University. The place for studying, partying, drinking, flat-sharing, and falling in love with your best friend's girlfriend. That's the case for student Tom Whitehaven anyway.

In the African American neighborhood of Sag Harbor, Charles Blakey is out of work, out of luck and on the verge of foreclosure on his ancestral home. A knock on the door from mysterious businessman Anniston Bennet brings a bizarre and lucrative proposition; rent his dusty stand-up basement out for the summer and receive enough money to clear his debts for good. Once Charles accepts, he finds himself led down a terrifying path that confronts his family’s ghosts and locks the men in a terrifying puzzle, at the heart of it race, the source of their traumas and the root of all evil.