Emily's child is growing far too rapidly in her uterus. Emily's best friend Jeremy Lodge has deep concerns as to whom or what might have fathered the child. Memories of the past are bought home to Deacon when a much beloved and cherished figure he believed dead, appears to him, in the company of wolves. Lost in the vast forest, hikers Larry Gaylord and Rick Morales are attacked by an unknown species. A woman is bought to Deacon with stories of his father Jonathan's ultimate betrayal. The forest is disordered. It's up to Deacon to find the cause of it and to explain if he can the sighting of a skeletal spectre, and the faceless shadows observed moving between the trees.