The Wendygo House
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
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 – Americarnie Trash
Text copyright© 2015 Jon Jacks
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Three-six-nine, the goose drank wine, the monkey chewed tobacco on the streetcar line,
The line broke, the monkey got choked, and they all went to heaven in a little row boat…
Anglo-American Skipping Song, 1800s
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 they, younger kids? Isn’t that what they say?
Perhaps that’s because she hadn’t known Mom as long as I had. Or maybe she hadn’t gotten so used to the old house as I had.
She’s already got lots of new friends here. Round every afternoon after school, every weekend.
All eager to play in her cute, little wendy house.
How do they all fit in such a tiny space? It must be more crammed than the Black Hole of Calcutta in there.
(I learned about that from Mom; she was from England. Maybe it’s because I’m only half Canadian that I really, really don’t like the woods.)
Then again, yeah: without any lights in that tiny house, it can be pretty dark.
Is that all Sis was doing when I couldn’t find her in there?
Hiding in a dark corner?
I glance up from my plate of burnt fish fingers and beans, glowering suspiciously at her.
She shrugs, smiles: like it’s all one huge joke to her.
*
Chapter 3
At school, Sis is little Miss Popular.
All her new friends flocking about her. All hoping for another invite round to our house. All getting overly excited, all tittering about their next big adventure down in our jaundiced looking little wendy house.
Like it’s all a gay trip to some amazing holiday destination. Rather than the first thing in ages Dad’s put together that doesn’t fall apart.
The moms dropping off their kids, they’re all so enthralled too, amazed by the tales their kids tell about the little house. Dad could set up a whole new business making these little homes.
He could make some of the moms too, you ask me.
Not that he seems to notice.
Not that he’s interested.
Mom’s the big hole in his heart. In his mind.
The kids gathering about Sis in the playground, they all sing that damn song they always sing when they call round. Sing it while gaily skipping over ropes, deftly changing places and positions. Precision and timing that would put the Marine Corps to shame.
‘My mama told me, if I was goody, that she would buy me, a rubber dolly.’
Their class walls are suddenly full of drawings and paintings of monkeys and geese. All going to heaven in a little row boat.
Weirder things too. The rabbit from Alice in Wonderland: the one with the waistcoat and watch.
I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date.
Then there’s old, canvas topped cars, but with wings. Flying about these crayon-blue skies like countless Chitty Chitty Bang Bangs. Dragons, too, but with kids riding on their backs. Ditto large swans, coasting down weaving rivers, with all these girls nestled between their wings.
Like someone’s been spiking the secondary grade’s fizzy pop with even more sugar than they could possibly handle in one hit.
‘My sister told her, I kissed a soldier…now she won't buy me, a rubber dolly.’
Yeah, thankfully, there aren’t any pics of any nine-year-olds kissing soldiers.
Now me, I’m a whole way older than nine. And yet kissing’s just as much a foreign world to me as it is to them, at present.
The boys I knew, who I’d got a nice thing going with, we’ve left them all back near the lakeside, along with the old house and memories of Mom. The boys here, out in the back of beyond, they obviously think I’m a little too weird for their tastes.
The only people out here with even a streak of bright colour in their hair are the dear old gals whose pink rinse has been left in too long. Buckles are for belts only, studs for boot soles.
Not that my name helps me kinda blend in. Not when the kids find out Dia’s not short for Diana, but for ‘Diamond’.
Mom and Dad, they thought I was their little diamond when I was born, see?
Thanks Mom. Thanks Dad.
Parents just don’t think these things through, do the
y?
‘Diamonds aren’t a girl’s best friend.’
That’s popular amongst the most popular girls at school. Amongst whom, of course, I can’t count myself as a member.
‘Hard as diamond.’
That’s what the boys sneer when I tell them to beat it. To leave me alone.
‘A diamond is forever miserable.’
That’s another one. And so okay, they’re right: I am miserable.
I have a right to be, don’t I?
I mean, just look at this dump.
The way the forest curls around the town’s edge, like it’s thick, dark prison fencing. Like it’s the forest itself that’s said ‘Thus far and no farther’, affronted that any settler had chosen to land on this side of the lake in the first place.
According to our history classes, it didn’t give up even this relatively small plot of land until the mid-twentieth century. When they’d at last developed the sort of equipment that could clear this type of thick wood, make the land habitable.
Until then, the forest had stretched right down to the coast, beating back even a large group sailing out here in the late nineteenth century. The trees had broken and blunted saws, forcing the settlers to cannibalise their own boats to provide shelter. They were too densely packed, too, to provide the would-be farmers with game, such that all livestock and seeds had soon been devoured.
After school, I hang around a little while, just in case anyone does want to talk to me.
They don’t.
They never do.
I walk home, taking it easy, unrushed, dawdling.
I take a detour. Walk past where I’ve heard Bradley Janes hangs out with his friends, his girls.
He’s not here.
Not that I desperately wanted him to be, see?
But he’s fun. Even smiles my way sometimes.
He might be laughing at me, course. Making fun of me behind my back soon as I’m out of sight.
‘Here’s my stalker!’
That kinda thing.
Thing is, I don’t intend to follow him around aimlessly like this.
I’m just trying to…trying to get up the courage to talk to him. Maybe even just smile back at him.
Even that, see, I regard as a risk: opening myself up to even more ridicule if his smile’s a false come-on.
Leading me into a trap.
I wander past his house.
I’m in no hurry for the plate of tinned spaghetti that usually greets us after a day at school.