The ghost of "patient zero", who allegedly first brought AIDS to North America - materialises and tries to contact old friends. Meanwhile, the Victorian explorer Sir Richard Burton, who drank from the Fountain of Youth and now works as Chief Taxidermist at the Toronto Natural history Museum, is trying to organise an exhibition about the disease for the museum's "Hall of Contagion".

In the small New England town of Galen, a young teenage boy claims he has dreams of young women being brutally raped and murdered. A doctor and the local sheriff discover that the boy's dreams are real and that a sinister occult might be behind the brutal murders. They must track down the vicious killer, who may be the indestructible incarnation of a demon spawned from hell.