Chapter 1: Ashes and Return
Worcester, Massachusetts, the year of our Lord 1837.
A sky of slate wept gently over the chapel’s peaked roof, its tears slipping along weatherworn stone and rattling against diamond-paned glass. Within, the mourners sat hushed and immobile, like carved effigies in the pews, faces pale, hands gloved, breath barely drawn. The scent of damp wool and extinguished candles filled the air, mingling with the somber perfume of lilies arranged at the head of the coffin.
Isaiah knelt alone at the front. His posture was erect, not in pride but necessity, as though grief demanded composure lest it consume him entirely. He did not cry. Not when the priest spoke the final rites in a thin voice that cracked. Not when the pallbearers set the coffin upon the bier. Not even when he dared, for one final time, to look upon the still and painted face of his mother.
She had been so warm in life. So fierce. Now she seemed waxen, hollowed by death’s cruel precision.
The priest cleared his throat, breaking the silence like a blade through water.
“Those who wish to bid their farewells may now approach.”
Isaiah rose and approached the coffin. He pressed his gloved fingers to the polished pine and murmured something too soft for any ear but God’s. His gaze lingered not on her but beyond, past the flickering altar candles, past the rows of bowed heads, to the darkened narthex beyond the chapel’s rear arch.
There, in shadow, stood a figure he had not seen in nine years.
He knew at once who it was, though time had carved harshness into the man’s features and turned a once-golden presence into something stately and severe. The shoulders were broader now, straining the seams of a black wool coat soaked dark by rain. The neck was thick, veins visible even at a distance, the jaw squared and grim with restraint. A clerical collar was barely visible above the dark line of his lapel.
Father Thaddeus Vale.
His own father.
Isaiah’s breath caught in his chest, like a bell struck once and left to quiver.
He had not thought the man would come.
He had not desired it.
But now that he stood there, tall and still as a monument, Isaiah found he could not look away.
No gesture was made. No smile. Only that steady, unwavering gaze that those pale grey eyes, ringed with sleepless shadow, trained upon him like a question unanswered.
When Isaiah blinked, the man was gone.
Not a step, not a sound. Simply vanished from sight.
—
By the time the mourners drifted away, some with hushed condolences, others with practiced silence, Isaiah stood beneath the old elm at the edge of the cemetery, his coat drawn tightly around him. The air was bitter and sodden with October mist.
He lit a cigarette with shaking fingers, the smoke catching in his throat.
“You ought not indulge in that, my son.”
The voice was low, gravel-worn, and impossibly close.
Isaiah turned, and there he was, Father Thaddeus, tall and unshaven, his coat discarded, leaving only the clinging black of his clerical shirt stretched tight over a form that no cassock could conceal. Rain had made the fabric translucent in patches, revealing the stark relief of muscle beneath. His chest rose with slow, deliberate breaths, the silver cross upon his chain resting squarely against the dense swell of his sternum.
“I beg your pardon,” Isaiah said coldly. “I had not realised your return granted you such authority.”
“I did not come to wield it,” Thaddeus replied, stepping no closer, though the weight of him pressed upon the air itself. “Only to see you. To see her laid to rest.”
“She asked for you, you know,” Isaiah said, voice quieter. “In her final hours. She wondered if you would come.”
“And yet I did not.”
“No,” Isaiah whispered. “You did not.”
The wind shifted between them, carrying a scent Isaiah could not place. Earth, smoke, and something faintly… wrong. He tried to ignore it.
Thaddeus’s jaw tightened, the muscle ticking beneath damp stubble. “I carry that sin, Isaiah. I carry it like I carry the others. But I have returned, for what little time remains. And I would see you come with me.”
Isaiah furrowed his brow. “Come where?”
“To Black Hollow. The rectory is empty, save for myself. You would have a room. Food. Quiet. The town is humble, but the work is honest. And the chapel there has long needed a caretaker.”
“I have no wish to take vows, Father.”
“I would not ask it.” His eyes softened. Just slightly. “Only that you not remain here in this house of grief, alone.”
Isaiah studied the man before him. The body was not as he remembered. The priest had once been lean, graceful. But now he was flesh made heavy with labor. The breadth of his chest seemed sculpted beneath the wet black of his shirt, his arms knotted with strength that suggested more than prayer. Discipline etched every line of him.
It was too much. Too present.
“And if I refuse?” Isaiah asked.
Thaddeus looked away. “Then I shall go alone at first light. And pray you find peace in your own time.”
He turned then, stepping back into the mist. His broad shoulders rose and fell beneath the fabric, his boots heavy upon the soft earth.
—
That night, Isaiah lay awake in his childhood home, unable to sleep beneath the silence. The floor creaked with familiar aches. The wind tapped insistently at the shutters.
And in his dreams, he stood once more beneath the chapel’s vaulted ceiling, where a single candle guttered above a kneeling figure, bare-chested, muscled like a Roman statue, arms outstretched in supplication. The man’s back was marred with fresh lashes. Blood ran in rivulets between shoulder blades, down to the curve of his spine. Something unseen whispered through the rafters.
He could not see the man’s face.
But he knew the shape of him.
And when the voice came, not from the man, but from the shadow beyond, it was not a voice meant for the ears of the living.
“He is yours. And you are his. Flesh to flesh. Blood to blood.”
Isaiah woke gasping, the sheets damp with sweat.
The candle had gone out.
Yet, the room was no longer cold.
To be continued..
