Peter Goode is a normal man who wants to shed his abnormal life. He wants to find a few friends and share experiences with people who aren’t put off by his physical appearance, which is why he’s decided to take a trip from his home in New York City to the expanses of Acadia National Park in Maine.

It’s in Acadia that Peter hopes to see a different way of life and people who don’t see him as ugly.

On his bus trip north, though, Peter is warned of the things in Acadia that haunt the forest and seek to lure unsuspecting people from the trails deeper into the woods.

As an old woman on the bus tells him:

My advice is not to leave that path. In the forest, off the path, and even on Mount Desert Island, there are terrible, dangerous things that are hard to explain.

Peter understands her warning because he’s seen the supernatural in action before, and in those instances, he and his anger caused devastating circumstances. He knows the spine-tingling thrill of opening the portal to another, much darker place and he hopes to never see that other place again.

It is with this hope that Peter arrives in Bar Harbor, Maine. He goes alone into the deep woods, sticking to the trails as advised, until the storm of the century rolls in with devastating winds and snowfall. As the storm builds, Peter sees a woman wandering alone through the thick vegetation. The idea of leaving her to freeze to death is no consideration for him, and against the old woman’s advice, he leaves the trail to give aid to the lost woman.

A fall down a ravine, and a subsequent knock on his head, cause him to lose track of the woman but find an old man who leads him to an isolated cabin. It is there that Peter finds sanctuary from the storm, but a much deeper level of the supernatural than he believed possible.