Thread by @seokjinhie

𝒘𝒉𝒊𝒔𝒑𝒆𝒓, 𝒅𝒂𝒓𝒌𝒏𝒆𝒔𝒔

~ #2seok oneshot
~ mature (might change)
~ blood, spooky, themes of religion, a priest, a vampire, and the holy spirit
~ inspired by (and not at all based on) 'midnight mass'

[~posting on twt because i'm writing something else right now so this is just for spooky season funsies~ updates will likely be short, unedited and inconsistent: you have been warned!]

♱

The entrance to the chapel had been creaking all night. A storm was on its way, promising its arrival through the harsh winds that whistled through the gaps of doors and cracks of windowpanes.

Hoseok was the only one inside. He was always the only one in the chapel. Nobody in the small town that he called home ever came to church anymore.

Barely anyone attended Mass, either — just the same, familiar faces of a handful of the town’s older residents and their small families, who only joined them because they knew that their grandmother’s or grandfather’s time on earth was quickly running out.

Hoseok was the last 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘦 person of faith left, here, and on nights like this, he wished he had at least one companion to call upon.

𝘖𝘯𝘦 friend, one person he could trust to sit beside him and pray with him as the strongest storm the town had seen in years swept its way through.

He’d always 𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 thunder. And he’d always hated being alone.

The entrance creaked again, louder this time. Hoseok bent his head lower.

He was sitting in the pews, head bowed, completely silent. Now and then he would lift his gaze to a corner of the chapel that always seemed too dark to be natural — the candles he lit all around the large, empty space never seemed to penetrate it. He never knew why.

On nights like this, Hoseok tricked himself into believing that a spirit loomed there, keeping a watchful eye on him as he lied to everyone in town. The spirit — his own mind — mocked him for continuing with his faith, after all that he’d done before coming back here.

On nights like this, that corner became darker yet; as dark as the woods that surrounded the chapel, as dark as the moonless sky.

Hoseok knew it was only in his head. He was smart enough to know that he'd simply been alone for 𝘵𝘰𝘰 long and the sounds of the night, the sounds of the storm, were putting strange, frightening fantasies into his mind.

The entrance creaked again, but Hoseok remained seated.

Lightning fractured the sky somewhere that he couldn’t see but could feel; could 𝘴𝘮𝘦𝘭𝘭. Ozone and electricity had such a distinct scent. Thunder followed not so far behind, promising rainfall in a handful of minutes.

“Soak the earth,” Hoseok muttered; beginning a prayer that his mother would whisper to herself whenever it was about to rain. “Feed it with life so that those who are dead do not borrow our breath.”

He prayed, still, even as the flames of the candles lit all around the chapel shivered in the unstoppable gusts of wind. He prayed even when the first candle went out, then the second, and the third.

He prayed, head lowered, voice quiet, even when the darkness out of the corner of his eye became bigger, opening its arms to consume more and more of his church’s light.

The entrance creaked. This time, it was the door.

“My Father, who art in heaven, keep my hands warm with my blood and the feet beneath my body on the ground, for all of my Lord's lessons have yet to pass through my mouth—”

Hoseok’s quick, panicked prayer was interrupted by a sound he couldn’t categorize. It was so loud, like a clap over his ear but it didn’t deafen him, it only made him gasp and turn in his seat.

The doors of the chapel had been pulled open — a wide mouth, spitting rain onto the church floor. He couldn’t see anyone but it was too dark to tell if he was truly alone, and so he stood, ignoring the way that his hands shook as he clutched at his rosary.

“Come in from the cold!” he shouted. “Don’t stay out there, I have to bolt the doors before the storm gets any worse! You are welcome here!”

A moment passed where nothing happened. No rain hit the roof, no wind bit at Hoseok’s cheeks, no sound reached his ears.

It was as though he’d accidentally cast a spell over the church, but he didn’t believe in spells. He didn’t believe in the supernatural. He didn’t believe in what, only a few seconds later, came to stand in the doorway of his chapel.

A man, drenched in rain — no, not rain. Hoseok couldn’t understand, at first, what was dripping from his clothes as he simply 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘰𝘥 there, saying nothing and moving not even a muscle.

He looked 𝘸𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨. His face was pale but not in a way that made him look different to Hoseok but in a way that made him look different to 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦.

His eyes… they were so dark and yet somehow they glowed, reflecting the last of the light that remained inside the church.

Hoseok stayed still. Not out of fear, although he was full of that. He stayed still out of want for his own survival.

He knew what this man was.

It was not a man at all.

The liquid that dripped off of it and onto the wooden floor of the chapel was not rain, but blood — thick, fresh, 𝘳𝘦𝘥 blood — and Hoseok could see streaks of it coming from the creature’s mouth, too. He could smell it.

“You—” he whispered, knowing it would hear him. “You can’t come in here.”

But it could. He had invited it.

As soon as Hoseok’s breath left his lungs, and as he was about to suck up some more and try to 𝘥𝘢𝘮𝘯 the creature out of his church, it fell. Onto its knees, its head still raised to keep its gaze locked on Hoseok’s even as it caught itself with its long, blood-stained hands.

Through a crackle of a voice that was unnaturally thin and broken, as if it had been saving this final breath 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 for these words, it said, “Father… Help me.”

Dragging a lifeless body across his church floor became a picture that Hoseok knew he would never be able to cleanse from his memories.

He would have to live with it until the day he died; the image of blood, streaked across pale wooden floorboards, staining his Lord’s resting place with this creature’s dirty, twisted brutality.

How many people had it killed before it came here? How many breaths had it stopped with its hands, with its teeth, with its unforgivable lust?

It was soaked. It covered Hoseok’s hands and the sleeves of his robe in the thick wetness of it, leaving him dripping, too, when he finally let go of the creature at the alter.

Perhaps he shouldn’t have brought it up to this point — the most sacred part of the church, the place where Hoseok stood every morning to recite the word of God.

But it was the only area in which his candles still burned, too far from the entrance to have had their flames blown out by the harsh winds.

It didn’t matter. It 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥𝘯’𝘵 matter. When the creature woke up, he would almost certainly be killed at the hands of it and if Hoseok was going to die tonight, he wanted it to be right here. He could have control over that, if nothing else.

When he finally knelt down beside the body, his breaths ragged and chopped from the labor of pulling it across the length of the chapel, he took a moment to examine it. It hadn’t moved or breathed since it fell, landing artlessly onto the floor, and so Hoseok knew he had time.

It was not dead. It never would be, if it 𝘸𝘢𝘴 truly what he believed it was, but it was injured somewhere that Hoseok couldn’t see.

He had 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦.

It had asked him to help. That was his only purpose on this earth, his only promise to himself, and he would always answer to those in need, no matter who or what they were. This thing had been human, once. Hoseok had a responsibility to treat it as though it were, still.

"Why did you come here?” he asked in a whisper, knowing that it would not answer him. The creature laid still below his nose, its blood-smeared face pointed towards the panels that kept the ceiling intact. Hoseok lowered himself toward it to get a closer look. “What did you do?”

He shook as he went, his whole body moving in betrayal to the sound composure of his mind. Of course, he was frightened. Of course, he didn’t 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 to die.

There was nowhere else for him to go tonight, though, and if he could somehow stop this thing from killing someone else tonight by being the one that it 𝘥𝘪𝘥? He would accept his fate and offer himself up to it.

After he took a steadying, cooling breath into his lungs, Hoseok’s eyes moved from the creature’s face and roamed across its body in search of what could be hurting it.

Carefully and with delicate hands, Hoseok pulled the opening of its long coat apart until the rest of its clothes were visible beneath. Here, there were still more traces of violence splattered across the pale white fabric of its shirt.

He wondered if it had bled through to its skin — he wondered, if he were to take its clothes away until it were completely naked, would it still be drenched? Would it be coated in red, beneath these layers of fabric?

The image disturbed him more than anything else that had happened so far this night. Not because it was gruesome, not because it made him think of the mindless, unreasonable deaths that would have to have happened for it to be real.

The image disturbed him — made him feel 𝘴𝘪𝘤𝘬 to his stomach with guilt — because he was not as repulsed by the idea of it as he should have been.

He closed his eyes, then, and leaned back until he was no longer kneeling but sitting on the train of fabric that covered the alter. He rested his hands behind his back and breathed in short, rapid bursts as he began to chant a short, desperate prayer.

“—be with me. Lord, be with me, for I am sick and unclean. Lord, be with me, for I am sick and unclean. Lord, be with me—”

"𝘚𝘵𝘰𝘱."

Hoseok’s entire body froze at the sound of its voice.

If he moved, would it hurt him? He couldn’t stay immobile and unbreathing like this forever.

Another strangled sound came from its chest as the creature began to move, slowly pushing itself up from the floor to sit. Its body was of a man’s; broad, strong and solid like marble.

Beneath the blood was pale skin, ruined by what was done to it — the sun did not feed it anymore, and so any warmth had been drained out of it like a twisted rag.

As it sat up, dripping with red from its chin and rain from its dark hair, it bowed its head down toward its lap and whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

Hoseok took his time to say or do anything. He watched, his eyes wide so as not to miss a movement, and tried to will the creature to look at him.

He wanted to see its face; seeing only the profile of such a horror was bound to be more terrifying than looking directly at it, face to face, and finding parts of its appearance that he could humanise. Rationalise. If he could 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 look into its eyes…

“Father,” it whispered again before finally — slowly — twisting its torso around toward Hoseok’s. “There is no one out there. No one.”

“No one where?” Hoseok’s own voice surprised him when he heard it. He didn’t form the question in his mind before it came out of his mouth.

“I killed… I killed people. I—” It stopped itself and licked its lips. It lifted the lids of its eyes until the black, black, 𝘣𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬 irises inside met Hoseok’s and pulled him down into the Hell within them.

“My mind is not my own, anymore. I didn’t have a choice. There is no one that can save me.”

Hoseok closed his mouth. He needed to be brave. It was talking to him like a human, seeking the advice of someone with faith — someone with experience. He 𝘩𝘢𝘥 to stop shaking.

“What is your name?”

Its breaths finally came in slow, heavy strokes. Hoseok counted them. The in, the out, and the seconds in between. Did it need to breathe? Perhaps it was out of habit.

Still, Hoseok matched them with his own; he filled up his lungs with the air that smelled thick with metal and released it at the same time as it did. He waited for it to speak again.

When it turned to face him this time, Hoseok was prepared for the horror of it. In his head, he changed the way he saw it and turned it into a man; if he thought of 𝘪𝘵 as a 𝘩𝘪𝘮, it would be easier for him to help. He hoped.

“Does it matter?” the nameless creature asked in a voice that sounded as though it already knew the answer. “Will it make a difference—” his irises shifted to the space behind Hoseok, staring over his shoulder, “—to Him?”

Hoseok didn’t need to turn around to know who he was looking at or who was referring to. He could see the marble cross and the body of Christ nailed to its points as if it were right in front of him. He had been praying to it before death appeared on his doorstep.

“You’re still His.” Hoseok’s shaking hand rose up from the cloth that covered the alter and fell upon a hard, soaked shoulder. “But you need to tell me what you’ve done. I need your name.”

Hoseok’s whispered words broke something in the stranger. In the reality of him. He broke apart the same way a performance — an opera — eventually always comes to an end. The veil fell from his dark, unnatural eyes, and gave way to who truly saw through them. 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵.

Before he spoke, he licked his lips. Not to wet them.

To taste what he hadn’t finished.

“You think I’m here to confess, Father?”

Behind him, off to the left of his shoulder, Hoseok felt the chill of the darkness that loomed in the corner of his church again.

He felt it lift up the back of his robe, pull out the fabric of his shirt and slide its cold, deathless fingertips up the length of his spine. The darkness that would follow him until the day that he died — it was here, too, in this creature’s voice. It was in his mouth.

“Why—” He couldn’t stop the hitch of his breath; fear like this was meant to silence him. He was stronger than that, though. “Why come to a church of God… being what you are, if not to confess?”

Neither of them moved an inch. Hoseok’s hand still rested on his shoulder. He wasn’t sure which gesture would be his last, anymore, and removing his hand might be the wrong one to make.

As long as their eyes were still locked as they were, he could at least anticipate his death before it happened.

What came next was another question, quietly posed with a curious lilt to his voice that sounded out of place and foreign compared to how it had sounded only moments ago. It no longer sounded... desperate.

“You know what I am?”

It was inappropriate. It was a temptation, a riddle, a 𝘥𝘢𝘳𝘦. As if he was asking ‘𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘮𝘦 𝘮𝘺 𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘐 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘴𝘱𝘪𝘯 𝘨𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘐 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘭𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵’.

“We’re asking far too many questions and not giving each other enough answers,” Hoseok whispered. He was done with his games.

The creature turned. Closer, closer, until Hoseok’s hand had no choice but to fall away, back into his own lap. Another hand that wasn’t his own landed on his knee, but he didn’t — wouldn’t — tear his eyes away to look down at it.

“I thought you were supposed to have all of them.” He spoke around a smirk as he tilted his head and Hoseok finally realised what was happening. “Answers, I mean.”

He had been lured out in his own domain. His unbending devotion to strangers and his service… it had brought him right here.

It had led this monster out for him to take advantage of and soon, even if he was still 𝘴𝘰 careful, he would end up smeared across those lips just like the other sorry souls who fell victim to that impossible face.

But Hoseok had been living off of borrowed time for longer than he could remember. He knew how to outrun a curse.

“I am not Him,” he said, turning his voice to stone. “I’m his vessel, not his encyclopedia.”

A hum followed that sounded more like the delighted purr of a large cat. He was enjoying this — the back and forth, the chase.

Was Hoseok simply dangling his meal in front of him? Presenting himself as a plaything? Was it worth the humiliation to keep going like this when he knew what could happen to him at any given moment?

Yes. Because if a game was what stood between life and death, Hoseok would always try to win.

“And yet His vessel believes in those that cannot be real.”

“According to who?”

Those words must have pleased him. Something in his gaze changed; shifted with a flicker of light or a breeze or a breath. He didn’t stare at Hoseok to terrify him any longer, but his eyes searched and roamed over his face for clues.

This time, when he spoke, his red lips remained open.

“That’s terribly blasphemous of you, Father.”

“I asked 𝘺𝘰𝘶 a question, not Him.” He couldn’t believe his own words. He couldn’t believe the sound of his own voice — so stable and unwavering, now that his faith was being prodded at with teeth that could 𝘳𝘪𝘱.

“I’ll ask you another.” Before he did, his hand found the one on his knee. There, his palm covered the knuckles that were still coated in drying blood, but he didn’t stop there.

Hoseok followed the path of his hand, feeling the veins that no longer worked until his nails tucked beneath a wet sleeve and found his wrist. There, he remained still. “Are you going to kill me, too?”

Any more words were sucked from the church and turned into the night that waited for them outside.

Only silence followed Hoseok’s question as the monster beneath his hand observed him, taking his time to try and peel back the cloth of courage that Hoseok was using to keep himself safe and alive. Along with that courage, however, was curiosity.

What did it taste like? The blood on his mouth. The blood on his chin, his throat, his hands. Hoseok had asked what he’d done when really he meant 𝘸𝘩𝘰 had he done this to? But now he wondered if that part really mattered.

A man’s blood was ruined, anyway, once it was digested. It was a filthy practice, long left in the past with the Egyptians and the Romans. His God had taught him that.

Yet, here 𝘩𝘦 was. Covered in it. Full of it. Smelling of nothing 𝘣𝘶𝘵 the richness of it that Hoseok wanted to dip his fingers into and lap up, too, just to say that he’d tried. Perhaps he wanted to see the look on the creatures face as he did it.

Hoseok was as sick as he had always been. He hadn’t changed, not one bit — he would be this way forever, until he could no longer 𝘣𝘦 at all.

The stranger must have seen a glimpse into that shielded part of him. It must have helped him make a decision.

“No,” he said, with finality. “Not if I can help it.”

Somehow, Hoseok believed him.

“Alright.” He didn’t sigh a breath of relief, despite wanting to. He didn’t look away, despite his instincts telling him to. He just continued to speak. He was always good at that.

“Then you shouldn’t call me Father any longer.” He rose up from his place on the floor, slowly and with care as the hand slithered off of his knee.

Things would be different from then on. He didn’t know if he had bargained away his life or if he was putting his trust in the wrong mouth, but there was nothing more for him to do than continue along the path he’d chosen.

Things would happen tonight that he would never forgive himself for. But had he ever forgiven himself for what he’d done in the past, either?

The question that had been asked of him earlier came back to the front of his mind.

Did it matter?

“My name is Hoseok. I killed my mother when I was a child. I thought she was like you. Maybe she was… maybe I was wrong. I’m still not sure.”

His gaze hardened, his jaw locked into its place with the grief that had been ruining his sleep since he was barely old enough to sit in a pew without a cushion beneath his seat.

He held out his hand.

“Now tell me your name. I’ll get you some clean clothes so that we don’t have to talk while you’re dripping blood onto my church floor.”

With widened eyes that suddenly looked a lot darker, but not in colour — in 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 — the stranger stood up. He didn’t hunch or lean, this time, doing away with the act of being in pain.

He had never been in any pain at all. It had all been a lie to get to where he stood; towering over the town’s priest with a wicked gaze that meant it would soon devour him whole.

He likely still would, if Hoseok were lucky.

“My name is Seokjin. And I'm an Atheist.”

They smiled at each other.

“That’s very funny.” Hoseok kept his hand outstretched, no longer shaking — only waiting, patient, for whatever end he would meet tonight. “Shall we, then?”

The darkness that they left behind did not flicker. It only grew.

— end. ♱