Vince Richards, a New York private eye, stumbles into a strange, hidden world when a prospective client is hanged in Tompkins Square Park. Someone is targeting a local coven of Wiccans and the details of their deaths mirror the Salem witch trials of 1692. When the Wiccans hire Vince to investigate, the weirdness intensifies: a voodoo priestess plots to take of the drug trade in lower Manhattan; a phantom train races by, announcing itself with a haunting whistle only Vince can hear; Wiccans and mobsters battle in the streets; and a ghostly encounter convinces Vince that his prospective client may not be dead after all. When he finally climbs aboard the phantom train and races past the boundaries of time and space, he discovers the trick is not getting on—but getting off.