There are worse things than the Ones Who Dwell in the Dark... Vince Marino is a dispirited sixteen-year-old, who is afflicted with anxiety panic disorder and an excessive fear of the dark. In his mind, he has nowhere else to turn but suicide. His one and only friend, Melissa, suggests he try hypnotherapy, which helped her deal with depression after her father's death. Desperate, Vince agrees. In his first session, Vince recounts a terrifying experience he had three years earlier at Goat's Head, a local haunt in his small hometown of Yucaipa. He and his then best friends, Jarrod and Ethan, went to retrieve a goat's skull that was said to hang on a barn owned by a presumed dead cult leader, Blackie Wilson. Here he encounters the Ones Who Dwell in the Dark. When Bruce McGrail, Vince's hypnotherapist, returns home that evening from work, he finds his house has been broken into by an unwelcomed visitor. A visitor that won't stay away. Bruce and his family's nightmare begins as they start to realize that there might be a connection between what now stalks them and Vince's encounter with the Ones Who Dwell in the Dark.