Susan and her sons Dane and Lucas Thompson move from Brooklyn to Bensonville, in the countryside. Dane is upset with the constant changes of address and the family has lived in many cities. Lucas and Dane befriend their next door neighbor, the gorgeous Julie and the brothers find a bottomless hole in the basement of their house locked with several padlocks. They take the locks off and sooner they are haunted by their darkest fears. Further, they believe that the hole might be a gateway to hell.

A lonely and friendless boy finds and untangles a hurt dolphin that is caught in a crab trap. He becomes very attached to the dolphin when the tail must be taken off to save the dolphin's life. The boy believes the dolphin would be able to swim normally if it was given a prosthetic tail.

After their wedding, newspaper writers John and Jennifer Grogan move to Florida. In an attempt to stall Jennifer's "biological clock", John gives her a puppy. While the puppy Marley grows into a 100 pound dog, he loses none of his puppy energy or rambunctiousness. Meanwhile, Marley gains no self-discipline. Marley's antics give John rich material for his newspaper column. As the Grogans mature and have children of their own, Marley continues to test everyone's patience by acting like the world's most impulsive dog.

Everyone thinks of it as a harmless lightning storm. When Dave Drayton notices a strange mist on the lake, he thinks nothing of it. When he, his son, Billy Drayton, and his neighbor Brent Norton travel to the supermarket, the unthinkable happens. On their way to the market, they see the army, firefighters, and the police heading toward the mist. When he sees this Brent mentions something about "Project Arrowhead", a secret military project that no one knows about. As they are shopping, they see three soldiers walk in, pick up a few things, then head toward the mist. All eighty of the store's shoppers have no clue what is going on until an old man runs in the market with a bloody nose and declares "Something in the mist!" He tells them to close the door. About five seconds after they close the door, the entire store shakes, as though it has been lifted several feet above the ground...