From his odd, secluded mansion in New Mexico, Mr. Ben calmly goes about remaking the planet for just himself and a few others-while deep in a faraway canyon, a small, autistic boy waves an old piece of rope back and forth. Now and then, the dome on top of the mansion splits apart like the grasping claw of a crab, and a huge, gleaming disk emerges, and shoots off and disappears in a purple flash of nothingness. Five friends-a modern-day Thoreau and his wife, a journalist on a CIA hit list, an Apache bull rider, and a Hopi woman who finds herself strangely and perhaps even cosmically entangled with Mr. Ben-together try to stem the malevolence they sense seeping from what just could be the Devil's Mansion. A spectacular event erupts in the mountain village of Pinedale. And in the uproar, the startling action of a small boy resounds across the oceans.