Magician's assistant Corky performs disastrously at his first solo appearance. He is given a ventriloquist dummy called Fats to improve his act and within a few years Corky is at the height of fame. However, Fats has developed a mind of his own and wants to control his master.

Thomas Luster is a troubled businessman who tries to make sense of a life being driven out-of-control by a force closer to home than he first realizes. When he discovers that the man working against him is another side of his own personality he is forced to fight back against his manipulative alter-ego as murder, madness and mayhem combine to take Luster on the most bizarre and terrifying ride of his life.

When Thad Beaumont was a child, he had an operation to remove a tumour from his brain. during the operation, it was discovered that far from being a tumor, the growth was a twin brother of Thad's that never developed. Years later, Thad is a successful author, writing his serious books under his own name, and his pulp money-makers under the pseudonum "George Stark". When blackmailed by someone who has discovered his secret, Thad publically "buries" George Stark. From that point on, Thad increasingly becomes the prime suspect in a series of gruesome murders.