EXCERPT A certain Christina, born in 1150 in the village of Brustem in Flanders to a humble shepherd couple, dies in her early twenties—possibly from an epileptic fit. During the funeral rites, however, Christina’s body opens its eyes and rises up to the beams supporting the church roof. After convincing her, not without difficulty, to leave her refuge, the family and the priests present at the ceremony listen in terror to the story of Christina’s journey from the abysses of Hell through the circumvolutions of Purgatory to Paradise, meeting God face to face and receiving from Him the ability to return to Earth, temporarily sacrificing eternal life so as to atone for the sins of the souls in Purgatory. Soon, the joy of Christina’s ‘return’ transforms into a serpentine wave of terror. What if she is just a rotting body infested with demons? Or what if, even worse, she is one of the living dead? Christina’s behaviour changes from day to day, becoming more and more ambiguously inhuman.…