Little pieces

This is a do over of stuff previously posted

If you enjoy it let me know. If you didn’t let me know that too.

Here we go

A soft breeze ripples through trees crowned with autumn fire causing their branches to sway gently. The sound seems almost like a whisper through the leaves, giving up their spent secrets to the sky that drift over the small town of Alexander. Towards the west end of town the whispering wind is overtaken by an organ being played. If we follow that sound to its source we come to a small rural church nestled in a clearing near the western woods. This is joined by a chorus of voices singing the closing lines of the hymn “What A Friend We Have in Jesus.”

The church is unremarkable; rustic and humble, it resembles countless other churches strewn across the southern United States in the mid 1800s. Seen from the ground, the church is a dark silhouette against the gray autumn sky.

The singing coasts to a gentle stop on the word amen, and the congregation takes their seats. Up at the pulpit Reverend Eli stands there smiling beatifically down at his flock. The sun had broken through the slate colored sky just then and poured through the two large windows behind him. The effect illuminated him in a hallowed glow.

“What truer friend do we have than Christ our Lord?” He asks the congregation. A murmur of agreement ripples through them as people smile and nod their heads in approval. Reverend Eli’s voice is mild yet resonant as he goes on speaking.

“Before we all part ways this afternoon, friends, I would ask you all to pray for the Rose family and their little girl, Margaret.”

He dropped his gaze for a moment, appearing to all to be fighting back tears. He gathered himself and then continued.

“It has been nearly two weeks now since little Margaret went missing, and her mother and father are sick with worry. Let us bow our heads and ask the Lord for Margaret’s safe return.”

Everyone in the congregation bowed their heads and said their silent prayers. For most, there was genuine hope the girl would return unharmed. Underneath that, there was a dark acceptance. Was it this way in other towns? Some never even asked themselves that question. Living in Alexander just came with certain truths. For the past forty years it had been this way. Children would go missing without a trace. Most assumed they had run away from home. Alexander was a small and quiet place, but people sometimes fell on unhappy times. Sadly, this seemed to affect the children of the poorer families the most. If there had been something more sinister to the disappearance of over a dozen children through the past forty years no one seemed to notice. After all, no obvious signs of violence were ever seen in Alexander. There were men who beat their wives and beat their children, and wives that beat their children and their husbands, too, but all of this happened behind closed doors.

There were also the old timers who told stories that insisted the western woods on the edge of town were an evil place. Some claimed the land had been cursed by the original inhabitants who had been driven from the land even before the war with Britain. It was true that most of the town’s people shied away from the woods. You could say it was due to superstitious beliefs about curses. It also could have been due to the fact that the western woods sat on treacherous terrain, with many dips and gullies and twists and turns, not to mention a few bear dens here and there. There were brambles of thorns throughout the forest, rumors of deep caves and pitfalls, and apparently there was an evil bog deep in the heart of the woods over which the canopy was so thick it would shut out the sun. Of course, no one had ever seen this place, but it was a favorite of the old timers to pull out anytime talk of the western woods came about