Ashes from the Root – A Devil's Bedtime Story
Word Count: ~1,430+
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I started hearing the ticking.
Not from a clock.
Not from my watch.
From the walls.
Soft. Measured. Pulsing like a heartbeat.
Always between 2 and 3 AM.
Always near Clara's room.
---
On the third night after the funeral, I found her standing in the hallway, her eyes wide open—but completely unaware of me.
She had dirt under her fingernails.
Red lines traced up her arms like veins carved in reverse.
And in her hand—
> A folded page. Torn. Yellowed.
---
She looked at me as if she didn't recognize who I was.
Then blinked once… and screamed.
---
I took her downstairs, sat her on the couch, wrapped her in a blanket.
She didn't remember walking.
She didn't remember digging.
But she remembered the page.
---
It wasn't a drawing this time.
It was a ritual.
Old writing. Archaic script. Drawn in blood and ash.
At the top, a title written in my mother's handwriting:
> "The Choosing Root."
---
Theo tried to calm her, but his hands trembled.
He read the words in silence, mouth moving without sound.
And then he set the page down like it was something alive.
I picked it up again.
And read:
> "Every bloodline must return to its root.
In the third night after the vessel dies,
the root will open to taste the next.
One will carry legacy.
One will feed it.
The house will hold them both
until one name remains."
---
Clara didn't speak for the rest of the night.
But I saw her glancing toward Noah's room.
Not with fear.
With something else.
---
Jealousy.
---
The next morning, Theo found something in the crawl space behind Clara's closet.
He'd heard scratching from inside her wall.
We pulled the panel away, half-expecting rats.
Instead, we found a small cavity filled with:
Black candles
Animal bones
Child's teeth (again)
And at the back… a drawing.
One of Clara's.
But she swore she didn't draw it.
It showed her—at age five.
Lying in a bed.
Eyes closed.
Roots growing out of her wrists and ankles.
Over her head, like a crown, was a shape I'd only seen once before—
The tree.
---
Carved into the plaster behind the drawing were the words:
> "SHE WAS THE FIRST SEED.
BUT HE WILL BE THE LAST."
---
I dropped the panel.
Theo backed away.
Clara was crying now. Not sobbing—screaming through clenched teeth.
> "I don't want it to choose!"
> "I don't want her inside me!"
---
We rushed her outside to get air.
But the second we opened the door—
The smell hit us.
Earth.
Rot.
Smoke.
And beyond the hill, at the edge of the backyard—
The tree was burning.
Not with fire.
Not exactly.
With light.
Pale green light pulsed through its trunk like veins under skin.
And at its base, the ground had cracked open.
Like a mouth.
---
Clara ran.
I tried to follow—but Noah was standing just beyond the porch, barefoot in the grass again.
He turned slowly.
His eyes were open, but all white.
And he spoke in a voice that wasn't his.
> "The root drinks backward."
> "The firstborn planted the flame.
The second will light the path."
He raised one hand.
Held something out.
I didn't want to take it.
But I did.
A tiny black root. Still warm.
Still wet.
---
Later, after sedating Clara and putting Noah to bed, Theo told me something he'd never said before.
About Eleanor.
---
> "She made me promise something, Amy.
Before she moved in.
When we knew she was dying."
> "What?"
> "That if anything happened after her death—anything unnatural—
I wasn't to stop it."
I stared at him.
> "You agreed to that?"
> "She said it was the price.
For keeping you.
For keeping Clara alive."
> "What price?"
He paused.
> "That when she left… one of our kids would carry her forward.
That the blood would choose."
---
I wanted to hit him.
I wanted to scream.
Instead, I went back to Clara's room and stood by the window.
The tree on the hill had stopped glowing.
But something new had appeared at its base.
A doll.
Made of roots.
Wearing one of Clara's childhood dresses.
Its eyes replaced with the cracked glass beads from my mother's jewelry box.
---
I didn't sleep.
I sat at the kitchen table with the old family photo album.
The one I swore I'd burned years ago.
But something inside me knew it had returned.
And in the center—
A photo I'd never seen before.
My mother.
Holding an infant that wasn't me.
The baby's face scratched out.
Scrawled beneath:
> "First chosen.
First failed."
---
And I remembered.
I was not Eleanor's first child.
There had been another.
One no one talked about.
Because he didn't die.
He disappeared.
---
I closed the book.
And heard the ticking again.
From the floor this time.
Right beneath my feet.
A second heartbeat.