There had always been things we didn't talk about in this family.
We buried secrets like we buried our dead—deep, silent, and with a prayer no one ever said aloud.
But the truth has roots.
And like any root left to fester underground—it crawls back up eventually.
---
That morning, I woke up to find Clara's door wide open.
Not just open—torn.
The hinges twisted like they'd melted.
Her sheets were shredded on the floor.
And her sketchpad…
Gone.
---
I found her in the basement.
Huddled in the corner.
She wasn't crying. She was humming.
The same three notes Noah had been humming.
Low. High. Hold.
But slower.
Like something behind her was teaching her how.
---
I crouched beside her, and only then did I see her arms.
Carved with tiny symbols.
Fresh.
Still bleeding.
But they weren't random.
Each one matched the etching I'd found on that ritual page two nights ago.
The same spiral.
The same backward "S" made of roots.
The same forked mark that Mom used to paint on the windows with rosemary oil.
---
She looked up at me with flat, dark eyes and said:
> "He's still here."
> "Who?"
> "The brother."
> "What brother?"
> "Yours."
---
That was when everything changed.
Because I remembered something I'd buried long ago—
A fragment of a memory so old I thought it was a dream.
Me. As a toddler.
Standing in the woods.
Watching a boy—older than me—digging with his hands under the Ashroot tree.
Naked.
Smiling.
Whispering to someone in the dirt.
I had asked, "What are you doing?"
And he'd said:
> "Making room for myself."
---
His name was Jonas.
My mother's first child.
The one no one ever mentioned.
---
I found his name on an old medical document in a locked drawer beneath the attic stairs.
> Jonas Ashcroft.
Born 1986.
Vanished 1994.
Declared presumed dead: 2000.
But my mother never reported it.
The file wasn't official.
It was a church record.
The kind used by covens who replaced birth certificates with rituals.
---
At the bottom, written in my mother's frantic hand:
> "He walked into the root.
It opened for him.
He was too eager.
I wasn't ready."
---
That same night, I followed Noah outside.
He had woken up again—eyes wide, humming.
He moved through the yard like something was pulling him on invisible strings.
He walked past the garden.
Past the broken shed.
Straight to the Ashroot tree.
And knelt.
---
The earth beneath the tree was cracked open again.
Like a wound refusing to heal.
Noah placed something inside the hollow.
I moved closer.
It was the doll.
The one that had worn Clara's old dress.
But now it had a face.
My mother's face.
Carved in bark. Eyes hollow. Mouth stitched shut with black thread.
He whispered:
> "This is how we feed it."
---
The tree groaned.
And I swear to God—I heard breathing from inside the trunk.
---
I grabbed Noah, pulled him back, but his body went stiff.
He spoke in that other voice again:
> "Jonas never left.
He's waiting.
The root still wants a son."
---
That was when the door appeared.
Not in the house.
In the earth.
---
The next day, Clara woke up with her sketchpad beside her.
New drawings she didn't remember making.
This time, they were of a door beneath the tree.
Wooden.
Split down the middle.
Marked with the same spiral symbol carved into her arms.
And on it, written over and over:
> "Where the first one went."
> "Where the root will take the next."
---
Theo didn't speak much anymore.
He just sat in the attic, staring out the window, mumbling to himself.
He had the photo album open on his lap, but he wasn't looking at the pictures.
He was whispering names.
Over and over.
> "Jonas. Eleanor. Clara. Jonas. Clara. Jonas…"
And then he looked up at me.
Eyes wide. Empty.
> "She promised me. She said the root always takes the quiet one."
---
We dug near the base of the tree that evening.
Not because we wanted to.
Because the door was real.
Covered in vines.
Sealed in dirt.
But unmistakably carved into the roots.
And when we cleared it—
We saw the handle.
An old iron loop.
Rusting.
Still warm.
The spiral symbol burned into the wood.
---
Clara stood beside me.
She held Noah's hand.
Both of them were silent.
Both of them… waiting.
---
I looked at Theo.
He didn't move.
Didn't blink.
Didn't breathe.
And when I touched him—
He tipped forward.
A single line of blood ran down from his ear.
And something black slid out from between his lips.
A splinter.
Old. Wooden.
Still pulsing.
---
I screamed.
But no sound came.
Only the tree creaking behind me.
And the door at its base beginning to open…