An Imam terrified by the spectral sound of a woman screaming in his Mosque arrives in Skendleby seeking protection; hours later he is dead. In Skendleby witch marks appear on the church walls and the white tree on Skendleby mound mutates into a harbinger of ecological crisis. An ancient terror has been unleashed and the trail of the screaming exposes a global contagion fragmenting world order with Skendleby as the epicentre.