Homer spoke of the Furies as avenging spirits who punished humans for the wrongs they did. In a small, bucolic, upstate New York town in the present day, six seemingly ordinary school children, led by an inspiring, hallucinatory girl among them, commit a series of murders of strangers. It doesn't take long for the lone detective on the force to put together what he and the Chief consider to be a strong case against six demons, but what local, and eventually national, opinion regard as a bizarre attempt by inept, small-town police to cover up their inability to find the obvious serial killer. National interest and concern generate a media circus and a trial, but well before that, the detective and the child leader engage in a battle of wits going far beyond the determinations of the case. This struggle between them leads to the astonishing finding of the jury and the defiant, final gesture of the girl.