Desperation drives an impoverished man into a dark realm in this chilling homage to H. P. Lovecraft by the award-winning author of The Horseman's Grave.

In the cold spring of 1936, Arthor Crandle accepts a position in Providence, Rhode Island, working as a live-in secretary for an unnamed shut-in—an author of unsettlingly bizarre fiction whose severely poor health has confined him to his bedroom. This writer, who Crandle knows only as "Ech-Pi," refuses to meet him in person, communicating only by letters left outside his room.

Soon, the home reveals other unnerving peculiarities. Crandle feels an ominous presence on the main stairwell. Light that shines from underneath the door of his employer's room is invisible from the street. And then there are the haunting visions of a young girl in a white nightgown wandering the walled-in garden behind the house.

As Crandle investigates his employer's dark family history, he finds himself pulled into a world cut off from reality, into black depths, where an unspeakable secret lies waiting.