Reporter Bob Smith heads for Little Rock, Arkansas to a permanent newspaper job but car trouble forces him to spend the night in the little town of Lazarus, Arkansas, where he encounters a man who says it's his birthday and he's a hundred and twenty-eight. He laughs, then meets a boy who looks about twelve but says he's forty-four. He's puzzled by the funny answers until he glimpses a party in progress at the inn where he's staying. The birthday cake is in front of woman who looks about sixty and there is two hundred on the bottom layer in pink icing. Suspecting he's lucked up on a local Fountain of Youth or at least a good story, Bob uses his curiosity and experience to get close enough to the town's secret to become a victim of it. He manages to get out of Lazarus with his life and his car repaired good enough to get him to Little Rock and a twenty-four hour gap in his memory. Nightmares and deja vu flashes take him back to Lazarus posing as a photographer to search for those lost hours. He meets the love of his life as he looks for clues as horror stalks him.