The Bellwife

The village of Durrel’s Hollow didn’t get visitors. It was too far from the coast, too far from the city, too far from sense. Folks who lived there didn’t move away, they just sank into the ground like everything else. Trees rotted upright. Houses leaned into themselves like old men with secrets. The air always smelled like wet cloth and dead flowers.

They said there was a bell that rang out from the woods some nights. Soft, like windchimes in a breeze that never quite reached your skin. No one had seen it, but everyone knew it wasn’t the church bell. That thing cracked during the war and never sang again. What they heard came from deep, where the trees grew close enough to whisper to each other, and even birds wouldn’t nest.

I never believed the stories. That’s the curse of getting old without dying. You stop believing in monsters, until something with sharp teeth shows up and reminds you just how much flesh you’ve got left to chew on.

It started when the Langley girl disappeared. Bright little thing, always wore too much makeup like she was trying out for some Victorian ghost pageant. Loved the woods, though. Said she could hear singing in the pines. Said it calmed her, which was funny, since everyone else said it made their teeth itch. She walked in one evening, past the old split-rail fence behind the Mason property, and never came out again.

Search parties went in, of course. Volunteers with lanterns and shotguns and dogs that couldn’t stop whining. They didn’t find her. They found something else.

A clearing. Round, like a firepit with no ashes. In the center, a ring of white stones, all etched with symbols no one recognized. In the middle of those stones, something had been pressed into the dirt. Not standing. Kneeling. The grass hadn’t grown back since.

Sheriff Mackey posted a guard by the clearing for a week. The guards never lasted more than a night or two. One shot himself in the foot trying to leave in a hurry. Another just walked into town naked and wouldn’t stop crying. After the third night, Mackey stopped asking. The forest could keep its secrets.

It should’ve ended there. But it didn’t.

The bell started ringing after that. Only at night. Only when it rained. And not the big churchy clang you’d expect, either. It was soft, high, like the bells sewn into a jester’s hat. People said they could feel it in their chest more than their ears. Like the sound wanted in.

One night, after too much whiskey and not enough judgment, I followed it.

I was sixty-one, angry, and alone. My wife had left two years before with a florist named Kenny who drove a Prius and wore linen pants. I had nothing left but my porch and a bottle. The night the bells came, the bottle was empty, and I was feeling mean.

I followed the sound into the woods behind my place. Didn’t bring a flashlight. Didn’t bring a coat. Just the shotgun I hadn’t used since the raccoon in the attic incident of ’97 and a heart full of dumb.

The deeper I went, the louder the bells got. Still soft, but more of them now. Layers. Like a wind-up music box that was trying real hard to lull you into something permanent. The trees thinned, and the air thickened. The smell hit me first. Sweet and wrong. Like sugar and rot.

Then I saw her.

She was standing in the clearing. Not walking, not dancing, just there. Like she'd always been there. Her hair was too long and too black and too thick. It moved when the wind didn’t. Her eyes were rimmed in coal, wide and wild, like she’d seen the end of the world and decided it needed a crown.

And oh, she wore one.

A headdress, jeweled and gaudy, like a smashed chandelier rebuilt by someone who’d only heard about royalty in rumors. Two enormous ear-like bells flanked her head. They didn’t move, but they hummed. And hanging from her neck, down to her waist, were rows and rows of little bells. Bone-white. Teeth-shaped. Clicking in time with her breath.

She opened her mouth and I swear to God, it wasn’t a voice that came out. It was a memory. Mine.

My father’s funeral. The smell of old carnations. The ache in my ribs from holding in tears I’d been trained never to show.

I dropped the shotgun. Fell to my knees. She floated toward me. Not walked, not stepped. Floated. Her feet never touched the ground.

And when she was close enough to touch, I heard every bell on her body start to ring. Not from motion, but from something else. Like they were laughing.

She leaned in and whispered one word.

“Forget.”

Then I was home.

Standing on my porch. Soaking wet. No shotgun. No scratches. No boots.

Just a faint ringing in my ears and a hole in my memory I could fit a month through.

I tried to tell people. But the more I talked about her, the less I remembered. Her face went first. Then her name, if she ever had one. All I kept was the fear. That and the sound of bells every time it rained.

Others started disappearing. Not kids this time. Old timers. Men and women who’d buried more friends than they had left. Folks who had grief instead of family. People the world had already let go of.

The clearing got bigger.

By the time they sent in state police, it was the size of a football field. Grass wouldn’t grow. Birds wouldn’t fly over it. And at night, if you pressed your ear to the earth, you could hear the bells. Faint, yes. But endless.

We called her the Bellwife. We don’t know why. She never said she was married. But there was something about her that felt... taken. Like a bride who never got to leave the altar. Or maybe she was waiting for someone to show up and say no.

I left Durrel’s Hollow a year ago. Took everything I could fit in a truck and drove until my hands stopped shaking. I don’t tell people why I left. I just say it was time.

But sometimes, when the rain hits just right, and the windows fog over, I hear the bells. Just one or two at first, like they’re checking. Then more, if I listen too long.

I don’t listen anymore.

But I keep a shotgun by the door. Not that it would matter.

Because if she ever shows up again, it won’t be to say hello.

It’ll be to collect.