It stayed there.
Marta didn’t own a bone comb. But her late grandmother had left her a trunk of stuff : dried herbs, crucifixes with broken loops, a fox skull wrapped in red thread. And yes, at the very bottom, wrapped in a scrap of black velvet: a comb carved from a single piece of what looked like human femur. The teeth were sharp. The handle was shaped like a woman with her mouth sewn shut. m3zatka
The sound was not bone breaking. It was a scream nine centuries long, folded into a single instant. The walls of femurs shuddered. The well spat black water. The thing’s sewn mouth tore open, and from it came a cold that froze the moisture on Marta’s lips. It stayed there
The thing had been sealed in the well nine hundred years ago, during the first Christian king’s purge of the old faith. But a piece of it had been left out—the comb, carved from its own finger bone by a witch who pitied it. As long as the comb existed outside the well, the thing could reach through the cracks. It could pull. It could feed. And yes, at the very bottom, wrapped in