Edgar Cushing is a young man who has lost much until a kind and grieving widower adopts him and raises him in a loving and happy home. A fire destroys lives and hopes for the future while Edgar is in school, however, forcing him to abandon his education and seek employment to help his badly injured father. A surprisingly generous job opening draws him to an isolated house and its strange and mercurial mistress, her fiercely devoted housekeeper, and an enigmatic young artist whose connection to Bridewater House goes back two generations. For all its dreamlike and excessive splendor, however, Bridewater House has a secret of its own — a dark, tragic one echoed in soft and creeping footfalls, a small child's calls for its mother, and the lonely grasp of a cold, invisible hand in the dark.