In the corner of my garden, there was a patch of wildflowers that never seemed to bloom. They were strange flowers—thin, crooked stems with dark, wilted leaves that twisted like gnarled fingers. I always wondered why they never grew the way the others did, why they remained half-dead while the roses and daisies flourished around them.

My mother told me not to worry. "It's just bad soil," she said with a dismissive wave of her hand, her garden gloves flecked with dirt. "Some flowers just don't take to the earth the way others do."

But I couldn't stop thinking about them, about the sad, lonely flowers at the edge of the garden. There was something off about them, something that felt wrong every time I glanced their way. It was as if they were crying out to me, begging me to understand something I couldn't see.

Then one night, the crying began.

At first, I thought it was just the wind—the way it howled through the trees and rattled the windowpanes. But as I lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, I realized that the sound was different. It wasn't the low, mournful moan of the wind. It was higher, softer, like the whimpering of a child who's lost their way.

I pressed my pillow over my ears, trying to drown out the noise, but it seeped through the fabric, growing louder and more desperate. I squeezed my eyes shut, my heart pounding, until eventually, I drifted into a restless sleep.

The next morning, the flowers looked different. They were taller, somehow. Stronger. Their petals, which had been dull and lifeless, now shimmered with a strange, almost otherworldly light. I watched them from my window, the memory of the cries still echoing in my ears.

Days turned into weeks, and the crying never stopped. It would come every night, starting as a faint murmur and swelling into a chorus of sorrowful wails that filled my room and made my skin crawl. I told my mother, but she just laughed it off.

"You've got too much imagination," she said, patting me on the head. "Maybe it's time to stop reading those ghost stories before bed."

But I knew it wasn't my imagination. I could feel it—the sadness, the despair that seeped out of the garden like a creeping fog. The flowers were changing, growing taller each day, their petals now a deep crimson that reminded me of blood. They were beautiful, in a way, but there was something sinister about them, something that made my stomach churn whenever I got too close.

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I began to avoid the garden. I'd take the long way around the house to avoid seeing the flowers, the way they seemed to lean toward me whenever I walked by. But the crying never left me. It followed me, clinging to the air like a damp mist. I started hearing it during the day, a faint sob that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.

Then one night, I couldn't take it anymore.

I grabbed a flashlight and crept outside, the cold air biting at my skin. The garden was silent, the moon casting long shadows across the grass. I moved slowly toward the patch of flowers, the beam of light dancing across their blood-red petals. They seemed to shiver as I approached, their stems swaying even though there was no wind.

The crying grew louder, rising to a fever pitch. I dropped to my knees, my hands digging into the cold, damp earth. I didn't know why I did it—why I felt this sudden, overwhelming urge to dig. But my fingers moved of their own accord, clawing at the dirt, pulling away clumps of soil until I felt something hard beneath my nails.

I froze, my breath hitching in my throat. Slowly, I pulled away more dirt, revealing a small, white object. It was a bone—a tiny, delicate bone, half-buried in the earth. And there were more. Dozens of them, tangled together in a twisted, rotting mass just beneath the roots of the flowers.

The crying stopped. The air was still, heavy with a silence that felt like a weight pressing down on my chest. I stumbled back, my hands covered in dirt, my heart hammering in my chest. I looked up at the flowers—the tall, blood-red flowers that seemed to glow in the moonlight.

They were silent now, their petals closed, their stems bending toward the earth as if they were bowing to some unseen force. I felt a tear slip down my cheek, though I wasn't sure why. The flowers no longer looked sinister. They looked sad. Like they were mourning something I could never understand.

I didn't tell my mother what I found. I couldn't. I spent the next few days in a daze, avoiding the garden, avoiding the flowers. But every time I closed my eyes, I saw them—the delicate bones hidden beneath the soil, the flowers that had sprung up like a crimson crown above them.

One morning, I woke up to find the flowers had withered. They were shriveled and blackened, their petals crumbling to dust. The garden was quiet, and the cries had vanished, leaving behind an empty silence that felt like a hollow ache in my chest.

I tried to forget. I tried to tell myself it was all a dream, a trick of my overactive imagination. But every time I looked at the corner of the garden, where the flowers had stood, I felt a strange sadness settle over me—a sadness that wasn't mine, but theirs.

The flowers were gone, but the despair remained. It lingered in the air, heavy and suffocating, a reminder of the secrets buried beneath the earth and the cries that would never be heard again.

I couldn't shake the feeling that the garden was still watching me, waiting for something. And every now and then, late at night, when the wind howls through the trees, I think I hear them—the soft, sorrowful cries of flowers that will never bloom again.