The Mourning Bell
a short story, plus a round-up of more of my stories for the 30 Days of Fright challenge
The 30 Days of Fright challenge (hosted by Wendy Cockcroft) continues. Today’s story, was written for Prompt 14: mourning bell. I saved it for this newsletter because I’m rather fond of it.
After the story, I’m linking to some of my other pieces for this challenge, written since my last email, as well as links to those of some other writers.
The Mourning Bell
The woman in the black dress, with black lace collar and black lace cuffs, entered the ruined chapel silently, with reverence. Her sensible shoes, though, clacked on the cracked stone flooring.
Light spilled through the broken stained glass window over the altar in shafts that barely illuminated the rotting wooden benches.
The woman in black stopped in the center of the small building, between altar and seats. “Lucy!” she called, her voice reverberating in the dead air. “Come down here.”
There was a shuffling noise as something moved near the ceiling. Hair hanging down, a young girl, limbs bending the wrong way, with the appearance of too many joints, scurried down the stone wall like a spider. It stayed to the shadows, disappearing into a dark alcove in the wall when it reached the floor.
The woman in black looked on and sighed. “Is this how it’s to be today?” she said loud enough for the girl-thing to hear, though its senses were preternatural. “You’ve rung the bell again,” she said. “People in the village are on edge. You mustn’t ring it out of turn.”
Nothing from the darkened alcove.
“Here,” the woman said, “I’ve brought your meal.” She strode forward and placed the plate just in reach of the silent alcove, knowing it best not to press the child when she was in one of her moods. On the plate rested a dead pigeon, and two plump rats, recently deceased.
The woman took four steps back. The plate was pulled into the darkness by a small hand, pale with extra long fingers, pointed too much at the tips.
Smacking sounds. A bit of snarling. The woman in black waited.
Momentarily, Lucy stepped out from the shadows, wiping her mouth with the back of her bony hand. A colorless girl with dirty blondish hair loose round her shoulders, her grey dress hanging ripped and limp on her thin frame. “Hello, Mummy.”
“Hello, my dear.” The woman stood tall and authoritative. “As I was saying, you rang the bell again. You must only—”
The girl-thing shrieked then, a piercing ungodly sound from a mouth stretched much too wide, in a face with eyes turned black. It lasted only a few seconds. The woman in black did not flinch, did not take a step back.
Lucy composed herself once again and smiled sweetly.
“Are you quite through?” said her mother. Then, more gently, “It’s important that the bell only rings—that you only ring it—on the anniversary. On the day you… didn’t die.” She paused as Lucy tilted her head at an inhuman angle, reminiscent of a crane or some other hunting water-bird. “That was part of the deal. Do you understand?”
“But Mummy,” Lucy pouted, “I like the sound of the bell. It makes me feel… something… closer to God, I think. Like every time it rings and it echoes off the walls, I feel like… I don’t know… I’m closer to Heaven.”
Her mother shuddered. Sometimes she wasn’t sure how much her daughter knew, or remembered, about the bell. “Every time you ring it, you squander our time togeth—”
“And if I ring the bell, you come. I miss you, Mummy. I wish you could stay here with me. I love you.”
The woman in black felt as though she would cry, but she had used up all her tears long ago. She stepped forward and embraced the little girl that was not quite a little girl anymore. “I love you too, darling. And that’s why I want to keep you safe. Here. For as long as I can. Please don’t ring the bell until I tell you to. Please.”
***
Eight Years Earlier
A woman, carrying a large bundle in her arms, stumbled into the disused chapel. She recalled coming there as a child, when it was still in use. The light streaming through the stained glass windows like a rainbow. The sermons about God’s mercy and love.
“You’re my last hope,” she whispered through her tears as she set the feverish child upon the steps to the altar. There was no cross. It has been taken away to the new church in the village.
Lucy, only eight years old, murmured in her feverish delirium, body soaked in cold sweat, wrapped in her bed sheet, lying upon the cool stones.
“I can’t lose her,” the woman sobbed. She didn’t really believe anything could save her daughter, when so many others in the village had died. She didn’t really believe God was listening. She didn’t really believe. But she hoped.
And something was listening. In that disused, hollowed-out, holy place, something older had moved in, slithered back to a space that perhaps had belonged to it the whole time.
“Please…”
To her utter shock, her daughter sat bolt upright suddenly, eyes unfocused, and spoke. In a voice that was not her own, or that of any child. “There are conditions, dear Mother. I exist anew. Two in this body now.”
The woman pushed herself away from this new daughter-thing. But she was listening, and in her heart she had already agreed.
“The bell rings once on this day, each year, to seal our pact. If you do not ring the bell…”
Lucy suddenly collapsed onto her back, eyes staring, chest still. The woman gasped and lunged forward just as the girl bolted up again.
The girl-thing smiled now, a too-wide grin with sharpened teeth. “Twelve tolls of the bell is what you get—no more—and then I leave her to the worms and the dirt. Do you understand?”
The woman looked at her daughter, who was no longer solely her daughter. Lucy’s face was back to normal, her eyes clear. She blinked as if just waking up. “Mummy?” It was her own child-voice again. “Do you understand?”
The woman gathered her daughter-thing into her arms. “Yes, darling. I understand.”
***
The woman in black burst into the ruined chapel, lantern in hand. No light streamed through the broken windows. It was nearly midnight.
“Lucy! What have you done?!”
The girl-thing scrambled down the wall on all fours, then righted herself, cracking her limbs back into their proper places. “Mummy!” she cried with glee.
She ran across the flagstones daintily, like the child she looked to be, and embraced her mother about the waist. “You came!”
The woman crouched down and set the lantern aside. She took her daughter’s face in her hands and looked into her eyes. “My darling, I told you not to ring the bell. Now…” She felt a lump forming in her throat. “Now we’ve only one toll left.”
Lucy furrowed her brow. “You’re sad. I’ve made you sad.”
The woman tried to smile. “No, my sweet. It’s just that… we’ve so little time. When the bell rings once more, you’ll…”
Lucy’s face changed and the woman pulled back. The girl said in her other voice, “I’ll die. For real this time.” But then as quickly as she had changed, she changed back. Just a little girl again. Almost.
“I’m tired, Mummy,” Lucy said. “I’m tired and sad and lonely in this place. I want to ring the bell.”
The woman looked into her daughter’s eyes, the eyes of a child who couldn’t be a child anymore, and suddenly felt very selfish. “Do you really? Are you sure?”
The girl nodded solemnly.
“Then let’s go up to the belltower.” She stood and took Lucy’s thin, pale hand. She carried the lantern in the other.
Together, they climbed the spiral stairs to where the bell hung ominously quiet in its chamber.
Mother and daughter seated themselves on the floor, settled themselves into a final embrace.
“Mummy, when what’s inside me goes away, will I go to Heaven?”
The woman choked back a sob. “Yes, my dear, I believe you will.”
Lucy sighed and rested her head on the woman’s shoulder so that she couldn’t see her mother’s face. “I’ll wait for you there, Mummy. And one day you’ll come to Heaven, too, won’t you, to be with me?”
“Of course, my dear,” the woman lied. After what she had done, the pact she had made, she knew it likely that she had squandered her chance at Heaven. And she was fairly sure that whatever existed inside Lucy knew it, too.
“I love you, my darling.” Lucy’s head was firm against her shoulder, her little arm wrapped around her waist. Her only daughter.
The woman reached up and took hold of the bell’s rope.
“I’m going to ring the bell now, Lucy,” she said. “Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mummy,” came the quiet reply. “I understand.”
Sketchbook
These timed sketches are based on a copyright-free photo by Johannes Plenio. Obviously, I was very taken with it, as I drew it multiple times, more even than shown in this post.
Further Reading
Consider reading some more of my recent posts for the 30 Days of Fright writing challenge.
Branches
If you're looking for another more melancholy story, try this one. It's about memories that haunt.
And more…
The Verdant Butterfly (Sable Butterfly) has kindly put together this round-up post of everyone’s writings from week TWO of the challenge. Please read and support these other amazing writers.
This is the Shrouded Grouse, and here you’ll find supernatural short stories and novellas, essays and musings, zines, and illustrations that explore the liminal spaces and moody places.
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Child possession always gives me the chills. This was really well done, I can totally understand the mother's desire but I'm reading going..."doooon't doooo it...." 😂 🦋
This was such a unique, unsettling concept. I really enjoyed the characters you built in such a short amount of time, and this made the ending all the more heartbreaking. Well done.