CHK-shhhk. Another spadeful of dirt on the pile. Anabel brushed her sweat-damp hair out of her eyes and looked at the line of nursery-potted saplings she had yet to plant, fully half of her twenty acquisitions. She looked around her rural dream home: a worn house only half repaired sitting on forty acres of untamed brush. With a deep breath, she thrust the shovel again.

CHK-thhhhhh. She almost fell on her face as the dirt slid off her spade and disappeared into the dark hole she'd just unearthed. At first she only stared in puzzlement. She usually thought of the earth as a uniform mass of dirt salted with rocks. A simple void wasn't something that made sense.

Anabel got on her knees and looked closer. It wasn't just dark. It was black as the Devil's colon and projected a sense of depth and echoing empty space. Fishing a coin from her pocket, she tossed it into the hole and turned her ear toward it. Nothing.

Much later, once she'd acclimated to the morals of it, Anabel would get rich disposing of bodies and other problems for the ethically challenged. Much, much later, she would learn where the hole went.