Teeth

"Nothing grows on Dansbury Plot-almost everybody simply calls it The Plot-where it sits on the very edge of the Township of Bridge Crossing, across a really wide street from the Little League fields. It's a square of land about the size of two town blocks and it is barren and dry and dead-looking. Everything for miles around our town is green and flowery pretty much all year long, even during the kinda mild winters we have here in Bridge Crossing, Delaware, but not Dansbury Plot. I mean even with the little bit of snow we get, there'll be winter flowers poking up all over. And talking about the snow-there's never been any snow on The Plot. Not ever. Snow on everywhere else but not there. It just looks dead and brown when everywhere else has a nice little cover of snow. What does that tell you about Dansbury Plot, huh?

"A lot of scary stories have been told about The Plot and stuff that's happened. Little kids call it 'Bury-the-Dead-Dan's Plot' but won't go anywhere near it, not ever. Even animals keep clear of it. Hell, if a mouse was being chased by a cat, it would go clean out of its way and take a chance on getting caught rather than run across Dansbury Plot.

"And speaking of cats, dogs too, they don't go anywhere near that place. If dogs are outside their house they'll stand a good distance away from The Plot, just shivering and sometimes they'll raise their heads and howl a kind of unearthly howl at nothing anyone can see. Cats, jeez, well, cats get their backs up and hiss if they're even facing in that direction. And you never ever see birds flying around there neither. Me, I hate the fact that that my bedroom window faces towards Bury-the-Dead-Dan's Plot almost as much as I hate Billy Sarlewski. Billy almost got me to step foot on that cursed plot of land. No fooling, he really almost did."

--Twelve-year-old Christopher Hopper