Seventeen-year-old James Daly's father bought a house in small-town Edington, Georgia to go with a promotion at his Atlanta law firm, only to lose his job when the housing bubble popped and the economy tanked. Now James has to work at the Edington Best Buy to help pay the mortgage they're underwater on. He can't wait until he turns 18 and can leave Edington behind forever.

But when a local boy challenges him to an ATV race near a tree farm most people avoid, things get much worse. James' rival is dismembered alive by a tentacled horror emerging from a nearby pond. The monstrosity has been worshiped by a murderous coven since before the Civil War, and its devotees don't take kindly to their secrets being threatened.

Now with the aid of Amber Webb, a local girl he doesn't like liking, and a renegade cult member, James must fight to avoid ending up bound to a picnic table and offered up to a monster. He must do battle with both the local cultists and their predatory master, The Thing in the Woods.