When Bihn arrives in 1977 Texas as a Vietnamese refugee, isolation and language barriers make every shadow feel threatening. Her charming nocturnal neighbor, who greets her in French with an aristocratic air, seems suspicious from the start, especially after she notices visitors leaving his apartment with strange puncture wounds on their necks.

Haunted by dread, Bihn turns to what she knows: traditional Vietnamese protective rituals. She burns spirit money and leaves blood pudding offerings outside her door (the old ways don’t just disappear when you cross an ocean). But when those offerings vanish each night, her curiosity overtakes her fear. What she discovers in his apartment are old photographs showing him unchanged since the 1920s, his motionless body in a darkened room at noon, all seem to confirm her worst suspicions, or do they?