A couple are caught in a violent snowstorm as they ascend notorious Harrow Mountain in Chi Bay, Alaska for a getaway at a Forest Service remote cabin, only to discover that what awaits them is far worse than any blizzard. An archbishop must prowl the streets of the ancient Roman city of Trier, penance for the ultimate sacrilege. On an earth decimated by plague, a survivor fraught with guilt carries on his person a specialized strain of that plague with the teetering intent of unleashing it upon an unsuspecting world again, this time to even more devastating effect. A novelist is tormented by hellish visions of Henry Fuseli's macabre painting The Nightmare. A man haunted by family tragedy takes his girlfriend to Lake Garda, Italy, where secrets reside, secrets that could destroy both of them. These and other strange, dark avenues await the curious among the monks of a separate cloth.