Charlie Bretall comes to believe the malevolent spirit of a dead man possesses his daughter. He risks his sanity and his life to save her, only to encounter evidence that he is being manipulated by invisible forces he never suspected.
It is a race he is bound to lose without help. This first comes in the form of Detective Rosen, who deduces the truth from a simple limp.
But no one—Rosen, Charlie's daughter, the narrator, or Charlie himself—are who they seem to be, nor are their motives clear as murders accumulate. The story culminates in an abandoned garage, where Charlie is put on 'trial' by skeptics and believers...and by the dead.