Seth Wearing is a high school boy and the protagonist. The story is narrated in third-person limited perspective from Seth’s point of view. At the beginning of the story, Seth feels hopeless and has just died by suicide, but he is shocked when he wakes up in a completely different setting. Because of his certainty that he is dead, he assumes that he is now in hell and that it has been designed to force him to relive his worst childhood trauma.

Seth grew up in England with his parents, Edward and Candace, and his younger brother Owen, before the family moved to the United States. They lived in a house located next to a prison. When Seth was eight years old and Owen was four, their mother left them at home to run an errand. An escaped prisoner named Valentine coerced Seth into choosing which one of the two children he would take with him as a hostage. Seth picked Owen because he thought he would be better able to raise the alarm than his younger brother. Owen was missing for a few days until the police caught the prisoner and found Owen dead.