The Wendygo House

By Jon Jacks

As wendy houses go, Sis’s isn’t anything special. But all her friends have vanished and, last time I saw them, they were all heading towards that weird little house. Now it’s full of dolls, dolls with her missing friends’ names. And I’m sure I still hear them singing that irritating skipping song! So how about I just take a peek in here and – oh oh, maybe that wasn’t such a great idea...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jon Jacks
• Release date: Sep 22, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310187513

Jon Jacks

While working in London as, first, an advertising Creative Director (the title in the U.S. is wildly different; the role involves both creating and overseeing all the creative work in an agency, meaning you’re second only to the Chairman/President) and then a screenwriter for Hollywood and TV, I moved out to an incredibly ancient house in the countryside.On the day we moved out, my then three-year-old daughter (my son was yet to be born) was entranced by the new house, but also upset that we had left behind all that was familiar to her.So, very quickly, my wife Julie and I laid out rugs and comfortable chairs around the huge fireplace so that it looked and felt more like our London home. We then left my daughter quietly reading a book while we went to the kitchen to prepare something to eat.Around fifteen minutes later, my daughter came into the kitchen, saying that she felt much better now ‘after talking to the boy’.‘Boy?’ we asked. ‘What boy?’‘The little boy; he’s been talking to me on the sofa while you were in here.’We rushed into the room, looking around.There wasn’t any boy there of course.‘There isn’t any little boy here,’ we said.‘Of course,’ my daughter replied. ‘He told me he wasn’t alive anymore. He lived here a long time ago.’A child’s wild imagination?Well, that’s what we thought at the time; but there were other strange things, other strange presences (but not really frightening ones) that happened over the years that made me think otherwise.And so I began to write the kind of stories that, well, are just a little unbelievable.

Book preview

Chapter 1

So how do you think Dad tried to make amends for bringing us to this crappy house in the back of nowhere?

By building a crappy wendy house in the back yard, that’s how.

Whoopidido!

Go figure, right?

Obviously, Dad hasn’t got around to noticing that I moved on long ago from second hand Little Ponies and charity-shop Disney Princesses.

You’d think the way I’m made-up, the way I dress – all that should be a bit of a clue, right?

The dyed purple hair.

The enlarged eyes, all down to carefully applied mascara and whitening.

The thigh-high heavy boots, with more laces and buckles than a dominatrix’s wardrobe.

The very nearest I can get, in short, to looking like a Manga character.

‘The wendy house is somewhere for you and Pearl to hang out together,’ Dad insists grumpily, a little hurt when I furiously point all this out to him.

Yeah, sure Dad. Like every day I’m just so endlessly harping on about how I want to spend more time with my pip-squeak, squeaky clean little sis!

Okay, I’ve got to admit Dad’s put a surprising amount of uncharacteristic effort into his little creation.

Saving money along the way too, naturally.

Taking all the wood he needs from the forest that backs onto our garden. (Some ‘forest’! As tightly packed as a used Christmas tree lot, you couldn’t take a hike in there even if you wanted to!)

Oh, and taking all the paint required from a road-work crew when they weren’t looking. Even watered down, it glows eerily in the dark, giving the house that oh-so in-vogue jaundiced-skin look.

‘Gorgeous,’ says Sis.

But then, she would, wouldn’t she?

‘Dad’s trying to make things better,’ she hisses at me, like I’m the one being childish.

And so all right, I’ll give her that: maybe I am being a bit mean to Dad, what with my permanently sour face.

Then again, what’s Manga if it isn’t a permanently disgruntled, at-odds-with-the-world face?

*

Sis, she ‘really loves’ the wendy house, naturally.

‘It’s the best!’ she says.

Yuuucckkk!

She would.

Off she trips, every morning, down the long, winding garden path. (Well, I say path: a trail of gravel Dad’s poured over earth already so tightly packed with tree roots it grows nothing more than stubbly grass.)

All Sis needs is the basket and the little red hood and she’d make the perfect meal for a hungry wolf.

When I come back from school, she’s still in there. Playing ‘houses’ I suppose. Or ‘happy families’.

But how would she know about them? Happy families, I mean?

How does her ‘play family’ pan out?

The mom who dies, way too young? Way before she had any right to leave us?

The dad who falls to pieces, who has to pack in work? Who can’t even cook a proper dinner without it all being burnt, or as healthy as deep-fried marshmallows?

What the heck’s Sis finding to do all this time in there?

*

‘Fetch Pearl in for dinner would you please, Dia?’ Dad asks me, ladling out yet another meal the homeless would tip straight in the bin.

I head off down the weaving garden path. It’s already dark: the sun sets early way up here, as bored with the place as I am. The forest blocks off most of its rays anyway, once the sun’s dropped below a certain level.

The wendy house glows, shining with an oil lantern’s dim yellow light against the black wall of tightly packed trees.

‘Pearl! Dinner!’ I yell, hoping she hears, shows her face, saves me the trip all way down there.

Not that a call to one of Dad’s dinners would get a response from even the most ravenous of dogs.

Sure enough, there’s no sign of Pearl.

The door remains closed.

Just how dark must it be in there? There’s no light at the windows, even though Dad’s fixed up a bared electric bulb in there.

I’ll give that to Dad: he’s a dab hand with his power tools. Enough drills and what have you to keep the US military running for the next ten years.

Not that they’re much use to him now his business has collapsed. He’s selling them off, one by one. The only way he can ensure money’s coming in these days.

I don’t bother knocking on the door.

I just angrily wrench open the upperpart of the stable door, irritated that Pearl’s making out she hasn’t heard me shouting.

‘Pearl! Didn’t you–’

It’s no good: I’m venting my anger on an empty room. Well, empty but for this stupid little doll wrapped up in a small bed.

But as for Pearl, she isn’t here.

*

Chapter 2

Surely she’s not in the woods!

When I exit the wendy house, I peer into the narrow, dark spaces between the densely packed trees anyway; just in case.

‘Pearl! Dinner’s getting cold!’

Not that Dad’s idea of a dinner is great whether it’s hot or cold. But I’ve got to show willing, haven’t I?

She can’t be in the woods!

All the kids around here, they have it constantly drummed into them: Don’t go anywhere near the woods!

No matter where you are in there, apparently, it all looks the same.

Anyone could get lost in there. Even if you’ve got the compass, the map, and all those other gizmos that are supposed to help lead you to safety.

So kids do get lost in there!

And then there’s no if little water. No berries, no anything like that, to survive on either.

Just a few weeks back, one of Pearl’s own friends wandered in there and hasn’t been seen since. Despite a massive police search.

Eventually, they had to give up the search. The police put out fresh warnings. Teachers reminded their pupils of the dangers of heading into the woods.

‘I can only hope Ellie’s disappearance serves some purpose in that she’s the very last child to vanish into these woods,’ the girl’s mom had sobbed on local TV.

Yeah, Ellie; that was her name.

She was cute too – long blonde hair, large blue eyes. Or at least, they looked large behind those thick spectacles she always wore.

Last time I’d seen her, she was heading down this path to this damned wendy house.

Thing is, come to think of it, that doll in there: that looked a lot like Ellie too. Blonde hair. Blue eyes.

Perhaps that’s what made me think of her just now.

Not that I want to think of her!

It’s horrible, the way the poor little mite just vanished into these awful woods just like that!

Behind me, there’s a pained squeak from the wendy house. Whirling around, I see the wendy house’s small door opening – and out steps a beaming Pearl.

‘No need to shout,’ she says light heartedly.

‘What? But I just looked in there!’

She chuckles.

‘Dia! You can’t have been looking too hard, can you?’

*

All through dinner, Sis smiles like it’s a private joke; the way she managed to hide from me when I went looking for her in her tiny wendy house.

Has Dad built a small door in the back she can sneak in and out of?

It’s the sort of thing he used to enjoy including in his work; clever, ingenious additions to the kitchens he built that would have his customers cooing in awe and admiration.

Not doors in the back, obviously.

But extra cupboards or drawers where you wouldn’t expect them to be. Or additional table-tops that pulled out from beneath the regular kitchen tops.

Letting the customers feel like they were some sort of magician, conjuring up more and more space from the most unexpected places.

They loved it.

Dad loved it.

But he’d loved Mom more. And when she went, out went that light in him too.

It didn’t help, of course, the way Mom ‘left us’.

Slowly wasting away. Her own body eating her up.

Cancer.

The most horrendous form of cannibalism there is, you ask me.

Reducing her to little more than a skeleton wrapped in overly-tight skin.

No one should see the person they love being brought so low.

We’d placed her bed by the front window of our old house. So she could look out on the street, watch people passing by. Unknowing people, people who weren’t aware that they were being observed by someone slowly dying.

Someone slowly being taken from us.

When she’d finally gone, when we removed the bed, it seemed to create a massive, empty space there.

‘It’s best for her that she’s finally gone,’ Dad had said, taking us in his arms.

We shouldn’t be selfish, he’d said.

She was suffering too much. She hated being a burden on us.

Hated who she’d been turned into; this person who no longer had any control over her body.

I know what Dad meant, what he was trying to say.

Still, I thought it was a dreadful thing to say.

Contrary little miss, aren’t I?

Confused, I think, would be a fairer description.

See, I also hated Dad when he told us we’d be leaving the house where Mom had brought us up.

Where too, of course, Mom had died.

It was a house full of great memories. And a constant reminder of how she’d died.

Depending on which mood I was in.

Not that Dad had much choice about us moving: business was suffering badly. No one wants a handcrafted kitchen put together by someone whose hands tremble, right? Who breaks down in tears at least twice a day?

But leaving the house was like leaving the rest of Mom behind. Like all those memories didn’t count. Best forgotten.

Like she’d never existed.

Does Sis think this way about Mom and the old house?

If she does, she never shows it.

More adaptable, aren’t