A work of Valle-Inclán, the story takes place in Galicia in the early twentieth century. To escape poverty, the wife of a sacristan uses a hydrocephalic child as a sideshow attraction. This causes a confrontation with her sister-in-law.
A group of parishioners die poisoned upon receiving communion, during the investigation of the event the priests of the parish begin to have visions. Everything rushes when the dead are resurrected in the autopsy room, these strange events seem to be related to an old book enacting a new religion.
