Day 391

Every village has its own quirks and ours was to carry a bell with you in case of trouble.
It was rare to hear a bell go off but when one did the person ringing it was either dead or dying.
The gravediggers lived in fear of hearing bells at night when they checked the graveyard's fences.
Its never been said of those fences were meant to stop animals getting in or ringers getting out.

The vicar won't say, too busy prophesying some great disaster he's seen in his sleep.
A landslide will see the whole congregation ruined but for the church and graveyard several miles away.
No one shall be safe and the bells shall ring louder and angrier than our Great Lord Almighty's voice!
It wasn't the first time he'd had one of these doomsday dreams, the last one was a flood.
Can you imagine our little hilltop village being flooded?

When the birds all flew away one morning in great swarms,we thought he might be onto something.
He definitely took it as a sign and spent every day screaming in church for us to repent.
It only got worse when the first tremors came, it was like the ground was vibrating.
Half the village went into a religious frenzy but most went to secure their homes as if that would help.
I remember the news would later say that a 7.4 scale earthquake in our area had never happened before.

A scale 7.4 earthquake should have been impossible, we were so far away from any fault lines.
It was localised too, nowhere else felt it apparently and were it not for the village's destruction they'd
never believe us either, even now I can hardly believe it.
Every house had been shaken to pieces, a whole community utterly destroyed with less than ten survivors.
What makes it worse is the constant ringing with no apparent source, the media won't report it.

The few who survived had spent the quake in the church, trembling under the alter.
They refused to go near the village for fear that the ringing dead would come for them and finish the job.
Maybe we were all meant to die then, it certainly feels like it sometimes.
The guilt is the worst part, hearing their bells and not being able to see or help them.
Knowing that whole they were slowly crushed to death we were safe.

Why did the quake only strike that village and more importantly how?
The vicar went back to pray for the dead and beg their souls to leave for heaven or hell.
When he came back he was bone thin and mute, that night the last thing he did was ring his bell.
they found him in the morning, body crushed and mutilated, bell clutched in his shredded hand.
Whatever caused that quake is coming for us all, the bells are always close by.