In a hurry to find five pupils to join a school trip to creepy old Harwick Hall, Miss O'Dell, their teacher, picks them from one of the ‘special’ columns on her list. They have little in common, except for two emergency phone numbers: two homes - two families.

Arriving at the Hall in a storm, they discover an old manuscript hidden in a sealed room. Richard Clayton Harwick, long dead and gone, has left a record of the sheer wickedness of his stepfather. The children listen, enraptured, to his account. But Richard’s is not the only story they will be hearing in the dark, towering mansion …