Jake and the Giant Hand (9 page)

Proof in Hand

J
ake
watched his grandpa shuffle away. He hesitated, but just for a second.

What's down there? Do I want to know? … YES!

He snatched the key from the table then ran down the farmhouse stairs two at a time. He snapped on the light at the bottom of the stairs and the bulb slowly buzzed to life. He breathed in the musty, cobwebby smell of the place.

One, two, three, four doors.

Jake stood in front of the fourth cold room on the left.

It was locked. He fit the old key into the padlock and the door swung open with a huge
creak
.

It even sounds spooky!

The cold room was … cold. And dark. And it smelled like decay and leaves and dirt. And something else. Time maybe. Or something forgotten. He flicked the light switch and the bulb slowly flickered to life.

The shelves were empty. The dirt floor was cold and damp. It took a moment for Jake's eyes to adjust to the dim light …

… something gleamed out of the dark. Something dull and
yellow
. Jake gasped.

A golden circle was leaning up against the wall of the cold room. It filled the room from floor to ceiling. The circle was taller than Jake's head and wider than his arms spread out.

It was a huge, heavy golden circle. It practically took up the entire room.

Jake ran his hand over the cool, gleaming metal. It was perfectly smooth and made a circle that reached the dark ends of the cold room. His hand caught at something rough on the inside of the circle. He pushed his face closer to the metal and saw a letter stamped on the inside. It was a giant “T.” Jake looked closer; it was hard to see in the gloom. There was another letter beside it: “O.”

There were more letters, all around the inside of the circle. Jake ran his hands over the circle and whispered the letters to himself as he read them: “T-O-M-L-O-V-E-L-O-N-O-U-R-W-E-D-D-I-N-G-D-A-Y.”

Jake froze. He realized it was a sentence: “
To M Love L on Our Wedding Day
.”

A chill started in Jake's feet and rose over his whole body, right to the top of his head. He didn't want to say the words on his lips, but he couldn't stop them:

“It's not a gold
CIRCLE!
It's a gold
RING!
It's a golden wedding ring big enough for a …
GIANT
.”

And it came from a giant's rotting hand!

A scream started in Jake's throat. He tore back up the stairs and out the kitchen door. He ran down the lane, screaming, waving his arms wildly, and he never looked back.

He couldn't. A swarm of giant flies chased him, buzzing like chainsaws all the way.

This Part Is Also (MOSTLY) True …

W
elcome
to the end of the story, and if you've made it this far, congratulations. I told you at the beginning that it was scary and more than a little sad, and yet here you are. I'm sure you'll never look at a farmer's field again without wondering what secrets, and possibly what horrors, lie beneath it.

You've no doubt got many questions at this point. You're probably wondering what happened next, what happened to Jake, and you might be thinking … is this story
true
?

It certainly seems true, doesn't it? But if you remember on the very first pages of this story you read these words:
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.

I could leave the story right there, and you'd just have to accept it, wouldn't you?

But that would be unfair of me and I pride myself on being fair. So, without further ado, here are the answers you seek….

It was a
long
time before Jake went back to his grandpa's farm (he skipped a few summers), although he did eventually visit again. Once he did go back, he and his grandpa never discussed the giant hand, not ever. He loved his grandpa too much not to visit, and they managed to enjoy each other's company once again. There were just some things they didn't talk about. They never did build a shed, either.

On the plus side, Grandpa stopped telling crazy stories, lies, exaggerations, or whatever else you want to call them, which was a good thing as far as Jake was concerned.

He visited Kate and Chris Cuthbert again, since they were great friends. But
no one
was allowed to tell ghost stories. Ever. Chris was fine with that, and more surprisingly, so was Kate. They spent lots of time in the gingerbread cabin in the woods, playing cards and making s'mores and
not
telling stories. At Jake's request, they kept a can of extra-strength bug spray under the cabin sink.

Jake also stayed away from the library for a while, although he was always polite to Mrs. Cody whenever he saw her on the street. She was polite too, but Jake knew better than to ask her about the giant hand. Or about anything else, for that matter.

See, Jake
had
figured out the truth about the giant hand. He wished with all his heart that he hadn't, that he'd left well enough alone and not pushed his grandpa to tell him what was down there, under the secret soil of the green field. He wished he could un-know the truth about the fourth cold room on the left, too.

But truth is a funny thing. Once learned, there is no way to unlearn it, short of amnesia.

So for Jake, there was no going back, no way to forget the truth about the hideous, dismembered, unmentionable THING buried deep in his grandpa's field. The giant white hand that really was somehow lying there beneath the field, a horrible truth hidden in the dark.

You're probably wondering, what happened to the bizarre giant gold wedding ring hidden in the farmhouse basement? That I can't answer, not for sure (see how unreliable I am!). Although I can tell you that Jake eventually had all the cold rooms removed and the damp old basement renovated and updated to be brightly lit, clean, and pleasant.

Jake inherited the farm, you see, and times being hard and jobs not easy to come by, he moved in when his grandfather died many years later. It was a beautiful farm, after all, and Jake McGregor became a successful farmer. He married a lovely girl (no one you know) and had a big family with six children. Jake was a great farmer and a wonderful father and husband.

There was a strange story circulating for a while about him digging madly in the back field one night. Someone said they saw him and his eldest son rolling a giant golden circle into the field by moonlight. Then they buried it. These are the same people who will tell you that they saw him from time to time, digging back there, particularly when times were tough and money was scarce. They'd see him in the moonlight, raising a shovel or turning an auger after a poor harvest, for instance.

But no one had any proof, so I can't tell you if that part of the story is true or not. It
is
true that Jake McGregor was always a wealthy man. When other farmers struggled, he always seemed to have gold in abundance, which he took to the bank in exchange for cash. His family was always well fed and well dressed, and once a year he made a modest donation to local shelters, children's groups, and the library always got a little something, too.

Make of that what you will. There are some secrets that even I can't answer. I can't tell you absolutely everything, now can I? What would be the fun in that?

So now you know the story of Jake McGregor and the giant hand. Despite the horrible truth, he grew up wealthy, happy, and wise.

There were only two things that were a little odd about Jake.

One: He always carried a golden fly swatter with him, everywhere he went (even though the giant flies that plagued the farm for years when he was younger were long gone).

Two: He would sometimes stop you in the middle of a conversation and ask with a crazy look on his face, “Do you hear a BUZZZZZ?”

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