Zak and Min’s father mysteriously disappears at breakfast and curious things then begin to happen to them. Min encounters two small creatures with spider-like legs, a doll that runs, talks and steals and Shaz, the shaman, who gives her a box with a finger bone inside. Zak is chased by a strange man on all fours in the shopping mall, flees from snakes that interrupt his homework and is visited by a ghostly old lady in his bedroom who happens to love matcha ice cream. Trying to find their father, they are transported to an eerie world called the Moonlight Lands where oily creatures want to kidnap and eat them. The novel concludes with Zak vanishing one night during dinner.