The Bell Beneath Blackwood

I gave Thomas no chance to object. I burst through the broken doorway, lunged into my truck, and jammed the transmission into drive. The wheels clawed at the iced-over dirt outside Elias’s house before they found the road.

Snow and bare timber smeared past the windshield on the way back to Arthur’s land. Heat poured from the vents, yet my body would not stop shaking. The bell kept swelling inside the cab, and so did the image of the dam coming apart.

I was not built for this. I was forty-five, a high school history teacher, and I had come to Wisconsin for the miserable little task of closing out my grandfather’s estate. I wanted a safe drive home, not a grave beneath a reservoir.

But whenever I pictured that enormous concrete barrier breaking open, I saw dark winter water swallowing the elementary school in the valley. I pressed the gas harder.

Bong.

The sound rolled through the truck, deeper and closer than before.

I swung into Arthur’s driveway and abandoned the vehicle with its engine running. Its headlights washed the snowy bluff in a pale beam as I raced behind the house and down the wooden stairway toward the shore.

The reservoir spread before me like an endless black wound under the storm. Far out on the ice, perhaps half a mile from land, a flashlight flickered beside an orange utility tent. Sarah and her fellow student were still there.

“Hey!” I shouted into the wind. “Get off the ice!”

My voice disappeared before it reached them.

I stepped from shore and ran across the frozen reservoir. The surface no longer felt trustworthy beneath my boots. It complained in long, shrill fractures, and the entire sheet seemed to flex under the violent pressure gathering below.

My feet slid out from beneath me. I hit hard on both knees, ripping the trousers of my funeral suit against rough ice. Pain flashed through me, but I forced myself upright and kept going.

Bong.

The strike came up through the ice and into my legs, jarring my teeth. I was halfway to the tent now. Sarah and the other student were cramming instruments into plastic carrying cases, finally understanding that their readings meant something worse than a research discovery.

“Run!” I yelled, waving both arms as I neared them. “Forget the equipment. The dam is failing!”

Sarah raised her head, white-faced beneath her lamp. “The acoustic readings have gone beyond anything we recorded,” she called. “The bedrock is breaking apart!”

“Head for the bluff,” I said, pointing toward Arthur’s house. “Get up those stairs and do not stop before you reach the top!”

The young man acted immediately. He seized Sarah’s arm, leaving the computer and seismic equipment where they lay, and together they fled across the ice toward shore.

I went on alone to the place where the old church square had once stood. Cracks laced the ice in every direction, overlapping like shattered glass. Beneath them, water heaved and moaned with the trapped fury of something alive.

I drew the gold pocket watch from my coat.

My hands shook so badly that the polished case nearly slipped free. I turned it over and saw the receiver needle driven all the way to the far edge of its dial. The signal could not have been stronger.

I was directly above Arthur’s emergency release.

The mechanism required only one thing from me. Pull the crown pin, then wind the hands until they reached twelve.

I looked back at the bluff. My truck’s headlights were two small pools of warmth against the vast night. I thought of my ordinary life, and of Arthur, quietly constructing this final safeguard while knowing it might someday demand his death.

He had endured decades of contempt because he chose to save people who believed he had betrayed them. Now his burden had arrived in my hands.

I inhaled, unsteady and sharp with cold. I caught the crown pin between my thumb and forefinger and started to pull.

Someone locked a hand around my wrist.

I gasped and turned.

Elias stood beside me, struggling for breath, clouds of vapor pouring from his mouth. He had no coat. He must have driven his old sedan down the access road and followed me onto the reservoir.

“Elias, what are you doing?” I shouted, wrenching at my arm. “Go back to shore. This ice is about to give way!”

He held on with astonishing strength. His gaze dropped to the watch and returned to mine. The furious old man from the church coatroom had vanished. In his place stood someone calm, almost relieved.

“My father sold out this town,” Elias said over the groaning ice, tears cutting down his weathered cheeks. “He accepted the money and left my mother and me behind before the flood. For sixty years, I blamed Arthur Vance for what my own father did. I cursed him every day.”

“Elias, we do not have time—”

“I know,” he broke in. “Arthur carried the hatred because it kept everyone alive. He bore it in silence for all of us. You should not have to die carrying it too.”

He covered my hand and the pocket watch with his own trembling, callused hands. “You still have a life ahead of you, son. All I have is a disgraced name and rooms full of empty boxes. Let me settle my father’s debt. Let me be the hero this town deserves.”

When the bell sounded again, Elias closed around my watch hand and readied himself to take my place.