Hester, a teenage girl, is left in charge of a young child in a cold, gloomy manor house under the looming shadows of the Cumberland fells. She hears strange organ music playing, but everyone tells her it isn't happening. She is forbidden from visiting the mysterious East Wing. She is desperate to keep her young charge safe from some unknown disaster, one she feels sure is coming, and - as the terrible events that have happened in her new home become clear to her - she is increasingly unable to do so.