It has been twenty years since Western State Hospital closed its doors and its last patients were reintegrated into society.

Francis Petrel was just over twenty when his family committed him to the psychiatric hospital after erratic behavior and a subsequent breakdown. Now, in middle age, he leads a drifting, solitary life, holed up in a cheap apartment and permanently medicated to silence the chorus of voices in his head.

Yet he is haunted by dark memories he thought he had buried—memories of the gruesome events that led to the hospital’s closure.