'...how do you describe that moment when the lights go out in someone's eyes and the darkness takes over?' When Ruth Gemmel's younger brother Alex fails to return her calls, she sets off to check up on him. Unable to find him in Grenwell, the town where he has been living and teaching, she begins her tentative enquiries. She soon discovers the locals to be frustratingly unhelpful, whilst the eerie town holds more questions than clues. Why are the police so uncooperative? Why is Greenwell so dark and lonely? And who is the 'grey man' the schoolchildren saw Alex with not long before he went missing? As Ruth becomes concerned that something terrible has happened to her brother, events escalate mysteriously, dangerously out of control. Too late, Ruth realises that her worst fears haunt her still, and that she is at the centre of a far darker nightmare than she could ever have imagined.