The Bell Ringer of Cedar Hollow

My brother Carl always had a flair for the dramatic, but I never expected him to spend his first Christmas with us in Cedar Hollow, Vermont, looking like he’d seen the devil himself. It was December 24th, 2003, and we’d just moved into my mother-in-law’s old farmhouse after she passed. The house sat at the end of a long gravel road, surrounded by skeletal pines and a frozen pond. Carl, a city slicker from Boston, had driven up ‘to see the country,’ he’d joked. He’d been sleeping on the pull-out couch in the living room, while my husband, Tom, our four-year-old daughter, Lily, and I slept upstairs.

At around 2 AM, I woke to the sound of creaking floorboards. I assumed it was Carl getting a glass of water, but when I padded down the stairs, I found him sitting bolt upright on the couch, his face as white as the snow outside. His eyes were wide, locked on the spot near the old grandfather clock.

He whispered, ‘Miriam, there’s something here. I saw it, right there, floating, just a head and shoulders, staring right at me. I wasn’t dreaming.’

I tried to calm him, told him he’d had a nightmare, but he just shook his head. ‘You don’t understand. It was real. It felt like it was drilling into my mind.’

I told him to come sleep in our room, but he refused, insisting he’d be fine. I left him, but I couldn’t shake the unease. As I climbed back to my room, I noticed the grandfather clock had stopped at 2:13. The bell ringer, a brass figure of a hooded monk, seemed to be pointing directly at the couch. I knew that clock hadn’t worked in years.

The next morning, Carl was quiet, still pale. He kept glancing at the clock. I noticed a thin layer of dust on its face that hadn’t been there before. I wiped it off, but underneath, I found a small brass key, old and ornate. It was for the clock’s winding mechanism, which Tom had told me was missing when we moved in.

I mentioned it to Tom, who shrugged, ‘Maybe it was just hidden in the mechanism.’ But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. That afternoon, while Carl was out for a walk, Tom and Lily were in the kitchen, and I was alone in the living room, I heard a faint, metallic chime, like a tiny bell. It came from the clock. I stared at it, and the hands slowly moved to 2:13 again. The bell ringer seemed to stare back, its hooded face inscrutable.

I decided to investigate the clock’s history. I found a diary in my mother-in-law’s belongings. She had written about a ‘visitor’ who would occasionally appear in the house, especially around the holidays. She called it ‘the bell ringer,’ and she believed it was a guardian spirit, warning of death. She wrote of a night in 1991, when her husband, Tom’s father, died, she saw the same figure by the clock.

That evening, as Carl, Tom, Lily, and I sat by the fire, the clock began to strike 13. We all froze. The bell ringer’s eyes, which I’d always thought were just decorative, seemed to glow with a faint green light. Then, a cold draft swept through the room, extinguishing the fire. In the darkness, I heard Carl’s voice, but it wasn’t his normal voice. It was deeper, older, and it said, ‘He knows the truth.’

Tom turned on a flashlight. The clock was still, but Carl was slumped in his chair, pale, and barely conscious. He came to, but he seemed confused, asking where he was. We took him to the hospital, but they found nothing wrong.

The doctor attributed it to stress and exhaustion. We brought him home, but he insisted on leaving early, on Christmas Day, despite the snowstorm. He said he had to get back to the city. We tried to convince him to stay, but he was adamant. As he packed, I found him in the living room, staring at the clock.

He whispered, ‘It’s not a ghost, Miriam. It’s a warning. It’s been showing me things. Things that will happen.’ He pulled out that brass key. ‘It wants me to wind it. To set the time. But I’m afraid.’ I took the key from his trembling hand and wound the clock. The mechanism clicked, and the hands began to move backward, to 2:13 AM, the time of my father-in-law’s death.

That night, after Carl was gone, and Tom and Lily were asleep, I sat alone in the living room. The clock struck 2:13, and this time, the bell ringer stepped out of the clock. It was taller than I expected, over seven feet, robed in black. Its face was hidden in shadow, but I could feel its gaze. It pointed a long finger at the couch, and I saw a vision: a man, older, Tom, his face ashen, in that room, alone, a phone call from a hospital. I understood. The bell ringer was a foreteller of doom, but only for those who looked directly at it.

I never told Tom. I sold the clock at an auction, despite its eerie history. But sometimes, in the dead of night, I think I hear a faint chime, and I see the shadow of a hooded figure in the corner of my eye. And I wonder if the bell ringer only moved on to someone else, forever waiting to reveal the future, no matter how grim.