When Penelope agrees to help her best friend Mary Lynn Hargrove, the mayor's wife, renovate the town's first school as a community center, she discovers the old building isn't quite as empty as it appears. Mary Lynn hears voices, and light bulbs and even flashlights go instantly dark at the bottom of the 13 steps leading to the basement. Is the town's founding father Jeremiah Bowden, who built the school, still around? Or his sister, Miss Daisy, the first teacher? Or is it someone-or something-more sinister? Then Sam telephones unexpectedly and tells Penelope to stay away from the place, but he won't tell her why. When she decides not to take his advice, she discovers she's rolled out a blueprint not for remodeling but for disaster.