The setting is the Swedish island of Öland. Living on the island, along with his aunt, uncle, and older brothers, is a boy named Jonas Kloss. At night he goes out to ride a boat, and what he sees makes his eyes widen: an appalling darkness suddenly thickens and takes on vague shapes of a ship. A smoky silhouette rapidly approaches and grows; Jonas doesn’t have time to move the boat aside. The ghost ship hangs over the boy. There is no one on the deck — only from somewhere comes a quiet engine noise, like the heartbeat of some huge beast… And that is how the story of the ghost of an ancient barrow begins.