The story opens in moonlit Bayonne where two friends watch a young woman endure an invisible scourge that leaves fresh welts; photographic evidence confirms the injuries and her sleep-murmurs include an Arabic phrase evoking a satanic garden. Their investigation threads through opium-haunted dives and secretive hasheesh-eaters, assembling clues about occult rituals, hypnotic suggestion, and monstrous guardians of a hidden lair. Tension escalates as dream and waking blur, alliances shift, and past debts and jealousies surface, driving a confrontation with supernatural forces that yields sudden violence and death. The tale blends atmospheric adventure, eerie magic, and questions about addiction and the boundary between perception and reality.