After a harrowing mission in Africa left her emotionally fragile, Gwen Mayfield returns to England and takes a teaching post in the remote village of Heddaby. There, she is hired by the wealthy and seemingly devout Reverend Alan Bax, who runs a small school in a place where the village’s one church lies in ruins. Gwen quickly discovers that Bax isn’t a true minister, wearing a clerical collar more for reassurance than conviction, and she soon forms a wary friendship with Bax’s sister, Stephanie Bax, an esteemed journalist who sees the world beyond the village in a different light.
In Heddaby, a romance takes root between two of Gwen’s pupils: Ronnie Dowsett and Linda Rigg. The grownups in the village react with stern disapproval, and Gwen senses a murky tension behind the pair’s bond. Linda lives with her formidable grandmother, Granny Rigg(/actor/gwen-ffrangcon-davies), whose reputation as a witch's kinling fuels rumors and fear. Ronnie, a gifted student, is even encouraged toward a prep school, but his father remains wary, while Gwen volunteers to tutor him.
Tensions escalate when Ronnie gifts Linda a male doll as a companion for her female one, symbolically pairing the two children. The following day, Ronnie slips into a coma, and Gwen discovers the male doll has pins driven into it and its head is missing. She brings this odd clue to Stephanie through her journalist ally, and the two women begin to suspect that witchcraft or dark rituals might be at play. Impressed by Gwen’s knowledge of magical practices from Africa, Stephanie Bax invites her to co-author a piece about the persistence of witchcraft in a modern English village.
Ronnie’s mother grows increasingly upset and seeks a deal with Granny Rigg in a bid to influence the boy’s fate. The next day Ronnie awakens from his coma and is whisked away to relatives in Wales, while his father confronts Granny Rigg and is later found drowned in a nearby pond. Gwen starts to think that the village’s belief in witches could be more than superstition, and she fears a plot designed to keep Ronnie apart from Linda—perhaps to sacrifice the girl as part of a ritual.
She agrees to testify at the inquest into Ronnie’s father’s death, but an injury caused by Stephanie’s dogs sends her to the Bax household, where a local doctor tends to her and a dark presence seems to stalk the rooms. During the night, she is haunted by a sudden vision of an African totem, triggering another nervous breakdown. Months pass, and Gwen recovers in a nursing home with no clear memory of Africa’s pull, until a young girl’s doll jolts those memories back. She escapes the facility and returns to Heddaby, where she is welcomed back into the Bax household. A whispered warning in the village hints that Linda has been taken by witches, not merely away on holiday.
One fateful night, Gwen spots a coven moving toward the ruined church and follows them to a chilling revelation. Stephanie Bax leads a group of witches who have learned a life-extending ritual that demands the sacrifice of a pure maiden, scheduled for the next night on a sacred site kept “spiritually clean.” Linda lies in a trance, unable to help herself, while Stephanie raises the ceremonial knife. In a moment of defiance, Gwen cuts herself and smears her blood on Stephanie’s robe, a gesture that defiles the robe and disrupts the ritual. Overcome by convulsions, Stephanie collapses and dies, the ward now free of her malevolent influence.
In the weeks that follow, Heddaby settles back into its ordinary rhythms, and Gwen chooses to remain, continuing to teach at Bax’s school and to occupy a quiet, restored place in the village. Her return marks a tense but hopeful resolution: the community heals, and Gwen, having faced the depth of fear and superstition, finds a renewed purpose among the people she once feared to trust.
