Chapter 12: The Unbreakable Bond

Chapter 12: The Unbreakable Bond

The illusion of the happier, better Remi was the key. It wasn't a monster made of shadow or a screaming specter that broke her will; it was the simple, devastating weapon of her own inadequacy. As the phantom Jenna looked at her with pity, the last of Remi’s defenses crumbled, not with a bang, but with a quiet, soul-crushing sigh of surrender. Maybe it would be better.

The moment the thought formed, the psychic ram became an irresistible tide. The pressure in her mind didn't break through a wall—it dissolved it entirely. There was no longer an "it" and a "her." There was a sickening, intimate fusion, a cold, ancient loneliness pouring into the hollow spaces of her own anxieties. She felt a connection, a bond she had been fighting for days, snap taut. But it didn't sever. It locked into place with the horrifying permanence of a welded chain.

Then, as quickly as it began, the assault was over.

Silence descended upon the ruined living room. The psychic storm had passed, leaving a wake of absolute devastation. The power did not return. The only light came from the grey, indifferent dawn filtering through the frosted windows. The air, thick with the smell of burnt herbs and ozone, was heavy with the stillness of a tomb.

Jenna pushed herself up, her body aching as if she’d been in a physical fight. The salt circle was a wreck, scuffed and broken in a dozen places. Magazines lay in shredded confetti, and the armchair was wedged violently in the kitchen doorway. She looked at the shoebox in the center of the broken circle. The doll, Kiko, was pristine, its painted smile unchanged. It had won.

Her gaze snapped to her sister. Remi was sitting exactly as she had been, but she was terrifyingly still. Her eyes were open but vacant, staring at nothing. The haunted, terrified woman from moments before was gone, replaced by a hollow shell.

“Remi?” Jenna whispered, her voice trembling. “Remi, are you okay?”

Remi blinked slowly, as if surfacing from a deep ocean. She looked at Jenna, and for a second, there was no recognition in her eyes. Then, her focus seemed to return. “Jenna,” she murmured, her voice flat and distant. “It’s cold.”

That was all. No mention of the illusions, the psychic attack, the catastrophic failure. Jenna’s heart seized with a new and colder terror. It wasn’t that Remi didn't want to talk about it. She didn't seem to remember it.

The hours that followed were a blur of defeated dread. They abandoned the ruined living room, retreating to the relative sanctity of Remi’s bedroom. Jenna swept up the exploded glass in the kitchen while Remi sat on the bed, watching the motes of dust dance in the weak sunlight, her expression placid and unnervingly calm. The frantic, cornered-animal energy was gone, replaced by a deep, unnatural quiet.

Jenna tried to talk to her, to assess the damage, but it was like talking to a stranger. Remi’s answers were short, her attention fleeting. She was there, but she was also… not.

Later that afternoon, Remi was sitting on the edge of her bed, tracing the floral pattern on her worn comforter. Jenna was on the phone, trying to find a 24-hour electrician, her voice a strained, false whisper of normalcy.

Remi blinked.

The world tilted and re-formed. She was no longer on the bed. She was standing in the living room, in front of the window, her hand pressed against the cold glass. She could see the grey street below, cars passing like silent metal fish. She had no memory of standing up. No memory of walking out of the bedroom. It was a single, lost frame in the movie of her life, a tiny, terrifying skip. A knot of cold dread tightened in her stomach.

“Remi? What are you doing?” Jenna’s voice cut through her confusion. She was standing in the bedroom doorway, her phone clutched in her hand, her face etched with worry.

“I… I don’t know,” Remi stammered, snatching her hand back from the window as if it were burned.

That night, sleep was not a choice but a collapse. Exhaustion finally overwhelmed their fear, and they both fell into a deep, dreamless slumber.

Remi woke first. The sun was streaming through the blinds, casting stripes of light across the room. A strange feeling of dislocation washed over her. She felt… rested. Too rested. She looked at the clock. It was almost noon. They had slept for more than fourteen hours.

She sat up, a sense of deep wrongness prickling at her skin. The blanket was neatly folded at the foot of her bed. She never folded the blanket. Her gaze fell to her bedside table. Sitting there was a teacup from her kitchen, filled with cold water. Next to it, one of Jenna’s glossy travel magazines was propped open to an article about the gardens of Kyoto, its pages held open by a small, smooth stone Remi had never seen before. It was a perfectly composed, elegant little scene, like something from a period drama. Like something from The Crimson Court.

She didn’t remember doing any of it.

A cold sweat broke out across her forehead. She scrambled out of bed and rushed into the living room. Jenna was still asleep on the mattress, her breathing deep and even. Remi’s eyes darted around the room, searching for what else was different, what else had been changed while she was a passenger in her own body.

She found it on the coffee table. The doll was no longer in its shoebox coffin. It was sitting primly on the table, and arranged in a neat semi-circle around it were several of Remi’s most personal possessions: a faded photograph of her and Jenna as children, the silver locket her grandmother had bought from Mr. Corbin’s shop, and her gas station employee name badge. It looked like a shrine. An offering. A collection of treasures presented by a child.

This was it. The final line had been crossed. The entity was no longer just mimicking her. It was living through her, acting on its own childish, ancient whims while she was lost in the dark.

When Jenna woke, it only took one look at Remi’s ashen face and the bizarre shrine on the coffee table for her to understand. The ticking clock of her sister’s identity had sped up to a frantic, terrifying pace.

Without a word, she grabbed her phone and fled to the relative privacy of the bathroom, dialing the number for Corbin’s Curios. Her hands were shaking so badly she misdialed twice. When Mr. Corbin’s dry, calm voice finally answered, Jenna’s words came out in a choked, desperate torrent.

“It failed,” she gasped. “The ritual, it failed. It’s worse now. So much worse. She’s blacking out, she’s doing things she doesn’t remember. It’s… it’s in her. What do we do? Please, you have to help us.”

There was a long, heavy silence on the other end of the line. When Mr. Corbin spoke, his voice was filled with a profound, scholarly sorrow. “I warned you of the risk, my dear. You didn’t just fail to sever the bond; you have cauterized it. The gaki is no longer just attached to her. It is weaving itself into the very fabric of her soul.”

“So that’s it? It’s over?” Jenna cried, tears of rage and guilt streaming down her face.

“No,” the antiquarian said softly. “Exorcism is no longer an option. You cannot tear out a root that has become part of the tree. But there may be one last, desperate path. Appeasement.”

“What does that mean?”

“It is a creature of profound sorrow, born of being taken from its home and left alone,” he explained. “Its clinging is a symptom of that loneliness. If you cannot sever the root, you must return it to its soil. You must take it home. Back to the temple where you found it. It is the only place it might willingly let go.”

Jenna’s mind reeled. Japan. It was an impossible, insane idea. A transatlantic flight with a cursed doll and a sister who was losing her grip on reality.

She ended the call and walked back into the living room, her face set with a terrifying, desperate resolve. She looked at Remi, who was staring at the little shrine on the coffee table with a look of dawning horror.

“Pack a bag,” Jenna said, her voice leaving no room for argument.

Remi looked up, her eyes wide with confusion. “What? Where are we going?”

Jenna knelt in front of her sister, taking her cold hands. “We’re going to fix this,” she said, her voice trembling with the sheer, terrifying weight of her decision. She was a flight attendant. The sky was her office. This was the one thing, the only thing, she knew how to do. “I’m getting us on the next flight out. We’re taking it back. We’re going home.”

As she said the word “home,” Remi’s expression shifted. For a split second, the fear and confusion in her eyes vanished, replaced by a look of serene, placid, childlike anticipation. It wasn't Remi’s expression at all.

The entity was listening. And it was excited to go.