Chapter Text
When Travis first heard about what happened at the Addison Apartments, the massacre, the blood, the bodies, he didn’t know what to think.
Sal Fisher. Sweet, awkward, soft-spoken Sal. The boy he’d secretly loved for years. The same boy who used to blush when their hands brushed, who doodled strange little creatures in the margins of his notebooks and laughed too hard at dumb jokes.
That Sal had killed people.
Not just one person. Everyone.
It didn’t make sense.
They hadn’t spoken in months. Not since the summer before Larry died. Travis had been drifting, afraid of the feelings he wasn’t ready to name. He told himself he was giving Sal space. But in the back of his mind, he sometimes wondered if maybe, if he’d stayed, if he’d said something, anything , maybe Sal wouldn’t have broken the way he did.
Still, Travis knew the truth: it wouldn’t have changed a damn thing.
He remembered those nights after Larry’s death. The nights Sal would show up at his door with tear-streaked cheeks and dark circles under his eyes, barely holding himself together. Travis had never seen someone look so haunted .
He'd hold Sal close on his couch, arms tight around his trembling frame as Sal cried into his hoodie. Whispering “why” over and over like it might bring Larry back.
That was the first time Travis really saw him. Not the Sal everyone else knew. Just Sal . Grieving. Lost. Human.
And maybe that was the moment it all changed, when the crush turned into something heavier, sharper. Something like love.
Now he was staring at his closet like it held all the answers.
“What the hell do you wear to a sentencing hearing?” he muttered.
Everything felt wrong. A tie felt too formal. A hoodie felt too casual. Half of him didn’t even want to go. He didn’t know if he could handle seeing Sal like that, in cuffs, in orange, in chains.
But he had to go.
If there was even a sliver of a chance that Sal would look out into the courtroom and see him there; he had to take it. Maybe he could talk to him. Maybe he could ask what the hell he was thinking.
Maybe he could say goodbye.
—
The courtroom was silent, oppressive. The kind of silence that buzzes in your ears. Travis sat stiffly on one of the wooden benches, hands clenched in his lap, knuckles white.
Sal was led in by two officers. His wrists were cuffed, ankles shackled. The bright orange of the jumpsuit made his pale skin look washed out, almost ghostly.
He didn’t look at anyone. Not the judge. Not the lawyers. Not the packed crowd.
Not Travis.
Travis’s throat tightened. That wasn’t the boy he knew. That wasn’t his Sal.
The judge’s voice echoed in the room.
“...in light of the defendant’s cooperation, psychological evaluations, and the recommendation of the prosecution, this court sentences Sal Fisher to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.”
A collective murmur rippled through the courtroom, but all Travis could do was sit there, staring.
Life.
He didn’t even realize he was holding his breath until it came out in a shaky exhale.
There was no closure. No neat ending. No dramatic final words. Just that. Life.
Travis leaned forward slightly, trying to catch Sal’s eye. For a second, just a second, he thought he saw Sal’s gaze flicker in his direction. But then the bailiffs turned him around, and he was gone.
Swallowed by the system.
Travis didn’t cry. He wanted to. But nothing came. Just the hollow ache of regret.
He whispered to no one, “I’m sorry, Sal.”
And he meant it.
—
The days after the sentencing bled into each other.
Travis stopped counting them.
He went home after the trial and crawled into bed, and for a while, that was all he did.
Sleep. Wake. Sit. Repeat.
The world outside kept spinning. Cars still honked, birds still sang, people still smiled like nothing had happened. But to Travis, everything felt muted. Distant. Like he was underwater, watching life through thick glass.
The only thing he could feel was the hollowness.
Sal was gone. Locked away forever. And Travis hadn’t even gotten to say goodbye.
Sometimes, in the quiet hours of the night, he’d reach for his phone and scroll through old messages. Dumb jokes. Song recommendations. Half-finished conversations. A picture of Sal with his mask pulled halfway off, laughing.
Travis would stare at that one the longest.
It got worse when the nightmares started.
They weren’t always about Sal. Sometimes they were about Larry. Sometimes they were about the Addison Apartments, the blood, the bodies. But they always ended the same way; Travis waking up drenched in sweat, gasping, clutching his sheets like a lifeline.
And then, as if the universe hadn’t twisted the knife enough, his father collapsed one Sunday morning getting ready for service.
Massive heart attack.
Gone before Travis even got to the hospital.
The funeral was a blur. Flowers, condolences, too many people touching him, speaking softly like he was fragile. Like grief hadn’t already been gnawing at him for months.
And then came the question:
Who would take over the church?
His father had always assumed it would be Travis. Even in the end, he’d talked about it like it was a given. "My boy’s got a good heart. He’ll keep the faith alive."
Travis wanted to scream.
He didn’t believe in any of it. Not anymore.
If there was a God, then where was He when Larry died? When Sal snapped? When Travis was left standing alone in a courtroom watching the only boy he ever loved get sentenced to die behind bars?
But the church needed someone. The congregation looked to him with soft eyes and grieving hearts.
So he said yes.
Now, every Sunday morning, Travis stood at the front of the sanctuary in his father's old pulpit, drowning in a suit that didn’t quite fit right.
The light from the stained-glass windows painted colors across his skin as he read from the Bible in a voice that didn’t feel like his own.
He preached hope. Redemption. The promise of salvation.
And every word felt like glass in his mouth.
He smiled. He shook hands. He bowed his head in prayer.
And then he went home, shut the door behind him, and stood in the silence of his father’s house, feeling like a fraud.
Like he was performing someone else's life.
Sometimes, after service, he’d sit on the front steps of the church long after everyone had gone, smoking a cigarette he pretended he’d quit.
And he’d whisper into the quiet,
“Sal... I don’t know if you can hear me. But I miss you. God, I miss you.”
He wanted to believe Sal could hear him.
He wanted to believe in something.
But most of the time, he just felt empty.
—
The hallway to visitation echoed with sterile hums. Pale fluorescent lights buzzed above Travis’s head as he was guided through the prison’s inner corridors, his boots clicking dully against the scuffed tile. He was dressed in his father’s old cassock; black, stiff, a bit too big around the shoulders. It felt like wearing a lie.
He hated this thing. The way it hung off him like a borrowed identity. The way people looked at him differently when he wore it; respectful, expectant, trusting.
He hadn’t earned that trust.
The guard in front of him was silent. Efficient. Travis followed, heart hammering against his ribs, palms sweating beneath his sleeves. His throat was dry, and every few steps, he fought the urge to turn around and run.
It had been over a year since the sentencing.
He hadn’t seen Sal since.
“Room five,” the guard muttered, tapping the keypad with a gloved finger. The heavy door hissed open. “You’ve got an hour. Don’t touch the glass.”
Travis nodded mutely.
And then he stepped inside.
The room was gray. Windowless. Two chairs on either side of a thick sheet of glass, a phone receiver bolted to the wall. Sal was already there.
Travis stopped breathing for a second.
The man on the other side of the glass was both familiar and utterly different. Sal had filled out.
The once-lanky frame had thickened with muscle, his arms broader beneath the short sleeves of his prison uniform, which stretched slightly around his shoulders. His hair was longer now, messier, hanging in uneven, dark blue waves that brushed just past his shoulders.
And his face.
He wasn’t wearing the prosthetic.
The left side of Sal’s face was brutally scarred, torn, ridged, and uneven. An old wound that had never fully healed, now on full display. The jaw distorted. The skin around his mouth stretched and burned.
But it was his eyes that hit the hardest.
They were flat. Heavy. Not dead but hardened.
And they flicked up when Travis entered, locking onto him with a quiet, unreadable expression.
Travis moved slowly, like every motion might shatter the moment. He sat down across from him and picked up the phone with a shaking hand.
Sal mirrored him, lifting the receiver to his ear.
They sat there for a beat. Two breaths.
“Hey,” Travis said.
Sal stared. “Hey.”
Silence again. Not comfortable, but not cruel either. Just full of everything they weren’t saying.
“You look…” Travis cleared his throat. “Different.”
Sal snorted. It wasn’t quite a laugh. “You look like a priest.”
Travis flushed. He looked down at his cassock, then back up. “Yeah. I guess I do.”
“Didn’t think you’d come.”
“I didn’t think I would either,” Travis admitted.
Sal studied him for a second. “You’re late.”
“I know.”
“You missed my sentencing. You missed the trial. You missed everything.”
“I was there,” Travis said softly. “For the sentencing. I didn’t tell anyone. I just… I couldn’t—”
“Look at me?” Sal offered, blunt.
“No,” Travis said, voice strained. “I couldn’t watch them lock you away and not do anything. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t move. I just sat there and watched. Like a goddamn coward.”
Sal leaned back in his seat, phone still pressed to his ear. He looked tired.
Travis looked at him, really looked.
Even like this, scarred, bitter, a ghost of the boy he used to be, he was still the most beautiful thing Travis had ever seen.
“You’re not a coward,” Sal said finally. “You’re just late.”
Travis closed his eyes for a second.
“Why aren’t you wearing it?” he asked quietly.
“The mask?”
“Yeah.”
Sal shrugged. “Got sick of hiding. Thought maybe it’d scare people away faster this way.”
“It doesn’t scare me.”
Sal looked at him again. This time, there was a crack in the shell. A flicker of something wounded, unsure.
“It should,” he said.
Travis’s fingers were clenched white around the receiver. He hadn’t expected Sal to make it easy, but he hadn’t been ready for the weight of his gaze, either—the steady burn behind it, the restraint, the exhaustion.
“I’ve been meaning to come for a while,” Travis said.
Sal’s brow twitched. “Why now?”
Travis hesitated. “I… I didn’t know what to say.”
“That didn’t stop you before,” Sal muttered.
It stung more than Travis wanted to admit.
“Things changed,” Travis said. “My dad...he died.”
Sal blinked. That flicker of anger shifted, just a hair. “When?”
“Couple months after the sentencing. Heart attack.”
“…Shit.”
“Yeah.” Travis stared at the floor, then back up. “Now I’m the pastor.”
“You? Pastor?” Sal let out a bitter breath of something between amusement and disbelief. “You hated that stuff.”
“I still do,” Travis said. “Every time I’m up there I feel like I’m lying. Like I’m pretending to be someone I’m not.”
“Then why do it?”
Travis looked at him. “Because he wanted me to. Because they needed someone. Because I didn’t know what else to do.”
Silence settled again, thicker this time. Sal looked away, jaw tight.
Travis leaned closer to the glass. “I didn’t come here to talk about the church.”
“No?” Sal asked flatly. “What then? Come to save my soul? Offer forgiveness on God’s behalf?”
“No. I came because I... I needed to see you.”
Sal stiffened.
“And because there’s something I never said. Something I should’ve said a long time ago.”
Sal didn’t move. But his grip on the phone tightened.
Travis felt like he was standing on a cliff, staring into the void. His heart pounded against his ribs. Every nerve in his body screamed at him to turn back.
But he didn’t.
“I loved you,” Travis said. “I mean, I love you. I think I’ve loved you since I was seventeen. I just didn’t know what to do with it.”
Sal’s face changed slowly. Not surprise. Not softness. Just… hurt.
“You’re kidding,” he said, his voice low.
“I’m not.”
“You wait how many years , and you pick now to tell me this?”
Travis opened his mouth, but Sal was already leaning forward, eyes sharp, voice rising.
“Now? After I’ve been locked up? After I’ve lost everything? After the trial, the blood, the fucking ghosts, now you decide you’ve got something to say?”
Travis flinched.
“Sal...”
“No. No, you don’t get to do this.” Sal’s words came fast now, heated, trembling with fury beneath the surface. “You don’t get to walk in here, dressed like a priest, after disappearing for a year and tell me you love me. You don’t get to act like that fixes anything.”
“I’m not trying to fix anything,” Travis said desperately. “I’m just...I need you to know the truth. I should’ve said it when you needed someone. When Larry died. When everything went to hell.”
“Yeah,” Sal snapped, “you should’ve.”
He was breathing hard now. His chest rising and falling visibly through the orange fabric of his jumpsuit.
“I cried in your arms, Travis. I broke down in front of you. You were the only person I trusted enough to fall apart in front of. And you just what? Pulled away? Disappeared? And now you think you can come in here and tell me you love me?”
Travis felt the lump rising in his throat. “I was scared.”
Sal barked out a bitter laugh. “So was I. But I didn’t leave.”
“I didn’t mean to leave.”
“But you did,” Sal said, quieter now, more cutting. “And the worst part? You only came back when you could look at me and see a lost cause. A tragedy. A prisoner.”
“No.”
“You love this version of me?” Sal leaned forward, motioning to his face, scarred, raw, angry. “You love the murderer in the orange jumpsuit? The freak with half a face?”
“Yes.”
That stopped him.
Travis's voice shook now, but he forced the words out. “I don’t love you because of what happened. I love you in spite of it. I love you because of who you are, because of who you still are, no matter what they say about you.”
Sal stared at him. His mouth opened, then closed. He dropped his gaze, swallowing hard.
“I’m not him anymore,” he muttered.
“I don’t believe that.”
“You should .”
Travis leaned his forehead against the glass. “I see you. Even now. I never stopped.”
Sal didn’t say anything. His hands were trembling where they held the phone.
“I think about you every day,” Travis whispered. “And not just the good memories, not just the sweet stuff. I think about the blood, the pain, the way you looked when they took you away. I think about how I wasn’t there . And I hate myself for it.”
He looked up.
“I love you. Even like this. Especially like this. Because I know what it cost you to still be standing.”
Sal’s eyes were glassy now. Not crying, not yet but close. He looked away again, jaw clenched so hard his teeth must’ve hurt.
“I don’t want your pity,” he said.
“It’s not pity.”
“Then what is it?”
“Hope,” Travis said. “Or maybe just love with nowhere else to go.”
Sal’s throat moved as he swallowed. Slowly, he lifted his free hand and pressed it to the glass.
After a moment, Travis did the same.
There were inches between them. A thick sheet of plastic. Years of silence. Mountains of grief.
But in that moment, they touched.
Not skin to skin. But heart to heart.
“I’m still pissed at you,” Sal said quietly.
“I know,” Travis whispered. “I deserve it.”
“And I don’t know if I can ever believe you really mean this. Not after everything.”
“You don’t have to believe me today.”
Sal looked at him again. For the first time since Travis walked in, the anger was giving way to something deeper. Rawer.
“You came,” he said again, softer now. “I didn’t think you would.”
“I’ll keep coming,” Travis said. “As long as you’ll let me.”
The plastic between them was cold. Even with their palms pressed to either side of it, there was no warmth, just a sense of proximity neither of them had felt in years.
Travis stared at Sal’s hand. Calloused knuckles. Faint bruises. A healed-over scar across the thumb that hadn’t been there before.
“I’ve missed you,” Travis said softly.
Sal didn’t answer. He just looked down, lips tight, as if he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to cry or scream.
Travis dropped his hand from the glass, his voice quieter now. “Can I ask you something?”
Sal gave a barely-there nod.
“Why’d you do it?”
Silence. A sharp silence, like he’d just cut the thread between them with a blade.
Travis pressed on anyway. “I know what the news said. I know what the trial said. But I want to hear it from you.”
Sal didn’t look up. “Why?”
“Because I need to understand.”
Sal leaned back in his chair. Something in his body shifted, stiffened. Hardened. The quiet fury returned, but this time it was colder. Walled in.
“You want to know why I killed them?” Sal asked, voice flat.
Travis nodded.
Sal looked at him, something almost unreadable in his eyes. “Because they deserved it.”
Travis blinked.
“Because no one else was going to stop what was happening in that building. Because the things I saw in those walls…” He shook his head. “It wasn’t just ghosts, Travis. It was people . Living people doing things no one wanted to talk about. Things no one believed.”
“You could’ve told someone—”
“I did .”
The sharpness in Sal’s voice stopped Travis cold.
“I told people. I begged people. And every time, they looked at me like I was crazy. Like I was broken. Like I was just that fucked-up kid with the dead friends and a missing face.”
Travis didn’t know what to say.
“I snapped,” Sal said simply. “And maybe I would’ve done it anyway, eventually. But Larry’s death…”
He trailed off.
“You remember how bad I got after that.”
Travis nodded slowly. “You used to cry in my arms.”
“Yeah.” Sal’s voice cracked faintly. “I don’t cry anymore.”
Travis swallowed. “Why not?”
“Because no one gives a shit. Because in here, crying gets you hurt. Weakness gets you beat down. So you stop crying. You learn to fight. You hit back, or you get buried.”
He looked up again.
“I fight now, Travis. I fight a lot .”
Travis felt like the floor had dropped beneath him.
The Sal he remembered, the Sal who used to make dumb jokes about horror movies, who used to apologize when he bumped into people, who once spent a whole week trying to rescue a baby raccoon stuck in a pipe, was gone.
Or maybe not gone. Just buried.
“You’ve changed,” Travis said quietly.
“Of course I have.”
“I didn’t expect you to be…” He hesitated. “So angry.”
Sal stared at him. “What the hell did you think I’d be like?”
Travis looked down. “I don’t know. Still you, I guess.”
“I am me,” Sal said, voice suddenly razor-sharp. “Just not the version you remember.”
Travis looked up. Sal’s face was hard now, his scarred half more expressive than ever. His long hair framed it unevenly, giving him a rough, almost haunted look.
“Do you ever think about who you’d be if none of this happened?” Travis asked.
“All the time,” Sal said. “But it did happen. Larry died. Ashley died. Tood is fucking insane. People died Travis. And I couldn’t save them. So I became someone who could stop the next one from happening. Even if it meant destroying everything else along the way.”
Travis pressed the phone closer to his ear. “Did it destroy you?”
Sal didn’t answer at first. His jaw moved, like he was biting back something sharp.
“I don’t know who I am anymore,” he said finally. “But I’m not the boy you used to hold.”
Travis’s eyes welled with tears, but he blinked them back.
“I don’t care,” he whispered. “I love you. I still love you.”
Sal looked away again.
“You shouldn’t,” he said.
“But I do.”
“You’re in love with a murderer.”
“I’m in love with you.”
Sal shook his head, frustration boiling just beneath the surface. “You keep saying that like it’s supposed to fix something. Like love is a fucking magic spell that’ll make this go away. It won’t. I’m in here for life. I’ve got blood on my hands and nightmares in my head and a face half the world can’t stand to look at. What do you even see when you look at me?”
Travis’s answer came quietly, but firmly. “Someone who’s still trying to do the right thing. Someone who’s still standing. Someone who didn’t give up, even when everything went to shit.”
He leaned in again.
“You want to push me away? Fine. But I’m not going anywhere. You’re not the only one who’s different now. I buried my father. I took a job I didn’t want. I lie to people every Sunday because I don’t know what else to do. But the one thing I do know is that I’m not going to lose you again.”
Sal’s breathing slowed. His posture sagged slightly.
“I don’t know how to be loved anymore,” he said.
Travis gave a soft smile. “Then I’ll remind you.”
Sal opened his mouth to say something else, but a guard interrupted him. Travis could see the change in Sal’s face, how he soured at the sight of the man in uniform.
“Time’s up, church boy,” Sal said, voice low and bitter. There was a flicker of something else there, though, a reluctance, a kind of sadness under the sarcasm.
His voice was deeper than it used to be. Travis liked it.
He stood, heart heavy, and watched as Sal was led back through\the door. Chains rattled. Orange fabric shifted. Then he was gone.
Travis sat in his car for nearly an hour before he drove away.
His collar was tight. The black clergy shirt clung uncomfortably to his back, damp with sweat. He tugged at the Roman collar as if choking on something more than cloth.
What the hell was he even doing?
The thought had come like a whisper days ago. Now it was a drumbeat.
What if I joined him?
He could do something. Break a law. A real one. Not some petty bullshit either, something big enough to get him locked away. Something loud. Something permanent.
It wouldn’t be hard.
He had access. He had keys. People trusted him. He could rob the donation safe. Or burn the church. Beat someone, stage something, anything.
Anything to be near Sal.
He felt sick the moment the thought solidified.
That night, he fell to his knees in the rectory, the old wooden cross looming above him.
His hands clasped tight. His voice hoarse.
“God, I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.”
He stared at the floor.
“I love him. And I know what he did, and I’m not asking you to forgive that, not yet. But I need you to tell me why I’m still here if all I can do is watch him rot. Why give me this job? This collar? This life? Why leave him alone in there and put me up in the pulpit?”
There was no answer. Only the creak of the building settling, and the sound of his own quiet breath.
Three nights later, Travis went to the Addison Apartments.
They were condemned now. The windows were boarded up and tagged with graffiti. Nature was starting to reclaim the edges, ivy climbing broken stone, weeds clawing their way through cracks in the sidewalk.
The building leaned like it was too tired to stand.
He slipped in through a side door, half-rotted and already ajar. The air inside was thick, damp, and stale. He felt the weight of it in his chest. The rot. The memory.
The long hallways were exactly as he remembered them, but darker. Dirtier.
He walked slowly. No flashlight. Just the dim moonlight cutting in through gaps in the boards.
Every creak underfoot sounded like a voice. Every whisper of wind felt like it might speak his name.
“Sal?” he whispered once, stupidly.
There was no answer. But a shiver ran down his spine like someone had heard.
In one of the old apartments, Travis found a ruined couch and the scattered remains of a cigarette pack. The room was empty otherwise, empty in that wrong kind of way. Like something had been pulled out of it and left a wound.
He sat down on the edge of the couch.
“If any of you are still here,” he said into the quiet, “I need help.”
His voice cracked.
“I need… to know if what I’m feeling is insane. Or if there’s still something real left. I need to know if he’s—”
He stopped. Breathed in.
“If I join him… is that love, or is it giving up?”
The silence that followed was heavy and deep. The kind of silence that felt like it was listening.
But nothing answered.
The next time Travis saw Sal, he wore the collar again.
He had trimmed his beard, but his eyes were hollow. More tired than before.
Sal noticed it immediately. “You look like shit,” he said.
Travis gave a small smile. “Thanks.”
They settled across from each other, phones to ears again.
“I went back,” Travis said after a moment.
Sal narrowed his eyes. “To where?”
“The apartments.”
Sal didn’t speak.
“I thought maybe I could… talk to something. Someone. I thought maybe I’d find answers there.”
“Did you?”
“No.” Travis paused. “But it made me think about something I’ve been afraid to say out loud.”
Sal’s expression shifted. Guarded now.
“I’ve been thinking about doing something,” Travis said. “Something to get arrested. Just to be close to you.”
Sal’s entire body went still.
“I thought maybe if I could get myself locked up, we could be together. I could protect you. We could talk. See each other. I wouldn’t have to go home alone anymore.”
Sal stared at him.
“Are you serious? ”
Travis nodded slowly.
Sal set the phone down for a moment and leaned back, running a hand down his face. He was mouthing something, maybe a curse, before he picked the phone back up.
“You want to throw away your life to sit in a cell next to me?”
“I’m not saying I’d do it for sure. But I’ve thought about it. I’ve prayed about it. I’ve begged for some kind of sign.”
Sal laughed, once. Sharp. Bitter. “Jesus, Travis.”
“I know it’s stupid.”
“It’s more than stupid. It’s insane.”
“I just...” Travis looked down. “I don’t know how else to love you anymore.”
Sal was quiet for a long moment.
Then, softly: “You really prayed about it?”
“Yeah.”
Sal’s face softened in a strange way, pained. “And God didn’t talk you out of it?”
“Maybe He’s letting me figure it out for myself.”
Sal leaned forward, eyes intense. “Don’t. Travis don’t do it. You think this is love? Sitting in here like an animal? You think being trapped in this place is going to fix either of us?”
“I don’t care about fixing.”
“Then what the hell do you care about?”
“You.”
Sal didn’t respond.
Travis stared at him, heart pounding. “I’ll keep coming back. Every week, if I have to. Just don’t push me away. Please.”
Finally, Sal’s shoulders dropped. He looked down at his hands. His hair hung in his face.
“I don’t know what to do with you,” he muttered.
“You don’t have to do anything. Just let me stay.”
The two of them sat in silence for a moment. Not peaceful. But not broken either.
Then Sal whispered, “I don’t want you in here. Not ever. Even if I want you near me. That kind of love… it’s not right. It’s like eating glass.”
Travis closed his eyes. “Then I’ll stay free. I’ll stay out there. But I’ll never stop loving you.”
Sal didn’t answer. But he didn’t hang up either.
And for now, that was enough.
—
A month passed.
Travis wrote to Sal every single day. Long letters. Rambling, desperate, sometimes poetic in that unfiltered way grief can be. He filled them with updates about the parish, about the dreams he kept having, some terrifying, others warm. He wrote about the Addison Apartments and how he sometimes still swore he could hear the whispers when he got close.
He never got letters back.
Sal wasn’t one for writing.
But Travis kept sending them anyway. Some pages soaked in sweat; others smudged with tears. His penmanship deteriorated the more the weeks stretched. He stopped sleeping regularly. Stopped eating on time. The sermons he gave started growing more unhinged, less structured, more like confessions than teachings.
People noticed.
One of the older women in the front pew gave him a worried look every Sunday. A man from the vestry committee pulled him aside and asked if he was “managing okay.”
Travis lied. He always lied.
And every Thursday, without fail, he drove the hour and a half to the prison. To see Sal. To sit across from him and talk, even if Sal didn’t say much anymore. Even if he just stared. Even if he looked worse each time, more hardened, his mouth a grim line, his face all bone and scar and silence.
But he never told Travis to stop coming.
Not once.
It was a Friday night when they knocked.
Travis had just gotten out of the shower, damp curls clinging to his forehead, a ratty old t-shirt sticking to his skin. The rectory was quiet, just the hum of the old fridge and the wind rattling against the stained glass.
The knock was hard. Sharp. Authority in its rhythm.
He frowned, moving barefoot across the wood floors. He opened the door.
Two uniformed officers stood on the porch, their faces unreadable in the orange glow of the porch light.
“Are you Reverend Travis Phelps?” the one on the left asked.
Travis’s mouth went dry. “Yeah.”
They glanced at each other, then back at him.
“Do you know a Sal Fisher?”
The name hit like a fist.
Travis felt his whole body tense. His heartbeat spiked, chest tight with instinctual fear.
“Yes,” he said. “I... I mean, yes, I know him. What’s going on?”
They didn’t answer right away.
“May we come in?” the second one asked.
He stepped aside, wordlessly.
They entered with the quiet weight of men used to delivering bad news.
“I—I just saw him yesterday,” Travis stammered. “What happened?”
The first officer looked him in the eye. “Sal Fisher escaped from prison earlier this morning.”
Travis stopped breathing.
“Wait...what? What do you mean escaped? How the hell—?”
“We’re still gathering details. There was a riot on the east block around 4 a.m. Fisher was part of the work crew in the maintenance wing. He slipped out during the chaos. Killed one guard. Injured another.”
Travis stepped back, like the words had physically hit him.
“No,” he whispered.
“We’re making contact with anyone who’s visited him recently. Friends, family. People he might try to reach out to.”
Travis shook his head. “He wouldn’t come here. He wouldn’t kill anyone.” His voice cracked. “You’re lying.”
The officers didn’t flinch. One of them pulled out a small notebook. “Did Fisher ever talk to you about escape? Anything about guards, routines, or plans?”
“No! God, no.” Travis was trembling now. “He never said anything. He didn’t even want me there. I mean he did, but… not like this.”
“Has he contacted you since this morning?”
“No!”
“Mind if we look around?”
He hesitated. Then nodded.
They didn’t find anything, of course. No signs. No messages. Just his letters, stacked high in a box by the writing desk, dozens of them, each one addressed in the same shaky hand.
They left after twenty minutes.
Before they did, one of them turned at the door. “If he reaches out to you, Reverend, you need to tell us. Immediately.”
Travis just nodded, throat tight.
The door closed.
He leaned against it, breathing shallow.
Sal was gone.
Not gone like he was before. Not locked up, unreachable.
Gone.
Out.
Somewhere.
Free… or something like it.
He didn’t sleep that night.
He reread his last letter to Sal, which he hadn’t mailed yet. It was folded carefully, sealed, tucked into his shirt pocket like some holy relic.
“I saw a bird the other day outside my window. Bright red. I thought of you. I keep thinking about the day we sat by the lake and you told me your favorite sound was wind moving through pine trees. I wonder if you ever hear that now. I wonder if you still remember that version of yourself. I do.”
The version of Sal he knew didn’t kill guards.
Didn’t escape.
Didn’t vanish into the night like a ghost.
But maybe that version didn’t exist anymore. Maybe he never had.
Travis lit a candle on the little altar in the corner of his room and sat down in the dark.
“God,” he whispered. “I don’t know if I’m praying for him or for me anymore.”
He didn’t expect an answer.
But he kept praying anyway.
—
It came two nights after the police visit.
A knock on the chapel door.
Not the rectory. Not his bedroom window. The chapel, where the altar stood, where the candlelight flickered behind the stained-glass saints.
Travis had just finished locking up after a sparse Tuesday night mass, his hands still trembling from a sermon he could barely remember giving.
He heard it. One knock. Then two more.
Quick. Sharp.
He froze.
He crossed the tiled floor slowly, heart hammering, breath shallow. He opened the thick, creaking wooden doors—
—and found nothing.
But something was there.
On the steps.
A crow feather. Jet black. Laying perfectly still, unnatural in its precision.
Tucked beneath it: a torn scrap of paper.
Travis picked it up with shaking hands.
The paper was old. Lined. Torn from the corner of some old notebook. The ink was faint, like it had been scribbled quickly, possibly in the dark.
Two words.
“Come home.”
The Addison Apartments were nothing but a skeleton now.
The police had closed them off years ago, but the barrier tape had long since rotted away, and the rusted lock on the gate had been broken so many times that no one bothered replacing it. The whole building sagged inward, its windows gaping open like dead eyes, graffiti and mold blooming side by side.
Travis stood at the base of it in the cold spring dusk, staring up.
He hadn’t been back since… since the last time. Since the ghosts didn’t answer him. Since the wind felt like it was pushing him back.
But now it pulled.
Something in his chest tugged. A thread he couldn’t cut.
He walked past the entrance, ignoring the pull of memories in the hallways, and followed the overgrown path around the building to the small patch of woods behind it.
And there it was.
The old treehouse.
It had barely survived. Parts of it were gone, one side of the railing rotted clean through, one of the rope ladders collapsed. But it still stood, somehow. Holding on.
A single light flickered inside.
Battery-powered lantern, maybe. Or a flashlight. Something small and warm.
Travis climbed up the sturdier side of the ladder, fingers trembling on the old rungs.
He pushed open the trapdoor.
And there he was.
Sal.
He was sitting with his back against the wall, legs stretched out, head tilted slightly like he’d just woken up from a long nap. His messy, shoulder-length hair fell into his face in uneven waves, dark roots visible now beneath the faded blue. His scars caught the lantern light. His face bare, no prosthetic, no mask.
He looked up when Travis appeared.
And for a moment, neither of them said a word.
Sal had cleaned up somehow. The orange jumpsuit was gone, replaced with worn jeans, a flannel shirt too tight across the chest and shoulders, rolled up at the sleeves. He looked…
Bigger. Stronger. Older.
But his eyes—
Those were still the same.
Travis made a sound, half-sob, half-laugh, and before he could stop himself, he dropped to his knees on the creaking wood and pulled Sal into a hug.
A real one. No prison glass. No guards watching. No time limits.
Sal stiffened, but only for a second.
Then he melted into it.
Travis buried his face in Sal’s shoulder, fingers digging into the fabric, breath hitching as he cried. No words. Just tears and the pounding in his chest.
He couldn’t stop shaking.
“I thought...I thought you were gone,” he whispered. “I thought they’d shoot you. I thought I’d never see you again.”
Sal said nothing.
He just held him.
Minutes passed like that. Like years.
Eventually, Travis pulled back just enough to look at him.
Sal’s face was tired. Worn. Like he hadn’t slept in days.
But there was something softer in his gaze now. Something that hadn’t been there during those cold visits. Something that had been waiting.
“I’m sorry,” Travis said. “I should be scared. I should turn you in. But I can’t.”
“I know,” Sal said, his voice rough but quiet.
Travis gave a shaky laugh. “Jesus, you really know how to wreck a guy.”
“You came.”
“Of course I came. You left me a fucking feather, Sal.”
“You understood it.”
Travis shook his head, smiling through the tears. “Of course I did. I would’ve come even if you sent a damn dead rat. You think I’ve stopped thinking about you for a second?”
Sal looked down.
“I don’t know what the hell happens now,” Travis said. “But I don’t care. I don’t care if I lose my job, or my church, or my—God, my fucking soul. I just wanted to see you again.”
“You sound like a lunatic.”
“I feel like a lunatic.”
That got a small smile out of Sal. Crooked. Brief.
But it was real.
Travis reached up and cupped Sal’s face. He didn’t flinch, not at the scars, not at the missing eye, not at the rough skin or hollow cheekbones.
“I missed your face,” Travis whispered.
“You’re the only one.”
“You don’t know that.”
Sal leaned into the touch, closing his eye.
The wind rattled the leaves outside. The old boards creaked beneath them. The light from the lantern flickered like a heartbeat.
“I’m not gonna ask where you got the clothes,” Travis said after a long pause.
“Don’t.”
“Or how you got a shower.”
“Really don’t.”
They both laughed, just a little. But it was just enough.
It was absurd. It was terrible. It was dangerous.
But it was also something else.
It was peace.
For now.
They sat there until the lantern dimmed; the treehouse wrapped in shadows. Outside, the world waited, still cruel, still broken.
But inside, in that small wooden room, pressed together on the floor, it was quiet.
Not okay.
Not even close.
But quiet.
And that was enough.