In April of 1910, in Forney, Texas, three children go missing on a day of violent thunderstorms. They are presumed dead, drowned in the Trinity River, their bodies washed away and never found. Two of them are brothers, the third is a little neighbor girl. In April of 1988, during an economic depression, two women, Ruby and Retha, siblings, take on the interior renovation of an old country mansion in Forney, Texas, that has sat vacant for two decades. However, the women soon discover that they share residence with the specters of three children, and more unsettling, with the vile specter of the childrens murderer, who wants to reap the childrens souls. When it realizes Ruby and Retha have moved in and want to help the children to cross over, it wants their souls, too, to feed to its deity, something it refers to as The Great Serpent.