Houston, 1943

A voice disturbs Roddie’s sleep.  Spotting a pale boy in his backyard, Roddie climbs outside from his back window.  The stranger introduces himself as Jim and points to the crawlspace beneath Roddie’s house.  From the shadows emerges a disembodied hand that Roddie mistakes for a tarantula.  The crawling creature climbs Roddie’s body before being thrown aside. 

Unnerved, Roddie returns inside to find another boy in his bed.  He recognizes himself in the sleeper and shakes his doppelganger awake.  The sleeper screams, and Roddie’s mother rushes to comfort him.  

Jim invites Roddie to an old man’s house. Roddie overhears his mother answer the phone and learn of an intruder in her backyard.  Befuddled and afraid, Roddie follows Jim into the night.

Jim instructs Roddie to enter a tumbledown house before disappearing into the darkness.  Roddie knocks at the door and hears laughter, moans, and chimes. He pushes inside, finding a pool of blood beneath a chicken hung from the ceiling of the single-room house.  Beside the puddle of gore sits a naked black woman and an old man wearing only a necklace made of bones.

A hand drops onto Roddie’s shoulder and seizes his neck.  Roddie screams, and the room is pitched into darkness.  A man materializes behind Roddie and the woman, Sheba, entreats his aid.  

Trying to flee, Roddie careens into a wall and falls to the floor.  Jim pulls Roddie to his feet. Sheba places a series of candles on the outstretched fingers of a severed hand. An unseen man pushes Roddie forward, his voice commanding Sheba to gaze into the blood.  Time spirals as Roddie catches his and Sheba’s reflection.

Roddie finds himself alone with Sheba and the old man, Doc.  Sheba explains that she saw a white boy in the blood, and Doc insists that they find him.  Roddie backs out of the shack and into the twilight.  He waves to a classmate delivering newspapers but is ignored.