As the film opens, a young man, travelling on an overnight train from Indianapolis to Pittsburgh, sedates a young woman with a syringe full of narcotics, slices her wrist with a razor blade, and drinks her blood. The next morning, he is met at the Pittsburgh train station by a mysterious man in white who escorts him away, whereupon the pair board a local train destined for Braddock, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania. The young man, named Martin, has romantic monochrome visions of vampiric seductions and torch-lit mobs, but it is impossible to tell if these visions are real or imagined. The man in white is Martin's elderly granduncle, Tateh Cuda. Due to the death of Martin's immediate family in Indianapolis, Cuda has reluctantly agreed to give Martin room and board, sharing the house with him and cousin Christine.