Chapter 3A: Beneath Silence
The morning light in Black Hollow was gray, filtered through fog and bare-limbed trees. Isaiah rose to find frost on the window glass and a silence in the rectory so complete it seemed to throb.
Downstairs, he found no sign of his Father.
The hearth was cold.
The kitchen, orderly.
A single crust of bread and a crock of hard cheese had been left out on the table with a note in a hand too neat to be loving:
You may take food at will. I will return before dusk. Remain within.
There was no signature. Only the faint trace of something that smelled like cedar smoke and worn leather. His father’s scent, lingering on the parchment like breath.
Isaiah ate in silence.
The house felt watchful. Its timbers creaked at odd intervals. Shadows stretched and shifted where they ought not move. Once, in the early afternoon, he passed by the sitting room and saw that the heavy Bible left atop the fireplace mantle had fallen open, its pages fluttering despite the stillness of the air.
Verse 22 of Leviticus 18 stared back at him, lines underlined in red.
Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.
Isaiah shut the book.
By dusk, the fog had thickened, curling along the eaves and pressing its fingers through the cracks of the windows. He heard the crunch of boots on frozen earth—measured, heavy.
The front door opened, and Thaddeus entered. His cassock hung open over a dark shirt soaked near to transparency, the fabric clinging to his chest, massive, rising and falling with slow breath, and to the taut plane of his stomach. His hands were bare, red with cold, veined like the arms of a statue halfway finished.
“Forgive my absence,” he said, voice rough from wind. “The chapel roof was troubled by storm. I climbed to inspect it.”
Isaiah set down his tea. “Alone?”
“There is no one else.”
Thaddeus stepped into the warmth of the fire and pulled off his gloves. As he peeled back the cassock, Isaiah caught the scent of sweat, salt, and wool—something base. Earthy. Human.
He hung the coat beside the hearth. For a moment, standing in profile, he seemed more flesh than cloth, shirt clinging to the swell of his arms, belt pulled tight over a body carved by discipline, not comfort.
Isaiah turned his gaze away.
“Your work…” he began, “it is lonely.”
“Aye. But it is holy.”
“Is it?” Isaiah asked.
Thaddeus did not look at him. He bent instead to stoke the fire, muscles rippling beneath the shirt as he leaned. “There are many kinds of holiness, Isaiah. Some quieter than others.”
That night, supper was taken by firelight. The food was simple: stew and black bread. Neither man spoke much. The heat between them was not warmth but pressure. Isaiah felt his skin itch, his palms sweat. Every time Thaddeus reached for the breadknife, the tendons of his forearm moved like ropes beneath the skin. His knuckles were scarred. His nails clean.
Isaiah could not stop watching his hands.
Later, Isaiah stood at his bedroom window. Moonlight silvered the roof of the chapel beyond. The steeple jutted toward the clouds like a broken blade. The night was still. And yet…
He left the window.
Padded quietly down the hall.
At the far end stood Thaddeus’s chamber door.
He should not have paused there.
He should not have leaned closer.
But he did.
From within came no sound at first. Then, a breath. Another. Then a whisper. Not in his voice. Not in Thaddeus’s. Pleading. Inhuman.
Isaiah turned away, heart pounding, and descended the stairs.
The rectory’s front room was dark. The chapel door stood across the yard, just visible through the high window panes. A line of pale light flickered behind the stained glass.
He moved toward the front door, hand on the knob.
But stopped.
Thaddeus stood behind him.
He had removed his outer garments. Only his shirtsleeves remained, rolled to the elbow, and a pair of black trousers that clung damply to his hips. His chest was still streaked with sweat from earlier labor, the fabric sheer where it crossed his pectorals, nipples faintly visible beneath the weave. His breath was slow. Controlled.
“You should be abed.”
Isaiah swallowed. “I couldn’t sleep.”
Thaddeus’s eyes drifted to the distant chapel, then back to him.
“Some doors remain locked for good reason.”
Isaiah did not move.
“Do you understand me?” The priest’s voice was low, but firm.
“Yes, Father.”
The man studied him. And in that gaze, something shifted. Not anger. Not disappointment. But a grief so deep it seemed to hollow his chest.
Without another word, he turned and disappeared into the darkened hallway.
Isaiah remained.
And the warmth from the chapel door beyond pulsed once, softly, against his cheek, like breath from a thing that waited.
Chapter 3B: The Scourge and the Flesh
He drifted uneasily, caught in the space between dreams and waking. Shadows moved behind his eyes.
And then… a whisper.
Soft.
Close.
Growing closer still.
“…Isaiah…”
It was spoken with no breath, no mouth—just shape and intent, pressed to the shell of his ear.
He sat up with a gasp, the sheets clinging to his skin.
The room was empty.
The candle had guttered out. The hearth was cold. But a faint light spilled through the narrow window, catching in the frost upon the panes.
He rose.
Outside, across the fog-draped yard, the chapel glowed faintly. Its stained-glass windows flickered with candlelight, shifting shadows within.
He crossed the room, dressed hastily, and slipped from the rectory with bare feet in his boots and a coat thrown loosely over his shoulders. The grass crackled beneath him. The mist curled around his ankles.
As he approached, he paused.
Two shadows moved inside.
One tall. The other, impossibly still.
Isaiah's breath caught. Something twisted in his gut.
He stepped closer. Slowly. Careful not to be seen.
He reached the chapel door and turned the iron handle. It groaned but opened with ease.
Inside, the air was thick with smoke and sweat.
And there was no second figure.
Only his father.
Stripped to the waist.
Kneeling in the candlelight on bare stone, shirt discarded. Breeches low on his hips. His back turned to Isaiah, revealing a form vast and brutal, carved from sinew and punishment. His shoulders flexed with each movement, glistening with sweat. And along the ridges of his back were welts. Some fresh, red and raised, others fading to pale scars.
In his right hand, he gripped a leather scourge, its braided lashes tipped in knots.
He swung it over his shoulder.
The strike landed with a sickening sound.
Thaddeus grunted, deep, guttural, but did not cry out. His breath hitched. His spine arched.
He muttered something under his breath. Words lost to distance, but spoken like a mantra.
He struck again. And again.
Isaiah’s mouth had gone dry. He could not look away. His father was enormous. monstrous.
Beautiful.
The flesh on his back trembling with each blow, muscles rippling under the candlelight, the shadows of his spine dancing like wings folded inward.
Another strike. Then another.
Isaiah’s own breath began to quicken, chest rising and falling beneath his coat. He shifted, suddenly aware of the pressure building between his thighs. Unwanted, undeniable. The heat of it bloomed low in his stomach, shameful and strange, as though his body had betrayed him before his mind could catch up.
He pressed a hand down, as if to smother it.
But it only made things worse.
Thaddeus trembled, finally faltering, his arm dropped, and his head bowed low.
He pressed his palm to the floor, breathing hard.
The candlelight glimmered against the sheen of sweat that rolled down his ribs and the curve of his back, tracing along the grooves of a man too strong, too large, too human to be so… broken.
Isaiah took a step back, suddenly overwhelmed by a terrible shame. He had watched. He had felt something stir inside him. He was hard.
And not from desire alone.
From awe.
From horror.
From something darker.
And so he fled.
Back in his room, he stood in the dark for a long time before slipping into bed. He did not light another candle. He did not move. He simply lay there, eyes wide, heart racing, breath shallow.
His mind repeated the image: the whip, the back, the blood, the silence after.
Morning came cold and pale.
Isaiah rose early and dressed slowly, hands still trembling faintly. When he entered the kitchen, the smell of fresh bread and salted pork greeted him. A pot of tea steamed at the hearth.
Thaddeus stood at the table, already dressed in his black shirt and clerical trousers. His coat lay draped over the back of a chair.
He turned with a faint, careful smile. “Sleep well?”
Isaiah hesitated. “Well enough.”
“I apologize for the sounds last night,” Thaddeus said, slicing bread. “The storm unsettled the shutters. I secured them late.”
Isaiah sat slowly. His eyes wandered down his father’s thick arm, to where the sleeve strained at the bicep, then further to the curve of his shoulder. There, at the shoulder, a blotch of red. Faint, but blooming through the black cotton like ink in water.
“You’re bleeding,” Isaiah said.
Thaddeus paused.
“I beg your pardon?”
Isaiah gestured. “Your shirt. At the shoulder.”
The priest turned his head slightly. Then resumed slicing the bread. “A scratch.”
“It looks—”
“It is nothing.”
Isaiah’s voice was quiet now. “I saw you.”
The knife stopped.
Silence.
Then Thaddeus straightened, slowly, deliberately. His body moved like something carved from stone: every muscle precise, held in check. He turned to face Isaiah, his face unreadable.
“What, precisely,” he asked, voice low and sharp, “did you see?”
Isaiah swallowed.
The room felt colder now.
“I…” Isaiah’s throat tightened. “I heard something. I went outside. To the chapel.”
Thaddeus stepped closer. Not quickly. But with weight.
Isaiah gripped the edge of the table.
“I saw you,” he said. “With the whip.”
A flicker passed across the priest’s face. Shame. Rage. Or something older.
He turned away. Reached for the teapot.
“We shall not speak of it again.”
“Why?” Isaiah asked, though his voice trembled.
“Because it is penance,” Thaddeus said quietly, pouring the tea with a steady hand. “And penance is not meant for the eyes of others.”
He set the pot down.
But did not sit.
Instead, he stood at the window, arms crossed behind his back, the outline of his body visible through the morning light, shirt still damp with sweat and streaked now with more red.
And when he spoke again, it was not to Isaiah, but to the window.
“There are things in this world, my son, that weigh heavier than any man can carry. And when one cannot put them down…”
His fingers flexed behind his back.
“…he must bleed them out.”
