Stories 1 - 10 Summary

In "The Night" the protagonist, a child nicknamed Shorts, spends an evening with his mother. His father is at a social function, and his older brother Skipper fails to return home. Shorts' mother takes him outside through a dark area of town to search for Skipper. Shorts develops a sense of foreboding that intensifies when his mother approaches an overgrown gully. Shorts fears Skipper is dead, fears the dark, and becomes certain that if his mother enters the gully she too will die. Shorts' mother calls out, Skipper replies, and comes running through the gully.

Stories 2-4 are tangentially related and feature recurring characters. In "Homecoming" the protagonist, Timothy Elliot, is a fourteen-year-old child who is deemed sick by his family. The Elliot family, living in Mellin Town, Illinois, has members who are an oddball collection of humanoid monsters and appear...