.

  Don’t think about the swamp! Don’t think about Kate Cuthbert’s creepy ghost stories either.…

  Too late. Kate’s voice from last summer popped into Jake’s head.

  “… a long time ago, a little old lady disappeared. She lived on a farm around here, then her husband died and her children moved away and she took to wandering….”

  Jake gulped.

  Think about something else!

  They pulled into the driveway of Grandpa’s old farmhouse. Gus bounded over Jake and out the truck door, then the smelly old dog ran to the back of the house.

  It was a small farmhouse with a white front door and apple trees all around. Jake could smell the late-summer apples, even if he couldn’t see them very well in the dark. The farm had been in the McGregor family for three generations, over a hundred years. His grandpa, his great-grandpa, and his great-great-grandpa had all lived there. It was a family homestead.

  Jake grabbed his bag from the pickup and followed his grandpa around to the kitchen door at the back. As long as he had been coming to visit his grandpa, they had never used the front door. No one ever did.

  Beside the back door was a water pump with a horse head carved out of the top. Jake ran his hand over the smooth old wood of the horse’s head. It was hand-made by a soldier who was going off to the First World War. It was an interesting water pump, definitely one of a kind.

  Jake walked past the horse-head pump, then past the barn that held Maggie, the real horse. She wasn’t for riding anymore, but you could hook her up to a little cart, and she’d pull you to town to get ice cream.

  Behind the house was a giant field with nothing growing in it except grass for the neighbour’s cows. It smelled sweet, though.

  Jake clomped upstairs to his room at the top of the house and dropped his backpack on the lumpy old bed. His grandpa had opened the window to air out the room. A night-time breeze that smelled like grass and sunshine blew the curtains a little. He walked over to shut the window. The swamp was back there, way back in the woods. Jake suddenly felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

  No. Don’t think about the swamp!

  He forced himself to look down at Gus digging in the dirt instead. The kitchen light
shone on him, and Jake could see the hound sniffing at something. Then the dog threw back his head and howled.

  Crazy dog. What could be so interesting in the dirt?

  Jake looked closer. Gus was eating something. It looked like a … fly? But no fly could be that big. It was the size of a bat. And it was buzzing.

  Gus chomped whatever it was in half then ate it in two gulps. Gone. Then he looked up at Jake in the window and wagged his tail. He licked his paws with the tongue-of-death.

  Jake yelled out the window at the old dog. “That’s disgusting! Your name is in the word disgusting, did you know that? Dis-GUS-ting. That’s what you are!”

  A huge fly buzzed in through the window and right into Jake’s face. Its enormous wings brushed his mouth.

  “EW! Gross!” Jake swatted the big fly away. It smashed into the window then buzzed lazily back outside. It was the biggest fly he had ever seen.

  Weirdly big.

  Jake said goodnight to his grandpa, brushed his teeth, and got into his pyjamas. But not before he made sure the window was closed and latched. He took a quick look out at the darkness … swamp! … and drew the curtains, too.

  Chapter 2

  Cold Rooms

  The next morning Jake unpacked, then took the curving wooden stairs down to the kitchen two at a time.

  His grandpa was staring at the window. A big fly buzzed against the glass. Sure were a lot more flies around here than Jake remembered. Big, gross flies.

  “Can I go see my friends now, Grandpa?”

  “Sure,” his grandpa said. “But we’re having spaghetti for lunch. Please go down to the basement and grab me a can of sauce before you go. First cold room on the left. Tomorrow it’s your turn to cook.”

  “Yeah, sure, hot dogs tomorrow!” Jake said. Whenever he came to visit, they took turns cooking. One day it was Grandpa’s turn to cook, the next day it was Jake’s turn. Luckily his grandpa wasn’t a fussy eater, because they ate a lot of hot dogs when Jake was around. It was basically the only thing he knew how to cook.

  That and toast.

  Jake started down the steep wooden stairs in the dark, gripping the handrail. The light switch was at the bottom of the stairs. Electricity was added long after the farmhouse was built, and that’s where the switch ended up. His grandpa never changed it, even though he probably should have. It wasn’t exactly safe going down those steep, slippery old stairs in the dark.

  Once upon a time, you would have had to go into the farmhouse basement by candlelight.

  The thought made Jake’s neck prickle. The basement was pitch black and smelled like musty, spidery corners and rotting leaves. Plus it was cold and damp. When he was little he had refused to go down there at all without his grandpa or grandma.

  Jake snapped on the light. The couch and TV were down there, and the weird little “cold rooms.” They were small rooms all around the outside of the farmhouse basement wall. They were cold and damp, because they were basically outside the house, underground.

  In the days before refrigerators, people kept food like cheese and eggs in the cold rooms, but now most of the rooms were empty. A few held Grandpa’s extra farm tools, and a few were locked. The first one on the left was the only one that was used all the time, and it had shelves and shelves of sauces and beans and soup and food in cans.

  All those tiny, dark, locked rooms would be a great place to hide someone …

  … or something. Jake shivered a little.

  But he was twelve now. He wasn’t going to let a dark, creepy, musty basement filled with locked little rooms bother him.

  Jake walked into the first cold room on the left and scanned the shelves for spaghetti sauce. He grabbed a can and ran back up the old stairs into the kitchen.

  “Bye, Grandpa, see you for lunch!” he called. He ran out the front door and into the barn. His old green bicycle was leaning against the wall. He’d been riding it since he was eight. Every year his grandpa raised the seat and the handlebars a little more and oiled it up for his visit.

  Jake took a few moments to say hello to Maggie and to stroke the horse’s soft nose. The old horse nodded like she remembered him from all the summers before. Then he swung his leg over the bike. It was almost too small.

  “Bye, Maggie! See you soon!”

  He rode off down the lane with his knees almost touching his chin, whistling as loud as he could, weaving across the gravel. It was late morning and soft sunshine filtered through the leaves. The lane was lined by big oak trees, and there were meadows on both sides with wandering cows. It smelled great, like mown grass and sweet clover and fresh air forever. It couldn’t be more different from the apartment block in the city where Jake lived. That didn’t smell like anything except car exhaust, garbage, and gum.

  Jake rode to the Cuthberts’ house, the next farmhouse down the lane. Chris and Kate Cuthbert were twins, and Jake had been friends with them since he was little. They were two years older than Jake, and they got a little bigger each year, but nothing much else ever changed about them.

  The twins were out front helping their dad load a cow into a trailer. They saw Jake and ran over. Chris smiled and shook Jake’s hand. Kate grabbed Jake’s handlebars and slapped him on the shoulder.

  Kate grinned. “Hey, Jake! Wow, that bike is way too small for you this year.”

  Kate had long, dark hair and freckles. Chris was blond and tall. For twins, they couldn’t look more different. They didn’t act much alike, either.

  “Hey, come see this, Jake!” Kate led the way to the back of the barn. “Dad got it for us for our birthday last month.”

  The twins took Jake around the barn and showed him their gift: a bright blue mini-bike with silver wings painted on it. It reminded Jake of a giant fly.

  Two cool skull helmets were on the seat.

  “Wanna ride?” Kate grinned.

  Jake grabbed a helmet and strapped it on. Kate climbed onto the seat ahead of him, strapped on her own helmet, then shouted, “Hold on!” over her shoulder. She revved the whiny engine, and they tore out of the yard and into the open field.

  Jake did hold on. For dear life. They flew over rocks and through the creek bed as mud and sticks and pebbles went spinning off behind them. Then Kate veered into the woods and along a special path their dad had made for them. Jake was dizzy as trees sped past them, too fast to see. They roared back onto the field and Jake couldn’t believe how small the twins’ house suddenly was from the edge of the forest.

  Kate idled the engine and pointed into the woods. “We built a cabin back there,” she yelled. “Do you want to sleep over in it tonight? We can tell ghost stories like last year.” Her voice got a little quiet and creepy.

  … a long time ago, a little old lady disappeared….

  Jake looked into the deep green woods and gulped. “Yeah, I guess,” he shouted back.

  A huge fly buzzed right into his face. He brushed it away.

  Don’t think about the swamp.… And where are all these disGUSting flies coming from?

  Chapter 3

  This Town Is WEIRD

  Kate kicked the little motorcycle into gear. They were back at the twins’ house in a couple of minutes.

  “Wow, that was fast,” breathed Jake, taking off his helmet and spitting out grass. Chris was waiting for them. He looked worried.

  “Kate drives like a maniac. Next time, let me take you for a ride.”

  Kate laughed. “Don’t let Chris take you for a ride, you’d fall asleep. He drives like a little old lady!”

  Chris ignored her. “Do you want to sleep over in the cabin tonight, Jake?”

  Jake nodded very slowly, but looked away. “Yeah. Kate already asked.”

  “Okay, see you back here at eight o’clock. Oh, bring a sleeping bag and a flashlight,” Chris said, always the sensible one.

  Jake didn’t whistle as he rode home. Instead, he kept looking over his shoulder into the woods. For the first time ever, he wasn’t sure he wanted to sleep over at the Cuth
berts’. Or in a cabin in the woods. Kate Cuthbert’s ghost stories had a nasty habit of staying in your head and keeping you up at night, for years.

  … a long time ago, a little old lady disappeared….

  Jake shuddered and dropped his bike in the barn. He stopped to say hello to Maggie, then went into the farmhouse kitchen. The house smelled like spaghetti sauce.

  “I’m starving, Grandpa! Let’s eat!” Jake yelled too cheerfully. He set the table, and he and his grandpa ate their lunch.

  His grandpa pushed his plate away and sighed. He picked at his teeth with a toothpick and looked out the kitchen window at the afternoon sun on the fields. Jake pushed his spaghetti around on his plate. He really wasn’t very hungry.

  “Grandpa?” he finally said.

  “Uh-huh?”

  Jake was silent. A cabin in the woods. Kate’s creepy stories. Swamp!

  “Cat got your tongue there, Jake?” his grandpa teased. Jake squirmed a little. He hated when his grandpa teased him.

  “No. I just wanted to know if I can sleep over … at the Cuthberts’ tonight? They have a new cabin. In the woods.” Jake spoke fast, all the words jumbled together. His grandpa heard him, though, and nodded.

  “Did I ever tell you about the time I slept in a cabin at the edge of the world?” His grandpa grinned and winked at him.

  Jake felt a story coming on, a crazy grandpa story. Jake’s grandpa told stories A LOT. Which is another way of saying he told lies.

  They were interesting lies, though. And sometimes he’d surprise you by actually telling you the truth. Like the time he told Jake he once worked as a lion-tamer. Jake refused to believe it until he asked his mom.

  She said, “Actually, Jake, it’s true. Your grandpa did work one summer as a lion-tamer in a travelling circus when he was a teenager. Although I’m not sure how much taming was involved. Grandma always said the lion was really old and had arthritis and no teeth or claws.”

  So you never really knew for sure what was true and what wasn’t when it came to Jake’s grandpa.