Brief Summary

In this book, the main character is Matthew Moore, Matt for short.  Towards the beginning of the book Matt appears to have the perfect life.  He is a star player on the football team, he makes very good grades, and all of the girls like him.  However, one day something goes wrong, there is a fire that causes his grandmother to move in with him, his mom, and hi stepfather.  This might not seem that bad, but his grandmother has Alzheimer’s disease which makes it even worse.  Days go by as Emily Moore, the grandmother, slowly tears the family apart with her rude unintended attitude.  Finally, the stepfather, Bill Hapgood, has enough when Emily recreates the room of her dead daughter Cynthia. 

            Three weeks later Bill returns to attend a traditional 16^th birthday dinner with his stepson, Matt.  However, with so much tension, the dinner doesn’t go as planned and the family starts to argue in the presence of their guest.  The next day , still mad at each other, Matt, Bill, and four friends set out for a hunting trip.  However, the trip doesn’t go as planned either.  Matt and Bill et in to another argument in front of their guests.  The next thing they know they spot a deer and the groups splits up into three groups of two so they can kill the buck.  After spotting the buck again Matt and Bill split up to corner it.  Matt finally spots the buck and shoots towards it three times.  Soon the group catches up to Matt and they go to view the buck.  They then realize that Bill is missing and starts to look for him.  They soon find him face down in the dirt with a bullet wound to the head.  This is just the beginning of all the terrible events.

            After being accused if killing his stepfather, Matt’s grades start to fall, he leaves the football team, and no one talks to him anymore at school.  Soon Matt and his mother start to see his Aunt Cynthia, walking through the house.  Then his grandmother and Kelly Conroe go missing.  Once again Matt is accused of doing something he didn’t do. At last Matt had enough and tries to go look for Kelly, his ex girlfriend.  However, he could not find her.

            Matt gives up looking for Kelly and starts to wonder about why his stepfather never showed him what was in his desk.  Matt gets up enough courage and pick the lock on his stepfather’s desk.  What he find in there shocks him.  There were pictures of him, but there weren’t him.  They were pictures of some guy that looked exactly like him.  Before he could determine who it was, his mom ,who is dressed just like his Aunt, hits him in the head with a shovel.

            Matt wakes up in their cellar to find Kelly Conroe, Becky Adams, and his grandmother.  All of them were alive put his grandmother who was in the corner with her hands cut off.  As Matt and Becky are trying to escape his mother comes.  Matt escapes only to leave Becky being beaten with the shovel by his mother.

            In the end, Becky dies. Kelly lives only to suffer with a broken arm.  Matt’s mom is sent to a physiatrist for multiple personalities.  Matt finds out that Bill isn’t his stepfather, but his actual dad.  He also finds out that his Aunt Cynthia is his mom and his mom is his Aunt Joan.

Since Matt has no family left, he moves in with Kelly and her family.