** spoiler alert ** 
 This story was about a family of witches a young boy meets who live at the end of the lane. The boy befriends a young Lettie Hempstock, a girl who offers to take him on a trip to a magical land where she is planning on eliminating a pesky spirit that brought about the death of an ex con. Lettie doesn't realize that the creature manages to hitch a ride back to the real world on the young boy's foot. 
 What follows is one of the most cringe-worthy scenes I have read in a while. The young boy wakes one night because he feels something stuck on his foot. That something is a worm that the boy proceeds to pull out in just the most disturbing way. The worm turns out to be the creature that takes on the shape of a woman named Ursula. 
 Ursula comes to his house as a new nanny and proceeds to torture the boy psychologically. The woman bewitches his father and causes him in one scene to want to drown his son. The boy eventually manages to escape and let Lettie know what has happened. Combined with her mother and grandmother, Lettie manages to ensnare the vile Ursula, but the creatures she must summon to do so ends up killing Ursula then turns on the boy too. Without a second thought Lettie sacrifices her life to spare his and she is returned to her ocean (the lake behind her farmhouse) by her mother. Her mother promises the boy that someday Lettie will return. 
 The boy grows up to forget the whole incident and lives on believing that Lettie has moved away. Every few years and well into his midlife he returns to the farmhouse and if only for a few moments remembers what actually happened that day. Perhaps the whole story was about how we perceive our memories when they do not fit into the narrative we have designed for ourselves. Whatever the deeper meaning of the story, it was a great read. I will definitely be reading more Gaiman in the future.