Charlie Reade looked like a regular high school kid but he carried a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was seven, and grief drove his dad to drink, so Charlie learned to take care of himself and his dad. When Charlie was seventeen, he met a dog named Radar and her aging master, Howard Bowditch, a recluse who lived in a big house at the top of a big hill with a locked shed in the backyard. Sometimes strange sounds emerged from the shed. When Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie a cassette tape telling a story no one would believe. What Bowditch knew and kept secret all his long life was that inside the shed was a portal to another world.