The boy, ten years old, is sent out of his mother’s house to disappear, as she has guests and doesn’t want him around. Even though it’s a hot day, she sends him out, with a magical bug, to find the garden keys he misplaced. The boy recites a spell and starts after the bug, which leads him to the kudzu patch. Quickly, he tries to keep up with it, in the blistering heat, and makes it through marshes, grasses, trees, though he still can’t find his garden keys, even with the spell’s power. For miles, the kudzu stretches, and the boy comes to a stop to pick a flower. He thinks about how his mother hates the kudzu, as it destroys everything it comes across, like all the buildings that used to be here. Frequently, the boy comes here with his mother, who casts a spell to light the kudzu on fire to clear it. She always says that the kudzu must never touch their house and that they must keep fighting it.

Now, the bug is gone, and the boy is in the kudzu patch. He looks out and sees a silo that used to be unencumbered and functioning, but even it’s covered. Heading down a hill of kudzu, he spots a body stuck inside of it. He pokes at it even though he knows his mother would disapprove. He keeps looking at it, how it’s almost overwhelmed by kudzu but still exposed enough to make out. The boy takes out a vine around the body’s arm. Suddenly, a bird comes and tells him, through his mother’s voice, that he has to go home. The sun sets.

The next day, the boy attends to all his chores early. His mother asks him what’s wrong, whether he really lost the garden keys. He says he’s going back out to look for it. She settles down and says it’s not a big deal that he’s lost them, but he insists anyway, not telling her about the body. On his way, he thinks about how he’s lonely, without any friends and hardly any family save for his mother. He thinks about the boy’s body in the kudzu patch and how he has him all to himself. There, at the kudzu patch, he asks him what he’s dreaming about. Later, at night, when he comes home, the boy is asked by his mother what he’s been up to and whether he’s hiding something from her. He says that the kudzu is growing from the silo. His mother then says she’ll go tomorrow.

At night, the boy dreams about going out to the kudzu patch to greet the boy. However, here, the dead boy is awake, with a crown of kudzu. They talk and introduce themselves to each other, and the dead boy thanks the boy for visiting him. The dead boy asks the boy to take him to his favorite place, and the boy proposes his mother’s garden, though he says he needs his garden keys. Suddenly, the dead boy brings up the garden keys. As they go to his mother’s garden, the boy notices that kudzu is growing behind them. He stops and says they can no longer go. Quickly, the kudzu overwhelms the boy, and he wakes up screaming from his nightmare.

In his bed, his mother is beside him, already with fire in her grasp. She asks her son what’s going on. All around, he sees kudzu covering his room. He confesses that there’s a dead boy in the kudzu and how he’s going to take them over, but she says he already has. His mother sets their house on fire, burning all of the kudzu and the dead boy, and the boy begs her to stop, but her fire burns all. Weakened from the fire and the smoke, the boy’s mother tells him to go bury the dead boy before it’s too late. He runs into town, tells everyone what’s happened, and tends to his mother’s beside. Weeks later, he finally buries the dead boy, in a secret place.