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never grew back. Couple years later, Doggett’s wife died and he buried her out in the pit. No one knows why he did it and I guess it’s not important. The point is, two days later she came back. She wasn’t exactly the same but she was good enough for old Doggett. She cooked his meals and cleaned his house. So before Doggett died he left instructions to be buried in the pit.” Waylon paused, looking in his son’s eyes. “That was more than a hundred years ago and . . . well . . . you know . . .”
    “ Yeah,” Christian said, “The Doggett’s are still around.” Christian knew them from church; they both had puss-yellow skin, dull eyes, frozen smiles and blackened teeth. Just like half the people in Somerville. And at school more and more kids were going away and coming back changed. Some ate rotten apples for lunch. Still others dined on insects and dead frogs. Some wore their clothes horribly soiled, inside out; few handed in homework and the teachers seemed not to care.
    I like peanut butter and maggot sandwiches.
    Waylon hung his head.
    “ Well why hasn’t anybody come here from away, see why it’s happening?” Christian asked.
    “ Oh they have,” Waylon said. “You bet they have.”
    “ Well?”
    “ They go away and never come back.”
    “ But what about Stevie?” Christian insisted. “Stevie didn’t just die, did he?”
    “ No, son, he didn’t. But he’s gone and there are rules.”
    “ What rules?”
    “ We’re living longer these days,” Waylon explained. “There’s better medicine, safer cars. If natural attrition doesn’t accomplish the goal then we have to be . . . creative.”
    “ I hate you,” Christian said. He got up and left the room, knowing what his father had done.
    Six days and nights passed and Stevie still hadn’t returned. And Christian began having dreams; Stevie sidling up to his bed, whispering in his ear, his breath dank, like grave dirt. “I need you, Christian,” his brother implored. “I can’t come home without your help.” But Christian knew that wasn’t the way it worked. Something was wrong.
    The dreams continued for nearly a month and when Christian mentioned them to his father, Waylon would just stare blankly at him. When he tried to stay awake, Stevie’s voice went silent.  It was only on those nights where, bested by exhaustion, he would fall into bed only to awaken at the sound of creaking floorboards as something crawled toward his room.  A shape would slither past the doorway and the smell of grave dirt would assault his senses.
    “ Please, Christian.”
    I don’t know what to do, Stevie.
    “ Yes you do.”
    Dad should do it.
    “ Dad can’t”
    Why not?
    “ Because Mama says you have to.”
    Mama? Christian thought.
    In a near-trance state, Christian climbed out of bed and, barefoot, followed the dark shape through the fields of autumn-dry corn stalks to the woods behind Doggett’s farm. It wasn’t until Christian reached the crater did he realize his brother had disappeared.
    The pit was just as his father had described, a deep bowl-shaped indentation in the earth where vegetation refused to grow. Christian stood on the rim looking down into it. With the harvest moon clear and bright he had no trouble seeing the hundreds of holes where citizens had been buried and resurrected. But why had Stevie been denied? And what did Mama have to do with it?
    Christian moved down into the pit until he came to an untouched mound. Something about the look of it troubled him.
    He went to his knees and started to dig, thinking of his brother and Waylon’s blank stare, thinking of the kids at school.
    I like peanut butter and maggot sandwiches
.
    He dug in the ground until his fingers bled.
In the end, he found only an empty hole in the earth. And in the morning, despite the filth on his feet and the blood on his hands, he wondered if it had all been a dream.
    That night the dark shape was back, slithering across the floorboards, beckoning,