"I bought the house," Butch says over the phone. Art Deats does not have to ask which one. His brother has been fixated on their childhood home deep in the swamps of lower Alabama ever since they fled the place in terror forty years ago. Has Butch lost his mind? The house is haunted. Let it rot! And then the fatal request: "I want you to come down here and help me fix it up."

Butch, do not do this. Do not wake the dead.

Against his better judgment, Art leaves his safe and predictable New Jersey life to help his brother restore the place. While he struggles to make the house livable again, Art's long suppressed memories are triggered as he discovers terrible secrets about his family. And that something more than ghosts haunt the place.