Twelve-year-old Lucas Trainer does not want to move from the city to the town of Hounds Hollow, and the giant manor in the middle of nowhere that his mother just inherited, but he and his CPAP machine have no choice; however he soon finds that this town is not really the boring village he imagined--people have been disappearing, ghostly dogs prowl the woods at night, and Sweetwater Manor hides a family secret that Lucas and his new friends, Bess and Lens, have to discover before it kills them.