For more than three hundred years the old gibbet has stood at the crossroads, its stark outline silhouetted against the sky.
To the villagers of Shillingham it is a local landmark, a reminder of the sterner justice of a bygone age - nothing more.
So why does Michael Lambton feel a sudden shiver of apprehension as he gazes across the harsh Northumbrian landscape in the dusk, and why are the children Karen and Graham drawn repeatedly to play around the gibbet, as if called by a silent voice? Why does Frank Warwick place fortnightly offerings of food and fuel at the crossroads, and why, when a new plan for a motorway means the removal of the gibbet from its site, does he become almost insane with fear and desperation in his frantic efforts to stop the development?
A dark and terrible evil slumbers beneath the gibbet. Slowly it is awakening, and in its mind burns revenge against mankind. Michael Lambton, in his lonely isolation at Split Crow Farm, has sensed its presence, but only Frank Warwick knows the true nature of the horror that could engulf, not only Shillingham, but the very fabric of existence, and he is powerless to halt the advance of the bulldozers. Soon, soon, it will be too late. At all costs, he must pass on to his daughter Christy the dreadful knowledge that has haunted the Warwicks for three hundred years. With Michael Lambton to help her, she may be able to challenge an evil that seems impervious to attack.
Stephen Laws is possessed of a rare talent which has already attracted millions of readers to his previous books, Ghost Train and Spectre, both masterly explorations of supernatural horror. In The Wyrm he probes the fragile core of our emotional armour, bringing us face to face with our deepest fears.
