The Church On Ridge: A Tale of Gothic Dread

Vermont, All Hallows' Eve, 1854. Father Seamus Malloy, an exiled Irish Catholic priest serving a hostile Yankee frontier town, is dragged from his rectory when a terrified boy reports that his father and brother have vanished into the abandoned, unnamed church atop Blackwood Ridge - a granite ruin locals refuse to speak of. Battling both the era's virulent anti-Catholic prejudice and something far older than his faith accounts for, Seamus climbs to the ridge and enters a structure whose geometry defies God and reason alike. Inside, he confronts an ancient, pre-Christian entity that has fed on the town's blood offerings for generations, and must find a way to save the very men who despise him most - armed with nothing but iron, wit, and holy water cut with whiskey. A tightly-paced Gothic horror novella blending cosmic dread, 19th-century immigrant tension, and one very sardonic priest.