A woman gives birth to a child whose evilness threatens all mankind Mary Kate is an ordinary woman: a waitress in a diner, stuck in a loveless marriage to an English-major-turned-cabbie. But whoever assaults her in a New York City alley is far from ordinary. As the man’s icy grip burns her skin, she couldn’t grasp the dark fate that awaits her. The rape leaves her carrying a child, who she and her husband name Jeffrey. As they try to live as a family, a mysterious force poisons them against each other. Finally overcome with hate for her husband, Mary Kate kills him, sending herself to jail and the child to an orphanage. There the boy takes a new name, Baal, and develops sinister powers that flourish as he approaches adulthood. When Baal becomes a man, the whole world will tremble before him.