Once there was a sister and brother who liked to play in the sandbox in their backyard. Their father had built the sandbox, and it was much better than digging in the dirt. They used their scoops, shovels, and pails to build castles and sculptures galore.
Until one dark night, a thunderstorm came that was unlike other thunderstorms. It shook the house, and the lights went out; there was no electricity for hours, only candles. The mother told the children: “We should go to sleep early tonight. The sun will come out tomorrow.”
“I’ll try to sleep,” the sister said, crawling into bed, counting backwards from one hundred. Her brother was already fast asleep on the couch, as if he had never even heard the storm.
Even though the sister tried to sleep, the storm raged outside the sister’s bedroom window. She was so scared that she ran down the hall to sleep next to her brother on the couch.
“Something’s not right! What are we going to do?” she said, waking her brother.
“What? It’s only a storm. Go to back to your room,” he said, squashing her with a pillow.
As lightning struck, he rolled over on the couch and pulled his blanket over his head. The girl climbed back into her bed, hoping the storm would end and the sun would rise. Sure enough, the next morning, the sun was shining strong and bright, not a cloud in the sky. The two children headed to the sandbox with their shovels and pails.
“Where did these come from?” the girl asked, looking at sandy footprints in the grass.
“Oh, it was just the storm last night,” the boy said, filling up his pail with moist sand.
As the girl put her feet in the sand, a fierce wind blew through the tree behind her. The sky became black, and a loud clap of thunder filled the heavens. Then the sandbox began to swirl and whirl, pulling the boy into its grip until he disappeared.
Out of the sandbox came a very large monster made of sand that roared and growled. His face looked just like her brother, but it wasn’t him at all. The creature loomed high above the sandbox, almost as strong as brick-and-mortar.
“What happened to my baby brother? I want him back!” the girl yelled. The Sandbox Giant reached for the girl, but she escaped his grasp.
“Momma, come quick!” she yelled, but her mother was inside cleaning the house.
“What do you want with my brother?” the girl cried, throwing her shovel at the monster.
“I want him to stop playing in the sandbox where I live!” the monster growled.
“You don’t live here! My father built this sandbox. Go back where you came from!” the girl yelled.
From the corner of her eye, the girl noticed the garden hose in the bushes. She dove to grab the hose, hoping she could melt the Sandbox Giant with water. As she grasped the hose, the monster lunged for her and almost caught her waist. Before he could strangle her, she sprayed the water in his face. The Sandbox Giant tried to cover himself from the stream of water.
“No!” the monster screamed, as it slowly shrank in size.
“Take that! Go back into the sandbox! I want my brother back!” the girl yelled.
“Honey, why are you yelling?” the mother called from the kitchen window.
“My brother is missing,” the daughter yelled to her mother, still spraying the monster with water.
“Oh, he’s just hiding,” the mother said. “Come out, come out wherever you are . . .”
When the girl turned back around, her brother was sitting in the sandbox building a castle. “What happened to you?” she said. He looked just like himself, and the awful monster was gone.
“Nothing. What are you talking about?” he said as the girl curled the garden hose into a pile. The girl shook her head, knowing that she could never explain to anyone what she saw.
She was so glad to have her brother back and hoped to never see the Sandbox Giant again. Every stormy night until the end of time, she worried something might be wrong, and only she would know it. At least she knew how to get rid of the Sandbox Giant; he might’ve been big, but he wasn’t that strong.
Copyright 2015 Jennifer Waters
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