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Coils That Bind
(Pact crossover)
Sarah took a deep breath and entered the room. The new girl didn't react. She was in the same position as Sarah left her to discuss the matter with Rachel and Alec - seemingly content to just sit on the sofa and stare at the floor.
Sarah watched her for a few moments, taking in the pale face, the dark circles under the eyes, the empty, defeated look. And the dried blood marking her clothes and hair.
Then she closed her eyes, took another breath, and opened them. And then she opened her eyes again. She shuddered. Under her Sight the girl looked... wrong.
She was broken. A web of cracks covered her whole body, bigger holes crudely stitched together with what looked like razor wire. Upon her heart the wire was torn apart and cracks formed a spiral - a mark of his influence.
It was no wonder that he managed to lay a claim on the girl. She had very few connection to this world. And those that existed were not benign. Where they connected with the girl, cracks originated, flesh parting under sharp edges formed of spirits.
Nobody would miss her if she were gone. She was rejected by the mortal world. She was thrown away, and it was inevitable that someone would pick her up.
It is not to say that the girl didn't have benign connections at all. A twisted shadow coiled around her body under her clothes, mouth formed by the absence of light whispering something into her ear. Sarah couldn't tell if the shadow was crawling from the cracks or pouring itself in. As far as she could see, there was no malice in it, despite the monstrous appearance, not directed at the girl at least. But such connections weren't helpful when one tried to hold onto their humanity.
Sarah took a third deep breath before acting. The sight of the girl intimidated her, but she needed allies if she were to ever get out of her situation. And the girl herself needed support just to avoid falling through her own cracks, never to be seen again.
Sarah walked to the sofa with confidence she didn't feel, sat besides the girl and hugged her, trying not to pay attention to the shadow parting around her hands. The girl froze for a few moments before slowly rising her head to look at Sarah. Sarah noticed that a few minor cracks closed under her touch. She took it as a good sign.
"Hello," she said, releasing her hug and trying to smile. "I didn't introduce myself properly before. I am Sarah Duchamp. What's your name?"
The girl just looked at her for a few moments as if remembering how to speak.
"Taylor," she said at last. "Taylor Hebert."
"Taylor," repeated Sarah, smiling again. Spirits around them swirling, forming a new connection. It didn't do anything to the cracks that Sarah could see, but she hoped it would help with time. She let her smile drop before saying: "Now, listen. You are in a bad situation now, but you are not alone. We are in the same boat, and I am going to do my best to get us out of here. In that, you can trust me."
Taylor winced, a few cracks reappearing where they were closed by Sarah's touch.
"You can," said Sarah forcefully. "You know the rule about lying, right?"
The girl nodded hesitantly.
"It's not that," she said. "Mostly not. It's... What happened... I deser-"
Sarah quickly put a hand on her mouth.
"Don't say it! You would be lying. Nobody deserves that. Nobody deserves him."
Sarah looked into Taylor's eye until the girl nodded. Sarah removed her hand.
"I understand that something horrible happened to you," she said. "You wouldn't be here otherwise. But you can't give in to him. You can't just accept what he does to you. No matter what you did, he is worse. No matter what you did, you deserve to get out. No matter what you did, I believe you can atone for it by fighting him."
Taylor returned to staring at the floor.
Sarah contemplated what to do next.
"Why don't you tell me your story?" she said at last. "And I'll tell you mine. If you want, that is. It's fine if you don't want to talk about that."
Taylor continued staring at the floor. Just when Sarah started to believe she wasn't going to talk, Taylor looked her in the eye with a dead expression on her face.
"I wanted them to suffer."
Taylor's parents often argued when they thought she was asleep and couldn't hear them. She didn't understand it. Not because she couldn't understand adult matters - mister Barnes often talked about his work with her father when she visited Emma, and she could understand him just fine - but because their words didn't make sense.
They argued about something they called "others", about stalking shadows, the circle getting out of control, crying walls and ambitions of Lords.
When she tried to ask them why they argued, her father told her they weren't, that she must have had a bad dream, and her mother remained silent. They never argued by the light of the day, never even uttered the words she heard from them on such nights. It was like they were different people, happier but also somehow less.
In their night arguments, sometimes they would talk about whether they should protect Taylor from "this world" or bring her into it, and she thought, perhaps that is the answer. Perhaps there is another, moonlit world where people changed, assuming new personalities and perhaps even new faces. A world with a different logic where bleeding windows were a common topic of conversation whereas mundane things familiar to her were nonsense.
Taylor found the answer to that mystery eventually, when she was sorting through her mother's things in search for something she could bring to school as a lucky charm that would allow her to endure another day of torment.
Her mother was a witch.
Seven old leather-bound books, thirteen hand-written journals and a flute, packed into a dusty trunk and hidden away in the corner of the basement, easily overlooked if one didn't go through everything.
Taylor skimmed through the books and journals, not believing what was written in them. They were talking about things belonging to the moonlit world of her childhood, about magic and monsters, and her mother's place among all of that.
Taylor put the books aside and just sat there, trying to make sense of it all. Her sight fell on the flute.
She remembered hearing about the flute in one of her parents' arguments. Her mother asked for the flute to be destroyed should something happened to her. It seemed her father never did. Taylor understood that. Even if the flute was somehow dangerous, it was still something belonging to her mother. To destroy it was to erase the connection, and that was not something she could willingly do.
In that moment, it became clear to her that she was going to follow the instructions given in the book titled "Essentials". She didn't believe in magic, but that didn't matter. It was something her mother believed in. It was something she did. And it was something Taylor will do.
And maybe she can find some peace of mind, an anchor keeping her in this world and giving her life some meaning.
Taylor finished drawing the diagram and walked around it, carefully comparing the design from all angles with that pictured in one of her mother's books.
In the past few months a world of opportunities has opened for her, but her situation didn't significantly improve. Magic, it seemed, didn't provide easy solutions.
She could cross her connections to her tormentors twice, but on the third time they would strike back, with more viciousness than usual. She could inscribe a rune on her bathroom stall which diverted anyone's attention, but it didn't prevent her from being caught right outside.
Perhaps she was picked on less by girls following Emma's lead, perhaps she was now ignored by boys trying to score with Madison, but that didn't fix the issue at the core of the matter.
In fact, it just made the conflict to escalate.
What they did to her the other week finally pushed her to search for a more permanent solution. To fight back.
Karma was real, and what she was planning to do would just restore the balance, right?
Her mother did it, so it can't be wrong, right?
She wasn't going to do anything too bad. Just scare them away from her, just make them focus on their own problems. After all she endured, it was only just, right?
Diagram was as precise as it could be. Taylor knew it was time to start, but she hesitated. After looking at the diagram for a few moments, she decided to reread the entries on those she decided to use.
"Two are done, one to go," she whispered.
The Smiling Siblings
A pair of bogeymen first bound by Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo. No individual names were given to them in urban legends since they always work together. They call each other Brian and Aisha.
Brian looks like a tall broad man wearing a motorcycle helmet concealing the fact his head is a naked skull. He can extinguish all artificial light within an area the size of a typical house. Moonlight and starlight are diminished as well, though not completely blocked. Sunlight isn't affected. Within an area affected by him, perception becomes unreliable. Sounds appear to be closer or further away than they are in reality, sensations are much sharper than normal, smells feel subtly wrong, etc.
He can also grant a gift of seeing in the darkness in exchange of a piece of a practitioner's skin the size of a palm which he uses to rebuild his face (so far unsuccessfully).
Aisha appears as a young black girl in colorful "trashy" clothes, with a permanent broad smile on her face. She naturally conceals all connections leading to her, disappearing from perception. That effect is so persistent that in fact she has to expend power to be perceived at all. She carries a knife with her which doesn't appear to have any unusual properties.
Their usual Modus Operandi is to stalk a chosen victim, haunting them with gaslighting, sudden appearances, laugh in the dead of night and other such tactics enabled by Aisha's nature. This continues until the victim is scared sufficiently for their liking at which point they wait or arrange for the victim to be alone and engage in a hunt in the darkness created by Brian, culminating in murder of the victim.
They appear to have some moral code, likely originating from their human life, as they go after drug dealers and abusers rather than random victims.
They are unusually reasonable for bogeymen, cooperating with practitioners willingly as long as they are not send after the innocents.
While they can be summoned separately, it is not recommended as they react violently to that and are likely to sabotage a practitioner's orders as much as the binding allows.
In summoning ritual, additional precautions must be taken to counteract Aisha's concealment ability...
The Shadow Stalker
An Other on the line between a revenant and a bogeyman. She was first bound by Amanda Holloway. As is typical for Holloway, Shadow Stalker's story before her transmogrification was recorded.
Her real name was Sophia Hess. She died in 1989, August first, murdered by her stepfather who was quickly apprehended by the police and sentenced to a life in prison. Soon after the sentence was carried out, he reported hearing distant steps. He reported them twice more, insisting that he can hear them getting closer. His claims were dismissed. When he reacted violently, he was put into solitary confinement. On the seventh day from his first report, he was found dead, apparently strangled.
Since then, Shadow Stalker started appearing regularly, going after murderers and abusers. With time, her victim profile expanded to include other criminals, likely indicating the loss of humanity and acceptance of her new nature.
Shadow Stalker is rarely used offensively. She takes seven days to complete the mission, during which the victim hears steps getting closer and their shadow grows darker. On the seventh day Shadow Stalker rises from the shadow and attacks the victim. Therefore, a practitioner would have plenty of time to notice the danger and find countermeasures, while an innocent is likely to be clued in to the hidden truth, adding an unnecessary karmic load to Shadow Stalker's summoner.
However, she can also be bound inside a practitioner's own shadow, from which she can be released in a moment of danger. Being in that state she would also offer the practitioner warnings about dangers she can perceive - mostly of mundane nature - in exchange of being free to whisper her advice to the practitioner. For as long as Shadow Stalker remains inside, a practitioner's shadow will never be entirely still nor entirely human-looking.
Shadow Stalker is reliable when used for revenge or when the practitioner feels in danger. However, she should not be summoned against someone who did no wrong to the practitioner as using her in such manner will enrage her and can even break the binding.
To summon her, one first needs...
Jack Slash
An old bogeyman who was around for at least four hundreds years. Was thought to be a minor demon of madness.
He appears as an unremarkable man with a goatee, usually wearing blood-stained clothes, though he is capable of hiding the stains if needed.
He styles himself "an angel of Karma", though the wording he uses indicates it's not a literal statement but merely self-identification. He enjoys delivering what he considers "ironic" punishments, though more often than not he is the one driving his victims to commit atrocities he punishes them for.
He does so by sending vivid dreams to his victims. Over time they poison victims' minds, compelling them to act on their darkest desires.
After that he comes again to reverse the effect and to show them dreams containing memories of their own victims (if there are any, and there usually are) impressed upon the spirit world until Jack collects them.
The resulting effect is enough to drive most people to suicide, at which point Jack appears before them to "help" with that task.
On top of that, wounds inflicted by him never heal completely.
Jack Slash is cruel, manipulative, unpredictable, smart and dangerous. He must be treated with care by the practitioner.
The steps to ensure his obedience are...
Taylor took a deep breath.
The first binding was easy. The Smiling Siblings were already on their way to "play" with Madison. They won't use lethal force - Taylor made sure of it - but they would pay her back for all the "pranks" she played on Taylor.
The second binding was more tricky. For that Taylor had to draw a silhouette around her own shadow, which was rather hard to do with her moving. Eventually she settled on using sympathetic magic to move the chalk without bending and later drawing the hand by memory, correcting it for mistakes afterwards.
Still, it was a success. A smoky figure was now woven around her, empty eyes searching for any sign of danger, black lips near her ear ready to whisper a warning or advice.
Taylor felt strangely comforted by the embrace. She suddenly realized that the only human contact she had in years were pushes, shoves and attempts to trip her.
"Right. No more procrastinating," she said, focusing on the task before her.
She took a kitchen knife and hit the floor in the dead center of the diagram, making sure that the knife is stuck and won't fall under its own power.
Taking her place in a smaller circle connected with the main diagram. She took the flute that now served as her implement. It was imperfect, she suspected, a tool of subtle control, of suggestions and coercion, not a match for someone who did what she was doing. But it once belonged to her mother, it was a connection that mattered more than most other things for her, a link to the past. And that, she thought, had to be enough.
She started a simple melody.
She knew she was playing with fire. She knew there were safer options for her to use. She knew she was probably making a mistake, an inexperienced practitioner trying to bind something those who literally wrote books on the subject called dangerous.
But he could make Emma experience what she did to Taylor. All the pranks, all the insults, all thousands little things that, combined, made Taylor's life a torment - Emma will share them.
In the end, Taylor had to admit, she wanted Emma to suffer like she had suffered.
The last notes of binding song died. For a moment, all was silent.
Taylor blinked, and then there was a man standing in the diagram and playing with the kitchen knife. He smiled at her warmly.
"My lady, it's good to see you again." His smile grew malicious. "I assume you desire another sinful man ruined?"
Taylor stared at him for a moment.
"It is the first time I summon you, Jack Slash."
The man chuckled.
"Ah, time flies for one such as I. Would you be Annette's daughter, then?"
"Yes." Taylor finally put the pieces together. Many Others, especially older ones, could see no difference between descendants and ancestors. Debts passed from mother to daughter, grudges were nursed through generations, Karma accumulated - good and bad. That Jack Slash could even realize the nature of his mistake was remarkable.
Taylor didn't miss the implication that her mother apparently used his services often enough to be remembered, but decided to think about it another time.
"Then, I am glad to see you following in her footsteps. To end the line with your mother would truly be a loss..." The man was silent for a time, smiling wistfully. "So, what task do you have for me, practitioner?"
Taylor pointed at the two coffee cups standing at the edge of the diagram.
"Take my hairs from this one." She indicated one of the cups. "Use it to find memories of misery and suffering. Most of them would be at school. Can you find them?"
"Of course."
"Good. Then take the hairs of the target from this cup." She pointed at the cup containing an old lock of hairs Emma gave her to wear in a locket, back before all of it started. "Find her through them. Can you do it?"
Jack Slash looked closely at the cup.
"It's old, but the trail is still there. Nothing hard."
"Good. Then deliver all the misery onto the target. Give her dreams where she will feel what I felt."
Jack smiled.
"Ah, it is always nice to see some good retribution. Sometimes people escape the consequences of their actions, and it is my pleasure to deliver them personally."
Taylor nodded.
"No harm shall be done to her. Just dreams."
"Don't hurt her," whispered a voice in Taylor's ear. "Kill her."
"Now, now, little shadow," chastised Jack. "It won't do to deliver all wrongs at once. A good karmic punishment should be savored. What is the point in killing someone who didn't learn their lesson yet?"
"No," said Taylor. "No killings, no lethal force. I want her to suffer what I suffered. No more, no less."
Jack sighed.
"Well, it's still a good start. I should do as you say for now. I am sure you'll come around eventually." He smiled. "As your mother did."
He could be seen by the absence of both light and darkness.
He could be felt by the numbness of your skin.
He could be heard by the silence that couldn't be broken by the loudest of screams.
He could be smelt by the feeling of unreality that comes with an absence of any background odors.
He could be tasted by the hunger that was not sated by any food.
Formless, not quite real, he had no place in this world, defined only by what he was not. He existed in realities that cannot be, waiting for an opportunity to add one more to his domain.
The opportunity presented itself. Karmic balance shifted just right, and what was a success didn't happen. An event was lost from reality, and it rearranged itself around the impossibility, ignoring it the best it could, forming a new chain of events.
One that coiled in accord with his design.
Taylor was jolted awake by the sharp voice speaking right into her ear.
"Danger. Somewhere in the house."
She scrambled on her feet and managed to put on her glasses on the second try.
"What kind of danger?" she whispered, looking around. Her room looked ordinary, and even her Sight didn't reveal anything unusual, but then, with beings like Aisha that wasn't a guarantee. She should look into protective practices as soon as possible.
"Blood is spilled. Muffled scream was sound. To the right of this room."
Taylor's blood froze.
She ran.
Thoughts of what it could be, of what she can do swarmed inside her head, but each disappeared into the dark void consuming her mind.
In the end, only panic remained, and a desperate prayer to anyone who could hear that somehow it was a mistake, somehow everything was fine.
She opened the door, nearly slipping on something wet.
Inside she saw Jack Slash standing above _
He has a bloodied kitchen knife in his hand.
"Ah, young practitioner," Jack said. "I thought I had a bit more time to play with _ before you wake up. Should have accounted for your little shadow."
There was so much blood.
"Alas, it appears your binding was imperfect. I was thrown back here. But don't think about it as a failure. Think about it as a lesson for the future."
_ slowly turned his head, coughing blood. He looked at Taylor.
"I am not going to do anything to you, of course. I do like you - well, I guess I should say I liked your mother - and I believe you have a long way ahead of you. But, you know, the nature of bindings. Backlash is a menace for practitioners like you. You'll do well to remember that. And, hey! _ needed to learn a lesson, don't you agree? He was a crappy father, what with not noticing your misery, missing your awakening and all. He even missed my return, though not my knife. That he noticed."
Taylor looked into _ eyes. He tried to say something, but only blood came from his lips.
"And you know the best part? He knows you were the one who called me."
The light went out of _ eyes.
And something numb coiled around Taylor's heart.
"He died because of me." Taylor was looking straight at Sarah. She was eerily calm, her face an emotionless mask. But Sarah saw cracks appearing under her eyes, she saw the remnants of what she knew now to be the connection to Taylor's father tearing into her flesh. And she saw Shadow Stalker filling those cracks, darkness turning into razor wire to bind the wounds together. She didn't like it one bit, but there wasn't much she could do. Even a company of a monster was better than no company at all. "If I didn't call for him, if I didn't try to pursue revenge, if I just asked him about it before doing anything..."
Sarah put her hands on Taylor's shoulders firmly.
"Listen to me," she said. "He is the one living in what-ifs. We live in the here and now. Perhaps you are right. Perhaps there were better ways for you. But dwelling on it isn't going to help you now. And make no mistake, I am going to help you."
Taylor blinked, surprise on her face.
"I know your story now," said Sarah. "And I am fine with it. You've made mistakes, but the same can be said for all of us. We are together in it, and I swear to you, I'll do my best to get us out of it together."
"You... swore?"
"Yes. Will you help?"
"I... Yes, I will."
Taylor's eyes changed in that moment. Shimmering impossibilities coiled inside of them, not perceived but felt in the implications. Mocking.
Sarah knew her own eyes looked the same.