Free Jake and the Giant Hand by Philippa Dowding Page B

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