Page 22 of Tangled at the Root
I’m losingmyself. And I have never been more afraid.
I need to find the details of the ritual my ancestors had used to uphold the deal with the dagbato. I refuse to become this—thing. Thismonster. I don’t think about the semantics, about why my mother had decided breaking the deal was her best course of action. About why she’d lied, and kept me away from my grandmother. Kept me away from the truth.
But I can’t do anything while Rosemary is here. The possibility of her disposition changing if she learns … what I am, of her hating me, or worse, being afraid of me—
I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.
For whatever reason, the house had let me outside. A subconscious part of me knows why—the beast’s ever-present hunger has been marginally satisfied once more—but I pretend not to notice or understand.
If the house had opened up once, there’s a high chance it might do so again. Once Rosemary’s gone, I’m summoning the dagbato and upholding whatever deal my ancestors had made. Whatever it takes.
I step out of the shower, slightly lightheaded from the searing heat of it, even though there’s no evidence on my skin; another effect of my … affliction—supernaturally fast healing.
I notice something strange as I walk past the fogged mirror. My heart leaps into my throat and I freeze. I unstick my feet and walk resolutely back to the sink, lifting a hand to wipe away the steam.
My grandmother is standing behind me.
I don’t outwardly react, though my pulse speeds up, something awful clawing into my throat. I hadn’t known her. I barely even remember her from the few times my mother and I had visited when I was a child, and had only met her that one time during the funeral. But still, fuck, she looks so much like my mother I can’t look away, even though every instinct is screaming at me to.
She looks furious, mouthing something rapidly. I try to read her lips and fail, gripping the edges of the sink with despair.
The longer she speaks, the more uncanny her appearance becomes.
Her teeth go first; sharpening, lengthening. Her brown skin grows paler, saggier. Her fingers extend, extra joints popping into existence as her nails do the same, the tips sharpening to wicked points.
I feel humid breath on the back of my neck, even though this can’t possibly be real. It’s just the madness. It’s the madness—
Look away. Look away. Look away.
A sharp crack echoes through the air, the sound startling me despite the iron grip on my control. My grandmother’s spine is arching unnaturally. Another crack. Her head jerks and twitches like it isn’t connected to the rest of her body. Her hair falls out in clumps, and her eyes are flooded entirely with black.
I notice something shifting in the reflection. When I look at myself, my eyes in the mirror are entirely black, too.
I rip my gaze away and leave the bathroom. I refuse to run, even as those sickening cracks echo around me as my grandmother’s spine breaks and breaks.
I don’t look back as I close the door on her slowly morphing into the monster I might soon become.
7: DANGER
An innocent-looking study isn’t what I’d expected. The curtains open themselves as I walk in, letting in the warm morning light.
Bookshelves line the wall directly to my left and half of the wall adjacent to that. The other half is taken up by a desk and chair, which sits underneath the corner of a wide window overlooking the front of the house. Two armchairs facing each other and framing a small coffee table sit directly in the heart of the protruding window. The wall on the right is overtaken by even more shelves, with a three-seater sofa sitting a few feet in front of it.
All the books look like ledgers or diaries. Strangely, they remind me of our record-keeping hut back in Maraya, where a sita oerhwu—a practitioner who specialised in visions of past,present, and future—stored, recorded, and referenced written accounts of our village’s history.
Something makes me look up.
The head of my visitor from this morning peeks out at me from the corner of the ceiling. My heart leaps into my throat. That painfully familiar face contorts into something inhuman before it disappears.
I wait, but she doesn’t reappear.
“Okay,” I say, mostly to calm myself.
I step further into the room, closing the door behind me. At the same time, one of the desk’s drawers flings itself open. I hear the wood creak unnaturally, then a book is ejected from the opening, slapping against the wall and landing dramatically on the floor, before the drawer slams shut.
I glance with amusement around me as I make my way to the desk. Both drawers framing the desk on each side are locked. I shake my head.
“Thank you?” I offer bemusedly at the ceiling, not expecting a response as I lean down.
