A woman (credited as "M") mentions to her musician husband (credited as "C") that as a child, she moved residences frequently and took to hiding little notes wherever she lived. C is resistant to M's desire to move, creating tension within their relationship. When he finally accepts, they hear a loud bang while asleep, the source of which they are unable to identify. Shortly afterwards, C is killed in a car accident nearby. At the hospital, M covers his body with a sheet before departing. C awakens as a ghost, invisible to the living. Still covered with the sheet, he wanders through the hospital. A door of light opens in front of him, but he makes no attempt to approach it and it closes. C walks home and sees Linda, his landlady, drop off a pie. M arrives and eats the pie until she vomits. Unable to communicate with her, C watches M grieve before proceeding with her life. In the house next door, he sees another ghost covered by a flower-print sheet who says that it is waiting for someone, though it does not remember who. Upon discovering that M is dating another man, C jealously creates disturbances inside the house. Books fall from a shelf, and M finds one lying open at the story "A Haunted House" by
Virginia Woolf, which tells of a ghostly couple whose love lingers beyond death. Later, M listens to one of C's songs and recalls the first time he played it for her. She moves away, but first writes a note and hides it in a gap between some
molding, which she paints over. C picks at the paint but is unable to reach the note. Later, a Spanish-speaking single mother moves into the house with her young son and daughter. C watches them eat, play the piano and celebrate Christmas. The children begin to sense his presence and become frightened. One night, he knocks a framed photo of the family off the piano and smashes dishes in the kitchen. The family moves out and the ghost continues scraping at the paint. At a party thrown by the next occupants, a woman says she has stopped working on her novel and a man responds by claiming all creative pursuits are pointless, as the universe will eventually
end. The partygoers notice the lights flicker. The house is abandoned and becomes derelict. C's efforts to retrieve the note are interrupted by a
bulldozer crashing through a wall. The house next door is also torn down; the flower-print ghost, while standing amongst the ruins, says "I don’t think they’re coming" and disappears from beneath its sheet. A skyscraper is built where the house was; once it is finished, C views a futuristic cityscape from the balcony before jumping off the ledge. The
celestial sphere rotates in reverse, and C finds himself in a field in the 19th century with a man who is driving stakes into the ground. The man's wife and three daughters arrive in a
covered wagon, and the family prepares to build a house. The youngest daughter writes a note and hides it under a rock while humming the tune of C's song. Native Americans attack and kill the family, and C watches the girl's corpse decay. Back in the house, which is empty except for the piano, C sees himself and M enter and look around. His life in the house repeats itself; he witnesses their last argument, and upon hearing his past self finally give in, he sits down heavily at the piano, creating the bang that had earlier startled the couple. Later, C watches his earlier ghost-self watch M leave the house for the last time. He finally retrieves the note and, upon reading it, disappears, his empty sheet collapsing to the floor. ==Cast==