Jimmy Tock comes into the world on the very night his grandfather leaves it. As a violent storm rages outside the hospital, Rudy Tock walks the corridors between the expectant fathers' waiting room and his dying father's bedside. Suddenly, Josef Tock sits up in bed and speaks coherently for the first and last time since his stroke. What he says before he dies is that there will be five dark days in the life of his grandson - the first when Jimmy is twenty, the last when he is thirty. What terrifying events await Jimmy on these five dark days? What challenges must he survive? At each of the crisis points a mystery as dangerous as it is wondrous unfolds - a struggle against an evil so dark and pervasive only the most extraordinary of human spirits can shine through.