A recent work by Cambridge-based sculptor Will Tench, shortlisted for the controversial Turner art prize, has so outraged the pastor of a Mississippi church that a million dollar contract has been offered for his life, a threat that Will laughs off until the evening he and Nina return home to an appalling message that cannot be ignored. They flee into the night, with no destination in mind, and the following day reach a place Will knew as a boy when it was a ruin: Bleakridge, a hilltop house with a dark history that no one speaks of these days. That no one cares to remember.

On impulse, he rents the house for an indefinite period, but Nina hates the place, finds every corner a threat, and eventually storms out - a departure that leads Will to begin a furious series of sculptures and paintings in solitary brooding Bleakridge where, now that he's alone there, the natural barriers between past and present begin to crumble, causing rifts - initially subtle, ultimately violent - in his day-to-day and night-to-night reality.