When forty-eight-year-old Rick Braden gets his first look at the house his wife Elaine wants to buy, he thinks that it looks like a scene out of an old Frankenstein movie-dismal and depressing. For Elaine, the 1800s Victorian house has great potential in spite of the fact that the former resident, Sedgwick Burns, disappeared without a trace eight years ago. Rick only hopes they aren't making a big mistake buying the mansion in Forest Oak. As Rick talks to his neighbors and learns about the house, he becomes more and more uneasy. Not only does he learn that Burns was a mortician, but Rick continually discovers strange things left behind by the previous tenant. In a misguided attempt to hide this series of bizarre discoveries from his wife, Rick becomes entangled in a sticky web of lies and deception that abruptly intensifies and turns his life into a maze of anguish and intrigue.