After escaping a hospital transport vehicle, Cole Charles Pecker takes refuge in his family's abandoned Queen Anne. Injured and without a ready supply of food or water, Cole resorts to the survival skills he learned in his youth, but hiding out in the old house is not merely a matter of first aid, food, and water.

Hidden in his most secret hiding spot from his youth, Cole battles withdrawal from his medication while listening long hours for the law.

When the cuckoo in the east wing of the house bellows to life, Cole knows the peril he faces is not simply human. Before her suicide, Cole's mother embraced the shadows. Now Cole believes something far more sinister has entered the house.

With the encouragement of his new duckling friends and the secrets of the Pecker Family Bible, Cole sets out to defeat the diabolical forces trying to destroy him.