Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
“He shall know her by the sound of his name on her lips. He shall not fear the grave or the permanence of the soil, for in her arms, he will be made into something new.”
—Journal of E.A. Harrow
“They’re coming for me.”
The knock wasn’t unexpected when it rang throughout the home.
Isaac moved toward the front door on muscle memory. Lenoria reached for him as he passed. Her fingers brushed his arm, but she knew better than to say a word.
He opened the door and three men stood on the porch.
Middle-aged, all of them. Dressed like they were headed to a family function: khakis, button-downs, soft brown jackets, the kind of clothes designed to fit in.
But their faces were unmistakable. He’d seen them in his father’s funeral photos.
In the margins of grainy newspaper clippings about town council meetings.
One of them wore a gold pin on his lapel: a hollow ring with a line through it. An elder.
The oldest man smiled. “Evenin’, Isaac.”
Isaac nodded. “You’re late for the viewing.”
“Oh, we’re not here for that,” said the man on the left. “Came to pay respects to you. Big thing, takin’ over the old place.”
Isaac didn’t answer. He knew better than to invite them in. But, they didn’t wait.
They simply stepped inside like they belonged there.
“We were just wonderin’,” said the third man, the tallest, “if you’d had any…unusual occurrences lately. Anything the family business didn’t prepare you for.”
Isaac shut the door slowly. “What do you mean?”
The first man’s eyes gleamed as he stared at Isaac. “You know exactly what we mean.”
There it was. The thin film of politeness peeled back, just enough to show the rot beneath.
“When your father was alive,” he continued, “he handled the rites without fuss. Knew when to keep his head down. When to follow through.”
Isaac’s jaw tensed. “My father hated you.”
The smile never faltered. “But he did his duty. Even when it cost him. We assumed, given your inheritance that you’d do the same.”
There was a sound behind him. Subtle. A shift of weight on old floorboards. Lenoria, listening just out of sight.
The tall man leaned in slightly. “You’ve seen her by now, I imagine. The girl. Our bridal sacrifice.”
Isaac’s hand curled into a fist at his side.
“She’s not a sacrifice. She’s a person.”
That got a reaction. A quick taste of something like disapproval.
“She’s a door, son. A holy body. The Hollow Bridegroom waits to walk again, and he’s chosen you as his passage.”
The man closest to him stepped forward, voice lower now.
“This town survived because of the pact. Because every generation, one of us bears the burden. You’re lucky it’s you. Blessed, even. It could have been your dad if he’d been strong enough.”
“Go to hell,” Isaac said.
“We already did, boy,” the man laughed. “We built our chapel there.”
A beat passed. Long enough for Isaac to hear his own pulse in his ears.
“We’re running out of time to finish the ceremony. Out of respect for your daddy, we will give you some time to fix this. Bury her properly, seal it clean, and we won’t have to involve the others. You understand.”
Then the men were gone.
But it didn’t stop the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Even as they disappeared from sight, their presence lingered. Not just them. Something older than them. Older than the cult. And… hungrier.
She was made for you, the voice said. And you for me. You are the hand that will bury her. The tongue that will recite me. The cock that will consecrate her flesh.
Isaac’s mouth went dry as he tried to block out the words.
She carries the hunger. You become the vessel.
Images flooded him. The embalming table.
The ritual didn’t just require death. It required a union.
And not a safe union, but the kind of desperation that stripped both parties bare.
That kind that made you beg. The kind Isaac felt when Lenoria looked at him like she wanted him to rot inside her when his cum ran in a thick stream out of her quivering cunt.
Tonight, the Hollow Bridegroom breathed into his mind. You will bury yourself with her. And I will rise.
Isaac’s breath hitched, and sweat beaded on the back of his neck. And then he moved through the house like a man possessed—because he was—and began gathering what he needed.