 An old wooden crate, marked from an 1834 Arctic expedition, is discovered by a janitor beneath the basement stairs at the zoology department of Horlicks University.He notifies Dexter Stanley, the school's biology professor, and together they open it to discover the crate contains a small yet powerful - and hungry - beast, still alive after 140 years.The creature kills and eats the janitor, as well as Stanley's grad student Charlie Gereson - consuming them entirely, leaving only scraps of clothing behind.