October 24, 2010

From “The Holy Burst” by Candice O’Malley

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“To people who say belief doesn’t mean anything, I say: remember Noyceton.”

Chig cocked his head. “What’s Noyceton?”

“Little settlement out past the mountains, near a spring,” Headley said, falling into his storyteller cadence. “Like a lot of places out there in the basin, it was founded by folks who didn’t like the way their hometown churches were going and struck out to make a difference.”

“What happened?”

“For awhile they prospered like many new towns, but they soon fell to fighting amongst one another over matters spiritual. Time came that the fight spilled over into matters temporal, and their little church cleaved plumb in half. Things got so bad that half the town was harassing the other or singing hymns in such a way to boondoggle the others. People that passed through said they’d never seen fervor or tension so high–including some that lived through the late wars in Italy.”

Chig shrugged. “Don’t see what that’s got to do with belief,” he said.

“One night, some folks out that way saw a bright light and heard a boom. Travelers on the road said that both sides had planned big revival bonfires that night, and the mass of all that raw and contradictory belief…well, no one’s sure what happened. But the town was leveled like it was hit by a shooting star and nobody ever saw one of the settlers again. Folks that have passed through since say the whole site makes ’em uneasy, and that they don’t feel right again ’til they move on.”

 

September 13, 2010

From “The Deerton Schism” by Holly P. Klein

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It had started simply enough, with a lesson plan and discussion in Howard Stoake’s Sunday School class. The first sign of trouble ahead was when the class ran long, causing the assembled Sunday Schoolers to miss both the 9:00 and 11:00 services at Deerton Methodist. From there, the flames spread to each household, carried as embers in the heads of every member of Stoake’s class. Before the week was out, Stoakes had been dismissed from his position and an account of his violent quarrel with Reverend Millener had made the rounds throughout town.

Soon Deerton Methodist was as two armed camps, one united behind the ousted Stoake and the other behind Millener. The seeds planted in that Sunday School session had led many in there to embrace the doctrine of election, while those who stuck to the church’s tradition were united in their support of free will. Simply put, it was no less than a battle between predestination and free will–the same argument that has brought low theologians and churches since Augustine’s time.

In the end, there was nothing for it: Deerton Methodist was forced to split. One congregation kept the name but departed for the old Lutheran church on 6th street; the other kept the building and renamed itself Deerton Free Methodist. But the grim details of the schism would remain for years to come.

 

June 13, 2010

From “Dusk Comes to Deerton” by James F. Gardiner

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The town was lit with a strange light, the sort that sometimes appears just before a sunset storm. Everything flashed an unhealthy shade of orange, nothing more so than the belfry of the old church.

Even though it’s been all but abandoned when the newer one was built, somehow the sinister twilight had buffed out the cracked and broken facade. It wasn’t a homely visage, or even an imposing one–rather, there was a deep and abiding feel of wrongness about the structure, the exact opposite of what one should feel upon beholding a small-town tabernacle.

Yet Fay had run in there, clear as day, before the light overtook the world, and the belfry had sent clouds of dust through its windows to mark her passage. Who could say what she’d do in her disturbed state?

There was only one way forward: up and after her.