Everyone in Gypsum, Texas, knows the Hotel Alvarado changes at night—especially Quinn. A teenage clairvoyant, he’s been having dreams about it . . . dreams that call him to its dark, abandoned halls. The hotel is a monument to the town's more prosperous past, when celebrities flocked to the mineral spas and films were shot in the desert. The Great Depression killed all of that, it killed the Alvarado, and frankly it killed Gypsum, too. Now, when the sun goes down, things no longer living stir deep within its creaking depths.

When Quinn braves the hotel's darkness with his best friend June and unrequited love Selena, looking for answers, he gets only one: ghosts aren't the scariest thing lurking inside the Alvarado (although they're there, cold and restless and angry).

No. He's been called by something worse: a predatory, inhuman entity that threatens to wipe Gypsum off the map, along with everyone in it. And wrongly—accidentally—he's let it out. It takes the shape of a handsome young man. It walks. It talks. It laughs. It can even make you laugh. But its appetite for death can never be sated.

Quinn has always had the power to see the future . . . can he find the power to change it?