WolvesTale

The Bell That Shouldn’t Ring

In a small, forgotten town nestled between tall pine trees and endless gravel roads, there was a quarry. Not just any quarry. This one had a secret. A very old, very strange secret.

The locals called it Bellwater Quarry, though no one remembered why. Maybe it was the sound they heard some nights. A soft, echoing toll like a church bell muffled by layers of water and stone. The thing was, there hadn’t been a church in the area for over fifty years. Not since the flood.

No one liked talking about the flood.

Even the oldest folks in town, the ones with shaky hands and glassy eyes, would change the subject real fast when someone brought it up. Ask about the quarry, and they’d suddenly need to check the oven or go walk the dog they didn’t own. That’s just how it was.

But kids, being kids, still dared each other to bike near the quarry fence. Some threw rocks. Some swore they saw something moving in the water. And a few brave (or foolish) teens even camped nearby, hoping to hear the strange bell.

One of them did.

His name was Drew.

It was late October, the kind of night when your breath puffs out in front of you and even the stars look cold. Drew, who had just turned thirteen, decided it was the perfect time for a solo camping trip. He wanted to prove to his friends and maybe to himself that he wasn’t afraid of ghost stories.

So he packed his dad’s old camping gear, a flashlight, some granola bars, and snuck out while his parents were arguing about bills again. He set up camp just twenty feet from the rusty fence that circled the quarry like a cage.

Everything felt normal… at first.

The moon was bright and round, casting a silver glow over the jagged rocks. Owls hooted. Crickets chirped. Wind rustled the leaves.

But sometime after midnight, the air changed. Everything went still.

Too still.

No wind. No bugs. No sound at all except one.

Gonnnng…

Drew sat up straight in his sleeping bag. The sound came again, low and distant.

Gonnnng…

It was muffled, like a bell ringing underwater. But it was clear enough to feel in his chest, like the bass from a speaker turned up too high.

He scrambled for his flashlight and shined it toward the fence. The light shook in his hand. Nothing. Just the dark water, smooth like glass.

Then a third toll rang out.

Gonnnng…

And that’s when Drew ran. Left the tent. Left the granola bars. Ran all the way home, lungs burning, legs cramping, heart slamming like a hammer.

When he finally told his parents, they didn’t believe him. His mom thought he’d had a nightmare. His dad just grunted and told him not to go near the quarry again.

But by morning, everyone believed something was wrong.

Old Mrs. Hendricks was found dead in her rocking chair, right in front of her TV. She had lived alone for years, baking lemon bars and feeding stray cats. People said she was the kindest soul you’d ever meet.

The cause of death? Unknown. No heart attack. No stroke. Just… gone.

She had died the same night Drew heard the bell.

And that was just the beginning.

Over the next few months, other townsfolk admitted to hearing it too. Always late. Always from the direction of the flooded quarry. The bell never rang during the day. Only at night. Only when the fog rolled in thick and heavy like soup. And every single time, someone in town either got very sick, lost a loved one, or had a terrible accident.

A farmer lost his hand in a thresher.

A little girl fell through a frozen pond.

A dog was found hanging by its leash in an empty barn.

And still, the bell rang.

The town grew quiet. People whispered in grocery stores and locked their doors before sunset. The local pastor tried to bless the quarry, but after he did, his house burned down the next day. No one tried again after that.

One man wasn’t scared, though.

Well, he said he wasn’t.

His name was Sam Fletcher. He was a diver. Not one of those guys with big oxygen tanks and flashy wetsuits. Sam used old gear and had a calm, quiet way about him. He’d served in the Navy once, long ago, and everyone said he wasn’t afraid of anything.

When he heard about the bell, he didn’t laugh like most outsiders might. He just nodded and said, “Maybe it’s time someone went down there.”

The town tried to talk him out of it.

“You’ll curse yourself,” said the mayor.

“Bad things follow that bell,” warned the waitress at the diner.

Even the kids avoided him.

But Sam made up his mind. One cool, gray morning, he packed up his gear and walked straight to the edge of Bellwater Quarry.

No one followed. No one even watched.

They just waited.

It took Sam nearly an hour to get all the way down. The quarry was deep over one hundred feet to the bottom. The water was cold and dark, and the deeper he went, the less he could see. He wore a headlamp strapped over his diving hood, but the light only reached a few feet in front of him.

He saw sunken trees. Old ladders. Even what looked like a rusted-out school bus. But what stopped him cold was the shape of a building, buried in silt and moss.

A church.

It sat sideways, half-swallowed by the earth, its steeple long gone. But the bell was still there, lodged in a broken tower. Tied tightly around the thick metal was something Sam didn’t expect.

Rosary beads.

They were wrapped again and again, as if someone had tried hard to keep the bell from moving. Crosses dangled in the water like little ghosts. Sam got chills. But he wasn’t one to scare easy.

So he cut the beads.

Right as he did, the water seemed to shudder. His light flickered. Bubbles rushed up toward the surface.

Then, in the dark silence…

GONNNG.

It was louder now. Clearer. As if the bell had just been rung by invisible hands.

Sam froze.

He looked around. Nothing.

He kicked back toward the surface, heart pounding. And just before he broke through, he spotted something caught in his net.

A small gold locket.

Inside was a note.

It simply read: “Thank you.”

That night, for the first time in years, the bell didn’t ring.

And for the first time in a long while, the storm that had been heading toward town just… passed by.

Blue skies by morning.

No one died.

But the town still didn’t feel safe.

Not yet.

Because the quarry was still there.

And so was the church.

The Toll That Follows You

Even after the storm passed and the town enjoyed its first peaceful night in years, folks couldn’t relax. Something felt... off. Like the quiet was too quiet. Like the calm after a storm that isn’t really over. People tried to smile again, tried to pretend the horror was behind them. But every time someone looked at the quarry, their stomach twisted up in knots.

It wasn’t just fear.

It was knowing.

They knew the bell wasn’t done.

And neither was whatever had been tied to it.

Sam Fletcher, the diver who had freed the bell, stayed in town after his dive. People thought he’d leave right after, maybe run from whatever ghost he’d disturbed. But not Sam. He kept to himself mostly, renting a room above the old bait shop. He didn’t talk much. Didn’t smile much. And he didn’t go near the quarry again.

Something had changed in him.

He moved slower. Looked tired all the time. His eyes once sharp like a hawk’s looked dull, like he hadn’t slept in weeks.

The town noticed.

And they whispered.

“He brought something back with him.”

“I heard him talking to someone who wasn’t there.”

“Maybe the bell followed him.”

The thing about small towns is this: nothing stays secret for long. Word got around that Sam had found a locket in his diving net. A gold one. Fancy, with a little ruby in the middle like a drop of blood.

It was pretty too pretty for a place like Bellwater.

When Sam showed it to the old librarian, she nearly fainted.

“That belonged to Clara Bellwright,” she said, covering her mouth.

“Who?” Sam asked.

The librarian looked like she might cry.

“She was the preacher’s daughter. The church bell rang for her wedding.”

Sam stared. “When was this?”

“Before the flood,” she whispered.

No one knew exactly what had happened to Clara, just that she’d vanished the night the water swallowed the church. Some said she ran off with a traveling musician. Some believed she drowned trying to save a child. Others were sure she’d been buried alive when the flood came too fast.

But one thing was clear: she was never seen again.

Until now.

Or… maybe not seen. But remembered.

Because after Sam found that locket, things started to happen.

Again.

It began small.

Sam’s room above the bait shop got cold at night. Not regular cold. Not winter-chilly. This was bone-deep cold. The kind that made your teeth hurt and your breath come out like smoke even with the windows closed.

Then came the knocking.

Three knocks.

Always at 3:13 a.m.

No one was ever there.

Not on the porch. Not under the window. Not anywhere.

One night, the knocking was louder. Angrier. Followed by a single sound a tolling bell.

Clear. Sharp.

Sam stood frozen in his dark room, sweat beading on his forehead. He clutched the locket in his hand like it was a shield.

And he wasn’t alone.

He could feel someone in the room.

The next morning, he went to see Pastor Elkins. The new one. Young, bright-eyed, and full of hope. He listened to Sam’s story with wide eyes and tight lips.

“You freed something,” Pastor Elkins said softly. “But I don’t think it was evil. Not at first.”

“Then why is it haunting me?” Sam asked.

“Maybe,” the pastor said, “it doesn’t know what it is anymore.”

Later that day, Sam checked himself into the tiny town clinic.

Said he was having dizzy spells.

Said he was seeing things.

The nurse didn’t argue. She’d seen stranger.

He stayed overnight.

That was the night the bell rang again.

Not from the quarry.

From inside the clinic.

The nurse on duty swore she heard it echo through the hallway at exactly 3:13 a.m.

She dropped the tray she was carrying. The crash woke up half the patients.

When she turned around, Sam’s room door was wide open.

He was gone.

They found him two hours later, barefoot and soaking wet, standing on the quarry’s edge.

Holding the locket.

Murmuring the same word over and over.

“Clara.”

People got real scared after that.

If the bell could leave the water... if it could ring anywhere...

Then what else could it do?

The mayor held a town meeting. Most of the town showed up. Even the folks who never left their houses anymore.

They argued. Some said to fill the quarry with cement. Others wanted to blow up whatever was left of the church. A few wanted to bring in ghost hunters from the city.

But no one had any good answers.

Except one.

A little boy named Elijah raised his hand.

“My grandma says you can’t break a curse unless you finish what started it.”

The room got very quiet.

“She says the preacher’s daughter never got her wedding day.”

By the end of the week, plans were in motion.

Crazy plans.

Plans that made people shake their heads and mutter prayers under their breath.

They were going to recreate the wedding.

It was a long shot. But it was all they had.

The librarian found old records about Clara Bellwright and her fiancé. His name had been Thomas Griggs. He’d died in the flood too.

There was even a photo of Clara in a white dress, Thomas beside her, both young and glowing with love.

They picked a date. The same one as the original wedding.

And they asked Sam to stand in as the groom.

He said yes.

He didn’t even hesitate.

The quarry was roped off for safety, but the “wedding” was set up right on the edge. The pastor wore his robes. A local girl who looked a bit like Clara dressed in an old-fashioned gown found in a trunk at the thrift store.

Sam stood beside her, clutching the locket.

The whole town came.

Even the sky seemed to watch.

It was cloudy. Still. Heavy. But no rain.

As the pastor read the vows, the air began to buzz. Like the world was holding its breath.

When Sam said “I do,” the water rippled.

When the pastor said “You may kiss the bride,” a wind whipped across the quarry, hard enough to knock hats off heads and send folding chairs skittering.

And then... the bell rang.

Once.

Only once.

Loud and pure and full of something that sounded almost like joy.

Or peace.

The wind stopped.

The sky cleared.

And the locket in Sam’s hand?

It broke open.

Inside was no note this time.

Just a single, perfect white lily.

Fresh.

Alive.

And impossible.

The bell never rang again after that.

The quarry grew quiet.

Storms still came, but they never stayed long.

And Sam?

He moved away a month later.

No one blamed him.

He’d done enough.

But every year, on the day of the wedding, the townspeople gather at the quarry. Just to be safe. Just in case the water remembers.

Because some stories don’t end.

They just rest.

Waiting.

The Girl in the Bell

They called her Clara Bellwright, the preacher’s daughter who never got her wedding day. But after the “wedding” on the quarry’s edge, where the bell rang one final time and the sky cleared like a curtain rising on a new act, people figured her spirit had finally found peace.

For a while, the town believed it.

But sometimes, peace is just a pause.

Not an ending.

It started again in spring.

Six months after the wedding reenactment.

The snow had melted, the frogs had returned, and everything in Bellwater felt soft and green and safe. Kids played near the quarry again. The fence had been fixed up, the warning signs cleaned and nailed tighter.

But rules don’t mean much to eleven-year-olds with bikes and curiosity.

Three girls snuck through the fence one Saturday afternoon, daring each other to touch the water.

“I heard the bell’s still down there,” said Becky, the leader of the bunch.

“It’s not cursed anymore,” said the smallest girl, June, dragging a stick behind her like a sword.

“My brother says a woman used to live under the water,” said Ellie. “He says she watches kids.”

They all laughed at that.

Until June screamed.

She was looking down, stick frozen in mid-air. The other two rushed to her side.

There, in the water, was a face.

A pale, blurry face.

Eyes wide open.

Hair floating like seaweed.

Lips not moving but the mouth was open.

Like it was screaming.

The girls ran so fast they forgot their backpacks.

The sheriff was called.

Divers were sent in.

Again.

They didn’t find a face. Or a body.

But they did find something else.

The bell was gone.

Just… gone.

That changed everything.

People tried to stay calm. Told themselves maybe it had rolled deeper, cracked free from the tower.

But how?

That bell was massive. Made of bronze and older than anyone alive. It would take machinery to move it. Or something worse.

Theories bloomed like mold.

“It was never really tied down,” said one man.

“Someone stole it,” muttered another.

But the folks who had seen it with their own eyes, wrapped in rosary beads knew better.

Something had freed it.

And whatever it was, it had a face.

Then came the laughter.

It started in the woods.

Late at night.

Kids and teens swore they heard it when biking past the quarry trail. Not giggles. Not joy.

High-pitched. Broken. Wrong.

Like someone had forgotten how to laugh and was trying too hard.

Like a puppet pulled by invisible strings.

It echoed through the trees.

Every time someone heard it, they’d get chills that lasted hours.

One boy Tanner refused to go outside after hearing it. Locked himself in his room. Covered the windows with trash bags. Refused to eat.

When the school counselor finally got him to talk, he said only two words.

“She’s rising.”

Then the drawings started.

First graders. Third graders. Even one kindergartener.

All drew the same thing.

A woman underwater, hair floating, arms stretched out. Her face was always blank. Always pale.

But her eyes?

Always wide open.

Always staring straight ahead.

One teacher, Mrs. Coates, collected the drawings and drove them to the library. She knew something wasn’t right. She found old photos, maps, newspaper clippings. She stayed up until 2 a.m. trying to piece things together.

That night, her house filled with water.

Her sinks overflowed. Her bathtubs gushed. Pipes burst in the walls.

The fire department couldn’t explain it.

Everything was turned off.

Everything was dry the next morning.

But Mrs. Coates was never the same.

She didn’t return to work.

She moved to Arizona a week later.

Desert country.

Far from any lakes.

Then came the whispers.

No one knew who heard them first.

But they came mostly near water.

Bathtubs.

Toilets.

Drains.

At first it sounded like wind in the pipes. Then like singing. Soft, slow, wordless.

But if you listened too long, the voice changed.

Started saying your name.

Saying things only you should know.

Private things.

Scary things.

One girl said the voice told her what her mother whispered when she thought no one was listening.

A man swore it told him what he’d done twenty years ago and never confessed.

The whispers came with cold water and flickering lights.

And when they ended, people were left shaking, breathless, eyes wide.

Like they’d looked into something they shouldn’t have.

Sheriff Howard who hadn’t believed in ghosts even after the wedding finally agreed to reopen the old records. He called it “a safety review,” but everyone knew he was scared.

He pulled up blueprints of the old church, photos of the original bell, records of Clara’s disappearance.

And found one thing he’d never noticed before.

The bell had never been meant to hang.

It was a mourning bell.

A funeral bell.

Not for weddings.

Not for joy.

It had been made in 1856, by a traveling bell maker who crafted bells only for funerals. Legend said he’d lost his own daughter and made the bell in her memory.

The bell had only rung for one wedding in its life.

Clara’s.

But now… it was ringing for itself.

Because something was still mourning.

Something that didn’t know it was dead.

Something that wanted the world to feel as cold and trapped and drowned as it did.

People tried to avoid the water.

Showers were taken quick.

Bathtubs went unused.

Some blocked their drains, just in case.

But June the little girl who’d seen the face in the quarry couldn’t stop thinking about it.

She began drawing it over and over.

At night, she sleepwalked.

Her parents found her standing at the sink, whispering.

One night, she vanished from her bed.

They found her the next morning.

Soaking wet.

Standing on the quarry’s edge.

Smiling.

Her parents begged the town for help.

And so, once again, they called on Sam.

He didn’t want to return.

He said he was done. That the bell was buried in the past.

But when he heard about the girl, he packed his bags.

No questions asked.

He returned to Bellwater looking older, thinner. Haunted.

He brought with him only one thing:

A tuning fork.

He said it was forged from a piece of the same metal as the bell.

He said, “If she’s in there, she’ll answer to this.”

No one knew how he’d gotten it.

No one dared ask.

He stood at the edge of the quarry again.

Same place as before.

Same heavy silence.

He struck the tuning fork.

Tiiiiing…

It rang out like a whisper across the water.

The surface rippled.

A shape rose.

Not the bell.

Not a boat.

A woman.

Pale, hair drifting like seaweed.

Eyes wide.

She was floating just below the surface.

Watching.

Waiting.

The fork’s note faded.

The woman’s lips began to move.

But no sound came out.

Only bubbles.

Then...

She sank.

And the water stilled.

Sam turned to the crowd.

“She’s not done.”

And then he added something no one wanted to hear.

“She’s looking for someone.”

Her Name Is Clara

You know that feeling you get when you walk into a room and forget why you went in? That quiet, buzzy stillness where something doesn’t feel quite right, but you can’t name it?

That was the feeling crawling over Bellwater.

All the time.

Like a fog in your bones.

And even though the bell hadn’t rung again not since Sam’s return people could feel it. The wrongness. The weight of a secret still hiding just beneath the surface.

Clara wasn’t resting.

She was remembering.

And that was worse.

The little girl, June, hadn’t spoken since the night she was found wet and smiling at the quarry. Her parents took her to doctors, counselors, even a priest from the next town over. No one had answers.

She wasn’t sick.

She wasn’t scared.

She just... wasn’t really there anymore.

She spent hours staring out windows. Mostly toward the west. Toward Bellwater Quarry.

But she wasn’t alone in this.

More kids started sleepwalking.

Some complained of dreams about water, about being trapped, about a woman calling to them with a voice they couldn’t hear but still understood.

One boy, Leo, said the woman had told him her name.

“Clara,” he whispered, eyes glassy. “She said it was Clara, but she didn’t remember the rest. Only that she lost something.”

Sam Fletcher kept to himself after sounding the tuning fork. He stayed in a borrowed room at the town library, reading old maps and newspapers, sometimes scribbling notes in a little black book.

Every day, he visited the quarry.

Every night, he lit a candle at its edge.

People watched from a distance.

No one joined him.

Until Pastor Elkins did.

One cold evening, the young pastor walked down the gravel path and stood beside Sam in the flickering candlelight.

“You think she’s stuck?” the pastor asked.

“I think she’s hollow,” Sam replied. “Like a bell. Something’s missing from her. Something that kept her… human.”

That same night, something new happened.

The candle blew out.

But there was no wind.

Sam turned quickly, hearing a splash behind him.

And when he looked into the dark water, he saw her again.

Clara.

Just beneath the surface.

Not angry. Not screaming.

Just... sad.

Her eyes locked on his, and for the first time, Sam felt something different.

Not fear.

Sorrow.

He whispered, “What did you lose?”

The water whispered back.

Not with sound.

But with movement.

A slow ripple.

A swirl of leaves.

And a shape rising.

Something small.

It bobbed up in the water and drifted toward the edge.

Sam reached down with shaking hands and pulled it out.

A music box.

Old. Carved from dark wood. Faded roses etched on top.

He opened it.

The song was broken, the notes thin and wobbly, but the melody was still there.

A wedding march.

And tucked inside, beneath the velvet lining, was a name written in faded ink.

Clara E. Bellwright.

The next day, the town woke up to find dozens of photos old, black-and-white ones taped to their doors, fences, and storefronts.

Photos of Clara.

Some alone.

Some with a man they recognized from the wedding reenactment photo: Thomas Griggs.

One photo stood out.

It showed Clara holding the same music box. Sitting on the church steps. Smiling. Light in her eyes.

Someone had written on the back.

“He never showed.”

The town had always believed Clara had died with Thomas.

Now they had to consider something worse.

That he never made it to the church.

That Clara had waited.

That she’d been left behind alone when the flood came.

And maybe she’d never stopped waiting.

Sam and Pastor Elkins met with the town historian, a woman named Agnes who kept records in dusty binders under the library floorboards.

She found something.

Thomas Griggs had a letter on file he never mailed. Found in his pocket when his body washed up weeks after the flood.

It read:

Clara, I’ve made a mistake. I don’t deserve your kindness, your joy, or your music. I can’t go through with this. I’m leaving Bellwater tonight. Forgive me if you can. Forget me if you can’t.

I’m sorry.

...Thomas

When Sam read the letter, something cracked inside him.

“I was wrong,” he whispered.

Pastor Elkins frowned. “Wrong about what?”

“She wasn’t haunting us because she died,” Sam said.

“She’s haunting us because she was abandoned.”

That night, Sam returned to the quarry again. Music box in hand.

He opened it and let the broken tune echo across the still water.

Clara rose again.

She always rose at night now.

But this time, she looked different.

Clearer.

Brighter.

She floated closer to the surface than before.

Sam held out the box.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

The wind picked up.

Leaves spiraled around him.

Water churned.

Still, he didn’t back away.

“He left. You waited. And you died waiting.”

Clara’s face didn’t move. But her eyes shimmered. Like she understood.

Sam continued.

“But it’s not too late.”

He set the music box gently in the water and stepped back.

Clara reached out slow and soft and touched it.

The box sank.

And Clara followed.

But not like before.

She didn’t vanish into the dark.

She glowed.

Like moonlight beneath the water.

Like peace.

And then, for the first time in generations, the bell rang.

Not loud.

Not cursed.

Just one soft, pure toll.

Gonnnnng.

It didn’t echo.

It didn’t shake the trees.

It simply… ended.

Like the final note in a song.

The next morning, something impossible happened.

The water in the quarry dropped.

Not by much.

Just enough to reveal the old stone steps of the church, mossy and crumbling, peeking above the surface for the first time in over fifty years.

And there, resting on the bottom step, was the music box.

Closed.

Dry.

Waiting.

But Clara was gone.

Not watching.

Not whispering.

Not waiting anymore.

She was free.

And the town?

For the first time in a long time, they slept easy.

But something strange still lingered.

Something no one could explain.

Every year, on the day of Clara’s wedding-that-never-was, the bell tolls once.

Soft.

Clear.

A reminder.

Not of fear.

But of forgiveness.

And this time, it’s not coming from the water.

The Sound Beneath the Floorboards

After Clara’s last bell rang out soft and true, the town of Bellwater breathed easier. The air felt lighter. Children laughed again. People even started leaving their porch lights off at night, something no one had done in years.

They believed the nightmare was over.

And it was.

For a while.

Then the sounds started.

But not at the quarry.

Not in the water.

In the houses.

It began at the Wilson farmhouse.

An old place at the edge of Bellwater, where the boards creaked even on quiet days and the pipes groaned like tired old men.

Mr. and Mrs. Wilson were both retired, lived with their grandson, Mason, and kept mostly to themselves.

One morning, Mrs. Wilson came into town looking tired. Her eyes were heavy, her smile thin. She told the grocer, “We didn’t sleep much. Thought we had raccoons under the floor.”

The grocer nodded. “Common this time of year.”

But it wasn’t raccoons.

Not even close.

That night, Mason woke up around midnight to a strange sound.

Tap… tap… tap…

He sat up, heart thudding.

The tapping was slow and steady.

Not fast like a mouse.

Not sharp like pipes.

More like… knuckles on wood.

It came from beneath the floor.

He got out of bed and crept to the hallway, expecting to see his grandparents with a flashlight or maybe the family cat batting around.

But the house was dark.

Still.

Too still.

Then the tapping came again.

Tap… tap… tap…

Closer now.

Right under his feet.

He backed away, toes curling on the cold floor.

Then it stopped.

He held his breath.

And then, right beside him, he heard a soft voice whisper from the floorboards:

“Let me out.”

Mason screamed.

Loud enough to wake the neighbors.

His grandparents rushed in, but the voice was gone.

The tapping, too.

They checked under the house, of course.

Nothing.

Just dirt and dust.

But that didn’t stop it from happening again the next night.

And the next.

And by the end of the week, three other families reported the same thing.

Tapping.

Voices.

From under the floor.

Each time the words were different.

“Help me.”

“Too dark.”

“I was here first.”

Pastor Elkins tried to calm everyone.

He said it was “spiritual residue” left behind by Clara’s curse.

That it would pass.

But folks weren’t so sure.

Because the voices?

They weren’t all the same.

Some were angry.

One family said their son heard growling.

Another heard scratching. Deep and wild. Like claws.

And one woman she was widowed, quiet, never one to stir trouble swore she heard her husband’s voice under the bed.

He’d been dead for three years.

When she leaned down to listen, she said the floorboard breathed on her.

She moved out the next day.

Sam Fletcher had been planning to leave again. He’d packed up, loaded his truck, even said goodbye to Pastor Elkins.

But when he heard about the floorboards?

He stayed.

“This isn’t Clara,” he said. “This is something else.”

He didn’t say what.

But he carried the tuning fork again.

And this time, he added a crowbar.

He stayed the night at the Wilson farmhouse.

Slept right on the floor in Mason’s room.

The family didn’t love the idea, but at this point, anything was worth a shot.

For hours, there was silence.

Then, at 3:13 a.m., came the tap.

Tap… tap… tap…

Sam sat up and pressed his ear to the floor.

Then, the whisper:

“Please… I’m stuck down here.”

He didn’t move.

Just listened.

The voice was soft. Sad. Like a child.

Then it changed.

Rougher. Deeper.

“You brought her peace, but what about us?”

Sam’s hands clenched into fists.

“Who are you?” he whispered.

The floor didn’t answer.

Just tapped again.

Tap… tap… tap…

Then, from somewhere deep below:

“Not just one died that day.”

The next morning, Sam told the town something no one wanted to hear.

“I think we only ended one story,” he said. “But the church? That flood? That bell?”

He looked at them, eyes haunted.

“There were more people down there.”

More than just Clara.

They checked old records.

More than fifty people had gone missing or been confirmed dead during the flood that buried the church.

Most were buried in a mass grave.

But not all had been recovered.

And the bell?

It had rung for the whole town.

Not just one bride.

Then something new happened.

At the bakery downtown, floorboards snapped in the middle of the night. Workers arrived to find flour scattered across the floor and strange prints small, muddy, barefoot leading from the kitchen to the counter and back again.

At the school, a janitor quit after hearing laughter echo under the gym floor.

He swore he saw fingers poking up through the cracks.

And in one old home near the center of town, a man was found standing on a chair in his living room, eyes wild.

“The floor’s talking,” he kept saying.

“They’re in the wood.”

It wasn’t just voices anymore.

It was movement.

Knocks that followed you from room to room.

Floorboards that bent slightly when no one was walking.

Shadows sliding beneath carpets.

And worst of all?

The names.

People began hearing their own names whispered at night.

Always just before sleep.

Sometimes just after.

Whispered softly.

Lovingly.

Like a mother calling her child.

Or a thing that’s been watching for a very, very long time.

Sam returned to the quarry.

Not to talk to Clara.

To talk to the rest.

He stood on the stone steps now exposed by the lowered waterline.

Held the tuning fork.

Struck it.

Tiiiing…

This time, nothing rose.

No ghost.

No light.

But the ground trembled.

And then, from the trees behind him...

The bell rang.

Not from water.

Not from metal.

From the earth itself.

A sound like bones cracking and thunder splitting wood.

And then a voice not Clara’s growled up from under the steps:

“The bell rang for all of us.”

Sam turned and ran.

But as he did, he saw something in the corner of his eye.

In the reflection of the water.

Dozens of faces.

Looking up.

Mouths open.

Eyes blank.

Waiting.

Trapped.

And now?

They wanted out.

The Toll of the Forgotten

There’s a reason old stories warn us about unquiet graves.

And Bellwater’s secret wasn’t buried in the deep.

It was sealed.

By stone.

By silence.

By forgetting.

Until the bell rang again.

And again.

And now, the forgotten were rising.

Not for peace.

Not for love.

But for reckoning.

It started with the dogs.

One by one, they stopped barking.

They sat by doorways and stared at the floor.

Whined.

Refused to eat.

And then came the shaking.

The ground, not the sky.

Soft rumbles, like someone knocking from beneath the soil.

Not earthquakes. Not storms.

Something closer.

Like footsteps.

Coming up.

Sam Fletcher hadn’t slept in days.

He sat at the quarry’s edge, staring at the now-exposed church steps, the broken tower, and the dark water that rippled even when the wind was still.

In his lap: the tuning fork.

By his side: an old book of church records.

Inside the book: a list of names.

Fifty-three.

Clara Bellwright was just one.

The rest had no stories.

Just dates.

Ages.

And death.

Some were children.

Some were strangers.

Some had no names at all.

“Not everyone gets remembered,” Sam said aloud.

“But that doesn’t mean they stay quiet.”

Across town, Pastor Elkins held an emergency meeting in the school gym.

Everyone came.

Even those who’d sworn never to set foot near town hall again.

Because now it wasn’t just voices.

It was marks.

Cracks in walls.

Rot in floors.

Wet handprints across ceilings.

One boy woke up with muddy footprints on his sheets.

A woman found a name carved into her hardwood floor.

It wasn’t hers.

It wasn’t anyone’s she knew.

But it matched one in the church ledger: Timothy Deeks, Age 7.

He had drowned in the flood.

His body was never found.

Until now.

Then came the rain.

Not a normal storm.

Black rain.

It fell in patches, turning soil to sludge and windows to mirrors.

People swore the raindrops hissed when they hit the ground.

One woman screamed that she saw her dead brother’s face in a puddle.

Others began hearing bells in their homes.

Tiny ones.

Under furniture.

In closets.

In mirrors.

Each ring came with a whisper.

“Remember us.”

Sam knew what had to be done.

But it wouldn’t be easy.

He needed help.

So he turned to the one person who knew fear better than anyone:

June.

The little girl who had seen Clara’s face in the quarry.

She hadn’t spoken in months.

Until Sam walked into her room holding the tuning fork.

He didn’t say a word.

Just struck it.

Tiiiing…

June turned to him.

Eyes clear.

Voice calm.

“They’re under the church,” she said. “The ones who never got their names spoken.”

The town gathered.

Sam stood on the church steps, rain slicking his hair.

June beside him.

Pastor Elkins holding a lantern.

The townspeople circled the quarry like mourners.

Sam opened the book.

“Tonight,” he said, “we speak every name.”

“Because the bell rang for all of them.”

And one by one, they read.

Fifty-three names.

Some cracked with age.

Some unfamiliar.

Some children.

Some lost to time.

Each name spoken aloud.

Each followed by a single toll of the bell.

Not the physical one.

That had sunk again, far below.

But the sound rang anyway.

In the air.

In the bones.

In the earth.

Each toll made the ground quake softly.

And each time, the water grew stiller.

Quieter.

Lighter.

As if the weight of centuries was lifting.

When the last name was spoken, the sky opened.

Not with rain.

With light.

Soft.

Gold.

Like sunrise after endless storm.

A mist rolled from the water.

And in it?

Figures.

Dozens.

All standing.

All silent.

All facing the town.

But their eyes weren’t hollow anymore.

They were home.

They faded, one by one.

Back into peace.

Back into whatever waited beyond the veil.

And then...

Silence.

Not the scary kind.

The good kind.

The kind after a long cry.

The kind after truth is told.

The kind after someone finally listens.

The next morning, something amazing happened.

The floorboards stopped creaking.

The taps stopped tapping.

No voices.

No marks.

No puddles.

No bells.

The water in the quarry stilled, clear enough to see all the way down.

The old church still sat there.

Broken.

Lost.

But peaceful.

No more sorrow.

No more rage.

Just stone.

And rest.

Sam left town that afternoon.

He didn’t say goodbye.

He didn’t need to.

He left behind the tuning fork.

Left it on the church steps, just in case.

And the townspeople?

They lived differently now.

They remembered.

Every year, on the day of the flood, they gather.

Not to fear.

But to read names.

To light candles.

To toss flowers into the quarry.

For Clara.

For Timothy.

For the ones without headstones.

Because stories, like bells, are meant to be heard.

And silence?

Silence isn’t always peace.

Sometimes, silence is waiting.

But not in Bellwater.

Not anymore.

THE END