Lock Crick has returned home to his friends, after serving thirteen months of punishment and pain, for the accidental killing of a hitchhiker, on a dark country road, in the pouring rain. Now, games and masks and nightmares of six friends' shared past, conspire and collide, as childhood demons taunt and hide, on this Halloween night and the eve of winter's bane. A welcome home celebration and a trick or treat incantation, turns rotten and rank, during a party prank, when an uninvited guest ends up slain. Another accident? Murder maybe? Is it Owen Poe's blood or a fake blood stain? Because now his body is missing, and good friends are acting strange. Raven Cathmore and her grown-up orphan friends must learn the rules of insanity and the reality of someone's twisted game. As the snowfall grows steeper and the body-part pile gets deeper, someone is playing for keeps, and one of them is to blame.