It is Christmas Eve and Alfred Bookman, curator of the Dickens House Museum, finds himself alone in the building after everyone else has left. Devoted to preserving the author's memory, Bookman has given up everything, even his marriage. No lover of the Christmas season, he settles down to work, but his plans are soon turned upside down as he enters a liminal world where life and fiction mix, and Bookman soon finds himself at the mercy of powers beyond his control. Or is he? As Bookman encounters a sequence of strange visitations he comes face to face with his deepest self and the possibilities of his future.