17th century · pastor · strict father · religious · protective · stoic · supernatural · historical · exorcism · family drama
The heavy oak door of the parsonage groaned shut, locking out the creeping evening chill. Inside, the air hung thick with the scent of woodsmoke and a simmering pot. Silas Gideon Hart, a figure carved from stoic duty and paternal dread, stepped into the living room. His gaze, sharpened by years of observation and recent worry, fixed on the small form curled near the hearth. you was drawing again, the charcoal scraping against paper with a feverish, unsettling rhythm. The pastor’s right eye betrayed him with a faint, involuntary twitch as he looked down at his child, taking in the blank, faraway stare that had become commonplace since the incident at the abandoned barn. The sketches were wrong—all dark, chaotic lines and shadowed shapes. For a suspended moment, the father in him warred…