Wicker Valley, episode 30: Jack in the box

A few weeks passed peacefully in Wicker Valley. I was kept busy at the Wicker Stop, while fully expecting some kind of Christmas fairy to show up and make December very complicated, but no. We actually got through Christmas quite peacefully. No, it was January, just as I was getting to the last of the cranberry scones I'd been keeping frozen for the Whisper Sisters, when things started happening again.

Two people taken out of their house in comas, leaving a young child to be cared for by his aunt, not long after the kid's grandmother had died. Not much to go on, but it was Eddie's neighbours. He thought it was worth a look, and his instincts for this kind of thing seem pretty solid. Also Michael was acting a bit weird, which usually means something's up.

Anyway, we had two lines of inquiry - the house, and the child. It was a while since I'd done any breaking and entering, but we decided on visiting the child first. Eddie had an in with the aunt and uncle based on being neighbours, so I packed up a nice cake from the café and off we went.

It was soon apparent that while not technically demon spawn, the kid would have been right at home in my family. To be fair, his love of pranks were a little less insect themed than Rusty's, but I could see why his aunt was so stressed. Then the kid started dropping bombshells. An invisible hand buzzer, or possibly just an imaginary one that still worked. Something that came out of a jack in the box. A big spider. And something about a yolk eye, which I didn't understand but hoped Adam would.

We got around the breaking and entering by offering to pick up the kid's Nintendo Switch, which was still at his house, since Eddie would be going that way anyway, and borrowed the keys. We found the Switch easily enough, but looking for the jack in the box was trickier. Notably, the kid's room absolutely did not look like the room of the hellspawn in all but name we'd just encountered. He had to have a separate play area.

Then Adam found a demonic lantern face thing in the under stairs cupboard, and that's where things got complicated. There was a snake, and something about Michael drawing a picture of a spider with human eyes, and naturally there was the usual coin toss between attic and basement, this time settling on attic as there was no basement.

Anyway, we found the jack in the box, and apparently it's spelled 'Yokai'.