Alice and Bea live in a boarding house and work as a club dancer and restaurant hostess, respectively, to support themselves as they attend college. Alice loves her friend and loves dancing at the club. But one night she begins hearing odd music drifting around the house from no apparent source and hears a strange male voice whisper 'pay attention' into her ear. She begins having a recurring dream with a tall silhouette of a man who speaks in a low, smooth voice and asks her to call him The Mentor.

Things just keep escalating. The next night at the club Alice sees blood dripping from the walls into patrons' drinks, and the mentor standing at the back. She runs offstage and almost loses her job. Soon after Miss Clara, the house matron, takes a bad fall down the stairs and swears she felt something push her, even though she was all alone. Alice sees the mentor at the club every night, and dancing doesn't bring her joy anymore; she doesn't sleep well and feels like just a shell of herself. Oddly, the other women in the house seem to be in the same state.

Alice dreams she's in an old, dark mansion filled with dust. She sees the mentor clearly for the first time: a thing with taut, scabbed dark skin and fanged teeth. She hears the tinny music again coming from Bea's room and becomes panicked when Bea won't open the door. When she finally gets the door open she sees the mentor laughing in a corner, and Bea dead on the ground with her wrists open and a pool of blood surrounding her. That night he comes to her and tells her she got his name wrong - he's the Tormentor, and he'll be following her wherever she goes.