A young man (Foyer) finds himself in charge of his great-uncle’s estate. While going through his papers he comes across a box containing files on the “Cthulhu Cult,” a series of newspaper clippings concerning strange, supernatural phenomenon, and an account of his great-uncle’s meeting with a young artist suffering from horrific nightmares of strange creatures.

The further he investigates his great-uncle’s notes, the more he realizes that there is something greater and very evil at work, involving an ancient race of creatures lying dormant for years deep in the ocean, waiting to be summoned so that they may rule the world.

His global investigation unearths the story of a gathering of archeologists in 1908, a police raid on a cult ritual in a Louisiana swamp, and finally the doomed expedition of a group of sailors to an unknown island in the South Pacific. Bit by bit he pieces together the incredible horrors lurking just beyond the fringes of perception, and in a classically Lovecraftian style, it proves more than his sanity can bear.