It's the summer of 1988, and the bodies of mutilated teenage girls begin showing up in a small town in Maryland. The police are looking for a serial killer, but rumors whisper that the culprit is something not entirely human. Richard Chizmar, a recent college graduate on the cusp on his writing career, returns to his hometown just as a curfew is set, and finds himself thrust into a real-life horror story in a novel that is part fiction, part true crime.