Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness, death, death by suicide, sexual violence and harassment, physical abuse, child abuse, mental illness, and cursing.

In 1753, a commodore for the British Royal Navy, Lord Adderly, approaches the shore of an island off Maine called Dracadia. The original Indigenous occupants have disappeared, and several clergymen sent to the island to retrieve supposed witches have gone missing.

They find everything on the island burned down. A young boy, badly wounded, says that “black worms, spilling from mouths of madness” (10), inflicted the destruction. The boy tells Adderly that the crew arrived days ago with the clergymen. They’re delirious with pain and will soon be burned at the stake. Adderly smells burning flesh.

In the present day, Lilia Vespertine cooks for her sick mother, Francesca, who’s taken to eating rare meat. Lilia’s stepfather, Conner, hasn’t worked recently, leaving them with little money. She asks her 12-year-old half-sister, Beatrix, or Bee, to check on their mother. Francesca experiences fits where she says that “evil men” and “monsters” are coming for Lillia (14).

A man knocks at the door asking for Conner, but Lilia soon hears a scream and finds Francesca trying to drown Bee in the bathtub, claiming that Bee is a spy for the monsters.