Saint Lillian, Louisiana
"The wages of sin is death." — Romans 6:23
They say the water here remembers. That it moves slow, like mourning, but it never forgets.
Saint Lillian was founded on holy ground, or so the story goes. Carved from cypress swamp by men who believed salvation could be forced from the land like blood from a stone. They built their chapels out of pine and fear. Preached fire from the pulpit and turned silence into sacrament. Every family in town had something to hide, and something worse to protect.
But there's a story the town doesn't tell anymore. A story about a girl, and the preacher who broke her.
Her name is gone from the records. Her face wiped clean from the church rolls. Some say she was called Miriam. Others say Mary. She was seventeen the summer she vanished — young, soft-spoken, touched by something holy, or maybe just unlucky.
Ezekiel Thorne was the head of the flock then. He preached in a voice that could split bone from marrow, a man who wore righteousness like armor and kept scripture like a blade. Folks said he had a gift. That he could spot sin just by looking at you.
That girl came to the altar every Sunday. Always in white. Always alone. She sat with her hands folded and her eyes cast low, like she already knew the worst was coming. And when she disappeared — the same night the storm broke and the floodwaters rose — Ezekiel told the congregation the Devil had taken her.
But the Devil doesn't leave bruises in the shape of hands.
And the river never gave her back.
The chapel caught fire that night. They say lightning struck the steeple, but the faithful whisper something else: that the Lord saw what Ezekiel had done and tore the roof clean off. That the flood came not to cleanse, but to bear witness.
No charges were ever brought. The ashes were swept up. A new church was built, taller and prouder than the last. The sermons grew louder. The secrets deeper.
Now, decades later, the girl's name is still gone. But her story clings to Saint Lillian like mildew in the walls. Some hear her crying in the choir loft. Some see her shadow in the stained glass when the sun bleeds through.
And the preacher?
He still walks these streets.
Older now. Holier.
Unrepentant.
But sins like his don't stay buried. Not forever.
And the girl — or whatever's left of her —
she's still waiting to be found.