Young widow Karen Spellman and her two daughters are leaving Los Angeles to return to the lush countryside of Karen’s childhood, where she plans to marry her high school sweetheart. But something sinister awaits the Spellmans. For here, long ago, a shadowy menace once stalked the innocent. Dormant, it waits–waits for summer’s heat to shimmer over the valley in a suffocating wave; waits for the arrival of its perfect victim. And now, with the dizzying descent of a nightmare, Karen’s homecoming will become a confrontation with evil, as she struggles to protect her vulnerable daughters from a menace that seems to rise from hell itself–a malign, preternatural force that must satisfy its gruesome thirst for its unsuspecting prey. . . .