AmeriChristmas

By Jon Jacks

We all know we should appreciate the magic of Christmas.
That we should enjoy it as a child enjoys it.
But Jake’s a child and he doesn’t enjoy it.
At least, not until he meets a thousand-year-old girl...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jon Jacks
• Release date: Nov 25, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370249473

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

AmeriChristmas

Jon Jacks

Other New Adult and Children’s books by Jon Jacks

The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly

The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale

A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things (Now includes The Last Train)

The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator

Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll’s Maid – The 500-Year Circus – The Desire: Class of 666

P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers – Gorgesque

Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)

Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg – The Last Angel – Eve of the Serpent

Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen – Porcelain Princess – Freaking Freak

Died Blondes – Queen of all the Knowing World – The Truth About Fairies – Lowlife

Elm of False Dreams – God of the 4th Sun – A Guide for Young Wytches – Lady of the Wasteland

The Wendygo House – Americarnie Trash – An Incomparable Pearl – We Three Queens – Cygnet Czarinas

Memesis – April Queen, May Fool – Sick Teen – Thrice Born – Self-Assembled Girl – Love Poison No. 13

Whatever happened to Cinderella’s Slipper?

Text copyright© 2017 Jon Jacks

All rights reserved

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. It remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

Thank you for your support.

Chapter 1

Jake lived so high up that he would know before anyone else when the snow had started falling across the city.

The vast apartment windows allowed him an enviable view of the brilliantly lit city spread out far below him.

The streams of cars were little more than twinkling streams of fairylights; the whites, the reds, the odd quickly blinking orange, the swirling blue of wildly careering emergency vehicles, the greens of ‘go’ lights.

Buildings at this time of night were dark, angular shapes against a slightly greyer sky, the blocks split into cubes of light appearing to hover in space. Similarly, the spectacularly illuminated tops of the older skyscrapers could be a city of the sky, divorced from everything else by the huge columns of darkness they sit upon; the architects reserving all their true passion for this unseen acropolis of dark hills, with its faithful recreation of Egyptian, Greek and gothic structures.

One such building rose even higher than all the rest, its top visible to Jake only through the trickery of perspective.

Tonight, however, he couldn't clearly see its glistening, gold painted ziggurat; because it was entirely suffused within a perfectly spherical swirl of snow, as if encased within a vast, sparkling snowglobe.

*

Chapter 2

Jake had never seen anything like the whirling ball of snow.

It could be a result of warm updrafts, coming up from the surrounding blocks, he told himself – thinking along the lines his father had taught him to use whenever he saw anything that seemed unusual (‘Trust me; there will always be a scientific explanation for it!’).

Even so…it looked spectacular – unbelievable.

‘Now…we won't be so long, darling,’ his mother reassured him as, with a hurried click-clack of high heels on the polished wooden flooring, she hurriedly strode across the room towards him.

Her dress sparkled like the swirling of snow. Her face was fashionably almost white, her lips a striking contrast, as red as a berry.

As she placed the glass she’d been drinking from on the table she passed, the gold specks in the champagne also swirled, also glittered magically.

Jake’s father hung impatiently by the door, checking his watch: his