Shrine

Little Alice, sweet and pure/ Come see her if you need a cure/ She’ll stop your boils and clear your head/ And smile sweetly when you’re dead/

A 1983 novel by James Herbert.

In the Sussex village of Banfield, eleven-year-old Alice Pagett, deaf mute from the age of four, is suddenly drawn to a solitary oak. Late that night, Brighton Evening Courier reporter Gerry Fenn, alarmed to find a young girl in his van’s headlights, stops to follow Alice. Before the tree, she speaks of a wondrous vision, and faints. At the nearby church of St Joseph’s presbytery, Father Andrew Hagan calls Molly and Len Pagett, and reports their daughter’s suddenly regained hearing and speech.

Fenn persuades girlfriend Sue Gates, radio producer and lapsed Catholic, to escort him to Sunday Mass at St Joseph’s. From there, Alice leads a procession of remarkably entranced children to the field opposite. By the solitary oak, she mentions a “lady in white,” who claims to be “the Immaculate Conception.”

Sue, her religious faith renewed, brings Fenn back to St Joseph’s — where several diseased and disabled people hope for more miracles. The congregation’s second visit to the oak sees Alice levitate several inches above the grass. Disease and disability, at a look from Alice, are instantly cured.

Fenn’s Courier article spreads word of the Banfield miracles. The field of the solitary oak, to thousands, becomes an unofficial shrine, in which Bishop Caines has an altar installed. Of the miraculous healings, Monsignor Delgard oversees an empirical study. Alice, sheltered from the public in a local convent, is suddenly distinctly withdrawn. Are these miracles truly divine? Why is Father Hagan rapidly drained of health? Why does he suddenly fear an eleven-year-old he’s known all her life? Monsignor Delgard has Fenn investigate Banfield’s history — where the career of sixteenth century nun Sister Elnor starts to raise terrifying implications…

A film adaptation, The Unholy, was released in 2021.

This novel provides examples of:

• Above Good and Evil: Sister Elnor, with her fantastic healing powers and rampant hedonism, says there’s “no greater power than the will of man.”
• Agent Scully: Downplayed with Bishop Caines. While he says a hallucination may have psychosomatically cured Alice, he stresses the Church’s need to impartially consider all possibilities. He notes Church authorities’ hesitation to accept the actuality of alleged miracles, mainly for fear of their being disproved.
• The Aloner: Father Hagan is, overall contentedly, used to solitude.
• Ambiguously Bi: Sister Elnor visits her appetites upon two young novices — one of whom, Rosemund, happily succumbs.
• Ambition Is Evil: In the 1550s, Sister Elnor’s desire for eminence and influence drives her to seek the role of Prioress.
• Ancient Tomb: In search of a fourteenth century chest, said to contain records, Fenn visits the church of St Joseph’s crypt.
• Animal Motifs: The solitary oak, when surrounded by hundreds of benches, reminds Fenn of a spider.
• Anxiety Dreams: In her sleep, Sue murmurs that someone isn’t who they’re said to be. On waking, her eyes are wide with fear.
• Apocalypse Maiden: Alice Pagett, in circumstances posthumously arranged by Sister Elnor, is conceived in the field of Elnor’s lynching; is devoted to the church of St Joseph's and adores the name of the Virgin Mary. The resultant emotional orientation facilitates Elnor’s surreptitious possession of Alice’s body; thereby to entrance thousands with miraculous cures, and eventually take her revenge.
• Awful Wedded Life: Downplayed with Molly and Len Pagett; the latter’s earnest distaste for religion alienates the two, especially since Alice’s alleged holy Visitation.
• Big Fancy House:
  • A local covent, which shelters Alice and Molly from the public, is a converted large house.
  • Forest-surrounded Stapley Manor, during Mary I’s brutal counter-reformation, was granted to Catholic loyalist Sir John Woolgar, whose son Thomas entered the priesthood.
• Big "NO!": A brutally tragic one from Molly Pagett, when Alice, shot dead by Wilkes, reanimates with the charred features of Sister Elnor.
• Birds of a Feather:
  • Brighton Courier reporter Gerry Fenn and Radio Brighton producer Sue Gates.
  • After the Banfield garage fire, Fenn moves into Nancy’s rented Brighton flat. Both dryly cynical journalists on a mutual case, they share a bed.
• Boring Religious Service: To aid further investigation of Alice’s mysterious recovery, agnostic Fenn asks lapsed Catholic Sue to accompany him to Sunday Mass at St Joseph’s. While he takes an outsider’s interest, he finds himself indifferent to the service.
• Break-Up/Make-Up Scenario: After three weeks apart, Sue returns to Fenn, eager for him to share in Banfield’s newfound spiritual vitality. When he remains unconvinced, they part again. By the end, they’re back together.
• Broken Pedestal: Sister Elnor, beloved by the people of Banfield for her remarkable healing powers, on reveal to have killed three children, suddenly declines in their esteem.
• Burger Fool: A poignant variant. Wilkes, kicked out by his mother, works as a busboy in a Covent Garden restaurant. Aimless and friendless, a coffee spillage sends him to weep in a toilet cubicle.
• Burn the Witch!: While 1550s priest Thomas Woolgar realises Sister Elnor’s supernatural powers to be something other than witchcraft, her murder of three children eventually sees a mob hang her from a young oak and burn her remains.
• Came Back Strong: After her sixteenth century lynching, Sister Elnor’s tremendous Psychic Powers enable her, through Alice, to reassert her psychokinetic influence — this time on a much bigger scale.
• Campbell Country: In the fourteenth century, in a part of Sussex known for its reluctance to convert from paganism to Christianity, several people in flight from The Black Death founded the village of Banfield.
• Candlelit Ritual: Alice’s fourth public appearance in the field of her alleged visitation, held in the evening, hosts a candlelit memorial procession for Monsignor Delgard. Alice then rises once more into the air…
• Cassandra Truth: Having learned from Monsignor Delgard’s translation of Thomas Woolgar’s Latin-written confession, Fenn warns of the true source of Alice’s powers. Bishop Caines dismisses him as a sensation-monger.
• The Cavalry: When Sue realises her eight-year-old son Ben’s mysterious negation of Elnor’s energy drainage, she leads him to the field’s altar, to where Fenn stands entranced by Elnor. Sue puts Fenn’s hand into the boy’s, and the spell is broken.
• Charm Person: Alice wanders out of church, followed by numerous children, to the solitary oak in the field opposite. Of their rapturous fascination, Fenn suspects shared hysteria, or even telepathy.
• Cheerful Child:
  • Alice, at first. She then becomes ominously subdued.
  • Sue’s eight-year-old son Ben.
• Children Are Special: When Alice, shot dead by Wilkes sits up with the charred, eyeless face of Elnor, eight-year-old Ben sees only Alice. Likewise, he, and other children, seem not to have sensed the field opening up to expose animate corpses.
• Church Lady: Molly Pagett helps out at St Joseph’s. Sue, after the miracles’ renewal of her religious faith, frequently visits to help Monsignor Delgard.
• Cleans Up Nicely: Sort of; the priest’s white cassock and green and yellow vestment give Father Hagan, last seen looking anxious in a dressing gown, a calm strength.
• Closet Gay: Father Hagan, as a novice, became infatuated with a senior priest. Assigned elsewhere, he threw himself into work and prayer.
• Come with Me If You Want to Live: Fenn, at Alice’s fourth public appearance in the field of her alleged Visitation, cadges two minutes in the privileged section to urge Sue and Ben to safety.
• Conspicuous Consumption: Supermarket owner Rodney Tucker, with his fancy suits, shoes and chunky jewellery.
• Cowardly Lion: From the almost unbearable heat of a burning car, a “shit-scared” Fenn tries to rescue Len Pagett — while Nancy aids a woman with a window-slashed throat.

  Fenn: So much for Women’s fucking Lib!

• Creepy Cathedral:
  • After Alice’s speech and hearing are restored, St Joseph’s acquires an uncannily voided ambience.
  • By Stapley Manor, in the church of St Peters, Nancy and Fenn seek a fourteenth century chest said to contain historical records. In a fireplace-equipped recess, they find a silent, hooded nun. Who turns out to be a spectral charred corpse.
• Creepy Child: Alice’s impassive serenity, even at her father’s funeral, to Fenn, is a tad disquieting. Though not nearly so much as her staring out of a window at a car that, seconds later, crashes.
• Crowd Panic: When Alice is shot onstage, an earth tremor sends the thousands-strong crowd into a lethal panic.
• Cue the Sun: On Alice’s third public appearance in the shrine’s field, her approach to the altar sees the black clouds suddenly part.
• Culturally Religious: Catholic-raised Sue, while latterly undecided on her observance, recognises Fenn’s description of Father Hagan’s blessing of Alice.
• Da Editor: Courier editor Frank Aitken scorns Fenn’s sensational, unsubstantiated article.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Monsignor Delgard, veteran of several exorcisms, feels the bodily and spiritual wear of his advancing years.
• Death Glare: When Thomas Woolgar leads a vengeful mob to seize Elnor, the malice in her eyes actually causes him to fall to the ground.
• Death of Personality: An uncannily subdued Alice gradually hints graphically carnal dreams; fantastic psychokinesis, and possible malice. This is because she’s channelling the spirit of sixteenth century nun Sister Elnor.
• Devil's Advocate: Bishop Caines, for an agnostic’s objectivity, wants Fenn to report Alice’s alleged miracles.
• Dinner and a Breakup: At Brighton restaurant the French Connection, Sue, dismayed at Fenn’s insincerely sensationalist coverage of the Banfield miracle, walks out.
• Disability Distress: An unnamed man, scarred with facial tuberculosis, briefly despairs at having accidentally scared eight-year-old Ben.
• Disney Villain Death: With the field ripped open in a gaping, fathomless chasm, Paula, enraged on sight of Tucker, plunges them both into the chasm. Subverted with Paula's survival.
• Divine Assistance: With Elnor’s spell over Fenn broken, the oak’s base hosts a brilliant radiance. Fenn, urged to pray by the discarnate voices of Father Hagan Monsignor Delgard, sees a mysterious figure at the light’s core…
• Domestic Abuse: When Tucker refuses Paula a partnership in the supermarket, she flies at him with fists, fingernails, hair-pulling and spit. He, in turn, grabs her throat — but stops before doing any serious damage.
• Earthquakes Cause Fissures: Elnor, having near-totally usurped Alice’s body, rips the field into a gaping, indefinitely deep chasm.
• Eldritch Abomination: Thomas Woolgar’s writings recall Sister Elnor’s mention of forces in the air, perceptible only to some, that, if released, would destroy and recreate the world in their own image.
• Elemental Powers:
  • With Banfield’s garage ferociously ablaze, Alice calmly approaches. The flames shrink and, at a raise of her hands, die.
  • At her fourth public appearance, having been shot dead by Wilkes, Alice’s Elnor-possessed corpse explodes floodlights; invokes a thunderstorm and rouses an earth tremor.
• Emotion Eater: During Alice’s fourth public appearance in the field of her alleged Visitation, an intangible entity, manifest in people’s minds, creeps towards the field. A manifestation of Elnor, it thrives on lowly drives and thoughts.
• Enemy to All Living Things: During Alice’s first healing of others, farmer Riordan’s unborn lambs, as well as several ewes, simultaneously die. There’s strongly implied to be a connection.
• Enfante Terrible: While induced externally, Alice’s slight but definite change in demeanour has Father Hagan genuinely frightened. She’s later strongly implied to psychokinetically cause a road collision with horrendous consequences.
• Evil Counterpart: In the sixteenth century, Sister Elnor, a child-murdering egomaniac with tremendous psychokinetic powers, longs for such power as that of the Virgin Mary.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: Farmer Riordan’s labrador Biddy, with neighbouring dogs, joins a nightly chorus of howling. As we’ll soon see, they’re right to be spooked.
• Evil vs. Evil: Wilkes, with his desire for fame through notoriety, disrupts Elnor’s manifestation by shooting Elnor!Alice dead.
• Extreme Libido: Sister Elnor.
• Eye Scream: Sister Elnor, at the hands of a sixteenth century mob.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: In the sixteenth century, Sister Elnor, “fair and gentle to look upon,” is an insidious, hedonistic egomaniac who rapes and murders several children.
• Facial Horror:
  • Trapped in a burning Capri, Len Pagett presses his face against a window. The melting glass moulds into his flesh - and splits. He soon burns to death.
  • One of the shrine’s thousands of visitors, an unnamed man with facial tuberculosis conceals, with a scarf, his brutally scarred face.
  • In the church of St Peter’s, both Fenn and Nancy meet a hooded, spookily incongruous nun. Nancy gets a look at her face: amidst charred flesh, the eyes are reduced to gristle, with nose and lips burnt off.
• Fainting: Before the solitary oak, Alice, approached by Fenn, faints.
• Familiar: Alice’s supernumerary nipple, just below her heart, reminds Monsignor Delgard of the concept — animals said to do witches’ bidding in exchange for suckling. The convent’s cat, on visit to Alice’s bed, seems to have this in mind.
• Fat Idiot:
  • Averted with supermarket owner Rodney Tucker, a quick-witted businessman.
  • Averted again with shrewd, sober Bishop Caines.
• Fool for Love: While Fenn, in defence against rejection, has learned to numb himself to female tears, Sue is the exception.
• Foreshadowing: When Alice clears dead flowers from the graves, the molehills evoke the dead rising from their graves. Elnor’s psychokinesis later sees precisely such an arrangement.
• Foreign Correspondent: Nancy Shellbeck, of The Washington Post.
• Friend to All Children: Horrifically subverted. In the sixteenth century, Sister Elnor, adored by Banfield’s children, rapes and murders three of them.
• The Gadfly:
  • A molecatcher greets Alice by pretending to eat one of his worms.
  • Fenn, an audacious reporter, has a sense of humour to match. While he enters the convent, five other journalists wait in the February chill.

  Fenn: Morning, hacks.

• Game Face: Onstage, having been shot dead by Wilkes, the charred, eyeless face of a centuries-dead nun intermittently replaces Alice's.
• Gentle Giant: Monsignor Delgard, at well over six feet.
• Ghastly Ghost: Sister Elnor, a sixteenth century nun who raped and murdered three children, appears in the church of St Peter’s as a charred, eyeless, laughing corpse.
• Gold Digger: Paula, Tucker’s supervisor, secretary and easy lay, wants co-ownership of the supermarket.
• Good Shepherd:
  • Father Hagan tries to visit four or five parishioners each day, and helps local organisations. Having known Alice all her life, he nurtured her engagement with other children.
  • Monsignor Delgard, despite his foreboding demeanour, is amicable and caring.
  • Bishop Caines, while somewhat dazzled by his parish’s potential eminence, takes a sober approach to the spectacle.
  • Averted with sixteenth century priest Thomas Woolgar. In thrall to Sister Elnor, he aided her rape and murder of several Banfield children.
• Guilt-Ridden Accomplice: To Elnor’s rape and murder of three children, Thomas Woolgar.
• Gut Feeling:
  • Our story starts with Alice’s strange, sudden urge to approach a centuries-old oak tree.
  • Father Hagan, in the church grounds, feels a terribly ominous sense of spiritual coldness.
• Gutted Like a Fish: Having seized child-killing Sister Elnor, a sixteenth century mob string her from a young oak and disembowel her.
• Hanging Around: A sixteenth century mob, having learned Elnor to have killed three children, hang her from a young oak.
• Hate Plague: At local pub the White Hart, a thrown glass is followed, out on the road, by Tucker and Paula’s uncharacteristic violent outburst.
• Healing Hands:
  • From a second oak-gathered crowd, a small boy with verrucas; a teenage girl with St Vitus’s dance, a man with cataracts and a mute seven-year-old girl all, on approaching Alice, are relieved of their respective infirmities.
  • In the 1550s, Sister Elnor, remarkably knowledgeable of medicine and alchemy, gives ill villagers symbols said to channel planetary energies. She says the wearer’s faith provides the cure.
• Heroic Fire Rescue: Trapped with Nancy in a flame-surrounded garage showroom, Fenn finds a displayed Maxi’s key, and drives them through the display window.
• He Knows Too Much: Monsignor Delgard, from Thomas Woolgar’s sixteenth century Latin-written confession, learns the true nature of Alice’s powers. Shortly afterwards, in the church of St Joseph’s, an exploding statue fatally lacerates him.
• Holy Burns Evil: In the convent’s chapel, a Communion wafer causes Alice — by this point, implicitly infected by some malign external force — to vomit onto Father Hagan’s robes.
• Holy Ground: Opposite St Joseph’s, the field of Alice’s claimed Visitation, while never consecrated, gains such a reputation. From farmer Riordan, Bishop Caines arranges for the Church to buy it.
• Hope Bringer: Alice’s reputed healing power genders a widespread desperate trust in its possibility.
• Humans Are Psychic in the Future: Psychic News ventures Alice, in a time of rapid cultural change, to prematurely manifest dormant powers of the human mind.
• Hypocrite: Despite his scepticism, Fenn’s Courier piece implies the possible genuine holiness of Alice’s mysterious recovery.
• Impartial Purpose-Driven Faction: To check for secular explanations for the mysterious cures, the Church sets up a Medical Bureau.
• Innocent Bystander: A Manchester couple, driving their handicapped daughter down to Sussex for Alice’s fourth public appearance, suffer a car failure. They have no idea how lucky they are.
• In the Hood: In Stapley Park’s Church of St Peter’s, Nancy and Fenn, visiting separately, encounter a hooded nun. While Fenn (wisely) flees, Nancy catches a glimpse of the face beneath the hood. A charred, eyeless, four hundred and twenty-three years’ dead face.
• Intrepid Reporter:
  • For a good story, cynical agnostic Fenn is willing to attend Sunday Mass. And then barge into the church sacristy.
  • Nancy, traumatised by what she saw in the church, still attends Alice’s memorial procession for Monsignor Delgard.
• It Was a Dark and Stormy Night: Or at least an overcast and stormy afternoon, when Fenn, at Stapley Park, visits the church of St Peter. Inside, the raging wind sets his nerves on edge.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: While not so much a “jerk” as irreverent and cynical, Fenn, on sight of a teenage girl with St Vitus’s dance, gladly recalls his article on a Brighton hospital to have so far stayed its closure.
• Just Think of the Potential!: Banfield’s predicted influx of visitors hints, to hotelier George Southworth, a chance to revive small businesses.
• Kill It with Fire: With Alice shot dead, her corpse, possessed by Elnor, is consumed by the lightning-kindled flames of the oak which ended Elnor’s previous stint on this earth.
• Kill the Cutie: Alice is shot dead by Wilkes — not that this stops Elnor…
• Lady Macbeth: In the 1550s, power-hungry Sister Elnor, who aims to poison the Prioress, hopes Thomas Woolger’s influential father will help her usurp the role.
• Lean and Mean: Subverted with Monsignor Delgard; intimidatingly intense yet kindly and amicable.
• Leaving You to Find Myself: On Fenn’s impartial response to undeniable miracles, Sue questions her compatibility with him. They briefly get back together; drift apart again, and ultimately get back together.
• Light Is Good: Freed from Elnor’s entrancement, Fenn, at the oak’s base, sees a strange shimmer brighten to brilliant radiance with a mysterious figure at its centre. Two lightning bolts then strike the dead, possessed tree.
• Likes Older Women: Twenty-nine-year-old Fenn, with thirty-two-year-old Sue and late thirties Nancy.
• Living Statue: In St Joseph’s dimly-lit crypt, another statue of the Virgin Mary, seems to widen its smile. It then falls on Fenn.
• Locked Away in a Monastery: Sir John Woolgar, after son Thomas’s macabre affair with Sister Elnor, has the priest confined to the church of St Peter’s.
• Man on Fire:
  • A car crash’s resultant fire burns to death Len Pagett.
  • Sister Elnor’s oak-hung body is burned.
  • A spectral burning corpse, suddenly hanging from the oak, suddenly takes on Alice’s appearance. Molly Pagett, on reaching for it, fatally catches on fire.
• Meaningful Name: Banfield, founded by survivors of The Black Death, was once called Banefield.
• Mind over Matter:
  • In the storm-lashed Church of St Peter’s, Fenn, in flight from a spookily incongruous nun, feels, from beyond touching distance, a hand grab his ankle.
  • Monsignor Delgard realises Sister Elnor’s Psychic Powers to have harnessed others’ beliefs to heal their own bodily ailments. From beyond the grave, this power has arranged the circumstances of a deaf mute child, whose worship of the name of Mary enables Elnor to manifest her will, which, through Alice, can now heal en masse; crash cars at a distance, douse flames with a look, and open the ground to release the living dead.
• Mind Rape: Onstage in the field, the Elnor-possessed Alice, with a look, forcibly rouses each onlooker’s sense of their own guilt and base drives.
• Monumental Damage: After Monsignor Delgard learns of Elnor’s possession of Alice, St Joseph’s statue of the Virgin Mary explodes, riddling his body with lethal shards.
• My Car Hates Me: An Express journalist, driving Len Pagett to a hotel to sign a private contract, is suddenly unable to control his steering wheel. Meanwhile, from a convent window, Alice watches intently…
• Naughty Nun: Sister Elnor, a murderous hedonist.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Learning Sister Elnor to have killed three children, a sixteenth century mob seize her, stab her eyes with sticks; relentlessly beat her, break her bones and pull out her hair.
• Not Too Dead to Save the Day: When Alice-possessed Elnor rouses an earth tremor and drains people’s energy, Fenn, in his head, hears Father Hagan and Monsignor Delgard’s discarnate voices urge him to resist Elnor’s will, dependent as it is on others’ life force.
• Nuns Are Spooky: At Stapley Park, in the storm lashed church of St Peter’s, Fenn finds a solitary hooded nun, who, from beyond touching distance, grabs his ankle. Nancy, visiting separately, gets a look beneath the hood, and sees the laughing face of a charred, eyeless corpse.
• Nun Too Holy: Sixteenth century Sister Elnor rapes and murders three children. Having been lynched, her remarkable psychokinesis posthumously arranges circumstance for a child, born centuries later, to host Elnor’s restless spirit.
• Occult Detective: Monsignor Delgard, for the Catholic Church, investigates supernatural phenomena. He’s performed several exorcisms.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When Fenn barges into the sacristy, Father Hagan’s sharpness surprises the altar servers.
• Pilgrimage: From across the country, thousands visit the field of Alice’s healing and alleged Visitation.
• Placebo Effect: An inversion, with a traumatic case of mumps believed to have psychosomatically caused Alice’s deaf muteness.
• Power Glows: When Alice floats into the air, she gives the impression of a white, gold-flecked aura.
• Power Floats: Having drawn a second crowd towards the oak, Alice is seen to float above the tallest blade of grass.
• The Power of Hate: Whereas religious faith enhances Sister Elnor’s Psychic Powers, living people’s inner malice helps her discarnate person regain form.
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • Monsignor Delgard, despite his daunting appearance, is approachable and amicable.
  • Downplayed with Bishop Caines, objective in his reception of the alleged miracles, yet, in the aftermath of Monsignor Delgard’s death, dismissive of Fenn’s diabolical warnings.
• Religious Horror: Sister Elnor, a sixteenth century nun and murderous hedonist, feeds, with the psychokinetic power of others’ faith, her own Psychic Powers.
• Rise from Your Grave: With the field ripped into a gaping, fathomless chasm, the cleft earth holds stirring corpses.
• Safety in Indifference: Monsignor Delgard deems Fenn’s cynical objectivity an advantage over whatever evil targets St Joseph’s — this way, it can’t prey on his fear. The Monsignor therefore asks Fenn to investigate the history of Banfield.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here!: When Elnor-possessed Alice is shot dead, gets back up and invokes an earth tremor to open the ground, many of the crowd take this view.
• Shared Mass Hallucination: After the “shrine” incident, an electrical storm is theorised to have caused the emotionally charged crowd to hallucinate.
• Shout-Out:
  • Seeing Alice running through the night puts Fenn nervously in mind of Daphne du Maurier’s famous serial killer.
  • Alice plays handheld computer game Galaxy Invaders.
  • Fenn, to Superman and Popeye, irreverently compares the transformative effect of Father Hagan’s cassock and vestment.
  • Fenn’s article likens Alice to Bernadette Soubirous, whose claimed visions of the Blessed Virgin drew millions to a shrine near the small town of Lourdes — five thousand of whom were reported to have been mysteriously cured. ^note 
  • George Southworth notes the reputed miracles of Walsingham and Aylesford. Of the Banfield incident...

  Southworth: I think at the time you said the story would probably die out.

  • Amidst the shrine field’s rows of benches, Ben reenacts Raiders of the Lost Ark.
  • In St Joseph’s crypt, Fenn recalls fifties horror series Inner Sanctum.
  • In St Peter’s Church, Fenn’s flight from a spookily incongruous nun rouses terror-crazed memories of the Frankenstein monster, the Fi-Fi-Fo-Fum giant, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Monkey's Paw and Norman Bates.
• Sinister Suffocation: Dining with Fenn, George Southworth, Bishop Caines and Monsignor Delgard, Father Hagan’s Entrecote steak seems to enlarge in his mouth. While the Monsignor tries to force in Father Hagan’s heart pills, Fenn distinctly sees the throat-lodged meat.
• Slasher Smile: Onstage, having been shot dead by Wilkes, Alice’s Elnor-possessed body sits up and looks around with a malevolent grin.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here!: When an earth tremor hits the field, many take a dangerously hasty such approach.
• The Speechless: Eleven-year-old Alice has been deaf and mute from the age of four.
• Stern Nun: Averted with Mother Marie-Claire, despite her severe appearance. One of her sisters smiles at Fenn’s impish humour.
• Stunned Silence: Before a crowd of thousands, Alice’s fatal shooting by Wilkes briefly stuns the crowd into silence.
• Supernatural Light: A blinding white light from the base of the oak heralds the miraculous restoration of Alice’s hearing and speech. To specialists, Alice describes “the lady in white” to glow and sparkle “like the sun does on a hazy day.”
• Surprise Car Crash: An Express pressman, driving Len Pagett to sign a private contract, unaccountably loses control of his Capri. A nearby bus crashes into a garage forecourt — shattering an emptying tanker’s fuel tube. Oh, dear.
• The Stool Pigeon: Thomas Woolgar, despite complicity in Sister Elnor’s crimes, dobs her in.
• Struggling Single Mother: Averted with Sue, who refuses her ex-husband’s maintenance, and whose eight-year-old son Ben lives with his grandparents.
• Tears of Joy: Some people cured by Alice weep with joy.
• Tears of Fear: Having fled the church of St Peter, Fenn, in a nearby barn, finds Nancy, unable to speak and sobbing with fear.
• Telepathy: While the Elnor-possessed Alice drains the energy of all around her, Fenn, able to hear the discarnate voices of Father Hagan and Monsignor Delgard, also hears, in his mind, Bishop Caines’s barely audible prayers.
• There Is a God!: An unnamed elderly homeless man longs to see, in the Banfield miracles, divine proof of good’s transcendence of this old world.
• Throwing Off the Disability: Alice’s third public appearance at the shrine’s field, this time attended by thousands, sees many suddenly rise from stretchers and wheelchairs.
• Torn Apart by the Mob: Wilkes, having shot dead Alice.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behaviour: At the convent, Alice obsessively draws two figures equipped with sexual organs. In her sleep, with an accent commonplace around the sixteenth century, she comes out with stuff like:

  Alice: {asleep} O, do not deny me, my sweet… let thy passion fill me… mad, exceeding mad…

• Turn to Religion: Alice’s miraculous healing and visions rouse in many, including Sue, a euphoric renewal of religious faith.
• Uncanny Valley: Initially only very slightly. In St Joseph’s, a statue of the Virgin Mary leaves Fenn unmoved by its skilfully carved affectation of tenderness. Later on, when the statue is lined with numerous unaccountable cracks, the distortion, to Fenn, evokes “an obscene leer.”
• Unholy Ground:
  • Father Hagan and Monsignor Delgard sense the church of St Joseph’s sudden spiritual drainage. Prompted to close his eyes inside the place, the eerie lack of atmosphere has Fenn shout in alarm.
  • Molly Pagett fears Alice’s outdoor conception to have prematurely defiled the field of her healing and alleged Visitation. While Monsignor Delgard assures that even now the field has not been consecrated, it gives him pause for thought.
• Unusual Hiring Practices: Fenn, first witness to Alice’s miraculous healing, is asked by George Southworth to write its definitive newspaper article; (he refuses) by Nancy Shelbeck to help her write one, (he refuses) and by Monsignor Delgard, for his cynical objectivity, to investigate Banfield’s history (he accepts).
• The Vamp: In the sixteenth century, Thomas Woolgar, in thrall to insidious Elnor, believes her to have some mystic influence over his will.
• Vampiric Draining:
  • Father Hagan, attuned to his church’s spiritual drainage, swiftly declines in vitality.
  • When Alice’s power starts to manifest, many onlookers find themselves drained of energy. When a Alice, shot dead by Wilkes, gets back up and takes on Elnor’s facial features, those around her near a state of collapse.
• Vengeful Ghost: Child-murdering Sister Elnor, lynched in the sixteenth century, psychokinetically arranges circumstance to resume earthly form. With earthly vessel Alice shot dead, Elnor rips open the ground to swallow her slayers’ successors.
• Villain with Good Publicity: In the 1550s, Sister Elnor, beloved for her remarkable healing abilities, is a murderously hedonistic egomaniac.
• Waif Prophet: Small, eleven-year-old Alice, from a “lady in white” who claims to be “the Immaculate Conception,” announces an imminent message.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: In her sleep, Alice adopts an accent a bit like Cornish. Monsignor Delgard recognises it from a Shakespeare production staged with the accent spoken with at the time of the play’s writing.
• We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: When Alice, before a crowd of thousands, once more rises into the air, television cameras suffer a simultaneous power failure.
• When Trees Attack: Sort of — a centuries-old solitary oak hosts the spirit of a child-murdering nun with fantastic Psychic Powers. When this spirit gets hold of Alice, things get very bad indeed.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: When Fenn notes Father Hagan’s subdued wear, Sue, convinced of the cures’ holiness, insists the priest is in a state of shocked awe.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • In the sixteenth century, Sister Elnor rapes and murders three children.
  • Wilkes shoots dead Alice.
• You Look Like You've Seen a Ghost:
  • In St Joseph’s crypt, Fenn, convinced a statue lunged at him, is staggered with fright.
  • At the storm lashed Church of St Peter’s, Fenn, having fled a hooden nun who seems able to grab and claw from remote distances, in a barn, finds Nancy — who, having had a look at the nun’s face, is literally speechless with terror.
• Your Mind Makes It Real: After the shrine incident, many children seem not to remember the field splitting into a zombie-filled chasm which so terrified their elders. Whereas the psychokinetic power of faith responds to Elnor’s healing powers, childhood innocence seems to negate her less benevolent whims.