The woman is twenty-nine years old, and when she tries to remember her childhood, it always seems out of reach. Sometimes she can gather bits and pieces in her dreams, but she arrives at nothing coherent or complete. All she knows is that something strange and horrible must have happened.

The woman is late for work. She is in her living room, trying to read a book. She hears a voice from somewhere, though she lives alone. Her phone rings. She picks it up, and she continues to hear a voice. When the voice vanishes, she walks through her apartment, opening closet doors. She tries to think about what might have happened to her family. Soon enough, she goes off to work at a coffee shop, a job which helps her pay for her master’s program. Before she leaves the apartment, she gets a flash in her mind of a child screaming in terror.

At the coffee shop, the woman talks a little with her coworker before going to sort inventory. Another flash in her mind occurs, in which a big man presides over a fearful child. Her coworker shouts for her, awaking her from the flash. The coworker says that she has been calling for her over and over again, to which the woman says that she simply daydreams from time and time again. Later in a class for her master’s program, the woman imagines a bloody child clinging to her leg, and she yelps out loud. She tells everyone that she thought she saw a spider.

After class, the woman’s professor asks the woman to walk with her to her office. She does, and they talk about the class on contemporary African American and Native American literature. In the professor’s office, they talk about how distracted the woman seems lately. The woman leaves without saying much.

In the middle of the night, the woman wakes up, still hearing the man’s voice. She sees a tape recorder in front of her. She wonders if she is dreaming. Briefly, the tape recorder plays a voice talking about a place which the voice needs to go to. From then on, the woman remains distracted through her classes and work shifts. Her coworker begins to worry about her. One day, after work, the woman sees the tape recorder again, and the voice in it—which she identifies as her father’s—talks about giving a child.

The woman calls in sick for both her class and her work shift. Her professor calls out of concern. The woman confides in her that she is having trouble remembering her past. The professor says she will investigate her past for her and tell her what she finds. For weeks, she gets no response. She continues to see the tape recorder, which ominously tells her that someone or something is ready. One day, outside of a department store, she remembers about her disappeared mother and baby sister, as well as her abusive father who was obsessed with demonology. She remembers how her father allegedly forged a deal with a demon, requiring a child as a sacrifice.

The woman drives into the woods. When she gets out of her car, her professor calls her to tell her about how her parents and her baby sister were reported missing. Right away, the woman remembers her baby sister. In the woods, she sees a stairway leading nowhere. She climbs it and sees a tape recorder at the top of its steps. It asks her if she wants to know where her sister is, and the woman says yes. She then recalls how her father sacrificed her baby sister to a demon at that very stairway. Now she sees the creature, which asks her if she wants to trade her own life for that of her baby sister’s. She accepts, stepping into the creature’s void.