Page 106 of House of Roots and Ruin
Everything was in sets of three.
Clusters of pink candles burned, tall and bright, and filled the nursery with their pungent, familiar odor. A paper mobile hung in front of an ivy-covered window, little stars and moons spinning in slow circles, caught in a draft.
I tried peeking out the window, to give myself a sense of where exactly I was in the house, but the vines made for an effective cover and I couldn’t see beyond them.
An open door led to another room. A single candle lit the new space with a soft glow.
“What is this place?” I whispered, stepping over the threshold.
I froze when I realized I was not alone. A series of cribs lined one wall.
There were three of them.
And each crib was occupied by a small, mewing form.
There were babies here.
My head felt strange, as wobbly as a screw loose in a sheath too big. Whatever Constance had done when she’d steppedthrough me lingered, growing and festering like a gangrenous wound.
I reached out to one of the cribs, trying to steady myself, then peeked into the blanketed depths.
Light golden curls framed a tiny, beatific face. Slate-blue eyes stared drowsily up at me.
I knew those eyes.
Those were Gerard’s eyes.
These were Gerard’s…sons?
Without warning, Constance bustled into the room, whole and unharmed. Her form looked more solid than before.
“What is this place?” I asked her, but she was still caught in the past, unaware of me.
Humming a soft, happy tune, Constance gathered up one of the infants, then crossed over to a rocking chair. Her feet barely skimmed the floor, pushing the chair back and forth on tiptoe, lulling the babe into a quiet trance. With one hand, she unbuttoned the front of her shapeless dress, revealing a milk-swollen breast, riddled with veins strange and green and wrong. The hungry infant went to work, suckling noisily.
“Constance?” I tried again, unable to look away from her dark veins. “What are you doing? What is all this?”
She and the infant flickered, fully disappearing for a second, for two, then three, before returning. I took a step forward, waving my hands, trying to steal her attention, but she only had eyes for the baby.
Gazing up at her in mutual adoration, he placed his tiny hand upon her chest and I gasped.
It wasn’t a hand at all, but some sort of stump, malformedand a horrible shade of verdigris. As I watched, the arm unfurled, like the coiling fiddlehead of a fern, and leaves—actual leaves—opened up. They spread across Constance’s skin, a lacy network of vines and tendrils.
I retreated from the macabre tableaux, choking back a cry, and bumped into the first crib. I cringed as the baby within struggled to roll over and look at me. He was young. He was so young and small. The babies couldn’t have been more than a month old.
His face was red and tight with an impending howl. Tufts of green fuzz, like feathered moss, poked out from behind his ears. His little fingers were curling tendrils of dark green and purple.
The same shade as the flowers in the greenhouse.
My stomach heaved and the room spun.
“I don’t want to be here anymore,” I whispered, gulping back a sob.
I hadn’t heard Constance get up.
I hadn’t felt her approach.
But she was beside me now, her face distorted and beaten. A long slash ripped the bridge of her nose open wide, flaying back her pallid skin till it hung in tatters. A pair of gardening shears protruded from her chest and bursts of red bloomed there, staining the linen bloody. She smelled foul, as dark and dank as a grave.
