A woman struggles with the odd behavior of her precious son and the feeling that something may be wrong with "Christopher". An old man listens to a country singer and remembers his younger days two-stepping across the dance floor. In the 1940s, a telephone operator provides testimony as a witness to a violent public attack. After thirty-five years on the police force, a detective tries to find the culprit behind a recent murder. At the centre of the case is only a description of the car the victim was driving. A young man revisits both an old dog-racing track and memories of his late father. A customer service employee in the city is content in her young, quiet life until she begins receiving gifts and attention from an unknown admirer. After her death, a young woman finds a new vague form of existence. But even that may be temporary. 

The thread that connects these stories is unnerving, the same kind that tightens around your heart when you watch shadows lengthen at night, the kind that shivers and prickles through you when haunting legends are whispered around campfires. That questioning, creeping feeling is sewn through each of these stories. Whether horror, drama, crime, or even science fiction, whether grounded in the natural or seeping into the supernatural, MacDonald gives us a collection that is at times frightening, at times heartfelt, but always, somehow, human.