Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student.
But when Charlie is seventeen, he meets a dog named Radar and her ageing master Howard Bowditch, a recluse in a big house at the top of big hill, with a locked shed in the backyard. When Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie a cassette tape telling a story no one would believe - inside the shed is a portal to another world.