As the film opens, a young man, traveling on an overnight train from Indianapolis to Pittsburgh, sedates a woman with a syringe full of narcotics, slices her forearm with a razor blade, then drinks her blood. The next morning, he is met at the Pittsburgh train station by a man in a white suit who escorts him to a second train destined for Braddock, Pennsylvania. The young man, Martin, claims to be much older than his appearance would suggest. He has romantic monochrome visions of religious icons, vampiric seductions, and torch-carrying mobs, but whether these are memories or fantasies remains unclear. The man in white is Martin's elderly grand-uncle, Tateh Cuda, who, in accordance with family tradition, has reluctantly agreed to give Martin room and board alongside Cuda's orphaned granddaughter, Christina.