A dizzying journey to a place where nightmare and insanity fuse with reality-to a place where fear preys on innocence.

Social worker Lissa Shelby works at McKenzie Hall, a center for runaways and children with emotional problems. More and more children are flocking to the center, for they do not feel safe at home.

The children are afraid of disappearing, afraid of a man, a shadowman, who abducts children, keeps them in his castle and kills them when he is through playing with them. Their parents call him a fantasy, but Lissa suspects the children are onto something.

When a homeless boy is discovered missing, Lissa sets out to find him, only to encounter a reality more terrifying than anything she could have imagined. For children's bodies are beginning to wash up with heavy rains.