Wayne Hrovat is a quintessential cog-in-a-wheel; at forty-one, he has worked as an accountant in the bowels of Ford Motor Company for fifteen years. He is unmarried and lives with his ailing eighty-something mother. He is also mildly schizophrenic. When downsizing costs him his position, he takes a consulting job at a manufacturing plant in rural Michigan and discovers that the town has a dark history of unsolved murders and lost persons. He soon finds that he is both an outsider and an integral part of the continuing nightmare. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that his damaged psyche has been annexed by an opportunistic demon, and the two mental states joust inside until the climactic ending.