Christian Short Stories

The Seventh Light

Psalm 142

Abigail returns to Blackwater to bury her mother, sell the family home, and leave town for good. On the afternoon of the funeral, a letter slips under her door. The handwriting belongs to her father, who died in prison eleven years ago. The letter asks her to find the seventh light and warns her against the man who comes to comfort her. Then someone knocks. For thirteen years, Blackwater has blamed her father for the mill fire that killed six workers and took her little brother, Nathan. But when a boy named Samuel turns up carrying a wooden sparrow Nathan carved, Abigail has reason to question whose name belongs on the memorial stone. Her mother left a clue in the margins of Psalm 142, and it leads toward a passage beneath the mill. Someone is about to seal it with stone. As the river rises and the people she once trusted close ranks, Abigail finds herself praying to the God she stopped speaking to the day her father was sentenced. She’s spent years wishing she could leave Blackwater behind. Now she may be the only person willing to ask what it cost the town to keep its secret.