Silver Bells
You were warned.
Everyone in town wore a necklace with a silver bell charm hanging from it. Some were fancy with delicate filigree and gems while others were plain. A few didn’t even have silver chains, just the bell dangling from a leather cord.
Whatever the case, everyone was gifted one at birth and wore it until they day they died. The only times you could ever remember actually taking it off were to replace the chain as you grew, and that was only for a little while. Just long enough for the charm to be slipped off the old chain and threaded onto a new one, then it was back around your neck again.
“I feel like a cat,” you complained — whined, really — once. “Always having a bell around my neck. Always jingling everywhere I go.”
You were seven. Knobby-kneed, gap-toothed, always disheveled and everywhere you went, you could hear that jingling. Whenever you were with your friends it sounded like a herd of reindeer coming through. Kind of neat during the holidays, absolutely awful the rest of the year.
“Why do we have to wear these anyway?”
Your mother smiled. Her necklace was fancier than a lot of people’s; three round bells on a sturdy silver chain with moonstones set between them. It had been her grandmother’s before her, and her mother’s before her, and so on. It’d be your sister’s one day.
That was fine. Not like you really wanted it anyway. One bell around your neck was bad enough; you couldn’t imagine what it’d be like with three.
“It’s to ward off bad luck, sweetie,” she said. “Evil is a funny thing; it hates the sound of bells. Sends it running for the hills, and silver burns it like hot coals. So long as you’re wearing yours, evil can’t touch you.”
There were a lot of things around town meant to keep evil at bay, from the way the church bells would ring out when the moon rose high, to the flowers that grew in droopy purple clusters that everyone warned children never to pick, and the weird grey-green herbs that old ladies kept that smelled like licorice and pine.
One time you took yours off. Left it at home. Wanted to see if anything would actually happen if you went a day without wearing it. Everything was fine at first. The sky didn’t turn dark. Nothing rose from the ground to drag you screaming into the darkness. You didn’t even stub your toe.
Everything was fine.
At least, it was until you saw the rabbit. A plump, fluffy little thing, probably had been eating good in Mrs. Turnbull’s garden. It was adorable, all brown and white with a wiggly pink nose.
And something in you wanted to chase it. Catch it. Tear into it with your teeth. Something wild and animalistic, a presence you’d never felt before.
The evil. It had to be. You didn’t have your bell and it found you.
You ran back home. Put on the necklace with fumbling fingers. Felt that wild presence go quiet again.
Never spoke about it to anyone.
Twenty years later, you’re without your necklace again.
No jingle. No familiar weight around your neck. Not that the necklace was particularly heavy, but its absence certainly is.
It’s gone.
Not just off for a minute or two, gone.
Your hands fly to your neck, searching. Maybe it’s just stuck under your shirt and not really lost. Maybe it’s still there.
No luck. All your fingers find is skin. No chain, no bell.
Maybe it’s still in the house? Might have fallen off somewhere; maybe the clasp broke after all these years or the chain snagged on something. It could happen. All you’ll need to do in that case is just slip the charm onto a new one and everything’ll be fine.
‘Everything will be fine’ becomes your mantra as you rifle through the drawers. As you scatter pens, pencils and papers everywhere. As you tear through your dresser drawers, hoping to find it among the socks or underwear or neatly-folded shirts. As you upend the silverware drawer on the off-chance it might be there.
Everything is not fine.
The closets? Not there either. Under the table or chairs? The bed? No such luck. In desperation you even dig through the trash and come up with nothing.
It’s nowhere in the house.
It might have fallen off outside. Got caught on something without you noticing, or maybe that damn clasp really did give way. That means it could be anywhere. In the street, in the gutter, on the floor in a shop somewhere.
It’s gone.
It’s gone.
It’s gone.
That same wild instinct that you felt so long ago stirs again, and as the full moon peeks above the trees, you finally understand why everyone in town wears a silver bell.
Fantastic! 👏
Werewolfs, anyone?
Well....its the entire town...
Maybe.