“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”

—Hebrews 11:1

Chapter One

Jacob Miller wiped the sweat from his forehead and placed another piece of wood on the chopping block. He brought the ax down in one swift motion and split the log in two. He enjoyed doing chores that demanded a lot of physical activity. The Bible says, do all things without grumbling or questioning. He knew just about every passage in the Holy Text, having been raised in a devout family in the secluded religious community of New Hope. But Jacob wasn’t a religious person anymore. He had his reasons for appreciating hard manual labor, motives he would not dare admit to anyone for fear of persecution. The truth was, he liked the feeling of exercising his muscles—he found comfort in the pain after a good day’s work, and was pleased to see the gradual improvement in his appearance. Some of the girls in town also appreciated his toned, well-chiseled body. They would never admit to that, either, as everybody in New Hope was raised to believe that vanity was a deadly sin. Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain. After Jacob’s grandfather had caught him doing exercises during first dusk, he was more careful not to be seen. He already had enough people talking about him and his lack of faith, especially his interactions with Sarah Fisher. Many of the elders were growing concerned about how his activities would eventually spell doom for the town. 

Everyone in New Hope knew the stories, but only a handful were old enough to even say they had witnessed the atrocities firsthand. Jacob’s grandfather, Isaac, was one of the few survivors, or so he claimed. The elders all told of how New Hope’s sins were piled up, all known to the devil, and that eventually, the lord of the underworld would send his demons to kill, torture, and drag just about every living soul in town back to hell. They even described in explicit detail the horrific fiends they had seen. Phantoms that floated through the air with murderous weapons of death encircling them, beasts with no eyes and no ears that could smell a rotten soul and who ate human flesh, children in cloaks marked by the devil carrying away souls that would forever be lost in hell...

Jacob didn’t believe any of the stories repeated by his grandfather and the elders. For one, nobody had ever seen a demon in recent memory. For another, most of the elders were drunks who claimed that drinking was the only thing that could calm their nerves and dull the images of their friends and family being brutally murdered in front of their eyes. Some people said that it was their sin of making fermented beverages that brought about their downfall in the first place. Jacob didn’t even believe that much—seeing what the intoxicating cocktails were doing to his grandfather only led Jacob to believe that half the town had probably died from alcohol poisoning and that the monsters were all wild hallucinations. 

Jacob stopped his physical labor and looked at the large pile of logs that were too big to fit into the wood stove. He wiped more perspiration out of his eyes and squinted up at the sun, which was quickly setting as clouds flew by. It would be first dusk soon, and too dark to finish chopping the wood. He’d have to wait until after lunch and second dawn to finish off the pile. Splitting wood was his favorite chore because it made his abdominal muscles very pleasing to the eyes. Well, only to the one set of eyes he cared about, anyways.

His thoughts turned to Sarah Fisher, as they so often did. He recalled the feel of her hand moving down his chest and across his abdomen as they hugged goodbye, and the feel of her skin as his hand swept down past her hips and grazed her backside. Sarah was by far the most beautiful girl in town, but she was to be married to Abraham Yoder, the well-off son of a very religious and prominent family.

He grabbed another section of wood and slammed it onto the chopping block. In a fit of rage, he smashed the log in half, feeling the force of the blow reverberate up his arms. As if Abraham weren’t bad enough, Jacob was also arranged by his family to marry Beth Troyer, a sweet-enough girl and not unattractive, but he could never love her the way he loved Sarah. Nobody cared at all about their feelings, justifying their selfish ends as God’s will. 

Jacob looked down and saw that his ax was stuck in the chopping block after the last log he’d tried to split. His entire body began to shake as he imagined the ax protruding from Abraham Yoder’s head— Abraham’s death stare glared accusingly back at Jacob while blood poured copiously from the ax wound. This caused Jacob to scream internally and snapped him out of his temporary vengeful or vindictive fury. His rage was instantly replaced by fear. How could he think such a thing? He had been raised to be a pacifist, to not even raise a fist in anger. Maybe they were right. Maybe he was an evil person. The proof was all right there in front of him—the fact that he had no faith, the way he lusted after Sarah, his hatred for Abraham, and now these thoughts of violence. 

It was almost dark now, the last light before first dusk barely visible above the horizon. A familiar fear burrowed deep inside Jacob—not fear of the dark nor fear of God’s judgment, but the fear he always felt when he thought he was being watched, or that someone was looking into his mind. He knew a lot of people felt the same way, but they all assumed it was the guilt of sins and God’s guiding hands. 

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you.

Jacob stared at the darkening sky and felt a deep sadness. He knew he would always feel this heartbreaking sorrow unless he could find some way to be with Sarah.

“Jacob!”

He turned and found his mother standing on the porch.

“Jacob, it’s getting dark and your lunch is ready! You can finish with the wood when there’s light outside again.”

He looked back at the sky for one brief moment, considered the woodpile, then started to make his way back to the house. His mother gave him a brief smile when he was halfway there, then stepped inside before he reached the front door.

Jacob’s mother and grandfather waited for him at the dinner table. As usual, his grandfather looked at him with disappointment and his mother seemed worried about him. He quickly rinsed off in the main-floor bathroom and took his place at the table. They all joined hands, bowed their heads, and then his grandfather began to pray.

“Bless us, O Lord, and these, thy gifts, which we are about to receive from thy bounty. Through Christ, Our Lord. Amen.”

“Amen,” they all repeated. 

Jacob and his mother ate in silence for a while, but his grandfather just sat there and stared at him until he finally spoke. “So, I heard you were out to see Sarah Fisher yesterday.”

“Yes, grandfather,” Jacob answered.

His grandfather gave him a stern look and took a long drink from his cup. Jacob could smell the alcohol from across the table. The stench made him want to be sick. He couldn’t understand how anyone could drink that poison.

“Jacob, we don’t approve of you spending any time with Sarah Fisher,” the old man continued. “You know she is to be married to Abraham Yoder and you’re to be married to Beth Troyer. You and Sarah’s flirtations are obvious to everyone in town. It’s an abomination and a disgrace!”

The defiant youth looked up at his grandfather. “I’m not married yet, and I can choose my friends.”

Jacob’s grandfather looked at him in shock for several moments. He trembled slightly with anger, then drained the rest of his cup in one long gulp, got up awkwardly from the table, and staggered towards the front door. Jacob could tell that he had probably been drinking most of the day, as he’d never even touched the food on his plate. His grandfather rarely ate when he was drinking, and he drank most of the time. Sometimes Jacob felt bad for his grandfather. Isaac Miller had never been a healthy or happy man, but since the deaths of Jacob’s brother and father, he’d gotten a lot worse.

The old man was about to leave but suddenly whipped around. “You can choose your own friends, indeed, but you should be careful about the choices you make.” He turned slowly and walked out.

Jacob wasn’t sure what his grandfather meant by that last comment. Was he referring to what would happen if he continued to see Sarah? Or was he regretting some of the choices that he had made? It was his grandfather’s decision that had killed Samuel, after all. Jacob finally decided that he was probably referring to both.

The young man turned to look at his mother. Her head was bowed in aversion, the way she always did whenever his grandfather scolded him. Ever since the recent deaths in the family, she’d pretty much given up on life, going through the daily motions with no real will to live. Jacob was sure that he was the only reason she even stayed alive. Well, that and the belief that to take her own life would be a mortal sin. It was a shame. Rebecca Miller was still a very attractive woman. He knew that several men in New Hope were interested in her and would try to invite her to social gatherings in hopes she would someday decide to remarry. But she would always find some excuse to avoid them, and it was obvious that she had no intention of ever finding any kind of happiness again. 

Jacob quickly finished the rest of his meal and asked if he could be excused. Rebecca nodded without looking up, and he got up and walked upstairs to his bedroom. As he passed by Samuel’s room, the door always closed, Jacob felt a pang of sadness for his lost brother. Nobody had gone in there and nothing had changed since the day he’d died. 

Jacob had come close to losing his faith that day. Samuel wouldn’t have lost his faith for anything. He wanted to be the next town pastor, but he was struck down by illness and spent his final days unconscious in his bed. Doctor Bender had begged and pleaded with Jacob’s grandfather and his father, Amos, to be allowed to see Samuel. He claimed to have medicine that could possibly save Samuel, but Isaac had convinced Amos that it was up to the Lord to decide Samuel’s fate, that to interfere with God’s will would be a mortal sin. Jacob’s father was a faithful man and had always done what his father told him, but when faced with losing his oldest son, he began to have doubts about putting Samuel’s life in God’s hands. 

Jacob didn’t know how long he’d been staring at his brother’s door, lost in thought. He shook his head as if to remove all the bad memories that came flooding in and continued to his room, shutting the door quietly behind him. 

Knowing that his grandfather was probably going to spend the rest of first-night drinking in the barn and that his mother would busy herself with chores, Jacob decided it would be safe to do a few exercises. Jacob exercised as often as he could, sometimes for hours at a time until all his muscles burned. He didn’t stop until the light of the second dawn came streaming through his bedroom window. He was eager to go back outside and finish the woodpile, but couldn’t allow his mother (or especially his grandfather) to see him come out of his bedroom sweaty and exhausted. He opened the window to let in some cool air to dry himself off and saw that the light was still on in the barn, his grandfather’s ramblings and desperate prayers drifting up to his window. Jacob shook his head and wondered if the old man had drunk enough to see demons again.

***

Rebecca Miller rinsed the last dish and put it on the rack to dry. She wiped her wet hands on the apron she was wearing, untied it, and hung it up next to the wood stove. Out the dining room window, the daylight of second dawn was slowly filtering in across the horizon. She’d decided earlier that she wouldn’t make supper for the family; she wasn’t hungry and knew that her father-in-law wouldn’t want to eat anything, either. 

She heard Jacob coming down the stairs. “There are leftovers from lunch on the counter when you’re ready for supper,” she said. 

Jacob nodded as he entered the kitchen. He poured a tall glass of milk and made himself a sandwich. “I’m going to finish splitting the wood now,” he said, downing the last of his milk and rushing out to resume his chores. She watched him out the window as he jogged towards the woodpile, then looked across the yard to the barn and noticed the light was still on. Knowing that she would be alone for some time, she went up to her room and shut the door, needing solitude to try to figure out how to deal with everything that was happening. She knew Jacob had gone up to his room to do exercises again, even though he knew how much it upset his grandfather. People were talking about him a lot lately. Some were only concerned for his soul, but most thought that because his sins were so severe, he might be challenging the demons to return once more.

Rebecca knew all about the wages of sin and its consequences. Her father-in-law reminded her all the time, claiming it had been her husband’s lack of faith that had made God decide to take away Samuel. He also said that because Amos had lost his faith completely, God had struck him down by making him fall off the barn roof when he’d tried to repair it. If this were all true, then why wouldn’t God just take her, too? The Lord must surely realize that she no longer had the will to live and do His work. Tears welled up in Rebecca’s eyes. She wiped them away and sat on the edge of the bed she had shared with her husband. 

She couldn’t understand why God had taken her husband and firstborn only to leave her with a life of misery. She could almost relate to Jacob and how he behaved sometimes. She had tried to tell him that if he didn’t forgive the Lord and Savior that his soul would be lost forever, that he would never see his father or brother in Heaven. She hoped she would be with them soon. . .

More tears ran down Rebecca’s cheeks. She loved Jacob as much as a mother possibly could, so she felt horrible about wanting to leave him alone in this world. She couldn’t blame God for wanting to punish her for having such selfish thoughts. Isaac had told her repeatedly that all this pain and suffering was to test her faith, that if she could stay strong and help him guide Jacob along the right path, all would be forgiven and their family would find peace in Heaven. She recalled a helpful passage from the Bible: And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe for a while, and in time of testing fall away. 

Rebecca wiped away the last bout of tears with the back of her sleeve. She opened the drawer of her nightstand and took out the rosary her mother had given her on her wedding day. The rest of the second light she spent running her fingers across the beads and saying the prayers.

***

Isaac Miller glared out the barn window as he watched his grandson chopping wood. He could see the large muscles flexing under his shirt as he worked away at his chores. Isaac wasn’t impressed by Jacob’s appearance one bit—he knew that all the physical strength in this Godly world was no match against the evil spawn from hell. Some demons could kill a man just by looking at him and leave his twisted body on the ground for the flesh-eating monsters, like scraps for a dog. 

He had seen this with his very own eyes! Only a small boy when the devil had come, Isaac remembered how the most religious people in New Hope had tried to warn all the sinners that Judgment Day would soon be upon them, but they had all laughed at the righteous followers. Just like they all laughed at him now. Only the most devoted followers, those that still feared the wrath of God, now believed another reckoning was soon upon them. He had to find a way to convince the rest of New Hope before it was too late. 

Isaac took another long swig from one of the bottles he kept hidden in the barn and continued to peer out the window at Jacob. He knew something would have to be done about the boy. His grandson was by far the most wicked sinner in town, deliberately flaunting the fact that he had no faith in the Lord at all. Everybody whispered about his vanity, and how he was using it to seduce a young, innocent girl in town. He would have to find some way to punish the boy and set an example to others that this kind of behavior would not be tolerated. Too many people had been backsliding in their convictions, and the path to hell was a very slippery slope. 

Isaac stared at the half-empty bottle he was holding. He was not without sin himself. He knew it was unforgivable to abuse himself so badly by drinking the devil’s water, but he had already forfeited himself after losing most of his family and friends to the dark one. He took another sip. His only hope now was to somehow stop the unholy ones from returning from the depths of hell to claim their lost souls again.