After teenager Sarah Crane is seriously injured by her alcoholic father, she is sent to live in a foster home. But it quickly becomes clear that this family has taken her in only for the money they get from the county. When Sarah starts school, the limp left over from the accident sets her apart from the rest of the students, and she makes only one friend: Nick Dunnigan, who has problems of his own, and has recently been released from a mental hospital. The only other person who befriends her is Bettina Phillips, who lives in an old mansion known as Shutters because it was once the warden's house at the Shutters Lake Prison for the Insane. Bettina is the art teacher at Warwick High School and she recognizes in Sarah a remarkable talent, and offers to help Sarah develop that talent.

When Sarah enters Shutters, she feels a strange stirring, and she begins to paint recreations of crimes that may have been committed by the prison's long-dead inmates. But before Sarah can begin unravel the mystery behind all of this, things turn ugly fast when violence befalls two of her enemies.and the town grows hungry for revenge.