Newspaper reporter Carl Streator has been assigned to write articles on a series of cases of sudden infant death syndrome, from which his own child had died.

Carl discovers that his wife and child had died immediately after he read them a "culling song", or African chant, from the book Poems and Rhymes Around the World.

Carl unintentionally memorizes it and semi-voluntarily becomes a serial killer who makes people die over minor annoyances.

Carl turns to Helen Hoover Boyle, a real estate agent who has also found the rhyme in the same book and knows of its destructive power.

The two of them decide to go on a road trip across the country to find all remaining copies of the book and destroy the page containing the rhyme.

After confronting Helen about the accusation, Carl decides to kill Nash, a paramedic to whom he inadvertently gave knowledge of the rhyme.

With her last amount of energy, Helen possesses the police sergeant and joins Carl to kill Mona and Oyster, who have been using the spells to advance their extremist views.

Lullaby starts with Mr. Streator talking to the reader, narrating where he is today and why he is going to tell us the backstory that will give us perspective on his current situation.

The final chapter concludes in the present, providing the puzzle-piece that strings together all the events and makes sense out of the backstory and their current workings searching for "phenomenons".

In 1999, Chuck's father, Fred Palahniuk, began dating an Idaho woman named Donna Fontaine.

After shooting Fred Palahniuk in the abdomen and Fontaine in the back of the neck, Shackleford left them to die, though he allegedly returned to the scene multiple times to attempt to start a fire large enough to destroy the evidence.