The story begins with 12-year-old Jonathan Grisby aboard a boat headed for a reformatory school for boys. Slabhenge Reformatory School for Troubled Boys was once a psychiatric hospital for the “criminally insane.” The salty old pilot of the boat, who is missing most of his teeth, tells Jonathan that the school is “a dark place for dark youths such as yourself. Troublemakers. Delinquents. Criminals” (2).

They arrive at the school, which is located on a remote island. It is a “hulking, jagged building of gray stone, surrounded on all sides by the foaming sea” (3). The building has dark, barred windows shaped like tombstones. The ship’s pilot notes that the sea has been eating away at the rat-infested building for years. When Jonathan sees the crumbling building, he thinks, “It looked bad. Just as bad as he deserved” (6).

Inside the reformatory, the Admiral orders Jonathan to kneel on a hard wooden structure, which he refers to as “the Sinner’s Sorrow” (11). The Admiral has eyebrows “like two monstrous, bushy cockroaches” and a voice “deep and breathy. Like a dragon’s” (9). The Admiral reads Jonathan’s file and says he has committed “a terrible crime” (10), but he does not reveal the offense.