When recent divorcee Margaret Ayinger decides to end her life, she wants to go out in style. For those who have done their homework and for whom money is no object there is only one place for that: The Precipice Hotel. Like a hospice for the terminally eccentric, it has stood for over a hundred years in a region plagued by yearly forest fires. Upon arrival, Margaret finds the old place nothing like what was advertised. Oh sure, the staff are friendly. And the food? Positively four-star Something about it though just doesn't sit well with her. For instance, the people who randomly swan dive from their balconies late at night into a thousand-foot gorge, the impossible thing living in her bedroom, and the automatons in black body stockings roaming the halls like creeping specters. Oh, and the purple monster named Fred who lives in the gorge.