No one can explain his escape from the insane asylum—but whatever the blue-gray dust was in his cell, it was certainly no longer Charles Dexter Ward…

It was the 1920s—the Jazz Age, the age of modern wonders. But young Charles Dexter Ward was a dreamer, in love with the antiquities of his native Providence, Rhode Island. Charles was known for the long walks he took around the streets and alleyways of the old colonial city, searching out the traces that still lingered from centuries ago. It would have all seemed a harmless interest in the past…were it not for the fact Charles gradually developed a fixation on his notorious ancestor, Joseph Curwen.

A wealthy merchant before the American Revolution, Curwen, known to have an interest in alchemy and rumored to practice the darker arts of the occult, never appeared to grow any older even as his money increased. But at last Curwen did die–violently—and the records of his life seemed to have been deliberately destroyed. Charles Dexter Ward hunted feverishly through the scraps of information that remained, for his new obsession was to find Curwen’s unmarked grave.

Young Charles hasn’t seemed himself ever since—travelling to strange lands and keeping stranger company. Performing bizarre experiments and chants inside his room, Charles claims to have rediscovered secret knowledge his ancestor possessed that could revolutionize the world. When his erratic and dangerous behavior at last gets him committed to an insane asylum, Charles seemingly escapes…and only his family physician, Dr. Willett, suspecting a hideous truth, now has the courage to pursue the strange case of Charles Dexter Ward!