<P> The main narrative starts as he recalls a time when an opal miner, who was living at the boy's home, steals the narrator's father's car and commits suicide in the back seat, having gambled away his friends' money; this death allows a supernatural being to gain access to our world, leaving money for people in unpleasant ways . </P> <P> After a coin becomes lodged in the narrator's throat overnight, choking him, he seeks his neighbour Lettie's help . She agrees to help, insisting that he accompany her on the travel necessary to find the spirit and bind it . Having been instructed never to let go of her hand, in a moment of surprise he does, and in that instant something lodges in his foot . Once home, he pulls what appears to be a worm out of his foot, but a piece is left inside him . </P> <P> The next day, his mother tells him she is starting a new job and a woman named Ursula Monkton is to look after him and his sister . The narrator takes an instant dislike to her and soon realises that she is actually the worm he had pulled out of his foot . She had used him as a way to travel out of the place he and Lettie had visited and is now inhabiting his house . Ursula quickly ingratiates herself with his family, winning over his sister and seducing his father, while the narrator is alienated from his family and is almost drowned in the bath by his father as Ursula watches . </P> <P> Most of the narrator's time is then spent locked up in his bedroom, avoiding Ursula . Frightened, he manages to escape one night . He barely makes it to the Hempstock farm, where the Hempstocks take care of him and remove the wormhole from his foot, which had been left behind by Ursula as an escape path . Lettie and the narrator confront Ursula, who refuses offers from the Hempstocks to leave peacefully for a world that is less dangerous for her . Unwilling to believe that there could be anything in the world that could harm her, Ursula is attacked and eliminated by "hunger birds," entities that serve a purpose similar to scavengers . These insist on eating the narrator's heart, as a piece of Ursula's wormhole still remains there . The Hempstocks bring him back to the safety of their property through the ocean by their house, which Lettie carries to him in a bucket . While in the ocean, the narrator understands the nature of all things, but the memory fades once he gets out . </P>

The ocean at the end of the lane movie trailer