Chapter 4 Blood and Bargains #2
“My husband,” Rosita said, and for the first time, the otherworldly echo in her voice receded, leaving only the cracked, weary rasp of an old woman.
“He did not drink. He did not hit me where the neighbors could see. He was clever. His cruelty was quiet. He would lock me in the smokehouse for days. He would make me kneel on uncooked rice for hours for misplacing his sandals. He told me the thoughts in my head were filth, and that he was the only one who could cleanse me.” She ran a thumb over the driftwood, her touch almost tender.
“I endured it for seven years. I prayed. I bargained. I tried to be better, quieter, smaller. One day, I realized I was praying for my own death, just so it would stop.”
The story pierced Lina like a shard of glass. Every quiet degradation, every meticulously hidden act of cruelty - she knew them. She lived them. Rosita’s words were a mirror, showing Lina her own face, her own silent pleas for an escape she had never dared to name.
“The mangkukulam who came before me gave me this,” Rosita said, holding up the blackened wood. “She told me the choice was mine. To continue kneeling, or to stand up.”
The cool, calculated mask Lina had worn for years finally shattered.
A hot tear escaped her eye, then another, tracing silent paths through the grime of the day on her cheeks.
They were not tears of pity for the old woman.
They were tears of a terrifying, soul-deep recognition.
The suffocating loneliness that had been her constant companion for eight years dissolved in the heat of this shared history.
She was not mad. She was not worthless. She was a woman in a story that had been told, again and again, in the dark.
The flickering candlelight caught the moisture on her face, making it gleam as if she were crying liquid light.
She finally understood. This was not a story about murder. It was a story about survival.
Lina wiped the tears from her face with the back of her raw hand.
The hut felt different now, the shadows less menacing and more watchful, expectant.
Nanay Rosita’s gaze lingered on her, a knowing, clinical assessment that took in her delicate frame, the exhaustion etched around her eyes, and something else, something deeper that Lina herself was only just beginning to feel stirring.
“The demon is an ancient thing, anak,” Rosita said, her voice once again resuming its unsettling, resonant hum.
The shadows in the corners of the room seemed to respond, drawing together, coiling like serpents of smoke.
“It is drawn to the vessel of its summoning. It is drawn to beauty, to the light of a pure spirit. That is the lure.” She leaned forward, her face a mask of grim intimacy in the candlelight.
“But it responds to the darkness. The darkness that abuse carves inside a woman. The quiet, secret rot of fear. The sliver of hatred that you nurture like a seed in the deepest part of your soul. It answers that darkness most powerfully.”
Lina felt exposed, as if the old woman could see straight into her, past the compliant wife and the frightened victim, and had found that small, hard kernel of rage she had so carefully hidden, even from herself. The part of her that dreamed of violence.
Terrified but captivated, she found her voice. “What are the rules?” she asked, the question feeling both practical and insane. “What happens when it… comes?”
“You will prepare a place for it,” Rosita explained.
“You will anoint yourself. You will speak the words to open the gate. Once summoned, it will find the man you have named. It will look into his soul, and it will judge him. It weighs the pain he has inflicted against the worth of his life. If he is found truly deserving, it will unmake him. It will strip the flesh from his spirit and drag what is left back to the place from which it came.” The old woman’s description was delivered with the dispassionate clarity of a butcher describing her trade.
“But it cannot linger. The pact allows it only a short season in this world before the tides of its own realm pull it back. It is a swift and terrible storm, and then it is gone.”
The thought of Ramon being… unmade… was a horrifying, beautiful image. A release so complete it was a kind of salvation. Lina’s breath hitched. She looked down at her trembling hands, laid flat on the dark wood of the table.
Nanay Rosita watched her for a moment longer, then nodded, a single, decisive jerk of her head. She turned and reached for a small, square box made of a wood so dark it was nearly black. It was covered in the same spidery carvings as her talisman. With a faint click, she opened the lid.
Inside, nestled on a bed of faded red velvet, lay a single stone.
It was the size of a pigeon’s egg, polished to a high gloss.
Its color was the deep, dark red of dried blood, with black veins that ran through it like cracks in a parched riverbed.
It seemed to drink the candlelight, containing a depth that felt infinite.
The candles in the room flared, casting Rosita’s face in a sudden, sharp relief as she lifted the stone from its resting place.
She held it out to Lina. “This will be yours, if you choose it.”
Lina stared at the object. It was beautiful and terrible.
Her hand rose to meet it, her fingers shaking so badly she feared she would drop it.
As her skin made contact, a shock went through her - not of cold, but of warmth.
A deep, pulsing heat emanated from the stone, as if it held a living heart within it.
The warmth was not burning; it was intimate, a feeling that spread from her palm up her arm, chasing away the chill of her fear. It felt like a recognition.
Rosita placed the talisman gently into Lina’s palm and curled her own weathered fingers over Lina’s, pressing the stone into her flesh.
“The choice must be yours alone,” the mangkukulam said, her voice now a low, serious command.
“Go home. Feel its weight. Understand what you are inviting into your life. The ritual will bind you to it, and it to you.” Her eyes held a final, dire warning.
“Return at dusk tomorrow if you decide to learn the words. And prepare yourself. Once you hold the key, the demon’s attention will be on you, even from across the veil. ”
Lina could not speak. She could only stare down at the talisman now resting in her hand.
Its unnatural heat was a steady, living pulse against her skin.
Her fingers, of their own volition, closed around it, a gesture of desperate, possessive finality.
The stone fit her grip perfectly, as if it had been made for her.
In its dark, polished surface, she saw her own reflection, distorted and shadowed, a woman on the precipice of becoming either a monster or a god.
The dread was a cold ocean inside her, but for the first time in eight years, a fierce, hungry longing burned brighter.