THE 16TH CENTURY
An hysterical mob burns Agnes Nutter, prophetess, at the stake for publishing a book. That book is The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch and it is the world’s only completely accurate book of predictions. It foretells warnings of many obscure events to come - Windows 8 and Betamax among them - right up until Armageddon in a few hundred years time.
ABOUT ELEVEN YEARS AGO
A demon named Crowley and an angel named Aziraphale have struck up a rather unusual and happy friendship over the last several millennia. After centuries of influencing the human race in matters of good and evil, they now find the human race quite capable of being both virtuous and barbaric without their intervention, giving the two supernatural beings more time to enjoy the spoils - and extensive wine lists - of Earth.
But before they can drink to that, Crowley finds himself reassigned. According to the jealous Dukes of Hell, Hastur and Ligur, Crowley is to watch over the Antichrist, as he is raised by unsuspecting human parents, to ensure his powers comes into full force a decade hence when he is destined to bring about Armageddon.
Crowley puts the hell-baby in the care of a group of secretly Satanic nuns, who perform a switch with the newborn son of the American Attache. Crowley and Aziraphale lament the boring, monotonous eternity their of lives in Hell and Heaven after the Great War is over. Together they conspire to supervise the child’s upbringing as a duo - each providing an equal amount of influence so that when the time comes the Antichrist will be too confused to start anything.
THE PRESENT DAY
A descendent of Agnes Nutter, Anathema Device, is in possession of the last remaining book of prophecies. She knows she will be present for Armageddon, and has felt the weight of this knowledge since she was a girl. Her obsession with deciphering the obtuse musings of her great great great great great grandma has consumed her life - but she knows she has a role to play (and her soulmate to find) in the final hours of Earth.
Simultaneously, timid Newton Pulsifer applies for a position with the Witchfinder Army, lead by the irascible and possibly deranged Sergeant Shadwell, who keeps an office let to him by fraudulent psychic and painted jezebel Madame Tracy. Strange phenomena are occurring and this trio are about to find themselves at the centre of it.
Meanwhile, after eleven years of babysitting Crowley and Aziraphale come to a terrible realisation: something went wrong in the switch and the real Antichrist has been misplaced.
In the county town of Tadfield, Adam Young is starting to have a strange effect on the world around him as he plays with his gang of friends. On his eleventh birthday a mysterious dog turns up to protect him, and he gets the sense that four new friends named The Horsemen will soon be joining him for a very special and explosive game.
All four stories begin to merge together and the race is on to get to the end of the world before the world ends…