On New York's Long Island, in the unpredictable decade of the 1960s, a
young boy spends much of his free time in the basement of his family's
modest home, where he and his brother, Jim, have created Botch Town, a
detailed cardboard replica of their community, complete with figurines
representing friends and neighbors. Their little sister, Mary, smokes
cigarettes, speaks in other voices, inhabits alternate personas... and,
unbeknownst to her siblings, moves around the inanimate clay residents.
There is a strangeness in the air as disappearances, deaths, spectral
sightings, and the arrival of a sinister man in a long white car mark
this unforgettable shadow year. But strangest of all is the inescapable
fact that all these troubling occurrences directly correspond to the
changes little Mary has made to the miniature town in their basement.