Just lately the twenty-first-century Pranksters had been in Cawker City, paying homage to the World’s Largest Ball of Twine. Since leaving, they had busted mega-amounts of dope, and all of them were hungry. WHO SWALLOWED A BAG FULLA SEEDS!” the girl trilled, her voice vibrato with barely controlled laughter. We keep calling,” he said, moving toward where her voice had come from. “We keep calling until we’re together again.”

She dropped down the embankment in two long-legged steps. It was steeper than it looked, and when she reached the bottom, it was clear the grass was even higher than she thought, closer to seven feet than six. No,” Cal said. “I don’t think it is. I’d rather stay lost.” Maybe it was just his imagination, but the buzzing seemed to be getting louder. Ahora bien: tres cuartos del relato son atrapantes, con un gran poderío descriptivo, con situaciones y acontecimientos que te apabullan y mucha crudeza.

An unspecified amount of time later, an RV full of hippies pulls into the parking lot of an abandoned church across the road from the field to have a barbecue. They hear Tobin's calls for rescue, and the whole group walks into the tall grass to help. En la hierba alta, es una historia de horror (creí que era de terror, pero efectivamente es de horror), que produce desde angustia en el inicio, hasta una repulsión tremenda por el desenlace de la misma. Desde el inicio, como lector sabes que los personajes no tienen que meterse en la hierba porque pasará algo horrible, por lo que sentirás esa angustia por evitar descubrir la verdad. Sin embargo, a medida que avanzan las páginas y se va aclarando la situación, ese sentimiento será reemplazado por la intriga de conocer si se van a morir los personajes o si por el contrario saldrán vivos de su percance. Lo mejor sin ninguna duda es el final, del cual obviamente no diré nada al respecto; lo único que mencionaré es que es impactante debido a la crueldad presentada. Drops of dew burned in the grass, a hundred miniature magnifying glasses refracting and intensifying the light. She was about to descend the embankment, to the edge of the grass, when there came a second voice, a woman’s—hoarse and confused. She had the groggy rasp of someone who has just come awake and needs a drink of water. Badly.

He got to his knees. “Kid? Tobin? Sing—” He sneezed mud, wiped his face, and now smelled grass-goo when he inhaled. Better and better. A true sensory bouquet. “Sing out! You too, Mom!” He rose on sore legs, and yanked at the grass. It was tough old rope, tough and sharp, and it hurt his hands, but he wrenched some loose, and crushed it into a pile and knelt before it, a penitent at a private altar. He tore a match loose, put it against the strike strip, folded the cover against it to hold it in place, and yanked. Fire spurted. His face was close and he inhaled a burning whiff of sulfur. Don’t!” shouted the woman. “ Don’t! Please! Stay away! Tobin, stop calling! Stop calling, honey! He’ll hear you!” Cal, as always, spoke as if he had a direct line to her private thoughts. “Aren’t you the little Mother Mary? Wonder when the wise men will show up! Wonder what gifts they’ll have for us!” He got more water, this time forgetting to filter it and swallowing more grit. Also something that wriggled. A bug, or maybe a small worm. Well, so what? It was protein, right?Nothing for a long time—long enough for his heart to abandon his chest and rise into his throat. Then, incredibly distant: “Here! Cal, what should we do? We’re lost!” Now the kid was on Cal’s right, and he sounded quite a lot deeper in the grass than before. How could that be? He sounded close enough to grab. What caused him to rise at last was the faraway sound of a car alarm going off. But not just any car alarm, no. This one didn’t go wah-wah-wah, like most of them; this one went WHEEK-honk, WHEEK-honk, WHEEK-honk. So far as he knew, only old Mazdas wheek-honked like that when they were violated, flashing their headlights in time.

Cal’s head jerked around. A little boy in mud-spattered clothes was standing there. His face was pinched and filthy. In one hand he held a dead crow by one yellow leg.He left her on the margin of the highway and turned into the dirt lot of the Redeemer. A scattering of dust-filmed cars was parked here, windshields beetle bright in the glare of the sun. That all but one of these cars appeared to have been there for days—even weeks—was another anomaly that would not strike them until later.