In with the Old World

Joseph Liebman has been recently dismissed from his job pending an internal investigation. Inert and floundering, he spends his days and nights wandering the streets pondering the novel he never wrote. Late one evening the telephone rings. Hyman Rudnip, a long lost childhood friend recently released from prison, has been waiting for years to confront Liebman on a past traumatic event that was to forever change their lives. Fragments of memory begin to assault Liebman as he is reluctantly reacquainted with his unresolved past, his daily existence thrown into disarray by persistent visions of darkened school hallways reverberating screams and echoes of distant strange melodies. All the while, the phone keeps on ringing and Liebman's carefully sculpted world verges closer to collapse. Rudnip's increasingly urgent vows of revenge become more difficult to ignore as it becomes clearer to Liebman he's on the run from a madman. In the hope that Rudnip, like all other awkward details, might simply disappear, Liebman goes to extreme lengths to hide the torments of his day-to-day existence from his wife and colleagues in an attempt to maintain the crumbling foundation of his home life. But he soon discovers that his efforts cannot distract him from a direct confrontation with a memory that just won't leave him in peace; and that a showdown with Rudnip may hold the only key to his salvation.