Church of Martyrs — Peter Fusco

The statues in the derelict Church of Martyrs were hard to ignore even before they moved. The sculptor had portrayed them in the throes of their gruesome martyrdoms; wrathful jeweled eyes had stalked nervous parishioners from the day the church opened in 1902. Though the church is closed and abandoned, the statues within are not through scaring people. They have fumed in silence for many years, biding their time, waiting for an opportunity to redirect the Catholic Church back to the ideals for which they died such hideous deaths. They require a little assistance, notably from a cynical and reluctant ex-priest, a reformed assassin, an abused woman, a blustery Cleveland cop, a Gypsy priest from the rainforest and, of course, the newly-elected Pope Celestine the Sixth. The statues make a bloody debut into the human world; the mayhem they create in the middle of the night in the darkened ruins of the Church of Martyrs launches the collected cast on a risky undertaking none of them want but can't avoid.