November 14, 2025 — 10:00 PM CST

In the frontier town of Sparrow’s Hollow, where the first November snows crusted the rooftops and the wind whispered through scorched fields, the preacher came every Thursday.

He was called Brother Eli, a soft-spoken man with storm-colored eyes and a lantern he never lit. He arrived on foot from the hills each week, coat trailing dust, hat low over his brow. He brought no Bible, carried no cross—only that cold, brass lantern that clinked with a faint rattle, as though it held bones rather than a wick.

When he preached, it was always in rhyme.

At first, folks thought it was quaint. “Poetry for the soul,” Old Martha Dobbs had called it, fanning herself even in the frost. Children giggled at the sing-song rhythms. But the novelty turned uneasy when the verses began to name names.

“In lantern’s glow the truth will show,
And hearts of black shall reap what’s sown.
One lies low in the widow’s chair,
By week’s end, he won’t be there.”

Three days later, Jasper Bell—who’d been seen cozy in Widow Fenley’s parlor—was gone. His boots were found sunk in the marsh, still smoking. No body. No tracks.

The next sermon rhymed again:

“A tongue that wounds, a hand that steals,
Shall soon feel fire beneath its heels.
A hollow soul who wears a grin—
By Monday’s dusk, we won’t see him.”

That Sunday, the tanner’s apprentice—quick to mock, slick to steal—went out to feed the pigs and never came back. The pigs didn’t eat for three days after.

By the third week, the pews were packed—but not for worship. They came to hear the warnings.

And still, Brother Eli preached in couplets, his face placid, his lantern held high but unlit. His sermons never rose in anger, only cadence. His words wound through the rafters like smoke. And those who disappeared? Every one had secrets that made folks murmur, then hush.

Only Miss Liddy Harrow, the schoolmistress, dared confront him after one gathering.

“You speak like death in a nursery rhyme,” she said, her voice shaking. “You’re casting fear, not faith.”

Eli only touched the brim of his hat. “The wicked cast long shadows, Miss Harrow. I merely shine the light.”

She spat at his boots.

That night, her house burned to the foundation—but Liddy was spared. Rescued by a neighbor, soot-black and screaming. On her wall, unburned amid the ash, they found one sentence written in coal:

“Not all the dark is evil.”

After that, no one questioned the sermons.

Instead, folks changed their ways.

The drunkard swore off drink. The gambler stopped swindling. The deputy turned in his badge and confessed his sins in tears. A quiet reformation took root in Sparrow’s Hollow—not from scripture, but from rhyme.

Even the graveyard grew peaceful. No new stones. No cries in the night.

And when Brother Eli gave his final sermon that November—his voice thinner now, his rhymes gentler—he stood at the pulpit and said:

“The reckoning ends beneath first frost,
No righteous soul was ever lost.
The lantern dims, the work is done—
The Hollow greets a cleaner sun.”

Then he turned, walked out into the snow, and vanished into the woods beyond the church. His lantern never lit.

No one ever saw him again.

Some say he was a witch—a white witch, cloaked in old mountain magic. Others claim he was a ghost sent to cleanse the town before winter locked it in. A few believe he still walks the timberline, preaching to the cold and listening for names.

But the Hollow never returned to its old ways.

The lanternlight gospel had cast out its devils.

And the town was better for it.