Harley Basil is a world traveler with a very dark secret. A seemingly well-mannered man, Harley even fools himself at times, but in the end the voices in his head always win out.

It's late November, 1909 in Washington D.C., and a serial killer is on the loose. Having made his yearly excursion south from Philadelphia to Washington for the weekend, Harley is content to once and for all find love. But when his Alice turns the tables on him, the real Harley Basil surfaces and finds himself stuck between two worlds: the one he knows, the other a perceived sense of reality. Harley must navigate the darkness of the Churchill Hotel to discover what is real and what is not, and he will find the answers to his questions somewhere between life and death.

Virgil Dabney is a law-abiding, well-respected attorney who is left to deal with Harley's estate. But the more he learns about Harley Basil, the less Virgil wants to share with others. A slow pull into Harley's world ends with a sharp fall with Virgil picking up where Harley has left off.