Whitey Dobbs, a local roughneck, laughs while being buried alive on Hawkins Hill. He thinks this is just an initiation, a high-school hazing, the four teenage boys who are busy digging aim to exact revenge for a brutal rape. They soon realise that their hoax has tragic consequences that will haunt them for the rest of their lives . . .

Twenty-two years later, the nearby small town of Black Valley is mysteriously plagued by a series of disturbing and unbelievable events: a red-hot brick crashing through a window of the local college, flaming trucks crossing the sky, showers of broken glass shredding a lone jogger. But most bizarre of all is the erratic appearance of a teenager with bone-white hair, who turns out to be the same boy buried alive two decades earlier. And he doesn't look a day older.