Echoes of the Bell

In 1967 in Cambodia, there lived a family on the outskirts of the city. They spent most of their time looking after their ill mother Mary, she had an unknown illness, and the family could not afford for her to stay in a hospital, her daughter Sara and her children Tony and Jaren looked after her while her husband Dean worked day and night to provide his family food and shelter.

Mary started ringing her bell and Sara asked her kids to take a look at her mother and see what her issue was, but Sara clearly saw that the boys were afraid to go up to their grandmother, so she decided to do it herself. Once she was in Mary’s room, Sara tried to calm her mother down, but to no avail. She rang her bell even harder and started convulsing while looking out the window.

That night Mary rang her bell and Tony went to check on her. He saw her sleeping, but the ringing was getting slower and further. Tony looked out the window and saw a shape resembling his grandmother in the depth of the woods. Then he saw that it was just from the flashlight of the nearby cemetery’s caretaker, when he looked back to her, she was standing in a corner and the bell started ringing again, he looked at the source of the sound, when he looked back, she was in the bed dead asleep.

He thought it was just a visage from the lack of sleep he had been getting and went back to bed. In the morning Jaren wanted to see his grandma but was shocked to see her tearing back her skin but stopped as soon as she saw him and went back to sleep. Jaren, worried, yelled to call her mother and father. When they reached Mary’s room, the door was stuck. The parents heard a shriek in the room and the door suddenly opened, and Mary went missing, the only thing left on the bed was the bell with the hammer removed. The window was left open, Sara looked down to the ground and there she saw her lying on the ground, dead.

After the funeral more strange events began to happen at the house. A painting of Mary was distorted in the hallway and when Tony saw it, he taught that it was just grease from when he tripped on the carpet with his soup in hand, so he went to the kitchen for a napkin to clean the glass, but to his disbelief, the painting was in perfect condition, but Mary was looking to the left instead of to the right. At night Jaren saw a distortion in the air in front of the picture, afraid, he threw his napkin towards it but it bounced off the shape. Screaming, he ran away, but when Tony looked back at the hallway, there was nothing. Luckily, Dean was offered a better salary in a different city near their hometown, so they moved out the next day.

Kun Tamás   X. H