Setting: 1868 in Jupiter, Fla.
Anna sat alone in the house. The wind whipped and screamed through the small town. She buried herself inside her covers and prayed.

“Dear Jesus. I have put my complete trust in You. Now I’m giving up any human effort and emotion and laying it within Your power.”

The wind groaned and screeched for what seemed like hours. Every creak of the old house seemed like a demonic claw ripping at the planking.

“Jesus, protect me!” Anna cried.

An angry wind shot down through the clogged chimney with a whuff-whuff sound. It was a noise Anna had never heard before. She sat up. A branch slapped at the windowpane in a panicked rhythm. The back doorknob rattled and shook.

Anna gripped her blanket but prayed boldly. “I call upon Your protection from the spiritual enemies, Lord. Like it says in Your Word: Greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world.”

The back door shook violently and then heaved on its hinges.

The door exploded, and a dark, horrible beast rolled and writhed into the room. Anna fumbled for a light, but the grunting, growling beast smashed against the nightstand and knocked over the matches and candlestick. She shrunk against the wall and saw the creature roll and pitch about, knocking over chairs and slamming into the walls. It had more than four feet. It had more than one head.

The beast slashed about on the floor, but Anna realized as horrible as it seemed, she had no fear.

“It’s not going to hurt me,” she said firmly. At that point she knew. As God was her Father, He was also her Shield. It was more than just talk. It was more than a social label.

This beast would not hurt her. It could not hurt her. She knew now that she was a child of the King.

The shadowy beast let out a cry of pain. It flailed about wildly and crashed into the pantry.

More Visitors
A burst of footsteps rattled across the back porch, and old man Bannister leaped into the room. Mr. Burl followed right behind him.

“Come on, Burl,” Pa Bannister yelled over his shoulder. “Hurry up with that light. You, too, Ned. Git that lantern shinin’ in here.”

The constable and Mr. Burl entered the doorway and held their lamps high. The light fell upon the snarling beast on the floor.

“He’s a-killin’ me,” the creature cried. “Git him off’n me, and I’ll give up.”

Old man Bannister dove for the window and threw it open. Mr. Burl squinted at the thrashing form on the floor.

“Quit yer gawkin’,” the beast screamed. “Turn him loose. He’s tearin’ me up.”

The constable stepped closer with his lantern, and that’s when the mystery of the beast was discovered.

It was no multi-limbed beast with two heads.

It was Ral, who had a vise-like grip on the yellow-haired man. Ral was wailing away at him like a combination of leopard, wild boar and mother bear. He was pounding the daylights out of the yellow-haired man, who was howling in pain.

“OK, OK, Raleigh,” the constable called. “Let him up easy, and we’ll grip him good.”

Anna breathed a sigh of relief. “An intruder,” she said quietly. “Then it wasn’t a demon after all.”

“Yep,” Pa Bannister said, ”but demon-influenced, no doubt. And here’s the influence.”

He reached out the window, grunted and strained, and to my amazement pulled a man bodily over the sill. “Here’s the answer to your problem, Miss Anna.”

He held up the man by the collar. It was the Prophet. “Standing here, a-peekin’ through the window.”

The Prophet tried to gather some dignity. “I was merely here to—“

“Hush, now,” I said sharply. I then turned to the younger Bannister. “Ral, a pretty fair scheme to scare Anna away. How did you figure this out?”

Ral lifted the beaten man to his feet. “The judge went through his docket mighty quickly, cause he had to take a horse ride up to Coastville before the rain set in. He let us off with a warning, and as we stepped off the porch, I spied two men lurking near Anna’s back door.

“A false prophet trying to play God is a mighty low-down thing to do, but like most schemes of this sort, he had a reason. Greed.”

Ral squeezed the yellow-haired man’s shoulder. “Care to explain, Mister?”

“Don’t say anything,” the Prophet demanded. He didn’t seem so mighty anymore.

“Ah, it’s all over,” the yellow-haired man huffed. “We was tryin’ to scare the girl and her mom out of this house.”

“Let him loose, Raleigh,” Pa Bannister said. “OK, friend, it’s best you explain what you were up to.”

The Truth
“I’ve been coming though this area for some weeks tryin’ my best to git me some liquor,” the man said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “And when I couldn’t find any at your lighthouse, I headed up the road to Coastville and saw this here ‘prophet.’

“I met him outside of town over a jug of whiskey that he carried on his boat. He said that he knew of a house in Jupiter that had a stash, but he needed a partner to get at it. He told me an old man named Pickens had lived in the place that the old widow bought in Jupiter. Pickens had been a miserly sort, keepin’ money hid in his mattress an’ under the floorboards.”

“This Prophet rascal ain’t from this area,” Pa Bannister said, rubbing his jaw thoughtfully. “How would he know about the old man Pickens?”

The Prophet glared at Bannister, but the yellow-haired man explained. “Old man Pickens was his brother. This here ‘prophet’ got the news that his brother died, but he had no claim to the property. Still, he knew enough about his brother’s habit of hiding money that he needed to hustle down to Jupiter as quickly as he could. Problem was, he was about a week too late. This here girl and her mother bought the place.”

All as It Seems
Ned tilted back his hat. “The Prophet is a fraud? Then how did he get that grass to grow in Coastville? That ground was dry as a parched bone in the desert.”

“I found that out from Willie, the cowhand who was at the jail with us,” Ral said. “You know how he got that grass to grow? He wasn’t doin’ any praying. People kept a distance, watching him flailing his arms and wailing.”

“The folks were scared of him,” the constable said.

“Well, he put on that show, because he was slingin’ wet grass seed all over the place,” Ral said. “Willie set out to spy on him and saw him giving the ground a bit of a sprinkle with a bucket of water every night.”

“That so?” Pa asked.

“But where do I come in?” Anna asked. “If he chased us out, he couldn’t just claim the house.”

“He only wanted you and your mother to leave for one night. The reason they didn’t want you to stay in that house is because of the chimney,” Ral said.

“The chimney?” Anna asked. “I can’t see how a chimney would be that valuable.”

“It’s not the chimney itself, Anna,” Ral explained, grabbing a crowbar. “It’s what’s stuck inside it.”

He leaned into the hearth and pushed hard on the obstruction in the chimney. After a few good hits, a metal box fell and rolled on the floor. It was the size of a picnic basket.

“Don’t touch that,” the Prophet ordered.

“Your days of proclamations are over,” Ned said. “Prophet, the only domain you’ll rule is a jail cell.”

“Bless my soul,” Mr. Burl said, reaching down and unlatching the metallic container. “I do believe that Mr. Pickens had a secret cache in a very hidden location. Here ‘tis, Anna: The reason your chimney was blocked.”

Mr. Burl pulled open the lid, and they all gazed at a drawer full of silver coins and a sprinkling of jewels.

Ned stopped down to look. “If I know my law, this is the property of the owner of this house. That means you and your mother, Anna.”

New Beginnings
Mr. Burl rowed to the lighthouse early the next week and saw a much happier Anna sitting on the shore reading a passage from the Bible to Ral and his father.

“ ’Tis a fine day and a merrier Anna than when I was last on this island,” Mr. Burl said as he sat down. She smiled a smile that set the sun shining brighter.

“It’s a right good story in Matthew,” exclaimed old man Bannister. “An’ she delivers it just as good as your Sunday delivery. Maybe better, Burl.”

Mr. Burl laughed. “So Lassie, your treasure is seeing to your needs, is it?”

Anna shook her head. “Not the chimney treasure, if that’s what you mean, Mr. Burl. The treasure I got is in seeing that my life in Christ is awakened. He’s real to me once again.”

“And that, my girl,” Mr. Burl said, “is something that shines brighter than this lighthouse.”