Jack Adams was a man with a dream; to hike the Appalachian Trail, from Georgia to Maine. Beset with a month-long delay in starting out, Jack soon found himself lagging seriously behind schedule, a delay which would mean finishing late in the fall, in the cold, northern reaches of Maine. With perhaps, only two or three days remaining until he completed the hike, a strange and bizarre turn of events brought Jack's dream to a screeching halt, plunging him into a situation where he would soon find himself fighting for his life, as well as the life of a complete stranger. Waylaid on the Trail by a deranged giant of a man and feeling the hopelessness and frustration of captivity, Jack was unaware that Kate McGuire, his fiancee, along with his dad, Frank, had hired a tough Maine guide to try and locate him. The plot is thickened by a grisly discovery and the grim realization that some truths in life are hard to bear. Enter Sheriff Wilfred Bowen, a folksy southwestern transplant, whose slow drawl belies the fact that this is one very smart lawman, intent on rooting out the truth. His reliance on his 'gut feelins' inevitably lead him to solve the mystery of what happened to Jack, along with another case, although not to the satisfaction of everyone involved.

Life is good for Paul McCulloch, middle-aged electrician, until he begins to experience a recurring nightmare, in which he finds himself standing in a rustic, old cemetery, confronted by a faceless, hooded figure. Unable to explain the reason for his dreams, Paul turns to an old boyhood friend, who, along with Paul's wife, Mary Ellen, offers some revealing information; the cemetery in Paul's dreams had been the scene of a brutal murder many years before. In his search for an answer to the terrifying nightmares, Paul discovers the startling fact that four young boys once played a strange game in the old graveyard; a game of daring, designed to test one's courage. For one boy, the game turned deadly. Who was the hooded figure and why did he point his finger at Paul in each dream episode? Could there be a connection to Paul's dreams and the brazen abduction of a local woman in broad daylight? Obsessed with finding the answers to these troubling questions, Paul heeds an inner voice and is drawn to the old graveyard one sultry, summer evening, where the nightmare starts to play out, with one big difference; the scenario in which he becomes embroiled, is not a dream and the people there are real.