The woods outside the city have been swarming with them since we had one of the harshest winters on record. They call it a root baby, an unwanted newborn buried beneath a tree that comes back from death to find its mother. Nasty little creatures in my opinion and a thoroughly rotten practice nowadays when every hospital and religious building has a baby box to help fight this problem.
It's hard to break tradition and some people, though they won't say it out loud, would rather bring a root baby into the world than give their child a chance at a happy life with someone else. For whatever reasons they drill into themselves they end up hurting a great many innocent people along the way.
A root baby is blind with skin thick as old bark and twice as gnarled. Their limbs are twisted as the roots that cradled them in death and their screeching cries sound like harsh wind through dry autumn leaves. Just below their eyes and around their tiny little noses are thermal pits, just like the kind you'd find on a snake and, much like a snake, they use it to find their prey.
Like any child, a root baby wants food and warmth. People provide both of those things, whether they want to or not. You can always tell whether it was an animal or a root baby attack - you check if the body's been drained of their blood and hollowed out, skin peeled back and ribs cracked to form a nest for it.
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