WHEN WALLY BENNETT was a kid, his parents taught him to say this prayer: Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. He had stopped saying the prayer at nine or ten, and he had always found it disturbing, for two reasons. One: Dying in his sleep was not a pleasant thought, not something Wally wished to entertain; the idea that the Lord was poised above his sleeping form like some immense holy vulture waiting to grab his soul--and do exactly what with it?--was unsettling, to say the least. And two: There was always the implicit suggestion that, should he forget to say this prayer, something awful would occur. One of Satan's minions might drag him into the abyss.