It’s a boy. A boy who isn’t a boy anymore. A figure standing in the aisle—taller now, broader, a hoodie pulled low to hide his features. His face is half-shadowed by the flickering light of the few candles still burning.
I know that shape. That heavy, weighted silence. That stare that feels like a physical brand.
My hand moves to my pocket, gripping the hilt. Knife. Just in case.
The figure tilts his head, a bird-like, inquisitive movement. And then—he laughs.
Not loud. Not manic. Just soft. Cruel. Like he’s been waiting for me to catch up to the punchline.
My blood goes cold. Because in the flicker of the candlelight… he looks exactly like Damien. But not the man I just left. Not the monster who fucks me like he wants to break me. Not the protector. Not the predator.
This one is younger. This one is something else entirely.
I blink, stepping back, the wood of the pew biting into my hip. The moth on the altar shifts as a draft hits it. And I remember. A hand over my mouth. A whisper against my ear.You can’t leave if I keep you.
The boy steps forward. And I finally understand—I didn’t just forget him.
I left him here to rot.
The air tastes like dust and iron. Every breath is a scrape down my throat.
He takes another step toward me and the floorboards creak under his weight, a sound so small it shouldn’t be terrifying, but it is, because it’s the same rhythm from my nightmares—step, pause, whisper, step.
I want to run. I want to scream. But my feet stay planted and my voice stays caught somewhere behind my teeth.
“You’re not real,” I say, but the words are too quiet, too unsure to hold any power.
The hooded head tilts a little more, like a predator listening for the heartbeat of its prey. Candlelight slides across a sharp jawline, a mouth, a flash of pale skin, and my stomach turns because it’s so wrong and yet so right at the same time. Damien’s shape, Damien’s stillness, but not Damien’s eyes.
The figure stops a few paces away. Hands in the pockets of the hoodie. Shoulders relaxed. Like he’s been standing in this aisle for twenty years.
“You left me,” he says. Not a shout. Not a growl. Just a statement. Calm. Flat. Devastatingly young.
My fingers curl tighter around the knife in my pocket until the hilt bites into my palm. I don’t remember putting it there. I don’t remember taking it out.
“I don’t know who you are,” I whisper.
“You do.” A slight, chilling smile. “You just don’t want to.”
Another step. He’s close enough now that I can smell him—dust, sweat, candle wax, and something older. The stale, recycled air of a room with no windows.
Images flicker in my head, a strobe light of trauma. A hole in a wall. Moths in a jar. Small, trembling hands passing scraps of food through the cracks. A whisper:count with me.
My stomach flips.
“You’re not Damien,” I say, forcing the words out through a throat that feels like it’s closing.
“No,” he answers, the corner of his mouth curling into something that isn’t a smile. “I’m the part he left here.”
The knife trembles in my grip. My pulse is loud in my ears, counting by itself, faster and faster. He takes another step, and my back hits the cold, hard wood of the altar.
“You don’t belong here,” I manage.
He laughs softly, the sound sliding over my skin like a razor. “Neither do you.”
Another flash—the priest’s polished shoes, the drone of the hymn, the heavy hand over my mouth. But this time there’s another hand too, a small one, trying to pull me away. The boy. This boy. Before he became whatever this ghost is.
“You kept the moths,” he says. “I told you you would.”
