Chapter 3: The Binding Jar

Chapter 3: The Binding Jar

The night passed in a state of suspended terror. Alex locked himself in his bedroom, shoving a heavy dresser against the door, a flimsy barricade against the supernatural horror that now wore his brother’s face. He didn’t sleep. He sat on the floor, back against the wall, listening. The house was silent, but it was a predatory silence, the kind that precedes a strike. The thing downstairs wasn’t whispering anymore. It was waiting. Patient. It had made its introduction, and now it was enjoying his fear, letting it marinate in the quiet darkness of the home it had so effortlessly conquered.

When dawn broke, painting grey, sickly light across his window, Alex was hollowed out, running on a toxic cocktail of adrenaline and caffeine. He knew he couldn’t stay locked in his room forever. This was his house. He had to do something.

Paranoia was a fever in his blood. Every creak of the floorboards, every rustle of leaves outside, sounded like a threat. He felt watched, a specimen under a microscope. The entity's words echoed in his mind: “Such a noisy little horse… always screaming on the inside.” It had been taunting Peter, but its dead, black eyes had been fixed on Alex. Why?

He crept out of his room, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs. The house was still. Peter—or the thing puppeteering him—was back on the sofa in the office, sitting perfectly still, facing the wall. It was a sentinel of decay in the heart of Alex’s life.

A new, terrible logic began to form in Alex’s exhausted mind. The dead animals on his doorstep weren’t random acts of cruelty; they were ritualistic. The whispering wasn’t mindless babbling; it was an incantation. The entity hadn't just possessed Peter; it had been brought here. Invited. But an invitation requires a door, an anchor point. Something Peter had carried with him from that bloody room in New Orleans.

He started with Peter’s duffel bag, which he’d thrown in a corner of the office. He unzipped it with trembling hands, a strange sense of violation prickling his skin. Inside was a mess of filthy clothes, a half-empty bottle of whiskey, and a worn leather-bound journal. Alex flipped through it, his hopes sinking. The pages were filled with Peter’s frantic, looping scrawl—manic poetry, sketches of the veve symbol from the house, and disjointed ramblings about “thin places” and “the Loa who walk between.” It was the diary of a desperate man, but there was no answer here. No cursed object, no occult artifact. Nothing.

He was looking in the wrong place. The thought struck him with the force of a physical blow.

He remembered Peter’s last lucid words, the sheer terror in his eyes. “You… you have to get away from me, Alex.” It wasn’t just a warning about the entity. It was a warning about his own role in this nightmare. Peter wasn’t just the victim. He was the delivery system. The weapon.

Alex’s search became frantic, his paranoia sharpened into a desperate, focused hunt. He wasn't looking for something of Peter’s. He was looking for something of his. Something that would tie the curse, the entity, directly to him. Where would you hide something like that? Not somewhere obvious. Somewhere dark. Somewhere forgotten.

The crawlspace.

The access panel was in the hall closet, behind a stack of old blankets. He pried it open, a blast of cold, musty air hitting him in the face, smelling of damp earth and decay. Armed with a Maglite, he lowered himself into the oppressive darkness. The space was tight, the floor a bed of dry, packed dirt. Cobwebs, thick as cotton, brushed against his face as he crawled forward, his flashlight beam cutting a shaky circle through the gloom.

He systematically swept the light across the space, past old pipes and concrete footings. It felt futile. He was about to give up, to retreat back into the relative safety of the house, when his light caught on something in the far corner, tucked behind a crumbling brick support.

It was a mason jar.

It was sealed tight, the metal lid rusted around the edges. A dirty length of twine was wrapped around it several times and knotted. His blood ran cold. He reached for it, his fingers closing around the cool, grimy glass. The contents were obscured by a dark, viscous fluid, thick and murky like swamp water mixed with oil. Floating within the repulsive liquid were dark specks of herbs, what looked like a shard of bone, and something else. Something that made his breath catch in his throat.

He angled the flashlight, his hand shaking so badly the beam danced. Suspended in the filth were several long, dark strands of hair.

His hair.

The same dark brown, the same slight wave. He knew, with an immediate and sickening certainty, that it was his. A memory, once innocuous, now blazed with horrifying significance. Peter, visiting six weeks ago, long before the phone call. They’d been roughhousing in the living room, a brief, nostalgic return to their childhood. Peter had gotten him in a headlock, laughing, and had “accidentally” pulled a clump of his hair. Alex had winced, annoyed, and then forgotten all about it.

It wasn't an accident.

The pieces slammed together in his mind, forming a picture of such profound betrayal it left him breathless. Peter hadn't been the target. He was the key. He was the Trojan horse, willingly carrying this cursed payload into the heart of Alex’s life, allowing it to take root. The rider hadn’t been looking for a horse. It had been looking for this horse. Alex.

A white-hot rage, pure and absolute, burned through his fear. He scrambled out of the crawlspace, clutching the jar, the dirt and cobwebs on his clothes forgotten. He stormed into the office.

The thing in Peter’s body slowly turned its head, the motion unnaturally smooth. That same, hateful, knowing smile spread across its face. It had been waiting for this. It knew he would find it. This was all part of the game.

“Is this what you wanted?” Alex screamed, his voice raw. He held up the jar, the foul contents sloshing. “Is this the anchor? The claim you have on me?”

The entity tilted its head. “The old magic is so simple,” it whispered, its voice a dry rustle of dead leaves. “A piece of the body to bind the soul. Your brother was a most willing key for a most inviting lock.”

The confirmation, the smug admission of the cosmic horror wearing his brother's skin, shattered the last of Alex’s restraint. He wasn’t a worried brother anymore. He was the target. This was a war, and this jar was the enemy’s flag planted in his soul. With a roar of fury and terror, he hurled the binding jar against the far wall.

It exploded in a shower of glass and stinking, dark fluid.

The result was not the release he craved. It was an detonation.

Every lightbulb in the house burst simultaneously, plunging the room into darkness. A shockwave of pure, malevolent energy slammed into Alex, throwing him off his feet and into the hallway. The air temperature plummeted, and a deafening roar of a thousand whispering voices erupted from every direction at once, a tidal wave of sound that clawed at his sanity. The house groaned around him, the wood of the walls and floorboards groaning as if under immense pressure.

He looked back into the office. In the gloom, he could just make out the silhouette of his brother. The entity was still standing there, unmoving. But the smile was gone. In its place was an expression of unbound, triumphant rage. The binding jar hadn’t been a prison for the entity. It was a focus. A lens.

And Alex had just smashed it to pieces, freeing its full, undivided attention upon the house. Upon him.