????The Girl Who Was Buried Pregnant (Part 4)
The tree groaned.
Its bark split open, leaking black sap that sizzled when it touched the ground. From its hollow trunk, whispers seeped—voices of mothers who had died unfinished, trapped between birth and burial.
Ifeoma knelt before it, arms outstretched, her body trembling as the vines wrapped around her wrists and ankles, lifting her slowly from the ground like an offering.
Above her, the newborns dangled, twitching, writhing. Their mouths moved, but no cries came out—only a deep, low hum that made the bones inside her body rattle.
Then she saw it.
Growing from the roots of the tree… was her own corpse.
Pale. Broken. Still carrying the swollen belly of death. Her own face stared back at her—empty-eyed, mouth frozen in a silent scream.
The tree had copied her.
It was planting her again.
The black vines wove tighter around her, forcing her into the earth, into a new grave dug by unseen hands. Soil filled her mouth, her ears, her nose.
Buried alive.
Buried awake.
Above, the dead girls danced in a slow, jerking circle, their bellies splitting open one by one to birth more horrors. Children with no faces. Children with hands where their mouths should be. Children with no skin, their muscles twitching in the moonless dark.
Each newborn scampered toward the roots, vanishing into the tree’s endless hunger.
And the forest listened.
It listened for new life.
Far beyond the clearing, in the villages, pregnant women sat bolt upright in their beds, clutching their bellies in terror. Something unseen clawed at their wombs. Dreams of black trees. Of soil. Of vines.
Ifeoma’s spirit floated above her trapped body, screaming without sound.
And then she saw it:
The forest wasn’t just growing its army.
It was reaching.
Every unborn child across the land now carried the forest’s mark—a shadow curled inside the womb, a seed planted in blood.
The curse had spread.
The dead girls turned their heads toward Ifeoma.
Their mouths moved in unison.
"Mother of Roots. Bearer of Vengeance. Your time is not over."
From the tree, a wet, slithering sound grew louder.
Something was coming down from the highest branch.
Something ancient.
Something that had been buried long before any human tongue spoke its name.
Ifeoma tried to close her eyes, but they were already sewn open with invisible thorns. She was forced to watch as the creature descended—a mass of bones, stillborn faces, writhing umbilical cords, and eyeless heads stitched together into the shape of a woman.
The First Mother.
The one who had cursed the forest.
She reached out a skeletal hand, and where she touched Ifeoma’s chest, her heart blackened.
Still beating.
Still alive.
But no longer her own.
The First Mother smiled—a smile that stretched too wide, tearing the stitched faces apart—and whispered in a voice that cracked the trees:
"You are reborn."
The last thing Ifeoma felt was her own womb opening, not in birth…
…but in hunger.
The forest didn’t just want vengeance anymore.
It wanted to be born again—
Through her.
—TO BE CONTINUED—
Would you tear yourself open to escape a curse—or let it live through you?
#TheGirlWhoWasBuriedPregnant #LadyViviansDarkWhispers #BornFromTheForest #AfricanHorro.