Eric Turner, a journalist specialising in accounts of the paranormal, investigates a healing well associated with a saintly abbot in the rural village of Scratchbury. Here he finds evidence of astonishing, miraculous cures: a blind woman who can see; a hunchbacked schoolgirl whose spine has straightened. But why is everyone else in the village so deathly ill? Why is a gangster so obsessed with shooting a movie in the ruins of the old monastery? Who are the ruthless order of monks who will defend their secret at any cost, even murder? As Eric investigates. he discovers to his horror that an evil that has been entombed for a thousand years is breaking free at last, and it brings plague and suffering in its wake. A pestilence stalks the land, and all flesh is its plaything.