For Professor mark Lansen the horror starts on the final day of the spring term - when, right in front of him, a vagrant plunges down to the pavement from a twelve-storey building. The man died instantly, so the doctors tell him and the other eye-witnesses confirm, but Mark knows the man spoke to him with his dying breath: "Root it out, Dr Lansen". Father Charlie Briggs is haunted each night; Bernie and Fran Pellagrini have been dead for five months, but still they come to the man who, in life, heard their confessions. He knows death is the only escape. So he kills himself, making sure his remains are so completely destroyed that there will be nothing left to work with. At last, Father Charlie Briggs is safe. For the time being. Priests have always made Tressa Downey uncomfortable - the one exception was Father Charlie Briggs, who helped her piece together the fragments of her life in the wake of drug addiction, the loss of her child, marriage, and career. Since his death, she's lived in a fog and after reading his journal, she knows she will never be able to sleep again. A change has come over the town of Oldenburg. They all believe it has only just begun. But in reality the unthinkable started long ago. And before it is finished it will strike deep into the heart of every man, woman and child and force them to reassess their very humanity.