Sotoba is a village "surrounded by death", a small traditional Japanese village who's primary industry is creating grave markers out of the Fir trees that surround the isolated town. On one particularly hot summer, people start dying in droves, with some people living with the rotting corpses of their family for weeks before their own bodies are discovered by neighbors. Meanwhile, the residents begin to gossip about the new family who moved into the newly built mansion atop a mountain in the town. As the death toll mounts, the doctors of the town suspect it to be a new type of epidemic, until they begin to see the figures of the deceased walking in the night.

Shiki blurs the line between good and evil, following a story that has no true protagonists or antagonists, but rather two sides attempting to survive in a deadly environment. Can one be called evil because they didn't starve to death?