When a circus caravan is torn apart by a destructive summer storm, the show's tattooed man and his fellow performers are scattered across the wheat fields of a nameless hamlet. The tempest's survivors convene at a local boarding house, but a series of violent attacks and strange deaths sabotage their attempts to regroup. The show's tattooed man is Sue, a middle-aged, world-weary war veteran whose days are haunted by dark memories. At night his inks call to him, seemingly alive. As the circus strains to stay the course, Sue's sense of reality begins to fragment -- and something reaches for him from the recesses of his past.