After the death of his wife, police psychiatrist Cal Jamison moves to New York. There he gets mixed up in the investigation of the murder of two boys, who seem to have been sacrificed in some sort of a cult ritual. Jamison reads up on what he believes to be the cult, and when he finds his housekeeper practicing something similar fires her, ignoring the warnings by her that he and his son are in need of protection. He is also surprised to find some "normal" people he knows involved when they show their hand and try to get him to sacrifice his own son.