Gerry Fenn and Einor·Elnor's confrontation

Gerry Fenn and Einor/Elnor's confrontation is a contest of power and resistance at the shrine, where Fenn faces the force that has taken hold of Alice Pagett. Einor/Elnor attempts to make him both witness to her vengeance and part of it; Fenn is initially unable to act, but his prayer accompanies a reversal in which the oak turns against the creature and Sue and Ben pull him to safety. The encounter makes their opposition more than a clash of wills: Einor/Elnor’s power depends on the living, while Fenn’s effort to resist becomes part of the conditions under which that power is challenged.

The basis of the conflict

Before the confrontation becomes immediate, Fenn recognizes that Einor/Elnor’s strength is not self-sustaining. He understands it as an accumulative force drawn from the evil of those around her, a negative power set against the positive. The explanation makes the people gathered at the shrine more than witnesses: their presence is part of the energy available to her. At the same time, Fenn recalls the voices from his dreams insisting that resistance is possible because EITHER-NOR can exist only through the living and cannot govern those who oppose her.

That understanding does not give Fenn easy control over himself. He moans and tries to resist, but the effort overwhelms him. His inability to look away or leave echoes his earlier response at the church in Barham, where he fled his nightmares rather than confront them. At the shrine, escape from the confrontation is no longer available to him, yet being forced to remain does not mean he can immediately act. The relationship is defined first by this imbalance: Einor/Elnor commands the scene, while Fenn can grasp the need for resistance before he can carry it out.

Einor/Elnor’s attempt to claim Fenn

Einor/Elnor’s hold on Fenn works through both attention and fear. He finds himself absorbed by her appearance and loses his balance of mind; when she speaks, he barely understands her words. Her stated demand is that he witness her vengeance and be part of it. This turns him from a spectator into a proposed participant, making the confrontation a struggle over whether he will accept the role she assigns him.

The figure before Fenn then changes from an apparently beautiful, composed woman into a visibly corrupted and threatening form. The change is not merely a new appearance: it makes the scene’s seductive stillness give way to open menace. Fenn tries to push himself away, but Einor/Elnor’s laughter fills his mind, and the platform begins to move beneath him. The widening fissure in the field and the creature’s approach leave him unable to move freely. Her control is thus enacted through several linked pressures—fascination, fear, and physical confinement—rather than through a conversation between equals.

Fenn’s resistance and the turning point

Fenn’s response begins as an effort to recover agency. As Einor/Elnor comes closer, he tells himself that he must get away and prays for help. The memory of the two priests’ voices returns with the same instruction: pray. The narrative leaves open whether these voices are truly those of the dead priests or whether Fenn may be deceiving himself, but their presence connects the present crisis with the earlier dreams that had already framed resistance as possible.

The turning point comes when Einor/Elnor stops advancing and turns her attention toward the oak. A glow appears at its base and grows brighter; Fenn closes his eyes and prays. Lightning strikes the tree, and the figure retreats toward it, screaming and cursing as its branches ignite. The oak’s burning is presented as a force that Einor/Elnor cannot master. Fenn’s prayer does not, by itself, explain or control what follows, but it marks a change in his position: he is no longer only caught in the creature’s power, and the scene shifts toward a force acting against her.

Rescue and the outcome of the confrontation

As the oak begins to fall, Sue and Ben take hold of Fenn’s shoulders and pull him away from the platform. Their intervention completes his escape from the immediate reach of Einor/Elnor: he does not free himself alone, but moves with their help. From a distance, he sees the figure beneath the descending tree. The narrative presents the burning oak as overwhelming her and destroying the shrine’s central structure; Fenn believes he hears her cry as the tree falls. The account therefore gives the confrontation a decisive outcome without making Fenn the sole agent of it.

The scene ends not with Fenn pursuing or confronting the entity on his own terms, but with him reunited with Sue and Ben as the platform burns and the tremors cease. His opposition has consisted of recognizing the source and limits of Einor/Elnor’s power, attempting to resist her hold, and praying when the priests’ voices return. The rescue and the oak’s intervention complete what his will alone could not. Their confrontation consequently links personal resistance to collective dependence: Einor/Elnor draws force from the living, while Fenn survives through prayer, the counterforce at the tree, and the help of those who pull him away.