On a quiet California peninsula, whispers tell of an old ghost story that has lingered for over a century—Bloody Maisie, the ghost of an 11-year-old schoolgirl who hacked eight classmates to death with an axe in 1925. Now, the whispers are screams. Popular cheerleaders are being butchered one by one by the apparition of a blood-drenched schoolgirl wielding an axe.

Joe Stone, a 17-year-old senior, watches his cozy world collapse when his 14-year-old sister, Caitlin, is the first cheerleader to be attacked. She survives, but as the only witness, no one believes her story of the child phantom. Fear grips the peninsula as beautiful cheerleaders are methodically stalked and beheaded in quick succession. Joe starts to worry that his tempestuous girlfriend and head cheerleader, Bethany Minor, is the killer’s endgame. But what sins did these cheerleaders commit to deserve such brutal deaths?

Joe meets 11-year-old prima ballerina Emma Black. New in town, Emma bears an uncanny resemblance to the descriptions of the elusive killer. The lines between innocence and danger blur when the precocious Emma develops an obsessive crush on Joe. To the police, Emma becomes their prime suspect. To Joe, she becomes the key to unraveling the century-old mystery of Bloody Maisie, and its connection to the cheerleader murders.

Are Maisie and Emma one and the same? Will Bethany be the penultimate kill? Will Joe link past and present to solve the deadly puzzle in time, or will all he loves be lost?