The Hollow Saint

In seventeenth-century England, work on an ancient village church uncovers a concealed tomb. Inside lies the remarkably preserved body of a medieval clergyman, his coffin covered with deep scratches on the inside. The discovery should belong to the distant past. The response to it begins before anyone has had time to understand what they have found.

The moment his body is removed, church bells ring across the surrounding villages. Even abandoned churches sound their bells, including those without functioning ropes. Frightened villagers gather at the church, demanding to know why the man has been released. Yet none can explain how they knew he existed. Their fear appears to have survived a memory they can no longer account for.

Almost three centuries earlier, during the Black Death, the clergyman possessed an extraordinary gift. Through confession, he could take the sins of others upon himself, offering absolution to people terrified of dying with their souls burdened by guilt. But the accumulated sins gradually transformed him into something monstrous, until those who once revered him were forced to bury him alive.

Now the Hollow Saint has returned, moving through the countryside and bestowing his terrible blessings upon the living. Those who receive them suffer unbearable physical torment for crimes committed by strangers centuries before they were born. What was once offered as mercy has become a punishment passed across generations to people who never made the confessions that created it.

As the horror spreads, a local clergyman investigates the forgotten history of the tomb and searches for a way to stop the creature. The deeper he looks into the past, the more clearly he understands why the Hollow Saint was buried rather than destroyed. The people who sealed that coffin had reasons—and releasing what they contained may prove far easier than finding a way to end it.