Climber Found Crucified on Cliff Face — 4 Years After Vanishing in Yosemite

 

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THE CHURCH ON HOLLOW RIDGE

When the boy disappeared, everyone in town agreed on one thing: it was the church’s fault.

Not the church in town—the respectable brick one with bake sales and Christmas pageants—but the other one. The one that didn’t officially exist anymore. The one on Hollow Ridge.

The one that still rang its bell at 3:03 a.m., thirty years after the county ordered it torn down.

1. The Second Bell

The first time Ethan Caldwell heard the bell, he thought it was a dream.

He had come back to Ashford—a dying Appalachian town in West Virginia—for three reasons, none of them voluntary: his father’s stroke, the looming foreclosure on the family house, and the fact that his contract at the Boston paper had not, technically, been renewed.

He hadn’t been back in eight years. The town hadn’t gotten any prettier.

The night he arrived, rain slid down the warped clapboards of his childhood home, tapping out a rhythm on the aluminum gutters. His father lay on the living room recliner, a faded blanket over his legs, his once‑huge hands thin and spotted.

“You lost weight,” his father rasped, which in Caldwell vernacular meant, I missed you.

“You got old,” Ethan replied, which meant, I missed you too.

He fell asleep on the couch around midnight, the TV whispering reruns of some sitcom in the background, the smell of old fabric and dust and menthol ointment sinking into him.

Sometime later, something pulled him out of a dense, exhausted sleep.

A bell.

A single, deep tone that thrummed through the walls, then another, and another, three in total. Not a doorbell. Not a phone. A real bell. It sounded…far, but not far enough.

Clang.

He blinked at the dark ceiling. The TV was off. The house was silent.

Clang.

The sound rolled through his chest like a dull wave, not loud, but impossibly clear.

Clang.

He sat up. The digital clock on the VCR read 3:03 a.m.

Then the bell stopped, as if someone had cut a wire.

He waited, heartbeat ticking in his throat.

Wind whispered in the trees outside. The refrigerator hummed. His father snored once, sharply, then settled.

No more bells.

He lay back down, feeling foolish, telling himself that old houses made strange sounds, that his brain was dredging up childhood stories and stitching them into dreams. He knew exactly what those stories were.

On Hollow Ridge, three miles outside town, there was an old, abandoned church.

Once, before the mines had closed and half the town moved away, the church had belonged to the Ashford Pentecostal Holiness congregation. When Ethan was seven, people stopped going. When he was eight, the county condemned the building, citing structural issues and “unspecified safety concerns.” When he was nine, the congregation’s pastor, Reverend Jonah Birch, hanged himself in the bell tower.

They said the rope snapped on the first drop. That he fell screaming through the trapdoor, hit the floor, broke both legs, and crawled bleeding back up the narrow wooden stairs. They said he wrapped the rope around his neck twice that time, tighter, and kicked away the stool.

They said the next night, the bell rang three times at 3:03 a.m. All on its own.

After that, no one went near Hollow Ridge after dark.

Or so the stories went.

Now, as a thirty‑three‑year‑old ex‑investigative journalist who had once written a three‑part series on fracking regulations, Ethan told himself he’d heard the wind rattle a metal gutter. Nothing more. The rational part of his brain won, as it usually did.

He closed his eyes.

He dreamed of a narrow staircase, spiraling up, up, up, and of a bell that rang not with sound, but with light.

2. The Missing Boy

By morning, the bell was just a weird anecdote to file away under “small town nonsense.” Ashford looked exactly as he remembered: the gray strip of Main Street sagging under heavy clouds, the diner with the flickering neon open sign, the boarded‑up storefronts half covered with campaign posters from elections long past.

His father insisted on going to physical therapy in town, grumbling the entire way, leaning hard on Ethan’s arm. The therapist, a patient woman named Denise, nodded at Ethan with the look people reserved for prodigal sons who remained disappointments.

“You here for long?” she asked.

“Depends,” Ethan said. “On a lot of things.”

He didn’t say: Depends how long Dad has left. Depends if I can find freelance work before the savings run out. Depends if being back here drives me insane.

At the diner afterward, as they worked through eggs and overcooked bacon, the town’s only police officer walked in. Officer Carla Monroe was five years older than Ethan and had been captain of the girls’ basketball team when he was a freshman. She’d only gotten broader in the shoulders since then.

“Caldford,” she said, sliding into the booth without asking. “Heard you’re back.”

“Caldwell,” Ethan said automatically.

“Right. Writer man.” She poured herself coffee from the metal pot on the table. “Perfect. Maybe you can help me.”

“With what?” Ethan asked. “Parking violations?”

She leaned in. Her eyes were tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep.

“You remember the old stories about Hollow Ridge?” she asked quietly.

That wiped the smirk off his face.

His father shifted, gaze sharpening. “Why?” he asked.

Carla hesitated, then sighed.

“We got a missing kid,” she said. “Fourteen. Name’s Jesse Harrow.”

Ethan frowned. The name meant nothing; half the families he’d known growing up had moved.

“Went camping with some friends,” Carla went on. “They were supposed to stick to the lower trails. But kids are idiots. They went up near Hollow Ridge. Storm last night scattered them. Three made it back to town around four this morning, soaked, hypothermic, scared as hell. Jesse didn’t.”

Ethan’s stomach tightened.

“And?” he asked.

“And the three that made it back—” she paused, choosing her words with care “—say they heard the bell. Three times. At 3:03.”

Silence settled around the booth like fog.

Ethan told himself his skin was prickling because of the drafts in the diner. Not because some childhood boogeyman had stepped into real life.

“You think he’s just lost?” he said. “Maybe fell down a ravine?”

“Maybe,” Carla said. “We got volunteers combing the trails. Fire department, a couple of folks from the county. But…” She took a breath. “The Harrows know you’re back. They remember your articles about those missing hikers in New Hampshire. They asked if you could…you know.” She shrugged. “Look into it.”

His father snorted into his coffee. “They want you to go up there and write about their dead kid.”

“Dad,” Ethan said sharply.

“Missing kid,” Carla corrected. “We’re not using the other word yet.” Her jaw clenched.

Ethan heard the unspoken part: We don’t use that word in Ashford, not when a church on a hill still rings its own dead bell.

He thought about saying no. His life was complicated enough. Returning here had felt like stepping back into a drowned town. Old resentments swam just under the surface.

But the part of him that had once chased stories through courtrooms and policy hearings stirred. A missing child. Strange bells. A shuttered church no one wanted to talk about.

He looked at Carla. “You really believe the bell rang?”

She held his gaze. “I believe three kids with no sleep and mild hypothermia think they heard something. I also believe every time the bell’s been heard since ’89, someone’s gone missing.”

“Correlation isn’t causation,” Ethan said, out of habit.

“Maybe not,” she said. “But correlation’s all we got right now.”

He looked at his father. The old man shrugged, expression unreadable.

“You always said the Ridge was bullshit,” Ethan reminded him.

“I said most of it was bullshit,” his father said. “Didn’t say all.”

3. The Ridge

By noon, Ethan was hiking up the trail to Hollow Ridge with Officer Monroe, three volunteers from the fire department, and a German Shepherd named Bear.

“You got no business doing this with your lungs,” his father had grumbled, but he hadn’t tried very hard to stop him.

The air was thick with damp and the earthy smell of rotting leaves. The trail, once regularly maintained, had become a narrow rut choked with deadfall and brambles. Trees leaned over them like listening giants.

“You sure you don’t want a sidearm?” Carla asked as they stepped over a fallen log.

“Are the ghosts armed?” Ethan asked.

“Not the ones I’ve met,” she said. “But the living are. And I’m only one badge.”

He declined. Guns made him nervous. Besides, he had a camera and a notebook slung over his shoulder, which felt more natural in his hands than any weapon.

“Tell me about the kid,” he said. “Jesse.”

“Single mom. Works nights at the warehouse in Clarksburg,” Carla said. “Kid’s got some attitude, but nothing we don’t see a hundred times over. You’d like him. Smart mouth, lots of questions. He’s the one who convinced his buddies to go up near the Ridge.”

“Because of the stories?”

“Because of TikTok, apparently,” she said dryly. “Some moron from out of town runs a horror channel. Drove up here last month and did a ‘We Spent the Night at the Haunted Church on Hollow Ridge’ video. It got like…eight hundred thousand views. Idiot didn’t even get past the property line. Too scared. But he made it look cool.” She gestured around. “Teenagers see that, they want to outdo it.”

“So you have an influencer to thank,” Ethan said.

“If I ever meet that kid, I’m going to influence his face,” she muttered.

They reached a fork in the path, marked by an old, moss‑covered wooden sign. The letters had mostly peeled away, but Ethan could make out: HOL— RID— PRIVATE PROP—.

“This is as far as the town tracks go,” Carla said. “Beyond this, technically, you’re trespassing on church property. The land still belongs to the Pentecostal trust, even if the building doesn’t.”

“Does anyone from the church ever come up?” Ethan asked.

“Not since ’89,” she said.

Bear sniffed the air, ears pricked. The dog’s handler—Cal, a barrel‑chested volunteer firefighter—tightened his grip on the leash.

“He’s got something,” Cal murmured.

Bear whined softly, tugging them up the left fork.

The Ridge rose slowly at first, then more sharply. The trees thinned. The sky, a churned gray, pressed low.

“Did you ever go up here growing up?” Carla asked.

“Once,” Ethan said. “On a dare. We got within sight of the building. I heard something move in the trees and bolted like hell. Got poison ivy from my knees to my neck, too.”

“What did your dad say?”

“Grounded me for two weeks,” Ethan said. “Then he sat me down and told me what he knew about the Ridge.”

“Which was?”

Ethan gave her a sidelong look. “You sure you want to hear the long version?”

“You see any other entertainment up here?” she replied.

He shrugged.

“Reverend Jonah Birch came to Ashford in 1979,” Ethan began. “The town was already starting to decline. Mines consolidating, factories closing. He shows up with a smile like a TV preacher, starts talking about renewal. Fire. Purification. That kind of thing.”

“Sounds about right,” Carla said.

“People loved him. He did the usual: youth programs, revivals, prayer groups. But he also started this…special circle. Invitation‑only. Emphasis on sacrifice.”

Carla snorted. “Let me guess, ‘special offerings’?”

“Not money. Time. Labor. Personal secrets,” Ethan said. “He told them confession was good, but confession plus action was better. Dad said it was like group therapy mixed with cult bullshit. People would stand up, talk about their worst sins, their fears. Then Jonah would assign ‘tasks’ to prove their devotion.”

“What kind of tasks?”

“Digging foundations. Delivering food to shut‑ins. Doing all‑night prayer vigils. For a while, it was just intense charity. Then it started to tilt.” Dry branches cracked under his boots. “Jonah started picking targets. People he called ‘corrupting influences.’ Drunkards, gamblers. Teenagers who skipped school. He’d encourage his inner circle to shun them. Publicly call out their sins.”

“Classic control technique,” Carla said. “Humiliate, isolate, then dominate.”

“Yeah. It escalated. There was this kid, seventeen, named Mike Travers. Dad said he was just…normal trouble. Music too loud, hanging in the parking lot. Jonah made him a project. Called him a lost lamb. Invited him to the circle. The kid went. One night, Jonah took the group up to the church, locked them inside, and preached for twelve hours straight about hell.”

“Jesus,” Carla muttered.

“Mike left town two days later,” Ethan said. “No note. No goodbye. Just gone. Jonah called it a victory. Said the devil had been driven out.” He paused. “Mike’s mom drove off the bridge into the river a month later.”

Carla’s jaw tightened.

“Nobody ever proved anything,” Ethan said. “But Dad said after that, half the town stopped going to church. The other half got…more intense. Including Jonah.”

“And the bell?”

“Officially, the county ordered the bell tower dismantled after Jonah’s death,” Ethan said. “They sent up a crew. The crew came back down and filed a report saying the structure was unsafe and needed to be demolished from the ground up. The county ran out of funds halfway through the demolition. The tower’s still there.”

“I meant the ringing,” Carla said. “The three chimes at 3:03.”

He glanced up at the gray sky through the leafless branches.

“They say the first time, it was Jonah’s funeral,” he said. “Everyone in town heard it. Even people five miles away. Three perfect tolls. No one in the bell tower.”

“And after that?”

“Every few years, someone would wake up swearing they heard it,” Ethan said. “Mostly drunks, kids, and people with overactive imaginations. But every time, within forty‑eight hours, someone went missing. Sometimes they turned up. Sometimes they didn’t.”

She gave him a long, flat look.

“You never wrote about that in the school paper,” she said.

“I liked having friends,” Ethan said.

They crested a rise. Suddenly, there it was.

The church on Hollow Ridge.

4. The Church

Up close, it looked…smaller than Ethan remembered. And somehow worse.

The white paint had peeled away in long, curling strips, leaving the bare wood beneath exposed like bone. Two of the front steps had collapsed, leaving a jagged gap. Weeds and saplings pushed up through cracks in the foundation. One stained glass window remained intact, smeared with decades of grime; the others were empty, like eye sockets.

The bell tower loomed above, a square silhouette against the flat sky. The shuttered openings where sound should spill from were dark.

“Jesus,” Cal muttered, giving a low whistle.

Bear whined, fur along his spine bristling.

“You good, boy?” Cal asked, kneeling to scratch behind the dog’s ears. Bear’s tail did not wag. His eyes stayed fixed on the church.

“Jesse’s friends said they reached the clearing just below the Ridge before the storm hit,” Carla said quietly. “They didn’t go all the way up. They said Jesse wanted to see the church, but they told him to fuck off and ran back down when the thunder started. Last they saw him, he was coming up the trail alone with a flashlight.”

“Do we have his GPS location?” Ethan asked.

“Phone died around midnight,” she said. “Last ping was half a mile from here.”

“Okay,” Ethan said, business mode kicking in. “We need a radius. Call in—”

Bear barked, sharp and sudden.

Ethan jumped. The bark bounced off the church wall and disappeared into the trees.

Cal tightened his grip on the leash. “What is it, boy?”

Bear pulled toward the left side of the church, nostrils flaring. He lowered his head, sniffed along the ground, then along the weather‑blackened boards.

“There,” Ethan said, pointing. The ground beneath the church’s side wall had slumped, leaving a gap just big enough for something—someone—to crawl under.

“Jesse!” Carla called, moving closer. “Jesse Harrow, this is Officer Monroe! If you’re in there, shout!”

Silence. Then, faintly, the sound of something shifting inside. A scrape. A muffled thump.

“Could be an animal,” Cal warned.

“Could be the kid,” Carla said. She dropped to one knee by the gap, shining her flashlight into the gloom.

“See anything?” Ethan asked, leaning over her shoulder.

“Cobwebs. Dirt. Old bottles. Wait…” She squinted. “There’s a crawlspace. Looks like it runs under the whole floor. I think something’s back there. Cloth maybe?”

Bear whined again, pawing at the earth.

“Too narrow for me,” Carla said. “Cal?”

“Too damn old,” Cal replied. “Last time I crawled under a building, it was to fix my septic tank. Took me three days to uncramp.”

They both looked at Ethan.

“Oh, hell no,” he said.

“You’re the skinniest,” Carla pointed out. “And you don’t have the badge liability.”

“You want me to crawl under a condemned church, in a town that believes in cursed bells, during an active missing persons case?” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

Bear pressed his wet nose against Ethan’s hand, whimpering. The dog’s eyes were focused on the dark slit beneath the church, not on the tree line or the ridge. It was enough.

“Fine,” Ethan muttered. He shrugged off his pack, handed his camera to Carla, and dropped to his stomach.

The ground was damp and smelled of old leaves and animal urine. He shimmied forward on his elbows, flashlight clenched between his teeth. The underside of the church loomed over him, a low ceiling of splintered beams and hanging cobwebs.

“Go slow,” Carla said behind him. “If anything looks unstable, back out.”

“How will I tell the difference?” he mumbled around the flashlight.

“You’ll know if it falls on you,” she replied.

He pushed forward. Tiny spiders scurried away from his light. His jacket caught on a nail; he yanked free. The space opened slightly as he moved deeper beneath the church. Old glass bottles glinted in the dirt. Someone had been drinking here. Recently? Hard to tell.

“About ten feet in,” he called softly. “See a beam. And…something next to it.”

He angled the flashlight. There, pressed up against one of the support posts, lay a heap of fabric. Dark. Crumpled. His heart leapt.

“Jesse?” he whispered.

The heap did not move.

He reached out, fingers brushing rough denim. He seized the fabric and tugged.

A jacket. Small, black, familiar in its generic teenage style. The inside tag read: J. HARROW.

“Found his jacket,” Ethan called. “It’s—”

The beam above him creaked. A dry, groaning sound, like someone shifting weight.

He froze.

“Hey,” Carla called from the bright slit of daylight behind him. “You okay?”

“Something’s moving,” Ethan said quietly. “Above me.”

A faint, rhythmic noise reached his ears. Like…breathing? No. Like something swinging? The beam creaked again.

His scalp prickled.

Against his better judgment, he shifted the flashlight, aiming it up.

For a moment, he saw nothing but dust.

Then the beam caught on a face.

It hung upside down between the floor joists, pale and round, eyes wide open, pupils dilated, lips parted. A snapback cap clung to brown hair by a few strands. A rope encircled the throat.

“Holy shit,” Ethan choked.

The face blinked.

He yelped, jerking backward. His head slammed into a beam. Stars burst behind his eyes.

“Ethan?” Carla shouted, voice sharp. “What’s happening?”

The upside‑down face squeezed its eyes shut and opened them again. The lips moved.

“…elp…me…”

Not a ghost. Not a corpse. A boy.

“Jesse,” Ethan gasped. “Hold on. Don’t move. We’re going to get you down.”

The kid tried to nod; the rope dug into his neck. His hands scrabbled at the knot above his head, fingers slipping.

His face was mottled, red and purple. He’d been hanging there, wedged between the beams, just high enough to not suffocate—yet. His sneakers braced against the joist, knees trembling.

“I’ve got him!” Ethan yelled. “He’s under the floor! Hanging from—something. He’s alive!”

What the hell was he hanging from? There was no obvious hook, no beam directly above his head. The rope disappeared into the darkness.

“Hang on, kid,” Ethan said. “Don’t pass out.”

“Can’t…my legs…” Jesse gasped.

Ethan inched closer, ignoring the way the world narrowed around the boy’s bulging eyes. He reached up and grabbed Jesse’s calves, pushing up to relieve the tension on the rope.

“Carla!” he shouted, muscles straining. “We need access from above! He’s threaded between the floorboards or something!”

“We’re on it!” she called.

Above, boots thudded across the church floor.

“Talk to me,” Ethan told Jesse, grunting. “Say something. Anything. Keep your brain awake.”

“Thought…it was a prank…” Jesse whispered. “Just a chair…then the floor…gone…”

“Who did this?” Ethan asked.

“Didn’t see…just heard the bell…” His voice hitched. “It rang. I swear, it rang.”

“Focus,” Ethan said, pressing harder against his legs, feeling them shaking, feeling his own arms begin to tremble. He had no leverage; his knees were in the dirt, his back cramped.

Boards creaked above. Someone cursed. Light sliced down through a newly pried‑up plank.

“Got him!” Cal shouted. “Rope’s over a beam! Jesus, who—”

“Cut it!” Carla snapped.

A knife flashed. The rope went slack. Jesse dropped—just enough that Ethan’s grip took the full weight. Fire shot through his biceps. He grunted, lowering the kid as gently as he could into the narrow space.

“Pull him up!” Ethan rasped. “Through the floor!”

Hands reached down from above, grabbing Jesse’s shoulders, hauling him up through the gap. Dust rained in Ethan’s face. He fell back onto his elbows, panting.

“You good?” Carla called.

“Define ‘good,’” he muttered.

He crawled backward, dragging Jesse’s jacket. Sunlight expanded ahead of him, then cool air washed over his face as he emerged.

Jesse lay on the church’s rotting floor, coughing and choking, tears streaking the grime on his cheeks. The rope had left angry red welts around his neck. His hands were scraped raw.

Carla knelt beside him, checking his airway, her movements brisk but careful. “Easy, Jesse. Breathe. You’re okay. You’re safe.”

“Bell,” Jesse rasped. “It was the bell. I heard it.”

Ethan sat on the crumbling steps, lungs burning, heart hammering, staring at the boy who should have been dead.

“I thought it would be above,” he said quietly.

Carla’s head snapped up. “What?”

“The punishment,” Ethan said. “The missing kid. The bell.” He looked up at the tower. It loomed overhead, silent. “I thought whatever was wrong with this place was above us. But it’s under our feet, too.”

5. What Jesse Saw

At the hospital, they kept Jesse overnight for observation. Mild hypothermia. Bruising. Dehydration. Trauma.

By evening, he was awake and lucid enough to talk. His mother wept silently in a chair by the bed, fingers locked around a Styrofoam coffee cup.

Ethan stood near the door, notebook in hand, feeling like both a vulture and a lifeline. Carla leaned against the windowsill, arms folded.

“You don’t have to tell us everything tonight,” she told Jesse gently. “We can wait until you feel better.”

“No,” he croaked. “Now’s good. Before…before I forget. Or convince myself it was a dream.”

He looked much younger without the attitude. Fourteen going on eleven.

“Okay,” Carla said. “Start from when you left your friends.”

Jesse licked his cracked lips.

“They’re going to be in so much trouble,” he murmured.

“They’re not the ones I’m worried about.” Carla nodded encouragingly. “Go on.”

“We were at the clearing,” Jesse said. “It was stupid. I know that now. We had a tent and some beer and…we wanted to hear the bell. I mean, it’s just a story, right? Ghost crap. I wanted to, I don’t know…make a video. Prove it was nothing. Get views.” He gave a weak, bitter half‑laugh. “Like that YouTube guy.”

“What time was that?” Ethan asked.

“Around eleven,” Jesse said. “Clouds were already moving in, but you could still see the stars. We stayed up, talking. They got cold. Said it was dumb, nothing was happening, we should just go home.” He swallowed. “I said I was going to go up. To see the church. Just for a minute. They told me I was crazy. I told them they were chickens.”

“Did you see anyone else? Hear anything?” Carla asked.

“No,” he said. “Just the wind. I took my flashlight and went up alone.”

“Did you go inside?” Ethan asked.

He shook his head. “I never made it that far.”

He stared at the blanket, seeing something else entirely.

“I walked for maybe fifteen minutes,” he said. “The trees got thin. Then I saw it. The church. It looked like…shit.” Another half‑laugh. “Like your house, Mom.”

His mother snorted faintly, wiping her eyes.

“I heard the first thunder then,” Jesse continued. “I thought, okay, fine, I’ll just get close enough to take a picture and then head back. I was maybe…twenty feet from the steps when I heard it.”

“The bell,” Carla said.

He nodded. “It was…loud. Not like on videos. Not…I don’t know, electronic. It was in my chest, like a bass drop. Three times. Exactly three.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I checked my phone. 3:03. I thought, no way. I thought it was fake, like ghost hunters editing their clocks. But it was real. And then…”

He opened his eyes. They were slick with remembered fear.

“There was someone on the steps,” he whispered.

The room seemed to contract.

“Describe them,” Ethan said, pen hovering.

“Tall,” Jesse said. “At first, I thought it was…like, a statue? Or a shadow? It was…dark. They were wearing what looked like…old clothes. Like in a movie about the Dust Bowl or something. Long coat. Hat. I couldn’t see their face.”

Male, Ethan noted. Probably. Or presenting that way.

“What did they do?” Carla asked.

“They just…stood there,” Jesse said. “Then they raised their hand and pointed at me.”

His own hand shook as he mimed it, finger extending.

“Did they say anything?”

“Not with their mouth,” Jesse said.

Carla exchanged a quick glance with Ethan.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I mean I heard it, but they didn’t talk,” Jesse said. “It was like someone whispering inside my head, but loud. Just one word.”

“What word?” Ethan asked.

“Come.”

Cold crawled up Ethan’s spine.

“I should’ve run,” Jesse whispered. “But I couldn’t. It was like…it wasn’t my legs. I walked toward them. Every step felt…wrong. Heavy. But I kept going. When I got to the steps, they moved aside and pointed at the door.”

“So you went in,” Carla said, voice steady.

“Yeah,” he said. “I…I wanted to stop, but I also…wanted to see. What was inside. Like when you know a jump scare is coming in a movie and you still want to look.”

Classic coercive compulsion, Ethan thought. He’d read about cult leaders who could trigger something similar. But this sounded…deeper.

“What did you see inside?” Ethan asked.

“Nothing,” Jesse said. “At first. It was dark. My flashlight…it flickered. But the pews were still there. Dusty. Broken. Smelled like mold and old books. Then it changed.”

“Changed how?” Carla asked.

“The dust was gone,” he said slowly. “The wood got…shiny, like someone just polished it. The air smelled…sweet. Like incense. Or flowers. I turned, and there were…people. Sitting in the pews. A whole church full. Dressed…old. Old‑fashioned. Some looked like people I know, but younger. Or older. I don’t know.”

Ethan felt the hairs on his arms lift.

“Did they see you?” he asked.

“They were all looking at the front,” Jesse said. “At the pulpit. There was a man there. He was holding a Bible and…something else. Like a rope? Or a whip? I couldn’t see clearly. But I knew his name.”

“How?” Carla asked.

“Because everyone was thinking it,” Jesse whispered. “Like…when you’re in a room and someone says a word, and you suddenly hear it everywhere. Jonah. Jonah. Jonah.”

Reverend Jonah Birch, Ethan thought.

“He looked at me,” Jesse said. “Right at me. His eyes were…wrong. Like…too light. He smiled, and I knew I wasn’t supposed to be there. I started to back away, but the people in the pews turned their heads. All at once. And they looked at me too.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, hand trembling.

“There was this…noise,” he said. “Like a hum. It was them. All of them. Saying the same thing, but not with their mouths. In my head.”

“What were they saying?” Ethan asked, though he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know.

“He lied to us,” Jesse whispered. “Over and over. He lied to us. He lied to us all.”

The same phrase that had been scratched into Thomas Roland’s bones, Ethan thought, startling himself. No—Roland wasn’t real. That was the story Ethan had just read online, the crucified climber. He shook the thought away.

A flicker of unreality passed through him. Stories bleeding into stories.

“What happened then?” Carla asked.

“Jonah raised that rope or whatever it was,” Jesse said. “And the humming got louder. But it changed. It was like…they turned it on me. It wasn’t ‘he lied’ anymore. It was ‘you will not lie.’ Like a command. Like they were trying to…push it into me. Into my bones.” He shuddered. “It hurt. Like my head was going to split.”

“Did you say anything?” Ethan asked.

“I screamed,” Jesse said simply. “I dropped my flashlight and ran. The pews were gone. The smell was back. When I looked over my shoulder, the church was empty. But the guy from the steps was inside now, and he was closer. And he was still pointing at me.”

His voice climbed. “I ran for the door. I thought I made it. But the floor… opened.”

“Opened how?” Carla asked.

“Like a trapdoor,” he said. “I hit something hard and then…I was hanging. My neck hurt. I couldn’t breathe. I thought I was dying. I don’t remember…much after that. Just the bell. Ringing in my head. Over and over. Until I woke up and you were there.”

He sagged back against the pillows, spent.

No one spoke for a moment.

Finally, Carla cleared her throat.

“Jesse,” she said gently, “what you went through was traumatic. The brain can…weave things. Memories. Sounds. Dreams. It’s possible the bell was thunder. The people were shadows. The floor gave way because the building’s old. Your mind filled in the rest.”

He managed a tired smile. “You have to say that, right? You’re the cop.”

She raised an eyebrow. “What do you think I want to say?”

“That you believe me,” he said.

She hesitated, then nodded once. “I believe you believe what you saw. And that’s enough to know something’s very wrong up there.”

Jesse looked at Ethan.

“What about you?” he asked.

Ethan thought of the bell, ringing through his father’s house the night before. Of the cold eyes that had watched him from between floor joists, the marks on Jesse’s neck, the rope burn.

“I think,” he said slowly, “that there’s a story up there. Bigger than a haunted house. And I think whatever that…man on the steps was, he’s not done.”

Jesse’s eyes widened. “You’re going back?”

Ethan didn’t answer.

He didn’t have to. They all knew.

6. The Ledger

Ashford’s town hall smelled like stale coffee and mildew. The clerk, an old woman named Miss Faye, gave Ethan a skeptical look as he requested access to the archives.

“Thought you left for the big city,” she said, sliding a sign‑in sheet across the cluttered counter.

“I did,” he said. “It spit me back out.”

She sniffed. “The big city does that.”

He signed his name and followed her down a narrow corridor lined with metal filing cabinets. The “archives” turned out to be a room with a single flickering fluorescent bulb and a wall of shelves stacked with cardboard boxes.

“Church records are over there,” Faye said, pointing with a bony finger. “Anything older than ’85 is in the basement, but I wouldn’t go down there unless you’re up to date on your tetanus shot.”

“I’ll start with ’79 to ’89,” he said.

She left him with a half‑hearted warning about closing time and a promise that the bathroom toilet only sometimes backed up.

He dug.

Old minutes from town council meetings, building permits, police reports. He skimmed, fingers going numb from the cold.

In a box labeled PENTECOSTAL ‑ MISC, he found what he was looking for: a leather‑bound ledger, cracked and dusty. The front cover bore a faded gold imprint: ASHFORD PENTECOSTAL HOLINESS—MEMBERS & OFFERINGS.

He opened it.

Names, dates, tithes, scribbled in a careful, looping hand. Families he recognized, some he didn’t. Notes in the margins: “Sister H. testified about her healing.” “Brother J. delivered from drinking.”

Around 1983, the ink grew darker, the handwriting more intense. The notes shifted.

“Brother M.T. resisted the Call. Intensive prayer required.”
“Circle meeting—discussed the necessity of deeper sacrifice.”

He flipped to the back. Several pages had been ripped out. On the last intact page, a single paragraph sprawled across the lines, not in the neat ledger script but in a slashing, agitated scrawl:

They do not understand. The Bell is not a curse. It is a correction. It tolls for those who carry the Lie. They must be Bound so they may choose. Without the Bell, they will all drift into shadow. With it, they may yet be saved.

No signature, but he didn’t need one. He could almost hear Reverend Jonah’s voice in the urgency of the ink.

He thought of Jesse, hanging beneath the floor. Bound so he may choose.

Choose what? To never lie again? To confess?

Ethan grabbed a stack of police reports from the same period. Missing persons. Accidents. One jumped out at him: a report from 1984. Subject: MICHAEL TRAVERS. Age 17. Last seen near Hollow Ridge. Case status: unresolved.

Attached, a handwritten note from Officer Caldwell—Ethan’s father.

Spoke with Reverend Birch. He claims Mike left town willingly. No evidence of foul play. Mother unconvinced. Recommend further inquiry, but mayor insists we “let this one go” so as not to stir up trouble with the church.

Ethan’s chest tightened. His father had wanted to push. The town had pulled him back.

He stuffed the ledger and the report into his bag.

On his way out, Miss Faye stopped him.

“You find what you were looking for?” she asked.

“Some of it,” he said.

“You be careful poking around that church,” she said, surprising him. “Some things don’t like being remembered.”

“Do you think the bell really rings on its own?” he asked.

She hesitated, then nodded once.

“I heard it when I was sixteen,” she said. “Woke me up out of a dead sleep. Three times. Next day, my brother didn’t come home from the mine. Found him a week later with a broken neck at the bottom of Shaft Three.”

“I’m sorry,” Ethan said.

She shrugged thin shoulders. “We all got a story like that here. That’s why most people leave.”

“Why didn’t you?” he asked.

She smiled faintly. “Somebody’s got to keep the records.”

7. The Second Night

That night, the bell rang again.

Ethan sat awake this time, hunched over his laptop at the kitchen table, the Reverend’s ledger open beside him, unsteady notes half written.

The first clang hit his chest like a fist.

He jerked, heart leaping, eyes snapping to the digital clock on the oven.

3:03.

The second clang vibrated the glass of the kitchen window. The third seemed to come from inside his own skull.

He stood, the chair scraping back. His father’s snores faltered in the living room, hitched, then resumed.

Outside, the town lay in darkness. The streetlights had gone out in last night’s storm and hadn’t yet been repaired. Only the moon painted the outlines of houses and leaning trees.

He opened the door.

Cold autumn air rushed in. For a moment, there was only silence.

Then, faintly, from the direction of Hollow Ridge, a sound drifted to him.

Not the bell. Singing.

Low, wordless, like a dozen voices humming on one note. It rose and fell, a living thing.

His skin crawled.

He grabbed his coat.

“What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?” his father rasped from the couch.

Ethan froze.

“I thought you were asleep,” he said.

“Stroke, not death,” his father said dryly. “I still hear. You going up there?”

“Yeah,” Ethan said. “The bell rang again. Something…something’s happening.”

His father studied him. The old man’s eyes were still sharp behind the haze of age.

“You remember what I told you when you were fifteen and wanted to write that blog about the Ridge?” he asked.

“You said I’d piss off every old lady in town,” Ethan said.

“I said more than that,” his father said. “I said, ‘If you go chasing ghosts, make sure you know which ones are real.’”

Ethan swallowed. “Do you think it’s real?”

His father looked toward the window, at the dark outline of the distant ridge.

“I think,” he said slowly, “that men like Jonah Birch leave scars that outlast their bodies. Sometimes those scars…learn to move on their own.”

“Is that a yes or a no?” Ethan asked.

His father snorted. “You’re going up there whether I say yes or no. Just…don’t go alone.”

“I’ll call Carla,” Ethan said.

His father nodded once, satisfied, and closed his eyes again. “Take my flashlight. The big one.”

Officer Monroe did not sound thrilled to be woken at 3:09 a.m., but she answered on the second ring.

“I heard it too,” she said before he could speak.

“The bell?”

“And the singing,” she said. “Give me ten minutes.”

They met at the base of Hollow Ridge at 3:25, breath pluming white in the cold. Carla wore her duty jacket over a hoodie, badge barely visible under the layers. Her hair was pulled back in a hastily tied knot.

“You think you’re the only one with insomnia, Caldwell?” she said. “This is Ashford. We all sleep like shit.”

He pointed up the trail. “You sure you want to do this in the dark?”

“You sure you want to wait until sunrise?” she countered.

He wasn’t. He didn’t think the singing would last that long. Already, it came and went in uneasy waves, sometimes swelling loud enough to prickle his teeth, sometimes dropping to a murmur.

They hiked.

The forest at night felt like a different country. Every branch was a grasping arm, every shadow a shape waiting to uncoil. The beam of Ethan’s borrowed flashlight cut a narrow tunnel through the darkness.

“Listen,” Carla said quietly as they climbed.

He did.

Between the rustle of leaves and their own breathing, he heard the singing more distinctly now. It wasn’t quite language. It rose and fell in uncanny unison, with occasional strange harmonies that made his spine arch.

“This is insane,” he muttered.

“Yep,” Carla agreed.

At the fork in the trail, Bear whined softly, tugging toward the left. Cal had insisted on coming too, the German Shepherd’s presence radiating a kind of grounded bravery.

Halfway up the Ridge, the singing swelled abruptly, as if someone had turned up the volume. Ethan’s knees nearly buckled. His heart stuttered.

“Carla,” he gasped. “Do you feel that?”

She was pale in the flashlight beam, jaw clenched.

“Yeah,” she said. “Keep moving.”

They emerged into the clearing.

The church stood ahead, painted in moonlight. The tower reared into a sky gone strangely clear, the storm clouds of the previous night swept away.

The front door was closed.

The singing emanated from within.

Carla unholstered her weapon.

“No shooting ghosts,” Ethan murmured.

“No promises,” she said.

They approached the steps.

Ethan saw the rope scar on the floorboards where they’d cut Jesse down. The planks above the crawlspace had been temporarily nailed back into place; the town crew hadn’t yet had time to shore up the structure.

The singing grew louder.

Carla put a hand on the door.

“On three,” she said. “One. Two. Three.”

She shoved.

The door swung open.

The singing stopped.

The church interior lay in darkness, illuminated only by their flashlights. Dust motes swam in the beams. The pews sat in crooked rows, warped by time.

Empty.

“Hello?” Carla called. “Ashford Police. If anyone’s in here, identify yourselves.”

Silence.

Then.

Clang.

The bell exploded above them, so loud Ethan flinched and clapped his hands over his ears. The sound was not just noise; it was pressure, pushing down, making his teeth ache.

Clang.

The wood floor thrummed. Bear howled, backing toward the door, tail tucked.

Clang.

On the last strike, Ethan’s flashlight flickered and died.

Darkness slammed down.

He heard Carla cursing, fumbling for her backup light. For a moment, the only illumination came from the faint moonlight leaking through the stained glass.

Shapes shifted in the shadows.

“Carla?” he whispered.

“Got it,” she said, voice tight. Her second flashlight clicked on.

The church was full.

Every pew was occupied. Figures sat shoulder to shoulder, wearing clothes from a dozen eras—Sunday dresses, overalls, flannel shirts, faded suits. Their faces were pale in the light, eyes dark hollows.

Ethan’s breath hitched.

“Do you see—” he started.

“Yes,” Carla said. Her voice had gone very small.

The congregation did not look at them. Their gazes were fixed forward, toward the pulpit.

A man stood there.

He was tall, his long coat hanging to his shins, his hair slicked back. His skin was a shade too light, like paper left out in the sun. His eyes, when they turned toward Ethan, were a washed‑out blue that seemed almost colorless.

He smiled.

“Welcome,” Reverend Jonah Birch said.

8. The Offer

Ethan had seen countless photos of Reverend Jonah in old newspapers: a handsome, charismatic man in his thirties, smiling with a Bible in hand.

The figure before him looked both older and younger. As if time had kneaded his face like dough, smoothing some lines, deepening others.

“Is this…real?” Carla whispered.

“Define ‘real,’” Ethan muttered.

Jonah’s smile widened.

“Everything here is real enough,” he said, his voice rolling through the church like oil. “For our purposes.”

“You’re dead,” Ethan blurted. “You died thirty years ago.”

“Did I?” Jonah tilted his head. “Many would say otherwise.”

“Get out of there,” a small voice whispered urgently behind Ethan’s ear.

He spun. No one stood behind him.

The whisper came again, from everywhere and nowhere.

“He lied to us. He’ll lie to you.”

Ethan’s skin crawled.

The congregation hummed, a low note that vibrated in his bones.

Carla raised her gun, hands shaking.

“This is an unlawful gathering,” she said hoarsely. “Disperse immediately.”

A few of the congregants blinked. Their eyes were wrong too—not glowing, not dramatic, but…empty in a way Ethan recognized from photos of cult survivors. Like something had been scooped out of them long ago.

“You believe in law,” Jonah said, amused. “That is good. Law is a kind of covenant. So is what we do here.”

“What do you do here?” Ethan asked, throat dry. “Hang teenagers from your rafters?”

“Only those who insist on lying,” Jonah said. His gaze slid to Ethan’s notebook, tucked into his coat. “You are a writer, are you not? A teller of truths.”

“I’m a teller of facts,” Ethan said. “Truth is messier.”

“Ah.” Jonah stepped down from the pulpit. He moved strangely, his feet making no sound on the creaking floorboards. “Facts. Truth. Lies. You know more than most how thin the lines are.”

He approached them. Carla’s gun tracked him, but her fingers trembled.

“Stop right there,” she warned.

“I am not here to harm you,” Jonah said. “Not tonight.”

“Jesse says otherwise,” Ethan said.

At the name, something flickered in Jonah’s eyes.

“The boy,” he said softly. “Yes. He came to us. Unprepared. Uninvited. The Bell called him too strongly. That was not my intention.”

“Your intention?” Carla snapped. “You put a rope around his neck.”

“Correction.” Jonah raised a finger. “I offered him the rope. He accepted.”

“Bullshit,” Ethan said. “He was compelled. He told us.”

Jonah sighed. “Compulsion is a harsh word for what people do to themselves when they are afraid. The Bell…merely amplifies.”

“Amplifies what?” Ethan asked.

Jonah’s gaze swept the congregation.

“The desire to be absolved,” he said. “Of lies. Of burdens. Of the weight of contradictions.”

“What does the bell have to do with that?” Carla asked.

“It is a tuning fork,” Jonah said. “When I was alive, I believed it was God’s instrument. A way to call people to repentance. To cut through the noise of their rationalizations.” He smiled faintly. “I was…half right.”

“And the other half?” Ethan asked.

Jonah’s eyes glittered.

“It is not God’s,” he said. “It belongs to something older.”

The humming in the pews rose slightly. Ethan’s ears popped.

“When did you figure that out?” Ethan asked.

“Too late,” Jonah said. “I was an ambitious man. I wanted my church to flourish, my name to spread. I prayed for a sign. For power. For a…tool.”

He looked up toward the tower.

“The Bell came,” he said. “Not literally, of course. It was already here, cast in some foundry a century ago. But one night, during a storm, lightning struck the tower. After that, when it rang, people listened. Really listened. Secrets spilled. Confessions poured forth. I thought Heaven had blessed us.”

The congregation shifted in the pews, as if uncomfortable.

“But it kept…ringing,” Jonah said. “Sometimes with no hand on the rope. People started waking in the middle of the night at its sound, compelled to come here. To speak. To offer themselves up. They said they felt…watched. Weighed. Judged.”

“And you liked that,” Ethan said.

Jonah’s smile turned brittle.

“At first,” he said. “Then I realized something. The more we used the Bell, the less…human…we felt. My inner circle stopped questioning me. Their eyes grew dull. They would stand for hours, humming that note, waiting for my instruction. It was… intoxicating.”

He looked at his hands.

“I told myself it was God working through me,” he said. “But deep down, I knew. The Bell was feeding on something. On devotion. On fear. On the moment when a lie breaks and the mind splits. And what it left behind…” He gestured at the pews.

“Are they ghosts?” Carla asked. “Hallucinations?”

“They are echoes of choices,” Jonah said. “Those who gave themselves over entirely to the Bell. Their bodies died long ago. Their…imprints remain. Bound to this place.”

“And you?” Ethan asked.

“I’m the one who rang it,” Jonah said simply. “Again and again. Until…well. You know the rest.”

“You killed yourself,” Ethan said. “Twice.”

“I attempted to,” Jonah said. “The rope broke the first time. I took it as a sign I was meant to continue. But there is another reading: the Bell wasn’t done with me.”

He smiled, small and sharp.

“When I died,” he said, “I did not go where I expected. I woke here. In the church. The Bell tolled, and I was…different. Less bound by flesh. More…connected. I could feel the lies in the town like cracks in glass. The unspoken things. The secrets.”

“So you kept going,” Ethan said.

“What else was I to do?” Jonah spread his hands. “The Bell demanded balance. For every lie, a correction.”

“And how many ‘corrections’ resulted in missing people?” Carla asked.

Jonah’s gaze slid away. “Some. Not all. Sometimes a confession sufficed. Other times…more was required.”

“Like Michael Travers,” Ethan said.

Jonah’s eyes flicked back to him, surprised.

“You’ve been reading,” he said.

“You targeted him,” Ethan said. “Humiliated him. He ‘left town’ under mysterious circumstances. His mother died. The town looked away.”

“He refused to confess,” Jonah said. “He mocked the Bell. He called it a joke. I begged him to be honest. To face his addictions. He refused. The Bell…chose.”

“The Bell is not a person,” Ethan said. “It doesn’t choose. You do.”

The humming in the pews rose, a warning note.

“I allowed it to work through me,” Jonah said. “As any prophet does with his God. I thought I was doing good. Even as I watched people crumble, even as I saw the light go out behind their eyes, I told myself it was righteousness.”

“And now?” Carla asked. “What do you tell yourself now?”

Jonah looked at her, something like weariness flickering across his face.

“That I was wrong,” he said. “That I unleashed something I did not understand. That the Bell is a wound I carved into this town. One that has not closed.”

“Then why are you still here?” Ethan asked. “Why haven’t you…moved on? Or whatever you Azathoth‑botherers do.”

Jonah’s smile returned, colder.

“Because the wound keeps bleeding,” he said. “Every time someone lies in Ashford, the Bell stirs. Every time someone’s guilt festers, it resonates. The more the town tried to bury what happened here, the more…pressure built.”

“You’re saying the Bell rang for Jesse because…he lied?” Ethan asked.

Jonah tilted his head. “Ask him.”

“He’s fourteen,” Carla snapped. “He lies about homework. That doesn’t warrant execution.”

“Execution?” Jonah shook his head. “No, no. The Bell is not interested in trivialities. It resonates with foundational lies. The ones that define us. The ones we tell ourselves so we can look in the mirror.”

His gaze pinned Ethan.

“Which brings us to why you’re here,” he said softly.

Ethan’s mouth went dry.

“I came because a kid almost died,” he said. “And because I heard the bell.”

“You heard it the night before Jesse came, did you not?” Jonah asked. “At 3:03?”

“Yes,” Ethan admitted.

“The Bell called you,” Jonah said. “It sensed something. A fracture. A lie that has grown heavy.”

“I don’t—” Ethan started.

“Your father knows,” Jonah said.

The words hit him like a fist.

“What does my father have to do with—”

“You think you left Ashford because you were better than it,” Jonah said, stepping closer. “Because you didn’t want to rot in a dying town. Because you wanted to write stories that mattered. That is the story you tell yourself.”

“It’s not a story,” Ethan snapped. “It’s my life.”

“Is it?” Jonah asked. “Or is it a convenient narrative that lets you ignore the fact that you ran away when your mother got sick? That you stayed in Boston when she died, leaving your father to bury her alone.”

Ethan flinched.

“That’s not—” he began.

“You told yourself you couldn’t get the time off work,” Jonah said. “That flights were too expensive. That she would have wanted you to stay and ‘follow your dreams.’”

His lips curled.

“She died asking why her son wouldn’t come home,” Jonah said. “Your father told her you were too busy. That you were in the middle of something important. He lied to spare her. He has lived with that lie ever since. So have you.”

Heat rose behind Ethan’s eyes.

“Shut up,” he said.

“The Bell rings for such lies,” Jonah said. “Not the childish ones. The ones that cut at the root of who we are. You tell yourself you are a seeker of truth. Yet the most basic truth of your life—that you are a coward who abandoned the person who loved you most—remains unspoken.”

Tears burned Ethan’s throat.

“That’s not why I stayed,” he said. “I…I thought she’d pull through. I thought—”

“You thought you would have more time,” Jonah said. “We always think that. Until we do not.”

The humming in the pews became words, a susurrus that scraped at Ethan’s ears.

“He lied to us. He lied to himself. He lied to her. He lied, he lied, he lied—”

“Stop it,” Carla shouted, stepping forward. “You’re done. Whatever this is, it stops now. Ethan, we’re leaving. Right now.”

Jonah’s eyes flicked to her.

“You think you are immune?” he asked. “Officer Monroe, whose younger brother took the fall for the pills in her glove compartment so she could keep her academy place? Who tells herself she had no choice?”

Carla went white.

“I’m warning you,” she whispered.

Her gun hand shook.

The Bell’s presence pressed down on them, heavy and suffocating. Ethan felt his knees wanting to buckle. Images flashed in his mind: his mother in a hospital bed, pale and small; his father standing alone at a graveside; his own face in a mirror, turning away from a ringing phone.

“The Bell offers you a chance,” Jonah said, voice suddenly gentle. “Confess. Truly. Let go of the stories. Accept what you are. And it will be done. No ropes. No rafters. Just…truth.”

“What happens if we don’t?” Ethan asked, though he was afraid he already knew.

Jonah’s smile reached his eyes, just for a second.

“Then it will correct you,” he said. “In time.”

The congregation leaned forward, as if in anticipation.

“Fuck your bell,” Carla said.

Her words hung in the air like a struck match.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

Then the tower above them shook.

9. The Choice

The first crack was small. A tiny fissure in the plaster near the altar, spider‑webbing out like a cotton fracture.

Then the walls moved.

Not much, just enough for dust to trickle down in soft gray sheets. The floor tipped an inch. Ethan staggered, catching himself on the back of a pew. The congregants did not move.

“Time’s up,” Jonah said softly.

“Ethan, run,” Carla hissed.

Ethan didn’t move.

He was staring at Jonah, at the congregation, at the cracked walls, but all he could see was his mother’s face. The last time he’d visited Ashford before she got sick, she’d pressed a hundred dollars into his hand and told him to buy a winter coat. He’d spent it on plane tickets for a conference instead.

A lie, he thought. Built of a thousand smaller ones.

The Bell thrummed. He felt it not as sound, but as vibration in his bones.

“Confession,” Jonah said. “Now.”

“What does that even mean?” Ethan demanded. “That I say ‘I abandoned her’ and…what? You let us walk out?”

“Yes,” Jonah said. “If you mean it. The Bell will know.”

“And if I don’t?” Ethan asked.

“Then it will ring,” Jonah said. “And ring. And ring. Until the lie breaks. One way or another.”

The fissure widened. A chunk of plaster dropped from the ceiling, exploding into dust inches from Carla’s shoulder.

She flinched, then glared at Jonah.

“You don’t get to judge us,” she said. “You built this. You used people. You killed them. You are not righteous. You’re a coward who couldn’t live with what he’d done, so he hung himself and hit repeat.”

A murmur rippled through the congregation. Some faces shifted, expressions tightening, eyes flicking in Carla’s direction.

Jonah’s own expression went still.

“You think I do not know that?” he asked quietly. “You think I do not hear that judgment every day from everyone I damned? This…” He gestured around. “This is my hell, Officer Monroe. The Bell does not let me forget.”

“Then destroy it,” Ethan said.

Jonah blinked.

“Excuse me?” he said.

“Destroy the Bell,” Ethan repeated. “If you’re really sorry, if you really understand what you did, then stop it. Break the thing that’s still hurting people.”

A tremor ran through the congregation, like a shiver.

“It cannot be destroyed,” Jonah said. “It is…other. It—”

“Lightning hit it once,” Ethan said. “Metal breaks. Stone shatters. Everything can be destroyed. You just don’t want to.”

“You do not understand,” Jonah snapped, a crack in his calm. “The Bell is not just an object. It is…anchored. In the choices we made. In the lies. In the corrections. It is woven into this place, into this town. To break it would mean—”

“Setting them free?” Carla cut in, nodding toward the pews. “And yourself too. Boo‑hoo.”

The church shook again, more violently. A pew tipped; one of the congregants slid to the floor and did not move.

“You presume much, for a mortal with so few years,” Jonah said coldly.

“Yeah, well, we’re wasting them talking to you,” she retorted. “Ethan.”

He looked at her.

“You want to know what I did?” she said, eyes blazing. “Fine. When I was nineteen, I drove drunk with my little brother in the car. I had pills in the glove box. We got pulled over. He took the charge because I had the scholarship. I let him. I told myself I’d make it up to him. I didn’t. He OD’d at twenty‑three.”

Her voice broke.

“The Bell can shove it up its incorporeal ass,” she said. “I know what I did. I live with it. I’m not letting some dead preacher use it to hang more kids.”

Her confession hung in the air, raw and burning.

The humming faltered. Several of the congregation blinked, their eyes focusing, just for a moment. One woman in the second row raised a hand to her mouth, expression horrified, as if waking from a long sleep.

Jonah stared at Carla.

“You confuse confession with defiance,” he said. “But your words have weight. The Bell…hears.”

“Good,” she said. “Let it hear this too.”

She holstered her gun, turned, and fired three bullets straight up into the underside of the bell tower.

“Carla!” Ethan shouted.

The sound was deafening in the enclosed space. Above them, something groaned.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

Then the tower cracked.

The sound wasn’t dramatic, not the cinematic splintering of timber, but a low, wrenching thud, like bones coming apart. Dust roared down through the rafters. A chunk of masonry fell, smashing the pulpit in half. Jonah staggered, flickering.

“The Bell!” someone screamed—not a person, but the collective voice of the congregation. The humming surged, becoming a shriek.

Ethan didn’t think. He ran.

Not away, but toward the side door that led to the narrow stairs up into the tower. He’d seen it in childhood, a forbidden portal. Now it yawned, half‑ajar.

“Ethan!” Carla shouted. “Where are you going?”

“To break your metaphor,” he yelled back.

The stairwell was narrower than he remembered, the steps steep and treacherous. Dust choked him. The smell of old wood and rusted iron filled his nostrils.

Below, the church rumbled. A crack zigzagged up the wall beside him.

He climbed.

The humming was louder here, like standing in the throat of some immense animal. With each step, the weight of the Bell’s gaze—or whatever passed for it—pressed harder on his shoulders.

At the top of the stairs, a small hatch led into the belfry. It hung askew, one hinge broken. Ethan shoved it aside and squeezed through.

The bell tower was a cramped square, open to the cold night air through the louvered openings. The Bell hung in the center, suspended from a blackened timber beam. It was large but not enormous, perhaps three feet tall, its dark metal mottled with verdigris and soot. Faint patterns writhed on its surface, half‑eroded symbols that hurt his eyes to look at.

The rope hung motionless.

The Bell pulsed.

Not physically, but in his mind. He felt it like a pressure behind his eyes, like the onset of a migraine.

“You are not worthy,” a voice said.

It wasn’t Jonah’s. It wasn’t anyone’s. It was deep and resonant, like the echo of a drum in a cavern.

“I know,” Ethan said, breathing hard. “That’s kind of the point.”

He stepped closer.

The Bell’s presence swelled.

“You carry lies,” it said—or thought, or impressed. “You deny. You run. You pretend to seek truth while hiding from your own. You are like the one who bound me here. Weak. Hungry. Afraid.”

“Yeah,” Ethan said. “You’re not wrong.”

He grabbed the rope.

Pain lanced through his skull. Images flashed: his mother’s hospital room; their last phone call, when she’d said, It’s okay, honey, I know you’re busy; him hanging up, sick with relief.

“Confess,” the Bell demanded.

He gritted his teeth.

“I abandoned her,” he said. The words tasted like blood. “She needed me, and I stayed away because I was scared. Because I didn’t want to see her sick. Because I had stories to write that made me feel important. I told myself I couldn’t leave my job. That I’d come later. But I didn’t. She died without me.”

The Bell’s vibration intensified, then shifted, probing.

“And?” it pressed.

“And…” He swallowed. Tears blurred his vision. “And I’ve been hiding behind other people’s tragedies ever since so I don’t have to look at my own.”

The throbbing pressure wavered.

“You are…closer,” the Bell said. “But confession is not enough. Correction is required.”

“Maybe,” Ethan said. “But not by you.”

He hauled on the rope.

The Bell’s note exploded through him, not as sound, but as an internal detonation. For a second, his vision went white. He tasted iron.

Below, the church shook. Screams rose.

He pulled again.

“You cannot break me,” the Bell said. “I am the weight of lies. I am the gravity of guilt. I am—”

“Metal,” Ethan grunted. “You are metal hung from wood. And wood rots.”

With the third pull, something gave.

There was a sound like a tree snapping. The beam cracked. The Bell lurched, swinging wildly. The rope burned his palms. He let go.

The Bell slammed into the side of the tower.

The world lurched.

Down below, the congregation’s screams turned to a roar. The tower leaned. The floor under Ethan’s feet tilted.

He scrambled toward the hatch just as the beam gave way.

The Bell fell.

For a moment, it seemed to hang in midair, vibrating.

Then it plummeted, smashing through the wooden floor of the belfry, through the ceiling of the church, through the air above the pews, trailing splinters and dust.

It hit the center aisle.

The impact was indescribable. Not just a sound, but a shudder that rolled through the building—and, it felt, through the ground itself. The pews tipped, throwing congregants left and right. Cracks raced up the walls. Stained glass exploded outward in a spray of color.

Ethan was thrown against the tower wall, breath knocked from him. The hatch frame twisted. Cold night air slapped his face.

Below, amidst the chaos, he saw Jonah.

The Reverend stood in the center of the maelstrom, head tilted back, eyes closed, light pouring from the cracks in his skin.

“No more,” Jonah whispered.

The congregation’s voices rose, a cacophony of overlapping cries, then…silence.

One by one, the figures in the pews flickered. The air seemed to loosen around them, as if something that had been holding them in place had finally exhaled.

They began to dissolve.

Not into mist or cinematic motes of light, but into absence. Spaces where they had been simply became…empty.

“No!” the Bell’s voice—or the echo of it—roared in Ethan’s mind. “Bound! You are bound—”

“You are broken,” Jonah said.

Light burst from the Bell, too bright to be seen, a negative glare. Ethan threw his arm over his eyes. Heat washed up the tower shaft, then cold.

When he blinked his vision back, the Bell lay in pieces.

It hadn’t shattered like glass. It had cracked along hairline fractures, coming apart like a broken eggshell. The metal looked…rotted, its once‑dark surface pale and crumbly.

Jonah stood beside it, flickering.

“Did we…do it?” Ethan croaked.

Jonah looked up at him, eyes clearer than before.

“You did,” he said. His smile was small but real. “You forced my hand. You did what I could not, all those years.”

He looked around as the church groaned, more chunks of ceiling falling.

“This place will not stand long,” he said. “The anchor is broken.”

“What about you?” Ethan asked.

Jonah’s form wavered.

“I think,” he said, “my correction is finally complete.”

He turned to Carla, who leaned against a tilting pew, coughing dust, gun still in hand.

“Tell them,” he said. “Tell the town. Not the stories. The truth. About what happened here. About what people did. About what I did.”

She met his gaze.

“I will,” she said.

Jonah nodded.

He began to come apart.

Not in pain, not in some horror‑movie disintegration. He simply…thinned. Like paper left in the rain. His edges blurred. The light in his eyes dimmed.

“Thank you,” he said.

Then he was gone.

The church’s front wall buckled.

“Time to go!” Carla yelled.

Ethan didn’t need telling twice.

He scrambled down the tower stairs, stumbling, lungs burning. He and Carla half‑ran, half‑fell out the front door as the roof caved in behind them with a roar.

Bear barked frantically, pulling at his leash. Cal shouted from the tree line.

Ethan and Carla dove behind the low rock wall at the edge of the clearing as the church on Hollow Ridge collapsed in on itself, sending a plume of dust into the night sky.

When the rumbling subsided, only a sagging rectangle of the front facade remained, like a stage set with nothing behind it.

The bell tower was gone.

The night was suddenly, profoundly quiet.

No humming. No singing.

No bell.

10. Aftermath

In the weeks that followed, Hollow Ridge became both less and more of a legend.

On the one hand, the physical church was no longer there. County inspectors declared the remaining facade structurally unsound; it was demolished within days. The rubble was hauled away. The land was fenced.

On the other hand, news traveled.

Not the version with ghostly congregations and dead preachers—that stayed between Ethan, Carla, and a handful of others who’d been in the clearing that night—but the story of a corrupt pastor, a dangerous obsession with confession, and a town that had turned a blind eye to abuse for too long.

Carla, true to her word, told the truth.

She dug through old records with Ethan, interviewing aging congregants who had never fully shaken their guilt. Together, they pieced together a narrative: Jonah’s rise, the Circle, the disappearances, the cover‑ups. They documented Mike Travers’ case in detail. They interviewed Miss Faye, who cried quietly describing the night the bell rang for her brother.

The article Ethan wrote was not for the Boston paper. It was for a regional outlet, then picked up by a national one. He titled it:

“The Bell That Bound a Town: How a West Virginia Church Turned Confession into Control—and How It Finally Broke.”

He did not mention supernatural humming or dissolving congregants. He did not need to. The human horror was enough.

But in a side column, almost a footnote, he included this line:

“On a clear night three weeks ago, at precisely 3:03 a.m., the church on Hollow Ridge collapsed. Residents report that, for the first time in thirty years, there was no bell.”

In Ashford, people slept easier.

Jesse Harrow started therapy. He still woke from nightmares sometimes, sweating, throat aching, but the rope burns faded. He got a small tattoo around his wrist a year later: three tiny lines, like an unbroken ladder.

Carla visited her brother’s grave every Sunday. She told him, out loud, what she’d done. What she was doing now. Her career took a hit for the frankness of the article—they didn’t like cops airing local dirty laundry—but she didn’t regret it.

Ethan stayed in Ashford longer than he’d planned.

His father’s health declined, but more slowly. They talked. For the first time in years, really talked.

“You should go see her,” his father said once, out of nowhere.

“Who?” Ethan asked.

“Your mother,” his father said. “Not the grave. The place where you remember her. You’ve been avoiding that, same way you avoided coming to the hospital.”

“I went,” Ethan said. “To the Hollow Ridge. To the Bell.”

“That’s town business,” his father said. “I’m talking about yours.”

Later that week, Ethan drove out to the old swimming hole by the river where his mother had taught him to float. He sat on the rocks and cried until the sun went down.

The next night, he slept through 3:03 a.m. for the first time in months.

11. Echoes

A year later, tourists began to trickle into Ashford.

At first, it was ghost hunters and thrill‑seekers, drawn by the article and the more lurid online rumors about “the collapsed cult church.” They took selfies at the fence line where the church had stood, oblivious to the “No Trespassing” signs.

“Could be worse,” Carla said, watching a group of college kids pose. “Could be a meth lab.”

“They’re walking on top of a mass hallucination,” Ethan said.

“Better than walking under a falling bell,” she replied.

He’d stayed. He wasn’t sure when that decision had solidified, but he’d found himself saying “we” when talking about Ashford more often than not.

He freelanced, wrote longer pieces, taught a journalism workshop at the community college. He helped his father into the car. He and Carla bickered and drank bad diner coffee and occasionally, tentatively, touched hands.

One crisp October afternoon, as they stood near the ridge with Bear sniffing at fallen leaves, Carla nudged him.

“Listen,” she said.

He frowned.

“I don’t hear anything,” he said.

“Exactly,” she replied.

No bell.

The silence felt…right. Not empty, but resting.

He took a breath.

“You ever wonder where it went?” he asked. “Whatever…that was. The thing in the Bell.”

“Honestly?” she said. “I hope it went somewhere it can’t find any more churches.”

He snorted.

“Maybe it dissolved,” he said. “Maybe it was just…a metaphor for our own bullshit all along.”

“Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe it found a new anchor. Different town. Different wound.”

They were quiet for a moment.

“You ever going to tell the whole story?” she asked suddenly. “The singing. Jonah. The…other stuff.”

He considered.

“Maybe one day,” he said. “When people are ready to hear the weird parts without forgetting the human ones.”

“And you?” she asked. “You ready?”

He thought of the Bell’s voice in his head, the weight of his confession, the way the pain had sharpened, then dulled, leaving something cleaner behind.

“Getting there,” he said.

He took her hand.

In the distance, the wind moved through the trees.

For just a second, on the edge of hearing, he thought he caught a familiar vibration—a deep, resonant note. Not a bell. Not exactly.

His chest tightened.

“Did you hear that?” he asked.

“Hear what?” Carla said.

He listened.

Nothing. Just wind.

“Nothing,” he said.

He lied.

Just a little.

And somewhere, very far away, in a town he would never see, at precisely 3:03 a.m., someone woke up, heart pounding, sure they had heard a bell ring three times in the dark.