Unmarked spoilers below!
- Everything about Ursula Monkton, from her arrival as a worm buried in the narrator's foot, to her manipulations of the narrator's family to turn them against him.
- The narrator waking up in the night nearly choking on a coin.
- The suicide of the opal miner. In the family car.
- The hunger-birds inspire fear in Eldritch Abominations.
- The near-drowning of the narrator by his father, a scene that is all the more horrifying for the lack of any supernatural elements to it, and the all too possible way that something like that could happen in real life.
- Worse still, Ursula claims she didn't even make him do it. She states it while she's dying horribly, and would therefore have no incentive to lie (except as one last jab at the boy—she's definitely cruel enough to want to leave him with emotional wounds, no matter what).
- Your best and only friend being badly hurt to the point of death for something you did.
