Category: Special Features

A short story inspired by Bell Witch
By W.H. Sepulcher

It began with a sound too heavy to be wind. A low toll, more felt than heard, that stirred the reeds outside my shack by the marsh. It came at dusk, when the sky was nothing but a smear of bruised purple, and the water looked like oil.

I didn’t remember building the shack. I didn’t remember how long I’d lived there.

The bell tolled again.

I took my lantern and followed the sound. It pulled at the base of my spine, a dull magnetism. Each step sunk into soft peat, and the fog gathered around me like wet hands. There were no birds, no insects. Only the bell.

Hours passed. Or maybe days. Time grew soft. Hunger faded. I didn’t speak. I didn’t think. I just moved toward the sound like something returning home.
Eventually, I reached what I thought was a village, half-swallowed by the mire.
Sagging roofs, doorways like yawning mouths. And there, at the center, a church bell hung in mid-air—not from a tower, but suspended by nothing, cracked and moss-eaten, swaying in rhythm to no wind.

I approached. Beneath the bell, half-submerged in black water, stood figures. Still. Hooded. Their faces were wrong: stretched thin like wax left in the sun. One turned toward me. Its eyes were hollow, but I recognized them.
It was my mother.

She had died years ago, I was sure of it. But here she stood, her mouth opening to sing with the bell. The others joined. A dirge, slow and low, like the earth mourning itself.

I wanted to run, but my legs had forgotten how. My hands trembled, but I did not drop the lantern. I stepped into the water. My mother took my hand, and it was cold as stone. She whispered: “You never left. You only forgot.”

Behind her, the other figures began to sway, their voices deepening into a harmony that seemed older than the ground beneath us. I saw faces—my grandfather, a childhood friend, a man I had once watched die in a fire. All singing. All still. All waiting.

The water was rising. Slowly. Deliberately. I felt it lapping at my ribs, but I did not shiver.

The bell tolled again. Louder now. Inside my chest.

I looked back, one last time. The path was gone. The reeds had overtaken it, grown thick and high, and in the distance, my shack had crumbled into rot.
The lantern flickered.

My mother let go of my hand and stepped back into the circle beneath the bell. Her mouth still moved, but no words came. I knew the song now. I knew the silence between the notes. I understood what they were singing for.
I opened my mouth and joined them.
The bell tolled again.
And I remained.