It’s November 1982 in Fell, New York, and 20-year-old Vivian Delaney sits in her car at the Sun Down Motel listening to the radio report on the discovery of 18-year-old Tracy Waters’s body in a ditch. It’s 11:00 p.m. and Viv is dreading the start of her overnight shift alone at the front desk. Inside, she has brief and occasional interactions with Johnny (a coworker), Janice (the owner), guests such as alcoholic Mrs. Bailey, and at least three ghosts of those who’ve died there: the smoking man, the little boy, and Betty.

Carly Kirk is 20 years old in 2017 and drove to Fell, New York, from Illinois the day prior with the inheritance money from her mother. Her mother passed from cancer at 51 and split her belongings between Carly and Carly’s older brother, Graham. In Illinois, Carly is enrolled in business school. Graham and his fiancée, Hailey, are concerned about her trip to Fell, which she’s undertaken to find out what happened to their mother’s sister, Viv, in 1982. The only information she has comes from two newspaper articles, one of which names Jenny Summers as her aunt’s roommate.

Vivian ends up in Fell, New York, after hitchhiking from Illinois to New York City to pursue her dream of studying acting.