The Devil in Sister Jones

by Beth Andrews

About the Author: Beth Andrews has had several Regency romance and mystery novels published by Robert Hale and Joffe Books in London, England, as well as two short story collections released by Belgrave/Regency Reads in Oregon—the latest entitled QUINTET. A confirmed Janeite, they regularly contribute articles to Jane Austen’s Regency World magazine.

Excerpt

When Pastor Jones died, the whole settlement just about went crazy. So much had happened in the months before his death, this was like the final blow that nobody ever could have expected. People say they don’t believe in the Devil, but I tell you he’s just as real as you and me. I know what I know, and I know what I saw with my own two eyes.

It was over sixty years ago now, when I lived on the Family Islands in Sea Grape Bay. Back then I used to go to the First Apostolic Church of the Word of the Lord, Limited. Our old pastor, Reverend Rolle, had died of a heart attack. Well, he was over ninety with one foot in the grave and the other had no business anywhere else. After he was buried, they sent away for a new minister. After a couple of months while the elders and deacons tried to run the church, Pastor Jones came down from somewhere up North: Florida or Miami, or someplace like that.

Reverend Jones was one of them good old fire-and-brimstone preachers. The first Sunday he preached, three sisters got full of the Spirit and two more fell out in church! He was about fifty and his head was bald as a brass bed knob. But he was a godly man—a real saint. I never heard anybody speak a bad word about him.

Reverend Jones had a wife who came with him too. She was at least twenty years younger than him and she looked like some kind of Hollywood star or something. Man, that woman was a beauty! But she was active in community work. She led a Bible study, started a sewing circle and all that kind of thing.

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