Dirt.
A plot of ground in Prescott Park is messing with Cal Hart's head. Ever since hearing the rumor of what happened on the land now covered by a toolshed, he's become obsessed with the urban legend. Children don't just disappear after being pushed into barren soil, not even when that soil is nicknamed 'the place where nothing grows'. But one did, and so he turns to the local sheriff's office for assistance. The authorities are adamant that nothing supernatural was at work, and that it was a transient with a long record of arrests that got hold of the diminutive second-grader and lured her away from home. But a town historian disputes the sanitized version of the incident and hints that more sinister forces are to blame—sinister forces that are yet to be named. Because of the confusion and his own need to know, Cal launches his own investigation.
The appearance of a raincoated man complicates everything. He's been watching the children in the park play—as well as burying toys around the area where the missing child fell. Cal digs up the items in an attempt to understand, but is threatened instead. The man deemed crazy orders Cal to leave the offerings alone, and that if he doesn't, it's Cal's children that could be next. With the cryptic warning ringing in his ears, Cal steps up the quest for answers as if his life depends on it, and the problem is—it does.
Venture into the world of classic horror. Written with nightmares in mind, if the suspense doesn't get you, the ending will.