Fifteen-year-old Jeremiah Bloom is forced, through poverty, to Gordington Square, a shipping town with a horrifying two-hundred year history of mysterious murders and ships lost at sea. After his father's boat is lost, Jeremiah takes a job as the flamboyant Captain Van Russel's cabin boy aboard the Nante, a ship bound for battle with evil. With the help of the Secret Society of Osiron, Jeremiah may fulfill a murdered navy man's last ghostly wish-to save Gordington and banish the undead pirates to Abaddon, the Realm of the Dead-if he manages to stay alive.