The Weeping Fig

It started with the smell. A sweet, cloying rot that clung to the curtains even after I’d scrubbed the house top to bottom. I’d always had a weak constitution, but the last year had been a slow drain—constant fever, chills, and a creeping fatigue that made my bones feel like glass. Money vanished. My husband’s salary, my side gigs, all of it went to doctors who found nothing. We ate rice and beans when we could. I stopped praying. I had nothing left to give.

Then one night, scrolling through my phone, a video appeared. A woman with hollow eyes described my life in eerie, precise detail—the sickness, the poverty, the feeling of being watched. She said, ‘Something is feeding on you. It lives in your home.’ The video ended abruptly. My skin prickled. That night, I fell to my knees and begged for forgiveness, for clarity, for anything. I cried until sleep took me.

At 3:00 AM, I woke to a dream that was not a dream. I was in our house, but everything was wrong—the walls were smeared with damp, the light was the color of old milk. My parents stood before me, translucent and stern. My mother’s lips were still, but her voice pressed into my skull: ‘You brought it with you. From the tree.’ My father pointed at my back. I turned, but saw nothing. Then I felt it—a weight, like a child clinging to me. A giggle, high and cold, breathed against my neck. I spun, and for a second, I saw her—a girl with hair like a bird’s nest, ribs pushing against grey skin, and eyes that were black pools. She latched onto my back, her arms impossibly thin but strong, and her laugh grew into a shriek. I woke gasping.

At 3:30, as always, I stumbled to the bathroom. There, in the mirror, I saw the marks—bruises on my hips in the shape of small fingers. The dream was real. I remembered the tree. Last spring, I had found a neglected fig tree in the overgrown lot behind our house, half dead and oozing a black, sticky sap. On a whim, I’d brought a cutting inside and planted it in the garden. It grew fast, unnaturally fast, and I liked to sit by it, feeling its coolness. Now I knew.

I told my husband, but he laughed and called me hysterical. That night, I returned to the tree with a knife. Its bark was warm like flesh. As I began to hack at a root, the house shuddered. Inside, the sound of a child’s giggle, then a scream—my own daughter’s voice. I rushed in. She was asleep, but on her back, in the dim light, I saw a shadow that wasn’t hers. The little girl was there, crouched on her shoulders, whispering. My daughter’s small face twisted in dream terror.

I grabbed the girl’s arm. It was freezing, and she turned to me with a smile filled with needle teeth. ‘You uprooted me,’ she hissed, ‘now I live in you.’ The next thing I knew, I was outside, kneeling by the tree, my hands clawing at the earth. My daughter was behind me, her voice eerily calm: ‘Mommy, she wants to play.’ I looked down. I had dug a hole. I saw a tiny, withered root, and wrapped around it, a lock of grey hair—my mother’s. The tree had been planted on her grave.

I fled to the church, but the priest refused to look at me. When I turned, the congregation was empty, but I heard a familiar laugh. The little girl was sitting on the altar, her head tilted. ‘You can’t outrun me,’ she said. ‘I’m in your blood.’ I ran home, packed a bag, and drove to my sister’s house miles away. But when I arrived, my sister looked at me with horror. ‘Who is that on your back?’ she whispered. I didn’t have to look. I could feel the cold arms around my waist, the weight of her ribs against my spine. Her breath was warm now. I sat down, and I didn’t get up.

Now, I tend to her. I water her roots with my tears. The house smells of figs and decay. My daughter doesn’t talk anymore; she just points at the corner where the little girl sits, humming lullabies. My husband left. But I’m not alone. She is always there, attached to my back, feeding on my fear, and I know that when I die, she will plant a new tree in my grave, and wait for the next lonely soul to bring her home.