Childhood memories are sometimes covered and obscured beneath the things that come later... but they are never lost for good and the most grim of those memories, no matter how faint, can haunt one forever, as they do the anonymous narrator of Gaiman's subtle and splendid modern myth. The protagonist, an artist, returns to his childhood home in the English countryside to recover his memory of events that nearly destroyed him and his family when he was seven. The suicide of a stranger opened the way for a deadly spirit who disguised herself as a housekeeper, won over the boy's sister and mother, seduced his father, and threatened the boy if he told anyone the truth. He had allies - a warm and welcoming family of witches at the old farm up the road - but defeating this evil demanded a sacrifice he was not prepared for.