The three Lantz boys have a way of protecting each other. The oldest, seventeen-year-old Dante, watches over the twelve-year-old brother, Damian; Damian watches over the six-year-old brother, Draydon; and their father watches out for all three of them. Then one day, everything changes. Their father is killed in a mysterious car wreck, and Draydon is injured severely enough to be sent to the hospital.
Draydon develops a bizarre fear of mirrors, and he starts seeing things strange things. Damian swears he saw a boy in the road, right before the car accident, and a burn in the shape of a handprint has appeared on his body. Dante, now the man of the Lantz household, has his own problems: terrible nightmares that confuse his sense of dream and reality. The Lantz boys dilemma seems to heighten with the arrival in town of a carnival.
Abel Lantz has been forbidden to see his grandsons, but he's old enough to remember the last time the carnival came to town, over fifty-five years before. Last time, something bad happened to all the twelve-year-old children of town. Abel fears for his own family, while the boys fear for each other. Is there a connection between the carnival and the mysterious difficulties of the Lantz family? And if there is, will Dante figure it out in time to save their lives and possibly their souls?
