Autumn term at Maybury University and, as the nights draw in, so does an atmosphere of menace. Dan Latcher — a previously quiet and withdrawn student — blossoms overnight into the forceful illusion-working leader of a charismatic student movement, ‘The Crack’; an organization with the power to shape and alter its followers’ personalities, pushing them on to mindless heights of pleasure and pain.
When hitherto bright, vivacious fresher Stephanie Peele becomes one of his converts, her worried room-mate Annie enlists the support of fellow student Ian.
While the campus is further beset by an unknown knife-wielding psychopath, Annie and Ian pit their strength against the forces of evil as personified by Latcher and his infinitely more potent puppet master, Peregrine Stitch, voraciously sucking-in new converts body and soul…