Marc Price arrives in the Concrete Grove to research a book about the 'Northumberland Poltergeist,' an infamous case from the 1970s: twins haunted by a spirit they nicknamed Captain Clickety. The media of the time were split between derision and hysteria. As Marc teases out the suppressed details of the story, he finds himself drawn to a woman whose young daughter went missing years ago during a spate of child abductions. He also finds himself investigated by a local policeman, whose private life seems tied up with events in the Grove, and harassed by the father of the missing child.

Then the scarecrows appear, their heads plastered with photographs of the long-missing and the dead. Hummingbirds flock to certain areas of the estate, as if awaiting the arrival of something... A door has been opened and a presence is about to step through. It is up to Marc to put the ghosts to rest and unravel fact from fiction. He is about to discover that the story he seeks is his own, and only he can plot the ending.