The Remnant Society

A prayer request at Wednesday night service tells the whole county what the six cousins have been careful never to say out loud, and by Saturday a kind man in a good suit has driven out from the district office to ask them, gently, to stop. He means every word. Then the piece Papa Harry promised would find them turns up in the last pair of hands anyone expected, with the answer Peter gave the council — and Jenna, who has been learning the old crossing hymn the real way, down the side, finds the one name nobody thought to look for.

“Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.”

Acts 4:12 (KJV)

The trail has gone cold — the baptism register gave up its names and nothing more — until Rion sees a row of stitches nobody else looked at twice. Hidden in the binding of the church's own book is the piece Papa Harry said would make them angry: his account of the one winter a friend used a pulpit to wonder a good man into ruin, and why Harry kept walking that road toward the people who had turned away from him. An old widow tells them what it cost. And Harry tells them why he never lifted a hand.

“LORD, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill? He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart. He that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbour, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbour. ... He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not.”

Psalm 15:1–4 

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The next piece of the truth was never hidden at all — it has been sitting in plain sight, in the crossing church's own baptism register, for fifty years. With Brother Williams and Bishop Garrett standing guard, the six cousins open the great book and find the day Papa Harry baptized half the county in the name of Jesus, the doctrine written plain, and two names nobody was ever supposed to read again. And beside one of them, in a different hand, the coldest word in the book.

“Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.”

Acts 2:38 (KJV)

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Papa Harry hid the next piece of his story in the one place the man who buried it would never destroy — a hymn, sung every Sunday for fifty years by the very congregation that forgot the truth. Up in the dusty church loft, the six cousins find the hymnal Harry bound with his own hands, and the secret he set to music: a grief he could not speak, carried in plain sight by everyone who ever sang it. 

And while they read it, a polite man in a nice coat walks in the church door downstairs.

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The cousins have a photograph of three young men at a river in Kenya, and one of them has been scratched down to the paper. Determined to give Sonny Sharpe his face back, they take the picture to Brent and Jenna's father, who can sharpen almost anything, and learn the hardest truth of the hunt: some things a man destroys are gone for good. But Papa Harry left a mark of his own on the back of that photo, and it leads them to the water, and to the next page of a story someone spent a lifetime trying to drown.

“Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”

John 3:5 (KJV)

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A single name, written in Papa Harry's own hand in the margin of his Bible, leads the six cousins to the last person alive who was there in the beginning — a ninety-year-old woman who loved Harry, remembers the church he gave away, and has been keeping something for him for longer than the cousins have been alive. The trail stops being paper and becomes a person. And for the first time, someone who was there says out loud that Harry's best friend came home from Kenya changed.

“The memory of the just is blessed: but the name of the wicked shall rot.”

Proverbs 10:7 (KJV)

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Back at the little church Papa Harry built with his own hands, the six cousins pry loose the second piece of the torn journal and finally meet the man behind the legend — not a saint born holy, but a soldier who ran from God as far as a boat would carry him, all the way to Kenya, and was undone the night the Holy Ghost began to pour out. This is who Harry was. And after this, the Society stops being a game.

“Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.”

Psalm 139:7–8 (KJV)

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A car sits too long outside Nana's house with its lights off, and just like that the hunt stops being a game. Following Papa Harry's trail to the little crossing church he helped raise, the six cousins come face to face with the polite stranger who's been calling the family — and learn he got to the church before they did. With a retired sheriff's hard-won wisdom and a tired country pastor's help, they have to decide how you keep chasing the truth when the truth is being watched.

“Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.”

Matthew 10:16 (KJV)

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At dawn the six cousins drive out to the old Sikes home place to dig up the first piece of Papa Harry's torn journal — and find they aren't the first ones to come looking. With help from a retired sheriff who knew Harry better than they did, they finally learn the truth the family had wrong for years: Papa Harry was never a missionary. He crossed an ocean to Kenya as a worker, a teacher, a soul winner — and the first recovered pages show them exactly who he was.

Anchor verse: Proverbs 11:30 (KJV)

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The trunk is open — and the most important thing Harry Sikes ever wrote is missing. What the six cousins find inside isn't a book; it's the hollow cover of one, its pages torn out and scattered, with a single card in their great-grandfather's hand pointing them toward the first piece. 

Their first real case as the Remnant Society: where do you start looking for something a man hid on purpose — and why is someone else already asking the family what they've found?

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