With her ex-husband no longer in the picture, long divorced Susan Thompson has frequently moved her and her two sons out of necessity due to circumstances despite wanting a settled life for them all. Their latest move from Brooklyn to small town Benzonville, OR, doesn't sit well with her oldest, late teen Dane Thompson, in being of an age of missing friends left behind. He soon forgets about them in having a crush on their new next door neighbor, same aged Julie Campbell. Dane, Julie, and Dane's younger brother, preteen Lucas Thompson, discover what was a hidden padlocked trap door in the floor of the basement of the Thompsons' new house. Finding the keys to unlock it, they are as befuddled to find that it is a completely dark seemingly bottomless pit, but that there is some sort of activity in it in whatever they drop into the hole being caught by something and lost. They don't want to tell Susan even about its existence until they know the nature of the hole. Shortly thereafter, continuing strange occurrences happen individually to all three of them, Lucas' with the appearance everywhere he goes of the same toy clown, clowns of which he has a fear, and Julie's with the mysterious appearances of an unknown young girl. Julie thinks that some answers as to the hole may be provided by the previous owner of the house, who she only refers to as Creepy Carl and who she knows has been squatting in an abandoned glove factory on the other side of town. While Carl does provide some warnings to them all, it is the discovery by Julie of the identity of the little girl which may provide the biggest clue as to what is in store for "fearless" Dane which is tied to the need for the Thompsons' frequent moves.
—Huggo