The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

The Last Bloom
by Kathleen McCluskey

They had been told that the roses were a blessing.

That was the lie that kept the monks from running.

Brother Alard learned the truth the first night he was led beneath the abbey, down past the wine stores and the bone crypts, into the chamber where the air never moved and the candles burned low and sickly. The chest sat at the center of it, ironbound and swollen with age, its lock thick and as black as a clot of dried blood. Upon it rested the roses, pale, red-edged and heavy with dew that never dripped.

He had leaned closer then, drawn by their scent. Not floral. Metallic. Sweet and wrong.

Something inside the chest shifted. Not a thud. Not a stir. But a response to him getting close.

The Abbot struck him hard enough to split his lip. “Do not invite it in,” the old man hissed, dragging him back.”It listens.”

Years passed, the Abbot rotted in his grave yet the duty remained. The roses must be fed. That was the only command that mattered.

Blood had to be poured at the roots hidden beneath the blooms. Names spoken. Prayers muttered through clenched teeth. The offering had once been plentiful, bandits, heretics, prisoners dragged from distant wars, but time thinned everything. Villages emptied. Cells went quiet. Chains rusted in place.

Still the chest endured. Still it listened. But lately, it had begun to speak.

At first it was nothing more than a murmur, something that escaped between breaths, too faint to grasp. Then came the scratching, slow, thoughtful, tracing the inner walls as if hunting for weakness. Alard had tried to ignore it. Bury it beneath prayer, but prayer did not silence it.

Nothing did. Because it was not trying to escape. It was waiting. Testing. Tonight they gave the last sacrifice. It was all they could find.

The boy sobbed until his voice broke, until it dissolved into dry, animal sounds that echoed off the stone. Alard did not look at his face as the blade was drawn. He focused instead on the basin. On the ritual. On the containment. On the roses.

Always the roses.

When the blood touched them, they shuddered. Every petal tightened, then spread again, drinking with slow, obscene eagerness. The dew upon them thickened, darkened and ran along the thin lines of the chest like diluted wine. For a moment, just a moment the chamber felt still. Satisfied.

Then the last drop fell. Something inside the chest exhaled. A long, low sound that dragged across the wood like a breath through broken teeth. The roses did not brighten. They sagged. Alard felt it in his bones, a hollow uncertainty that sank deeper than fear. Not enough.

The other fled above, their prayers rising into the chapel in trembling waves. Alard remained, someone had to. Because someone had to see what happened when the roses finally failed.

The chamber grew heavy with a sweet, rotting scent. The petals continued to curl. To loosen. Then came the scratching. It was soft at first. A single point along the inner lid. Then another. And another. Then many.

Not frantic. Not wild. Careful. Testing.

The scratching moved with growing certainty and a low, buried growl thickened beneath it, vibrating through the stone and into Alard’s bones.

Above, the monks’ hymns faltered as more petals fell. The scratching stopped. A slow, wet breath slid from the cracks in the chest, lingering in the air as if tasting it. Tasting him, before sinking back into silence.

The last petal fell.

The chest split open with a sharp, internal crack, the iron bands bending as the lid jerked upward enough to break the seal. In that instant, the singing upstairs stopped abruptly, cut off with an unnatural finality.

Something shifted in the darkness within, turning with deliberate slowness until it faced him. The blackness deepened, then focused. Two red eyes opened, wide and unblinking. They fixed on Alard with a suffocating, ancient awareness that stripped him where he stood.

He felt the moment it found him.

His skin tightened and split. Fire belched and fractures spread as his body collapsed inward without sound, breaking apart into a fine, gray dust that spilled across the stone.

The eyes watched the dust settle.

A long, pale clawed hand slowly emerged over the top of the box. Its fingers flexed as though remembering how to touch the world again.

Fiction © Copyright Kathleen McCluskey
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com 

More from Kathleen McCluskey:

The Long Fall: Book 1: The Inception of Horror

Lucifer always cunning and intelligent challenges father to a battle of wits. Being the angel of light he casts a judgemental eye upon mankind. He begins a war with his fellow archangels and God. Michael, along with his siblings defend their home and mankind from their deranged brother. Broad swords and hand to hand combat drench heaven in blood. The four apocalyptic steeds are released, each having their own destructive power. Betrayal and lust are at biblical levels. Understand the very creation of evil and the consequenses that transpire in the first of THE LONG FALL series.

Available on Amazon!