Jeremiah’s Bell

Welcome to our regular feature showcasing the talents of the nation’s best writers.

The old woman stood on the jagged promontory, the strong wind catching her plaid shawl, sending it flapping round her shoulders. She drew it over her bony frame as she shivered in the late November chill. The sea was pale green, almost luminous in the gloom of the day. A storm had hit hard the previous night, and high above its tail was curling like a celestial whip ready to crack its full wrath against them once more before the next dawn.

The thrash of the tide crashed over the Barrel Rocks, calling to the ghosts of the many mariners who had perished on them through the ages; a desperate lament for the departed, ripped from the world like leaves from an autumnal bough, lost souls never to settle or rest, but to rot unremembered in the turbulent depths.

She hefted the bell in her right hand, and with no little difficulty swung it toandfro.thiswasfarfromacallto prayer; more like the summoning toll to children at play in the schoolyards of long ago. Its peal caught on the wind and the modulated chime cried plaintively against the tumult all around. Nonetheless, three figures stirred against the dark rocks and the washed lime sea, their ears long since attuned to the urgency of its call. Slowly, begrudgingly, they turned in the direction of the bell’s insistent demand, swaddled arms laden with driftwood bleached white like old bones by the unforgiving wuthering wind and waves.

Satisfied, the old woman let the bell swing loose in her bony hand, then turned for the weather-beaten cottage. She trod on, her worn boots sinking into the black soft cleft of the weed until the rough shingle afforded surer footing. A brief turn of her head was enough to register the lurching shapes close together in her wake, quite indistinguishable now, slouching forward, almost as one foul beast, headed for an ancient little town. ■