Italy 1252. Inquisition. Accusation. Fear.Torture. The guilty and the innocent dying for sins realand imagined in the flames of the burning stake.Neilsville, 1978. Peter Blasam has come to thissleepy desert town to teach its youth, and finds amystery of mounting horror. Something is happeningto the young girls of St. Francis Xavier HighSchool -- something evil. In bloodlet and terror asuicide contagion has swept the two... while a darkorder of its holy men enacts a secret medievalritual. Is hysteria manipulating these innocent childreninto violent self-destruction? Or has supernaturalforce, a thirteenth-century madness, returnedto... Punish The Sinners.From the Paperback edition.