Punish the Sinners

The town felt evil—Peter Balsam knew that the second he arrived in the desert outside Neilsville, but he was too desperate to turn away. He hadn’t cut it as a priest or a husband, so his only hope was a teaching job with his old friend Peter Vernon, who was now monsignor of St. Francis Xavier’s high school. However, Vernon had since become a religious fanatic, calling Balsam’s psychological research “heresy” and denouncing the girls of his own high school as evil...but then those girls start dying, committing suicide after suicide in a wave of inexplicable atrocity. As the zealous townsfolk pin the blame on Balsam’s psychology classes, he realizes his suspicions about the town were right but missed the mark: the townsfolk are more than just zealous, Vernon is more than just a fanatic, and a bloody cabal of priests is using the chaos to enact a ritual unseen since medieval Italy at the height of the Inquisition.