讲述的是国际象棋冠军保罗在新奥尔良内战中离奇死亡后的那个晚上，他下棋的天赋异禀和饱受折磨的人生被人们重新审视。摩菲是现代最伟大的国际象棋选手，也是一个多面的天才神童。

California, Mojave Desert, 1998. A strange glow appears in the sky. Sam, a forty-something door-to-door salesman, travels through the few inhabited zones of the Californian desert in search of clients, yet everything seems deserted. What's more, his wife won't answer his calls. It's as if everyone were avoiding him. When his car breaks down, Sam becomes a prisoner of the empty, hostile environment. Alone and without human contact for days on end, he listens continuously to a talk-show on the only local radio station. The host, a man named Eddy, takes calls from listeners who share their thoughts on a child killer at large in the area. At the same time, Sam starts getting psychologically harassed by strange threats he receives on his pager. Gradually, people begin to reappear and attempt to kill him. Sam has become a target and he must now defend himself. Little by little he loses it, caught up in a paranoid identity crisis. Is he truly the killer they're after, or is he being driven ...

1900年，德国北部的沃尔普斯韦德小镇。从他们相遇的那一刻，保拉和奥图就感受到了生命的共振，对绘画共同的热爱让他们的感情更加伟大。他们虽然结了婚，却过着和当时社会习俗所认同的不一样的生活。最终，保拉在艺术的世界里活出真我，铸就了美好人生。

年轻漂亮的女护士凯西到一家偏僻的私人诊所工作，在那里她见到了处于深度昏迷中的帕特里克。她逐渐发现帕特里克可以通过吐口水来与她交流，但出乎她意外的是，帕特里克似乎有惊人的能力，可以操纵她身边的人们……

玛丽亚・杜兰是一位报社新闻记者，擅长推敲各种细节，逻辑思维敏锐，生日当天亲眼目睹了一系列“不可能”犯罪发生在她眼前，命运的轮盘从此骤然加速，她与唯一幸存者神秘的安妮亚的命运交织在一起，成为惊天大案的终结者，不料所面对的却是令人窒息的威胁和困境，玛丽亚在她同样心思细腻的心理医生的帮助下,带着安妮亚顽强反击，一步步逼向终极真相……