When Lynn Hutchinson realizes her nightmares are in fact reality, she understands the years of mental anguish from night terrors and depression are caused by something horrifying but quite real. When her ex-husband returns custody of her two young sons to her, and she begins attending group meetings for individuals abducted by extraterrestrial beings, she fears for her sons' safety from the horrors she realizes have been her lot in life since childhood. Although she doesn't want to remember the events of her past abductions, the memories are thrust upon her anyway, as well as the knowledge of the purpose for her abductions and the abductions of her sons; a purpose that leaves her in a state of terror. She becomes aware that there has been a multitude of other inhabitants of the earth over a period of many millennia, that have been abducted and have undergone the same painful, frightening procedures that she has endured at the hands of the strange gray beings that haunt her.