4.7
CONTENT WARNING: This update contains descriptions of gore.
Austin wiggles his fingers, and breathes hard through his teeth. His hand and arm are gummy with dried blood, and more is still dripping sluggishly out from around the knife that’s holding him in place, streaking his pale skin. Rabbit is limp on the ground, his foot wholly detached now, the pool of blood under his wounded leg filling the rivulets in the earth, sinking into the ground. His skin looks white as a sheet. It’s hard to tell if he’s breathing or not, but his eyes keep fluttering open and shut, so he must be alive. For now, anyway.
Otter - the thing in Otter’s body - is painting things in Rabbit’s blood on the mine shaft walls. Loops and whorls, sigils Austin doesn’t recognize. Austin reaches across himself and curls his fingers around the grip of the hunting knife stuck in his hand. His palm is slick with sweat. He takes a deep breath, forcing the air in through his lungs.
“Why the change of plans?” he asks, his voice hoarse and strained. “When you were inside me, all you wanted to do was kill everyone.”
Otter clicks his tongue. “I was naive. Thinking I could take so many humans on in a body like theirs, when I hadn’t even experienced pain in centuries. Or had any kind of body at all!”
“Did you have a body? Before you were bound to the lake?” Austin swallows, wiggling the hunting knife a little, trying to gently pry it loose from the wood his hand is pinned to. Every motion sends a little shock of pain through his palm, down his wrist and arm. If I can keep him talking - keep him distracted - maybe I can get free before he finishes whatever he’s doing. Before whatever he’s summoning comes for backup.
“Of course I did,” Otter scoffs, kneeling to dip his fingers back in the pool of Rabbit’s blood. “But I can’t hold it for long, now. Not after existing as a fucking lake for hundreds of years. Just being untethered from anything after I was forced out of your body almost tore me apart.”
Austin wiggles the knife a little more. “So you’re, what, a spirit?”
Otter snorts. “Don’t be an idiot. A spirit couldn’t control that lake, not even after being there for as long as I was. Even if I can’t hold a physical form any more, I’d think you’d be able to recognize a demon when you see one.”
A demon? Austin pauses, raising his eyebrows. He’d considered the possibility, but the lake’s behavior hadn’t seemed consistent with anything he knew about demons, from the few he’d dealt with in the past. Too erratic, almost. But the blood sacrifices…that makes more sense than if it had been just a spirit bound to the lake. And the level of control the entity was able to exert over the lake, the lake house, and Landis.
Pieces slide into place in his mind, and Austin frowns slightly. A demon being bound to the lake - that means someone was strong enough to bind a demon there. Strong enough to make a binding that only got weak enough for it to organize an escape after hundreds of years, if it’s telling the truth.
“So, who put you there?” he asks. His breath catches a little in his throat as the knife gradually slides free of the wood, but he coughs to cover the noise. “Sealed you, I mean. In that cave on the island.”
Otter laughs. The sound is loud, too loud, and dissonant. Not the way he was laughing before - when he was laughing before, Austin realizes, it was all Otter. Or Otter’s mannerisms lingering around, still fading in and out as the demon took control. But now, he laughs like the demon inside of him can’t remember how to. Like it’s trying to imitate the way it thinks a laugh sounds. Otter’s shoulders heave a little, a pantomime of mirth, and a chill shoots down Austin’s spine.
“What’s funny?” he asks.
“You think the enemy of your enemy is your friend,” Otter says. He looks behind him to smile at Austin with all his teeth, and one of his eyes is still rolling in the socket, jittering in a way that makes Austin seasick to look at. “That’s a remarkably human outlook.”
“But aren’t they dead by now, anyway? You said it was hundreds of years ago.”
Otter laughs again. The sound is a little smoother, like the demon inside of him is slowly learning. “It would be a pleasant surprise if they were. Maybe a little disappointing. I’d always hoped I would get free and then kill all of them.”
All of them? How many people did it take to bind one demon? How powerful was this demon before they bound it? Austin clenches his teeth hard as he feels the tip of the knife finally come free of the deep notch it made in the wood beam. He keeps his hand in place, tugging on the knife handle even slower than before. His thoughts are racing - he hadn’t expected to be freely given so much information. How are the people who bound it still alive? Did they make a demon pact? Were they even human to begin with?
He blinks tears out of his eyes and looks at Rabbit, on the ground. The kid’s eyes are open now, and wide, and it’s even harder to tell if he’s still breathing. Austin’s stomach drops. He very nearly lets go of the knife pierced through his hand and gives up, before he looks a little harder, and sees Rabbit’s lips moving. There’s no sound coming out - maybe he’s hyperventilating, or just talking to himself. Or praying. But he’s undeniably still alive.
Another flash of motion catches Austin’s attention, out of the corner of his eye, and he turns his head very slightly to see Richard’s head and shoulders stuck down through the ceiling of the mine shaft. Richard meets his gaze and gives a little wave, grinning.
“Hold on just a little longer, Aust,” he says. “Landis and everyone are coming to get you.”
Austin opens his mouth - he wants to ask who “everyone” is, tell Richard he should have listened and not gone to get help, ask if “everyone” even has a plan for dealing with a literal demon - but Richard is gone before he can get a single sound out of his throat. He settles for gritting his teeth again and yanking the knife the rest of the way out of his hand, barely suppressing a cry as it comes loose with a wet, popping sound.
“What are you trying to summon?” he asks, palming the knife, and taking a few quiet, wobbly steps forwards. His injured hand hangs down at his side, a throbbing dead weight. Otter’s back is still turned - if he can just keep the demon talking a while longer, he can injure it. And pain might not give Otter a chance to break free of the possession, like it did for Austin, but it’ll certainly slow Otter’s body down.
“While I was untethered, before I was summoned back here and came into this,” Otter gestures loosely down at himself, his fingers dripping blood onto his shirt, “I found myself drifting around these tunnels. There was a presence down here I was drawn to - something even stronger than me, trapped here under the earth. I’m surprised you can’t feel it, medium. All the people who have died here.”
The people - Mac said the mine closed because of some kind of disaster. A cave-in. Austin feels weighed down with cold horror.
“You’re trying to summon back the people who died here?”
“I’m not trying,” Otter says, smugly. “I’m already finished. I’m just waiting for them to wake up.”
Austin lunges for Otter with the knife, his heart pounding, aiming for something non-lethal. Stomach, hip, thigh - not his hands, if I ruin his hands he can’t be a doctor anymore, I can’t aim for his hands. He feels the blood-soaked blade slide into Otter’s side as easily as it would through butter, just before the ground starts to shake and sends them both sprawling to the ground.