Audio Recording:

The Ringing Bell

“Aren’t you listening?” asked the boy.

She blinked, turning to face him. She had forgotten he was there. 

“I’m listening,” she said.

“Then what was I saying?”

“You were - well, you were telling me a story.”

The child scrunched up his face at this, disbelieving, “You weren’t listening. You’ve got to listen when people tell you things. That’s what mum says - you have to pay attention. If you don’t pay attention you lose things.”

She smiled, amused at this little glimpse into his mother’s life. “Your mother is a very smart woman.” 

He always seemed like a miracle to her, since the day he was born. She had never been able to imagine what he would be like, how he would change and grow. Impossible to imagine another life blooming out of nothingness until it was there in front of her face.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I must have zoned out. Go on with your story, I’ll catch up.”

It had been happening a lot recently. The forgetting. The holes. It was never what she would have thought it would be like, not the dramatic emotional outpouring as she whirled from moment to moment, shocked and sobbing by the appearance of a scarf or a letter landing on the mat without her name on it. It was so much quieter and smaller. 

Her house was an old one, full of the noises of an old house and lights that flickered dimly and only worked half of the time. When she went to bed the pipes creaked and clicked like the squeaking of stairs underfoot or the turning of the front door handle. There was a draught too from a warped window frame and in high winds it echoed like the breath of another sleeper in the room. She was good at ignoring it. The lights from passing cars shone from the street into her room at night, the curving scythe of light a comforting reminder of other living neighbours only steps away, of the press of bodies all around her clothed within the walls of their separate houses. She liked that she could hear the doorbells and constant muffled murmur of household chatter through the walls. But she hadn’t been sleeping well recently - too much work and too little sleep and she was regularly fighting off migraines that threatened to punish her when she was too remiss with self-care.

“Do you like scary stories? I could tell you one of those instead?” The boy asked. She was glad he was here, sat at her small kitchen table with his half-eaten sandwich. She hadn’t seen him in a while.

“Sometimes. It depends if they’re actually scary or not.”

“I know some stories that will scare you.” He said, “Really scary, not like the ones they let children read - the ones grown ups think we don’t know.”

“Where would you hear a really scary story?” She asked, feeling indulgent and nostalgic. Had she ever been this precocious as a child? Perhaps she had

“They’re everywhere.” He said, “Everyone has heard the scary stories, they just don’t like them staying around and don’t really listen when they’re being told. Grown ups don’t like scary stories. They try to hide them, but you can still hear them.” He took a large final bite of his sandwich, stuffing the last remnants of crust into his mouth, and gulping it down, jaw clicking with the movement. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve, brushing away the trace of the crumbs that clung to his lips. 

“What is your scary story about then?” She sighed. 

“It’s a monster story.” He said proudly. “It’s about the bell-ringers.”

She felt coldness flood over her and the blood drain from her face. “You mean, like in a church?” She asked, heart fluttering in her chest, “The people that ring the bells in church towers?”

The boy looked at her with steady dark eyes, “You must know the stories about the bell-ringers.” He said.

She did know. The memory rose unwanted even as she tried to suppress it, strong and burning like bile in the back of her throat. She had heard the stories when she was a child too. They might have changed over the years, between different schools and playgrounds, different cities and families, but the basic knowledge was always the same. 

The bell-ringers came when they were least expected. No one knew what they looked like or where they came from. Some speculated they were grief-stuck souls, trapped in a cycle of their own loneliness, forever fighting to fill the void within. Others thought they were developed from vampires or other, better-known creatures of the dark.

“They’re why you have to pay attention.” The boy said, “They take things when you’re not looking. And if you’re not looking you miss the signs.”

She nodded looking down at the pale swirling grain of the pine kitchen table, tracing the rings developed over years of growth and weather, those delicate scars rippled through the wooden surface even after it was felled. “And the signs are?”

“Well,” He edged forward in his seat, “There’s the bell ringing. That’s obvious. That’s why they’re called the bell-ringers. But it’s not first. First there’s the lights.”

Yes. The lights were first in all the stories. Hazy dots of light, floating just on the edge of vision. They were the bell-ringers’ lanterns, some said. Others that they were the lights from that other place, the space just out of reach where they hovered, waiting. Waiting.

“And then,” the boy continued, his excitement mounting as he reached the gory climax of his tale, “Then they come. They only come when you’re not looking, and then they cut out the core of you.” He grinned. “Isn’t that disgusting?”

She tried to smile. Her heart was still fluttering, a faint skipping rhythm with drunken lurches that made her feel sick. There was a pressure behind her eyes. She stood up and moved over to the kitchen cabinets, taking down a glass and filling it with cold water from the tap. She took two Ibuprofen from a packet, gulped them back with a big swallow of water.

“How do you think they do it?” he asked. “No one ever says.”

“There’s more than one way to cut someone open.” She said.

He lifted his plate over to where she stood at the sink, “Can we go to the park now?”

At the front door she pulled on flat-soled trainers and her raincoat and the two of them stepped outside. She was only renting that house, that place among the other families and couples that lived there, and she knew that someday her time there would end. The bricks were not her own and could easily be snatched from her, but she felt invested in that space, and more anchored by invisible roots than any one other place she had lived. They walked along the street, past the parked cars with their wheels raised on the pavement, and along through the busy playground. She didn't stop there, where the local school children played and mothers sat on graffitied benches, but continued on through the rows of Victorian terraces. The misty dew of the morning had gone, replaced by a pale October sun and dull grey clouds. The air was damp and cool. They turned down a muddy flinty path that squeezed out of the cul de sac, opening onto a wide scrubby field. There was a small copse to the far end, a cluster of arching deciduous trees, half-bare of leaves by now, bark mottled with the crudely gouged love hearts and declarations that someone now gone had been there once.

She stepped out into the field, the long wet grass stroking her shins and soaking through the fabric of her trousers. There were tracks through the field covered in fallen leaves, mulched and slippery from the wet weather, twigs snapped and hidden, and the occasional old tennis ball long-forgotten by a dog snuffling through the undulating open space. The boy strode on ahead of her, kicking up leaves and dragging a fallen branch in one hand, cutting a new track alongside him. 

He turned to face her with a smile full of baby teeth, “What are you afraid of?”

She shrugged, “The normal things people are scared of I suppose. Spiders?” Her answer was like a question.

“That’s stupid.” He said, “You’re not scared of spiders.”

“Well I don’t like them very much.”

“That’s not the same as being scared.” He told her in a rather superior sort of voice, “You should be scared of ghosts.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts.”

“I don’t mean people in bedsheets - I mean real ghosts.” He said.

“You shouldn’t be scared of ghosts.”

“I’m not.” He said, “I’m not, because I know they’re there, but you are. And you’re scared of the bell-ringers too aren’t you?”

“How can I be scared of something that isn’t real.” She said, “Who’s been telling you all this rubbish?”

“That’s how I know you’re scared,” The boy said, “You don’t want them to be real so you don’t have to pay attention to them. You don’t have to look if they’re not there, and you’re scared they are. So you don’t look.”

“I’m not afraid of anything as silly as ghosts.” She insisted, with a sigh.

“Then what are you scared of?”

They had walked to the edge of the trees, the branches stretching high overhead. Jackdaws flapped above them, shaking the last clinging leaves. 

She thought about the dreams, those nightmares that came to her when she was restless and pushing herself too hard. There were dark things in those dreams. She would wake from them drenched in sweat, heartbeat almost blinding her as the blood thundered through her veins, pressing heavy against the back of her eyes. She wasn’t going to tell this child about that. She wasn’t going to tell him that he was in them.

A rabbit skittered out from under the tangled roots ahead, darting through the long grass. The boy jumped with its movements, flinching as it spun out, white tail bobbing. He raised himself to the balls of his feet as the rabbit stopped behind a scrubby tussock, little body trembling with a held breath.

“Did you see?” 

His eyes shone as liquid and dark as the rabbit’s and his hair was only a shade away from the flecked downy fur.

“Yes,” she murmured softly, “They’ve got a burrow in here. A snug home for the whole rabbit family to hide away safe and sound.”

“What are they hiding from?”

“Predators. Do you know what kind of predators might hunt rabbits?”

He thought for a moment, sucking in his lower lip beneath his teeth, never looking away from the tiny wild thing in front of them. “Foxes?”

She nodded, “And cats, sometimes. I don’t know if he’s too big to need to worry about owls. But don’t worry, he’ll be perfectly safe.”

The boy didn’t respond, but crouched down lower to the grass and tried to edge closer to the rabbit with timid faltering steps.

His face when lit with wonder looked just as he had as a baby, newly aware of the world around him. She could almost feel the delicate softness of his hair when he was newborn, only a few fine strands darkening his head. That had been so long ago.

A twig snapped under the boy’s foot and the rabbit was gone.

He straightened up and turned to face her. She pulled her coat tighter about herself and walked towards him, hand outstretched to place on his shoulder. He was frowning.

“What’s the matter?”

“My - my-” he searched in his pockets briefly before throwing himself to his knees, scrabbling in the mud and thick wet grass, “it’s gone I’ve lost it!”

“The rabbit’s only gone home,” she soothed, “it’s okay, we’re lucky we got to see him but nothing bad will have happened - he’ll be alright -”

“Not the rabbit!” The boy cried, searching frantically now, “Not the rabbit - but it’s gone, I-I-”

She rushed to stroke his shoulder, “It’s okay. What have you lost? One of your toys? I don’t think you brought any with you, they’re all at home.”

“It’s - it’s -” he was starting to cry, large tears beading in the corner of his eyes, about to spill like water from a broken dam.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” she repeated, bewildered, “What are you looking for?”

The boy sniffled, staring at her with those huge watery eyes, “It’s gone now. It’s gone. It’s gone forever.”

“What is? Look, I’m sure we can find whatever it is you’ve lost.”

He swallowed back a sob, the red flush fading from his face, “No you can’t. It’s gone. You can’t just get it back because you want to.”

“Okay.” She hesitated. How had this afternoon gone so horribly wrong? What could he be talking about? She needed this conversation to end, for them to go back to a brighter moment.

His eyes were huge and dark, “You know what I’m talking about. You just don’t want to let yourself pay attention.”

Back at the house she poured him a glass of orange juice. He was calm, as though the dramatics of a few moments ago had never happened. He wouldn’t tell her what he had lost and she wasn’t sure she believed there had been anything there for him to lose in the first place. 

Now he had gone home and the night was drawing in. She had wiped the countertops down, clean and pristine, locked the doors and gone up to bed. She brushed her teeth, spitting the debris of the day into the sink, and washed her face. She read in bed, alone, while the lights from passing cars filtered through her thin curtains, until exhaustion crept up on her and she fell down into the darkness of unconsciousness.

She should have known the dreams would come that night. After her headache, after the things he had said.

It started, as it always did, by the side of the river. The water was dark and cool, fast moving and vast. She was standing on the riverbank, her bare feet wet from the grass. He was there, across the river, waving and calling her name. She waved back.

“Where’s the bridge?” She called out, her hands cupped around her mouth as she tried to make herself heard over the torrent. “How did you get over there?”

He pointed down river. She walked quickly, following the meandering bends in the path. He mirrored her, pausing every now and then to throw stones into the water with a loud and hollow splash. 

Eventually they came to a bridge, or what remained of one. The wooden boards, once reassuringly solid and regular had rotted through and collapsed. The rail at each side was half gone and the boards that remained had slid to unsettling angles, bent nails protruding through the splintered surface. She glanced over. The boy was waving his arms and nodding. This couldn’t be the way he had climbed over, she thought. How was she going to get them both back safely?

She took one tentative step onto the first board. Then another. They held. Awkwardly, feeling dizzy and hating the need to look down to check her footing suspended over the rushing flood of water below, she crept over the bridge. The planks creaked and groaned and the current seemed to get louder as she made her way to the middle. Her cheeks were cold, whipped by the wind and upswept spray. She crept from the left side to the right, reaching numb fingers for the shattered remains of the railing on that side. The board beneath her feet whined and slid backwards, fast. She grabbed for the post, throwing her weight towards it and clutching a handful of splinters. The boy screamed, but it wasn’t his voice screaming it was hers, her throat raw and the noise unrecognisable, and the post crumbled beneath her fingers. She ran over the remaining planks, leaping from gap to gap as the bridge collapsed with a high pitched screech. She was near the river’s edge. Another few steps and she would have him in her arms. Then the floor dropped away from her feet and she fell down, down, down into the dark water. Splinters, nails, shattered wood rained over her head, splashing into the water with a tingling delicacy juxtaposed to the fear that rushed through her as the current pulled her under. Or was it a hand about her ankle? Eyes screwed shut, her mouth opened in an endless scream, filling with water, choking her, drowning her -

She was thrust from the water like a landed trout, gaping for breath and soaking. She gasped awake. Her pajamas were dripping with sweat, her hair stuck in damp tendrils to her forehead and neck.

She pushed down the covers, folding them back to dry in the night air. The carpet of the stairs was comforting between her toes, the creaks of the old house the familiar noise that cradled her rather than the pitching distress of her dreams. She flicked on the light in the kitchen, heading for the kettle. 

“Do I have to have my breakfast now?”

The boy was sitting at her table. She froze, staring at this sight that she couldn’t be seeing. 

“What are you doing here?” She whispered. The sweat had cooled on her skin, making her shiver.

“I don’t feel very well,” he groaned, “My tummy hurts.”

She moved over to him and felt the raging heat of his forehead. 

“Do you want something to drink?”

He shook his head, “No.” His eyes were huge and glossy and dark as he gazed up at her, pleading.

“Where does it hurt?”

He touched his stomach, just beneath the ribcage. “Here.” He touched his chest and then the back of his neck, where the vertebrae protruded. 

She moved to touch him there, and he flinched backwards, tension evident in every line of his body. 

“Let me see.” She asked, her voice soft and low.

He flinched again, leaping out of his seat and crouching in a strange animal posture against the back wall.

“What’s all this about sweetheart?” 

He skittered along the wall, leaning forward onto his toes, tipping away, before he began to run, bounding out of the room. His hair gleamed russet in the artificial lights. She called after him and rushed to follow into the hallway. Something was wrong with his body. He was shrunken somehow, his skull squeezed until it was the size of an orange, his ears thrusting up through his thick hair, his limbs tucked at bizarre angles beneath him. His shadow was small. She reached out a hand and he darted away once more, running and running, his bottom raised and bobbing, and he disappeared. 

She searched through the house, opening cupboards and calling him. She thought she might be mad. Light gradually glowed behind the curtains, pale and cold. She pulled on her shoes and her coat and went out into the front garden to continue her search. The door had been unlocked.

There in the centre of the lawn he crouched. His nose twitched when he saw her and he raised up into a squat, ears quivering. She reached out to him and he spun away, dashing across the road. She ran after him, through the streets and the rows of sleeping houses, past the playground and out into the rough, scrubby field. He dashed through the long grass, and she followed, breath burning in her lungs and her eyes streaming in the cold air as she ran. Under the trees she stopped, listening. There was a rustling sound and then he lept from the bushes, out into the burrows beneath the trees, her last glimpse of him a flash of bobbing white tail. She threw herself to the ground, knees sinking in the mud, trousers sodden with earth and damp. She clawed at the small round hole calling his name. There was no reply.

She sat staring into the hole for a long while as the sun rose behind grey clouds. High above her in the branches of the trees a bird started to sing. She looked up. The branches were full of birds, rousing from their slumber, feathers shaking as they took to their morning song and flight. Tears welled in her eyes and she began to cry. He never stayed for long. And she never knew when he would come back, whether this time he would grow or whether this time he would stay. Sunlight sparkled in the corner of her vision, refracted as her sight blurred. She bent over, crying freely, mud staining her hands and her clothes. Far away she heard church bells ringing. 

There’s more than one way to cut a person, she thought, and only one loss, one kind of absence that lasts a lifetime.

She retraced her steps back to the house. She just had to pay attention next time. She just couldn’t let him go.