Blending uncanny horror with comedic crime fiction, this is a tale of desperate people colliding, with disturbing results. Think Shirley Jackson meets Pulp Fiction.

Clare Sanderson believes her life is over. Infertility, a vapid marriage, and a missing Halloween decoration shove her into a state of waking death. That is, until she finds her elderly neighbor Miss Frick dead in the bathtub. In death, Clare feels alive again and assumes the work of guarding the Frick home’s terrible secret.

Miss Frick’s estranged brother, a mid-level gangster named Troutman, sends his soldiers Harold and Dillon on a bizarre reconnaissance mission to her house, to see about something inside the walls. Before they can even get through the door, the fragile membrane between the world of the living and the dead begins to tear.

Grocery delivery man Nigel Ashwood believes he’s descended from kings. Doesn’t matter which ones. Any royalty will do. So when Troutman’s resentful bartender hires him for a simple murder, Nigel sees it as his de facto coronation. Too bad his target is the estranged sister of Troutman, the already-very-dead Miss Frick.

All the while, a depressed giant beneath the house tempts them further into his web. But Clare refuses to feel sorry for him. She’s too busy trying to convince her husband that she’s dead.