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For readers looking for an adrenaline-filled adventure with a religious twist, look no further than Matthew Light's thrilling journey to uncover the secrets of his family's past. Matthew and his father are tasked with the ultimate mission to protect a holy artifact, and when a figure from the past threatens to expose the family secret, Matthew must put his life on the line to protect the artifact and the ones he loves. Matthew must rely on his faith and inner strength to confront the darkness and discover the true power of his family's past.
If you enjoyed the classic suspense novel This Present Darkness, you will love the Light of the Ark series. Buy now before the price changes and get ready to experience the suspenseful, faith-filled adventure of Matthew Light!
What readers are saying about the series:
"This story had what looked like magic, but it really is the hand of God."
"A glimpse into the supernatural realm that a true believing family faces."
"Every chapter made me want to keep reading and loved the ending!"
"This is a fantastic book!"
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Enjoy a sample of Light of the Ark!
Chapter 1 - Coffee with Dad
The steam from the coffee rose before his face as he stared, lost in thought. He was inches away from taking a sip, but his mind was captured before he could.
“Dad.”
He wasn’t here; his mind was somewhere else.
“Dad...”
His eyes were locked on the Bible on the end table next to him. It was an old Bible but had held up well. The thick green covers were tattered from wear, but it was handled with care for the decades or more it had been in the family’s possession. Even with the wear, it always had sort of a glow to it, a welcoming and unique nature. Recent events added deep cuts into the hard green backing, and the spine of the book was half torn off, now held by a strip of grey duct tape. Matthew knew more about the story and the book, but far from all of it. That would take a lifetime.
“Dad. You okay?”
The funeral was yesterday. All of the boys, along with their wives and kids, had packed into the old home they grew up in. Zechariah had three boys: Luke, Mark, and Matthew. Each of them had two kids. The extra twelve in Zech and Mary’s home was a strain, but a welcome one to the heads of the Light family. Each son had offered to put his family in a hotel, or in Matthew’s case, drive the hour and stay in their own home, but their mother wouldn’t hear of it. Secretly, all of the boys liked being back in their old home. The sons, wives, and grandparents could all have breakfast together, play games in the backyard, and stay up late playing cards after the kids went down. That sort of family time does not happen when part of the family wakes up in a hotel twenty minutes away.
Back when the boys were young, the house was busy, loud, and all-around hectic. Now that their kids were here, it brought back those chaotic memories. The grandkids ranged from diapers to high school and thankfully all got along and played well with each other.
“Hey, Grandpa!”
Matthew’s oldest daughter’s voice snapped Zech out of his trance before Matthew’s words could. The aged patriarch smiled at the five-year-old to acknowledge her. She thanked him for the bacon but now was eager for her grandfather’s famous pancakes. He loved making his grandkids bacon, especially the real pork kind, as well as blueberry pancakes. Zech’s wife Mary made nearly every meal in that house since they were married, but once a week and on special occasions, Zech made bacon and pancakes. Mary would talk with the kids and grandkids while sipping on her coffee, and Zech worked away in the kitchen, usually singing along to various country songs. The house picked up the wonderful smell of bacon. The smell rolled through the house and Zech’s ear-to-ear grin was nearly as contagious as the hunger.
This morning was different, though. The funeral lingered in the air while recent events weighed on Matthew’s and Zech’s minds.
The artifact, as they had come to call it, was paramount, but for different reasons.
The crate.
Jeremiah.
Terrence.
Isaiah.
Even Micah loomed in their thoughts. That was new for Matthew, but not for Zech, as Micah had been a daily thought for nearly three decades.
As more grandkids ran past, Zech looked to his son, finally acknowledging him.
“Paul stopped by last night while you and Liz were out. He asked for us to come by the yard today. He and I both want to talk with you about the other night. The situation with Terrence.”
“Dad, I already told the cops everything, and honestly, I am sick of talking about Terrence,” Matthew replied. His voice echoed his frustration, but he kept it low with the kids nearby.
“You have learned more about your family and our responsibilities than I ever thought you would. There is much more to this than you know. And, honestly, I’m glad it is you that will be taking over.”
Matthew stared at his dad, trying to get a read on him. Zech was not a huge man, but strong in his days, and he still carried a presence with him. The sort of presence that you respected, physically and spiritually. Matthew did not know what his father meant, but given the past two months, he knew it was serious.
Zech had pastored the church for decades, just as his father Isaiah did before him, as did his father… and his. None of his three sons were going to be the next pastor. Mark, the middle son, worked with the church, but as a missionary, currently based in Eastern Europe. Zech had flown Mark, his wife, and two kids in for the funeral. Zech still mentored Mark and saw the kids on video calls weekly. Mark never saw himself as a pastor, and while he always attended, he did not work in the church for most of his twenties. He made his own path in finance and eventually tech investing, advising on IPOs and amassing a small fortune in his mid-twenties. However, he gave it all up, sold his shares in numerous companies that became tech giants, and moved into ministry. His small fortune could have been quite a large one if he had held on for only a few short years longer, but nope. Mark cashed out and never looked back. He never told Matthew the full reason, but his brothers knew. The week before Mark quit, he was on a trip with a few young and soon-to-be billionaires. He was being courted to help with their next IPO. The trip took a few detours, though, and Mark realized the slippery slope he was tip-toeing. His clients convinced the pilots of the private flight to divert the plane towards Vegas. Mark spent two nights trying to deal with the events, to just get through, but on the third day, enough was enough. He did not reboard the original flight and never looked back.
Luke was the oldest and lived a few hundred miles away in Atlanta. He loved the church and was a member at a sister location in Atlanta, but never showed interest in leading the church his father spent his life growing. Luke had had a rebellious childhood, mixing in with the wrong crowd and keeping his mother up many late nights during his teenage years. He took the long road, but eventually, after moving out and no longer getting financial support from his parents, Luke started building a new life. He rose up in the ranks at a local car shop from part-time work to becoming the right-hand man of the owner. Within a few years, Luke opened his own shop, and within another ten years, he owned a successful regional chain based in Atlanta. Matthew could see his father’s work ethic and his mother’s kindness in both of his brothers, and it served them well in their professional and personal lives.
The family torch to lead the church would have fallen onto Matthew, if it had not been for Jeremiah, Matthew’s best friend who was practically a fourth son. Zech had been childhood friends with Jeremiah’s father, Micah. When Micah passed away in his thirties, Jeremiah was only six years old, and Zech took it on himself to be Jeremiah’s father-figure.
“J,” as he had been called since he was a kid, fit in perfectly with the family. He and Matthew had been best friends their whole lives. The three Light boys were all above average height and played sports growing up, and J fit right in. J fit right in with the older boys as well, as he always seemed to be an inch or two taller and ten to twenty pounds heavier than Matthew. He could join one of Mark’s teams without friends knowing he was younger, whereas Matt was obviously the youngest.
J took more to reading and noticed when Zech always had the Bible out. While Matthew took a love of math into the engineering field, and J took a love of reading into scripture. The time in scripture at such a young age led him to become a Bible competition finalist and champion numerous times throughout grade school. By the time he was sixteen, he was filling in for the youth pastor and giving guest sermons to his peers in the youth groups.
Childhood memories of J and himself flashed in Matthew’s mind as he took his turn getting lost in thought. The steam from his coffee began to fade in the cool morning air.
The thoughts of long-ago good times with his friend began to fade, and the past two months came into focus. Matthew could see J talking with Terrence after the Christmas Eve service.
Why did he not insist on finding out more?
He saw the look on J’s face as he walked away from Terrence.
There were plenty of chances, but he figured his friend was fine. “He would say something. He’s fine.” Matthew heard his past self say it, over and over.
If he had only known then all the damage and the subsequent death that would come.
He could have helped.
He should have helped.
He would have helped! If he only knew…
Zech brought him back from his spiraling thoughts.
“We’ll head to Paul’s after breakfast. He said he’ll be at the yard all morning working on repairs from last week’s damage. For now, it’s time we get these kids some pancakes before they mutiny on us.”
Matthew and his wife Elizabeth, who went by Liz, had always been close to his parents. They enjoyed visiting for their own sake but mostly for their two girls. Grandma was their best friend and the only person Matthew knew who could out-energy a five-year-old. From a tea party, to freeze tag, into the pool, out of the pool, to another tea party, to story time, and on and on. Those kids slept great at their grandparents’ house.
The adults would stay up late playing Euchre or Sequence or just talking, but soon would pass into a deep sleep just like the girls. The peacefulness of the house always took over.
Matthew and Liz had been married over ten years now. Liz’s father, Paul Stollard, ran the Storage Yard just outside of town near the river. Paul was a little older than Zech and was almost like an older brother to him. They had been family friends for as long as Zech could remember. The Stollards regularly came to church, but being an hour away from the grounds, they did not always attend all the functions and events. That was a reason Matthew and Liz joked they should have met sooner.
Liz was a couple of years younger than Matthew. They could have met at a younger age but had a different circle of friends, attended different service times, and were in different youth groups. They had “known of” each other for years but went to different schools as kids. But then, at a mutual friend’s party in college, they both delighted in seeing an old face from home and struck up a conversation. The friendship quickly turned into more, and from then on, they were inseparable and married less than two years later. Liz was a beautiful woman with amber-brown hair, bright brown eyes, and a picture-perfect smile. Matthew joked that she could grace the covers of any risqué men's magazine, yet he loved how she could dress conservatively and still be more desirable than any model in a low-cut shirt.
Liz was not only beautiful, but she was also Matthew’s spiritual anchor. Without her, he likely would have drifted away from the church. With two young kids and living an hour away, it was easy to justify watching the message online or not at all. However, it was Liz who corralled the family and insisted they attend in person. It was so much easier to watch online, or better yet, simply listen to the audio version later in the week, but Liz would not have it, especially being the daughter-in-law to Pastor Zech and Mary. Liz knew they needed to be in person.
Matthew had been in church his whole life, but more out of habit than a burning desire. Once he moved out of his parent's house, the Sunday morning habit took a slight hit that snowballed into a low attendance rate, only attending during holidays or special events before dating Liz. He always felt like he was in the public eye as he passed through the rotunda and into the sanctuary each Sunday. His passive nature toward church bled into his professional life even after marrying Liz, more doing what he was told instead of proactively trying to help the company. His boss saw his potential—it flashed at times on big contracts where all of the company’s leadership could not ignore it—however, it was few and far between. His boss gradually gave him more responsibility to flush out that potential, but the results were not reliable. Only in the past couple of months did his boss notice a change.
Being the youngest of three boys and having a best friend the size of his older brother, Matthew learned how to survive more than learning how to thrive. Unless he tried his absolute hardest, he did not have a shot in the backyard sports and games. Given the extra effort, he could hang with the larger boys, and it helped him best the majority of his peers; however, it also led to a fear of failure. Most new things he could succeed at, but eventually, there came a time when the effort waned and he stopped caring. It was all or nothing, and too often lately, he felt like nothing was winning, never putting in the work to carry his skills into mastery. Granted, his breadth in many sports and professional topics was immense, but he kept hitting the ceiling of his own burnout. Once he figured something out, he moved on. He feared his job at the engineering consulting company was coming to the same head. He was a licensed Professional Engineer for a private consulting company. He was brought in to help design manufacturing areas, warehouses, and office spaces, and then provide the simulations to show what tweaks could be made during build or later life to customize the space for optimum efficiency. He learned all the coding and visualization required to complete a seven-figure contract himself. However, where he really shined was when he put himself in the shoes of the workers who would one day inhabit the space. When that happened, he was a magnitude better than his old self. He would delegate the drawings and simulations, then critique and communicate with the team with ease as the project vastly improved from what he could do on his own. This was the potential his bosses saw, but unfortunately, Matthew seemed to randomly flash upward potential as opposed to consistently growing into the promotion he recently received.
But that all changed at the start of the new year. Two months ago, Matthew gradually showed the consistency his bosses desired. There was something growing in him. Something all the mentoring and training had not flushed out.
The family cleaned up the pancake breakfast, or what was left of it after the kids inhaled their meals. Matthew and his brothers decided to postpone their five-mile run into the woods, given Zech and Matthew’s trip to see Paul and their now full bellies nearly putting them to sleep. Luke and Mark, along with their wives and Mary, moved into the backyard with the kids on the crisp morning. The ladies were planning a girls’ trip to a few stores capped with lunch at the local Greek restaurant while the dads gathered the kids for a mix of football and tag. It looked more like Calvinball to Matthew as he turned from the back porch toward his father.
Matthew was glad the recent events, especially the funeral, were not weighing too hard on anyone as the day went on. Everyone except himself and his father. Both men took on a somber tone as the rest of the family moved away from breakfast. They quietly cleaned up the plates and silverware together. Zech’s Bible now loomed heavy on Matthew’s mind. It was one room away, but in his mind’s eye, he could see it glowing.
The worn green Bible.
Decades old or more.
How it glowed bright in his mind.
As he began to ask his dad a question, Matthew paused when his cat, a fluffy grey Chartreux named Porkchop, jumped onto the front window seat. Recently, Matthew found himself talking to the cat more and more in the early morning hours. The cat, now ten years old, had been his confidant these past couple months. Matthew had a new appreciation for the feline and decided to bring him with them during the short stay at Zech and Mary’s home.
He watched the cat as it stared back at him; with a slow blink, it moved its gaze to the front yard, seemingly directing Matthew to look. As Matthew looked through the front window, his grip on the used forks and knives turned white knuckle as his vision focused on what was outside on the front curb.
It was Terrence.
And he was holding a sledgehammer.
Terrence stared through the front window and his eyes met Matthew’s. How long had he been out there? Did he watch them all eat breakfast or had he just pulled up?
Before Matthew could finish his thought, Terrence raised the sledgehammer, and with one smooth motion, brought it down like a meteor on the Lights’ mailbox.
Matthew did not even notice the shotgun-like boom of the impact. He stared and thanked God the kids were in the backyard. Terrence then shot a look back at Matthew after the destruction, holding the gaze just as they locked eyes in the Storage Yard only days before when the muzzle of Terrence’s shotgun was pointed into Matthew’s chest.
Terrence then moved back into his car and was gone without another sound.
Matthew looked at the mailbox as his father came around from the kitchen. Zech asked what the noise was. The iron pole and box slouched, hunched over and pitiful after the blow, half as tall as it once was.
The family name “Light” now appeared scratched and shattered, hardly legible in the shadows of the bent iron.