Aside from her nightmares, Felice DePalma enjoys living on Long Island. But when her conniving boyfriend steals all of her money and leaves her in debt, she knows there is only one solution: sell her house and start a new life. So she lines up a new job in Buffalo and decides to make the road trip to her new home a mini-vacation. She'll visit all the interesting sites along the way, making the best out of a bad situation.
But she quickly finds out that she hasn't left everything behind. Her nightmares continue even when she's awake. In them, a man with a perverse grin terrorizes her. She doesn't know what he wants, but she knows very well that he's evil.
Meanwhile, FBI agent Frank Welker is investigating a string of deaths. He's finding bodies along the same route that Felice is traveling to Buffalo, and he's beginning to think that she might be a serial killer.
If Felice can't convince authorities to take her nightmares seriously, she just might be the next victim of The Grinning Man.