A man has his comfortable descent into middle age interrupted
by the sudden reappearance of a long-lost childhood
friend, recently released from prison, who wishes to
unearth the horrors of their distant past.
Joseph Liebman has been recently dismissed from his
job pending an internal investigation. Inert and floundering,
he spends his days and nights wandering the streets
pondering the novel he never wrote. Late one evening
the telephone rings. Hyman Rudnip, a long lost childhood
friend recently released from prison, has been waiting
for years to confront Liebman on a past traumatic event
that was to forever change their lives.
Fragments of memory begin to assault Liebman as he
is reluctantly reacquainted with his unresolved past,
his daily existence thrown into disarray by persistent
visions of darkened school hallways reverberating screams
and echoes of distant strange melodies. All the while,
the phone keeps on ringing and Liebman’s carefully sculpted
world verges closer to collapse. Rudnip’s increasingly
urgent vows of revenge become more difficult to ignore
as it becomes clearer to Liebman he’s on the run from
a madman.
In the hope that Rudnip, like all other awkward details,
might simply disappear, Liebman goes to extreme lengths
to hide the torments of his day-to-day existence from
his wife and colleagues in an attempt to maintain the
crumbling foundation of his home life. But he soon discovers
that his efforts cannot distract him from a direct confrontation
with a memory that just won’t leave him in peace—and
that a showdown with Rudnip may hold the only key to
his salvation.
