Jake and the Giant Hand by Philippa Dowding

Chapter 1
    Dis- GUS -ting

    J ake 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.
    â€œSorry, 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.
    â€œDid 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.
    â€œNo, 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.
    â€œMove 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.
    â€œSo, Grandpa, what are we going to do for the next two weeks?”
    â€œDigging. 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.
    â€œâ€¦ 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