No man could have made such prints, even if a man were walking barefoot in the dead of night across an inhospitable mountain slope. When Ellen MacDonald arrives for a surprise visit to her uncle’s remote lodge on the lower slopes of the snow-swept Cairngorms, Doctor MacDonald is on a most unusual case. At the time-hallowed monastery of St Bechan, a brother has fallen dangerously ill with a mysterious sickness. The doctor’s diagnosis suggests a baffling fever, but to the monks of St Bechan, steeped in the dark myths of the Black Peak, it is a case of possession. Sudden, savage deaths follow – animals, and then men. In the shadow of the jagged peaks towering against the grey skies of Scotland an immemorial legend has come to light – a legend reaching across hundreds of years and thousands of miles. In the chill mountains a low, fretful wail rises and falls with the driving wind – the cry of the SNOWBEAST!