The Bell Chime in the Chalk Hills

My name is Elijah Whitehorse, and I’ve lived in the shadow of the Chalk Hills all my life. We’re not on a reservation, but my family has a plot of land out near the dry riverbeds, where the earth is pale and crumbles like old bones. The elders say the Chalk Hills are thin places, where the veil between worlds is worn through. I never paid much mind until I was seven, the summer my grandmother took me to gather herbs.

We were walking along the ridge, the sun baking the dust beneath our feet, when I heard it—a faint, silver jingle, like the tiny bells sewn onto the regalia at powwow. But there was no one around. The sound came from the direction of the Badlands, a twisted maze of gullies and spires that no one entered. I stopped, my heart quickening. Grandmother’s face went stern. She grabbed my arm, her fingers like iron. ‘Don’t listen, Elijah,’ she said. ‘That’s the Winage. They ring their bells to call the living into the earth. If you follow, you’ll wander forever.’ I looked back, and the sound seemed to beckon, sweet and hypnotic. But she pulled me away, and we hurried home, the bells fading until they were just a memory. That night, as I lay in my bed, I could still almost hear them, a faint chime at the edge of sleep.

We moved to the city soon after, to a cramped apartment in a building that creaked and groaned like an old ship. I was ten when the sounds started. At first, it was just the occasional crash and slam, as if furniture was being thrown. My mother, her face pale, said it was the spirit of a man who had died in the building, a suicide in the basement. He was buried in the walls, or so the rumor went. But it got worse. One night, I woke to see a black shape in the corner of my room. It was tall and thin, like a slice of darkness cut from the night itself. It stood motionless, staring at me. I tried to scream, but my voice was gone. It took a step closer, and the sound of its footfall was like dry leaves skittering. Then it was beside my bed, leaning over me. Its face was blank, but I felt its presence like a weight on my chest. It whispered, ‘Come with me.’ And I heard the bells again, faint but clear, as if they were just outside my window. I closed my eyes, praying, and when I opened them, it was gone. But the bells lingered for hours.

I told my mother, and she went rigid. She said, ‘You must never answer them, Elijah. They want to take you into the Stony Waste, where nothing grows and the wind sounds like crying. Your grandfather saw one once, and he said it was the shape of a man but with eyes like caves. He never stepped foot near the hills again.’ But the darkness followed me. It stood in doorways, watched me from mirrors, and sometimes at night I’d feel something brush my hair. I learned to ignore it, but it never really left.

Years passed, and I thought I was free. I moved to a small town near the coast, far from the Chalk Hills. But last week, I received a letter from my mother, who had moved back to the old family land after my grandmother died. The letter was frantic, written in trembling script. ‘Elijah, the bells are louder now. They never stop. Your grandmother’s ghost has returned—I see her in the garden, and she points to the hills. She wants me to follow. I’m afraid I will.’ The letter ended with a single line: ‘I hear them in my head. They are calling you too.’

I drove all night, the road a ribbon of black. When I arrived, the house was silent, dust motes dancing in the dim light. My mother’s car was there, but she was gone. On the kitchen table lay a note: ‘I’m going to find the source. I’ll be back by dawn.’ Dawn had passed a day ago. I searched the house, my heart pounding. In her bedroom, I found a journal. On the final page, she had written, ‘The bells are not in the hills. They are inside me. I was born with them, passed down from the beginning. We are the keepers of the pit.’ Below that, a rough sketch: a circle of stones near the dry riverbed, with an X marking the center.

I took a flashlight and walked out toward the Chalk Hills, the familiar dread rising. The sun was setting, casting long shadows. The dry riverbed was a maze of cracked mud and ancient bones. I found the circle of stones, half-buried, and in the center, a hole in the earth. It was just wide enough for a person to squeeze through. A cold wind blew from the hole, and I could hear, faint but unmistakable, the sound of bells. They were not in the hills. They were coming from beneath.

I knelt at the edge and peered in. I saw a faint light, and my mother’s voice echoed up, thin and reedy: ‘Elijah, come down. It’s beautiful here.’ I didn’t see her face, just her hand reaching up, ghostly pale. But my grandmother’s voice cut in: ‘No, Elijah! Run! She is not your mother anymore. She is the Winage now.’ I heard a scuffle, and then my mother screamed, a sound that turned to a laugh that was not human. I scrambled back, my heart racing. The bells grew louder, a mad jingle, and the ground shuddered. I turned and ran, not looking back, even as the earth crumbled behind me.

I drove away, leaving the Chalk Hills in my rearview. But the bells did not stop. They are in my head now, a constant chime, like the sound of a wind-up toy winding down. I know they will call me back, and I know one day I will answer. The pit is patient, and it has my mother. It has a piece of me now, too.