The Bell

They said the bell in the East Parish steeple had never truly rung.

Built with the church in the spring of 1711, it stood high above the tree line, a gift from a Dutch blacksmith who died before its first toll. Reverend Eliah Mott called it sacred—ordained, even—though no one had ever heard a proper chime echo from the tower.

It wasn’t broken. That had been checked. A young boy once snuck into the tower and yanked the rope with all his might. The sound that followed, he claimed, was not a bell at all—but something closer to a breath. A long, groaning exhale. The boy vanished a week later. Folks stopped asking questions after that.

Since then, the rope had gathered dust. The bell remained untouched.

And then, in the fall of 1743, it rang.

Three times.

Isaac Hale was the first to hear it.

A cooper by trade, he lived just down the hill from the church, his workshop filled with the smell of brine and sawdust. He’d been sealing a barrel of salted pork when the first toll echoed through the trees. He froze, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of his wrist, heart skipping a beat.

The first chime rang out sharp and clean—pure, almost regal. It vibrated the walls of his modest home, rattled the lids on his barrels, and sent a chill crawling up his spine. Isaac turned toward the sound in awe and confusion. The East Parish bell had never rung—not once in over thirty years.

The second chime followed a moment later, hollower, strained—like a poor echo of the first. It didn’t sound right. Isaac dropped his tools and stepped outside, squinting toward the church tower. Others had done the same, spilling out of their homes with puzzled expressions and murmured questions. No one spoke above a whisper. All eyes were on the steeple.

The bell swung violently now, wide arcs that made its frame groan with each pass. It looked unhinged—like it might rip free of its beams and tumble down the hill into the village below.

Then came the third chime.

It wasn’t a tone, not really, it was a roar. People winced and shielded their ears. Children screamed. Even the dogs ran. The sound pressed on their bones, not just their ears, and for a moment the whole village stood still.

Isaac turned away before the echo had faded. He had no interest in unraveling the mystery. He preferred the predictable rhythm of wood and iron, of barrels and trade. Let the reverend or the elders make sense of it.

But the next morning, the constable found old man Henley collapsed in his wife’s vegetable garden.

He was barely conscious, his mouth full of dirt, skin caked in wet mud like he’d been crawling—or rolling—through the soil all night long. He had no shoes. No coat. No memory of how he’d gotten there.

And that was only the beginning.

The following day, another villager vanished—Sarah Lindley, a widow who kept to herself near the eastern edge of the woodline. Her hearth was still warm when neighbors came calling, bread dough half-kneaded on the counter, as if she’d only stepped out for a moment and simply forgotten to return.

By the third morning, two children had taken ill.

They were brothers—Samuel and Josiah Reed—ages six and nine. They collapsed during morning chores, both pale and feverish, their eyes fluttering like they were caught mid-dream. No rash. No cough. Just cold sweat and silence. The physician bled them, prayed over them, and packed their small bodies in warm bricks by the fire, but nothing roused them.

They were dead by sundown.

Reverend Mott spoke the eulogies himself, but his voice cracked in places. He kept glancing toward the church tower, where the bell sat quiet once again.

Then came the collapse.

On the seventh day after the bell rang, the schoolhouse caved in without warning. A dry day, no wind, no storm. It wasn’t fire, or quake, or rot. The roof simply gave out, folding inward like it had been crushed from above. Two schoolgirls were inside sweeping the floor. One was found beneath the beams, spine bent in a shape no body should take. The other was never found at all.

The villagers gathered that night, not to mourn, but to ask questions none of them truly wanted answered. No one dared accuse the church or the bell out loud, but looks passed between neighbors. Children were kept indoors. The roads emptied hours before sunset. Doors were locked, even in the daylight.

And Isaac Hale, who had heard the bell before anyone else, began to dream of it nightly.

Not ringing, but breathing.

He would dream he was sitting right beneath the bell, hearing it come alive with each chime—inhale, exhale. It moved like breath, slow and heavy, and he heard it like a metronome, steady and sharp, ticking in his chest. With each toll, an atrocity followed. A tree would collapse in the woods nearby, snapping like bone. A villager would keel over mid-step, life ripped from them like the bell had reached down and taken it. He’d watch his shop burn, the fire climbing high against the night, and then see his wife, Miriam, running up the hill, her body lit like a torch, screaming—begging—for it to stop, for the pain to end, for Isaac to stop the incessant ringing.

And when he’d turn to look back at the bell, it was always the same: his own hands wrapped around the rope, pulling hard, again and again, in rhythm with his heartbeat. He’d let go and stumble away, but it would already be too late. The bell didn’t stop, not when he did. The damage had been done. The ringing always continued long after he was on his knees, begging for silence.

And Isaac could never quite remember when he had started pulling in the first place.

Isaac was sweeping the front step of his shop when the man approached—broad-shouldered but stooped, dressed in a stained gray cloak that moved like it was soaked. His hood covered everything but a narrow, cracked mouth. He smelled faintly of iron and smoke.

“Morning to you,” Isaac offered, uncertain. He hadn’t seen this man before.

The stranger didn’t return the greeting. He stood just at the edge of the path, eyes fixed on the church spire up the hill.

“You heard it, then,” the man said after a long silence, his voice coarse and low.

Isaac lowered his broom. “Aye,” he said. “I heard it. I reckon we all did.”

The man gave a slow nod. “And the breath it carried, did you feel it in your bones?”

Isaac frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The bell,” the man said, now turning to face him. “She’s not a bell in the manner you understand. Not cast for summons nor mourning. She were made for remembrance. And remembrance has a price.”

Isaac felt something turn in his gut. “You speak in riddles, old man.”

“No riddle,” the man said. “Only warning.”

Isaac stepped forward. “Do you know what’s happening here? The school, the Reeds—Henley still won’t eat or speak. My wife won’t go near the churchyard.”

The man tilted his head. “Would you, if you’d felt her breathing?”

Isaac blinked. “Her?”

The man stepped back now, voice dropping to a whisper. “She wakes only when called. But once she wakes, she does not sleep again.”

Isaac opened his mouth to respond—

And then the bell rang.

Just once.

The man didn’t flinch. But Isaac staggered, hand braced on the post, breath caught in his chest. When he looked back, the man was gone. Only a shallow print remained where he had stood—mud pressed in the shape of bare feet.

Isaac braced for more chimes—more chaos, more evil—but the bell had spoken its peace for the time being.

That day, the village did not move, and that night, the village did not rest. Doors were shut, shutters drawn, but no one slept. They lay in silence, listening, waiting. Anticipating the malice the bell had promised to bring.

East Parish remained still and restless for three days.

On the fourth night after the second ringing, it began.

The animals were the first to break.

Dogs howled endlessly, clawing at doors and walls like they meant to tear their way through the wood. The oxen in the northern pen kicked clean through their stalls. Chickens turned violent, pecking each other raw in the dark. Horses refused their reins, bucking and shrieking, eyes rolled white with terror.

The villagers did not light their lamps or open their doors

No one stepped outside.

But every soul heard it—hooves pounding, wings beating frantically against coop walls, dogs wailing in pain and desperation.

By dawn, not a single animal remained. The pastures were empty. The pens were broken. And where the animals had once been, there was only churned dirt and the lingering stench of sweat, blood, and panic.

The next morning, Reverend Mott called a town meeting in the grass in front of the church. Nearly all of East Parish came. They gathered in tight, anxious groups—mothers clutching their children, men with their arms crossed. The absence of animal sounds made the stillness feel louder. No hooves. No crows. No barking.

Mott stood on top of a flat stone used in summer sermons, hands clasped in front of his robe, eyes more hollow than the day before.

“We are under trial,” he said. “The Lord allows hardship to find us, that we may search ourselves for the root of it.”

“That bell is no test,” came a voice from the crowd—Thomas Vane, a wiry man with blistered hands and a bloodied shirt sleeve. “It’s a curse. My livestock gone, all five of ’em. My boys been digging turnips for supper like dogs in the field. What’s the church to say for that?”

“I’ve no livelihood now,” Sarah Reed called out, voice tight. “My hens all torn to pieces. My husband buried two children this week. We’ve no eggs, no meat, no milk. What would you have us do—pray the hunger away?”

Murmurs of agreement rippled through the crowd. A few nodded. A few wept.

“I do not claim to have answers,” Mott said, raising a hand. “Only that we must act with order. With calm. The bell’s voice is not random—it follows a rhythm. The chimes bring harm, aye, but the stillness between them gives us time to prepare.”

“Prepare for what?” another man spat. “Death?”

“For understanding,” Mott replied. “We will keep watch over the bell tower, from dusk until first light. One man per night. If it moves, he will know. If it sounds, he will see how. We do not leave it unguarded.”

The crowd muttered. No one volunteered.

Still, the mood seemed to settle. A plan, however frail, offered comfort.

Before another word could be spoken—

The bell rang.

The ear could barely recognize it as sound—too deep, too dense. It moved like pressure through the body, not air through the drum. Some clutched their heads. Others fell to their knees. One woman screamed and would not stop. The infants all began to wail in unison. Someone vomited in the grass.

Chaos broke over the crowd like a wave.

Then the old man was there again.

No one saw him arrive, he simply appeared, standing on the edge of the well, cloak snapping in the air. His voice cut through the screams.

“Still you wait for mercy?” he shouted. “Still you act like she sleeps?”

The villagers turned to him, some stumbling backward, others frozen.

Reverend Mott’s face went gray. “Who are you to speak of the bell?”

“I am one who listened,” the man replied. “And lived.”

He stepped down from the well. “She is not a bell. She is not a thing of sound. She is the echo of what we’ve forgotten—bound in iron, sealed in silence. But you woke her. You let her breathe again.”

“What is it she wants?” someone asked.

“She wants to be witnessed. That is all. Let no eye turn from her. Let no watcher sleep.”

Mott turned to the crowd, voice strained. “Then we do it tonight.”

Silence. The villagers looked to one another, but no one moved.

“Who will stand first?” Mott asked.

No answer.

Then Isaac Hale stepped forward. “I will.”

The old man’s eyes fixed on him. “See that you do not blink.”

Before night could fall and Isaac could take up his post, three more villagers died.

One was his next-door neighbor, Mr. Lorring—a kind man, quiet, who tended to his own bees and often gave honey in trade for firewood. They found him slumped in his rocking chair on the porch, mouth open, his pipe had fallen to the floor, the contents burned to ash. No wounds. No struggle. He looked as if something had simply stopped inside him. His wife, Ruth, sat beside him for hours before anyone realized he was gone.

Isaac said nothing when they covered the man’s face. He looked up the hill instead, toward the tower, toward the bell.

When he climbed the narrow ladder to the steeple for the first time, the wind had died entirely. The bell hung above him, still and heavy, its iron dark with age. It didn’t sway. It simply loomed, ropes curled neatly underneath it, as if they had remained untouched for decades.

He sat on the planks next to the bell, knees pulled up, cloak drawn tight. He kept a lantern lit and his eyes wide. It didn’t move, not once—not even when the air shifted or his teeth began to chatter. But it made him feel watched. Not in the way of a person looking from across a field, but in the way a mountain watches—indifferent, immense, and immovable. Something beyond comprehension.

Hours passed, and he could not look away.

He didn’t speak aloud, not at first. But sometime past midnight, he found himself muttering to it. His voice low enough that he wasn’t sure if he’d said anything at all. He asked what it was. What it wanted. Why it had chosen now to speak. Of course, there was no reply.

When dawn came, he descended the ladder with cracked lips and a thousand-yard stare. He didn’t eat. He slept only briefly, and only because Mott insisted he rest while another man, Marcus Deans, took the next shift.

But Isaac dreamed.

And in the dream, he was back in the tower. His fingers wrapped tight around the rope. The bell was breathing again. Slow, deep breaths. When he looked up, the sky was gone. The roof above had vanished. In its place was a mouth. Vast, open, and waiting.

He woke with his hands clenched into fists, fingernails bloodied from digging into his palms.

He didn’t wait for the night. He went to Reverend Mott and asked to take the watch again.

“Isaac,” Mott said carefully, studying the deep hollows beneath the man’s eyes, “you need rest.”

“I’ll rest when it rings again.”

“You fear it will do harm.”

“I fear what it will do if no one watches.”

Mott relented, but not easily.

Isaac began sleeping during the day. Short naps. He refused food more often than not, and when he did eat, it was quick—mechanical. He only came home to change shirts, wash his face, and then return to the tower. His wife asked if he was well, asked what he saw up there, what he heard. He never answered directly.

“It’s quieter when I’m there,” he had said once. “Like it’s waiting for something.”

After the first week, Miriam stopped asking. She left food near the ladder sometimes, though it went untouched more often than not.

The bell didn’t ring again.

Not once. Not in two full weeks.

Under Isaac’s watch, the village remained silent. No new deaths or disappearances. Even the livestock, what few had returned or been found, seemed calmer. Mott praised him quietly during Sunday prayers, noting the “devotion and selflessness of our brother Hale.” But no one felt safe, not really. They were only waiting.

And Isaac was changing.

Not in ways that would worry anyone—he still spoke when spoken to and still used the same words and handshakes. But something in his eyes had gone murky. He stopped looking people in the face. The man who once worked sunup to sundown with callused hands and humming lips now stood silent in a tower, his mind somewhere else entirely.

And every night, without fail, he climbed the ladder.

And every night, he watched the bell.

And every night, it watched him back.

It was near dusk when his wife climbed the ladder to the bell tower—something she swore to herself she’d never do. The wood was damp and cold, and the climb felt longer than it should have. When Miriam reached the top, Isaac was already sitting, just as he had every night for fourteen nights, his eyes fixed on the bell.

He didn’t look at her.

“I brought food,” she said, setting a cloth bundle beside him.

“Thank you,” he said, though he made no move to touch it.

She crouched down slowly. “You don’t come home anymore.”

“I do,” he replied.

“You pass through. You don’t speak to me. You don’t sleep.”

He blinked. “I sleep when it’s quiet.”

“It’s been quiet for two weeks.”

He finally looked at her. “Because I’ve kept it that way.”

“It’s just a bell, Isaac.”

“No,” he said, and his voice caught—not raised, but strained. “It isn’t. It watches. It waits. If I leave, it rings.”

She looked up at the massive bell above them. “It hasn’t moved.”

“It breathes.”

She didn’t speak for a while. Then, “What do you think it wants?”

He turned his head back toward the bell. “To be heard.”

She rose, slow and quiet, arms folded like she was holding herself together. She looked to him, tired and pleading, but his gaze wouldn't leave the bell. “Then stop listening.”

And she left him there, alone.

The eve of his third week started like every other watch.

Isaac climbed the tower just before dusk, same as always, his body moving out of habit more than will. He didn’t speak to Miriam that day. He hadn’t spoken to anyone in three days, and no one pressed him to. They knew better. He was the only one willing to go up the tower anymore, and so he went.

He sat beneath the bell, back against the beam. He didn’t speak. He didn’t sleep. He just waited, hour after hour, until the dark settled and the village was still.

Then, slowly and without ceremony, Isaac rose to his feet, walked to the rope, and began to ring.

The first toll was measured. A breath.

The second came deeper. The sound rolled down the hill and slipped into the bones of the homes below, stirring those inside. Windows lit with lanterns. Doors cracked open. Faces peeked into the dark, confused but not yet afraid.

Then he rang it again. And again. And again.

The steady repetition of it, like the sound of something knocking at a locked door with more and more urgency.

Down the hill, the village began to shift. Livestock howled and kicked their stalls. Dogs started to bark. Children woke crying, and the old men who'd survived the last fire closed their shutters.

Isaac kept ringing.

Twenty minutes passed before the first fire started. There was no wind, no candle left burning, no chimney flare. It began inside the Wilkes' home, light glowing through every seam like someone had struck a match to the walls themselves. The family ran into the yard screaming, but before anyone could reach them, the house burst and collapsed inward, smoke curling into the sky.

Then another house lit. Then another.

The bell didn’t stop.

Flames moved through the town like they were being poured from one rooftop to the next, moving across porches and into attics, skipping roads entirely. They didn't spread—they leapt, jumping across fields and fences. Screams grew louder, footsteps slamming against the ground, but none of it compared to the sound of the bell, which now swung with a violence no man should have been able to maintain.

Isaac held the rope, his hands raw and split open, arms shaking but unwilling to stop. His breath was ragged. His chest rose and fell with each toll, as though the bell was breathing through him.

And then, through the smoke and flame, Miriam came.

Just like the dream.

Her dress was on fire. Her skin cracked and peeling. Her hair trailed smoke behind her as she stumbled up the hill, eyes wide with horror and pain. She didn’t scream at first—just walked, dragging her foot like she had when she'd twisted her ankle two winters back. Then her mouth opened, and the sound that came from her throat wasn’t human. It was raw and cracked and begging.

“Isaac, please. Please stop. Please.”

He looked down at her, but his grip never loosened.

She collapsed at the base of the stairs, her body crumpling into itself, fire climbing up her arms and into her hair, her face already blistered beyond recognition. She reached out to him, then went still.

Isaac rang the bell.

He rang it long after the screams had stopped, long after the homes were gone, long after the air was thick with smoke and soot. The sun never truly rose. Just a gray light broke over the hills, revealing nothing left of East Parish but smoldering beams and streaks of blackened earth.

Eventually, Isaac let go of the rope.

He descended the tower alone, hands shaking. He walked past the steps where Miriam had fallen. Nothing remained of her but scorched grass and ash caught in the wind.

He didn’t look for shelter. He didn’t pray.

He walked to the patch of grass in front of the church—the only structure still standing in the whole village—and lay down flat on his back, eyes on the sky, hands folded like he meant to rest just for a moment.

He never got up again.

When the search party from Haverhill arrived weeks later, they found no bodies in the ruins. No people. No animals. Just ash and ruin stretching in all directions.

Only the church remained—perfect, untouched, untouched by flame, untouched by time.

And there, in front of it, they found Isaac Hale, whole and cold, lying still with a look on his face that could have been peace.

Inside the tower, the bell hung silent once more.

And though it hasn’t rung again, some say that if you walk through what’s left of East Parish just before winter sets in, and stand at the edge of the old church, you can still hear it high above you—not ringing exactly, not echoing either.

Just breathing.