"The Bells of Ossendrecht"

Fog clung to rooftops as a shroud over a coffin, dampening sound, vision, and sensibility. Out of the murk, a bell tolled a low, mournful chime that submerged in the fog like pebbles in profound water. There were no singing birds. Nobody strolled. Only that empty clang ringing out through the village, bouncing off unseen surfaces. Ossendrecht held its breath.

Venessa Sampolski leaned towards the passenger window, tracing her breath along the cold glass. Wind curled fingers along the roof of the rental vehicle outside. Ahead of them, a Gothic spire pierced the grayness like the tip of a rusty blade. Warinya Waree drove carefully, hands tight on the steering wheel as tires skirted cobblestones glazed with dew. Flanking them were the brick-and-timber houses, windows shut tight as if holding firm against something unwelcome.

"They toll them like prayers no one dares to answer," Vanessa breathed, opening a creased leather notebook on her knee. Warinya gave her a smirk, eyes fixed straight ahead. "Or warnings," she added.

The church slowly materialized out of the mist, a jagged outline, its tower broken and weathered. But the bell still swung. Its wail echoed over rooftops, then faded into silence.

At the alleyway's mouth, a row of children stood and held candles. White and unblinking little faces stared at the church without a sound. Their lights never trembled. No gust of air disturbed the light. The braid of a girl rested heavy and soggy, eyes staring at something distant, something beyond the veil of fog.

Venessa stepped out of the car. Her heels clicked once on the cobblestone pavement before the fog swallowed the noise. The children all turned simultaneously. Blank faces froze her with a stillness that left her breathless. A figure appeared from the haze of candlelight.

He had on gray robes that swept along the stone. Bearded, his eyes as cold as frozen puddles. A bronze medallion hung around his neck, inscribed with two crossed keys behind the skull of a lamb, the metal weathered dark by time. He smiled thinly, the smile narrow, it never reached his eyes. He had stitched symbols on his sleeves: Jacobite in shape, but altered, rewritten as if in code.

Warinya arrived, camera slung over her shoulder. She gazed at the symbols, grumbling in Thai, "Not Catholic. Something else."

"Something rewritten," Venessa said, watching the man turn silently and move toward one of the side doors of the church. The children followed him, still carrying their flames. None flickered. None died.

They stepped into the darkness silently. The town square was a postcard frozen-in-time bakery, bike shop, and florist with bright windows and freshly swept sidewalks. But inside those windows, curtains whispered. A butcher stopped in mid-sweep as they passed, a broom suspended in his hands. No one glanced at them.

They stepped into a small café with a creaking red wooden sign above: De Groene Belofte.

Within was the smell of fresh bread and soggy coats. A blonde girl about Vanessa's age poured two cups of coffee silently. When Vanessa took her own, she noticed a small tattoo on the girl's wrist, a candle sketched within a circle like a small sun. She couldn't ask before the girl vanished behind the beaded curtain. A door slammed shut.

They sat in the window. Warinya opened her journal, the empty pages wrinkled at the corners. Venessa started through the glass. No children anymore. No candlelight. The church tower still rose above the rooftops. But its silence screamed.

"I think we found it," Warinya breathed, pen scratching paper. "Found what?" asked Venessa. "The beginning.".

Whispers followed them all day. Locals gazed at them from doorways. A green-coated woman circled the square twice. A man stacking wood dropped his bundle when the camera peered out of Vanessa's bag. Words were erased when they walked by, eaten by glances.

At a local bookstore, Warinya returned with an armful of materials and an absence.

No church documents, she answered. "No weddings, no baptisms. Not even architectural drawings. As if the building did not exist twenty years before."

"Buildings don't just appear out of thin air," Vanessa complained, drawing her fingers across an iron railing slick with moss.

In the background of the churchyard, headstones leaned like drunkards, their inscriptions erased by time. One was nameless, a single flame incised into it housed in a single circle. Venessa lifted the camera and snapped. The lens fogged up.

As sunset fell, mist thickened, accumulating into a wall. Lanterns along the main road twinkled, their light casting strange shadows on the pavements. Far away, the spire of the church glinted in and out of view like an illusion. They were facing a worn iron gate.

"Locals said this was the old bakery road," Warinya whispered. "It's been deserted for over ten years."

A farmhouse leaned over the border of the forest. Shutters hung loose, ivy wrapped around its beams like fingers. A wooden swing creaked on the porch. No wind. No movement. But the door was open.

Venessa moved ahead. Leaves crunched under her boot. a sound, soft, as held breath between breaks in the earth. It surged up at them, level with their feet. A whisper. Layered, layered over. Not up. Down. Warinya remained unmoving. Venessa lifted her camera. The flashlight lit the second floor. A figure poked out from the window upstairs, blinked, and was gone.

Venessa was paralyzed in the window, camera dangling from her hand, lens aimed at the table but recording nothing. Rain came down harder now, not a storm, but steady fingers tapping on a coffin lid. She made eye contact with the girl across the street. Her damp hair stuck to her face in strings beneath the yellow streetlight, and her café apron hung around her wet bulk. But she didn't move. Didn't blink. Her lips repeated the same words in a silent mantra: "Don't dig deeper.".

Warinya trailed after her, following her line of vision. Her breath hitched. "That's the same girl," she stated. "The one with the candle tattoo." She was watching when we departed," Vanessa whispered, pulling her notebook to her. The words within it scribbled while under the ground, now seemed more like confessions than notes. "She knows something. Perhaps she's one of them.".

Warinya didn't respond. Her fingers brushed across the Bible picture on her phone, zooming in on the mark of the flame inscribed on the cover. It was the same medallion the figure in the robes had on earlier. Same flame.

Same circled enclosure. But also, carved deeper here, there were smaller markings nestled under the symbol, almost tooth-like. She turned to the picture of the trapdoor, squinting. On the perimeter of the slab, cut into the stone floor, were corresponding tooth-shaped notches. Not ornamentation. Locks. Ritualistic boundaries. Something designed to keep a thing in, not out.

Below, the innkeeper shuffled by the hall. The floorboards overhead creaked. A faint, muffled sound of a slow and cautious closing of a door echoed through the floor. Warinya's frown intensified. "You don't think we were followed, do you?"

"No," Vanessa replied slowly, looking away from the window. "I think. I think they were always ahead of us."

She stuffed the camera into her satchel, closed it in a single decisive snap. "We return to the church tomorrow."

"The church?" Warinya's eyebrow rose. "You want to enter the lion's den?"

Venessa's lips tightened, her eyes inscrutable. "I am not scared of the lion," she said. "I'm scared of the quiet. The way this town just sits and listens as if waiting for something. I have to know what." The girl stepped out onto the exterior.

The fog had intensified by morning. The breakfast table at the inn was still untouched. Coffee sat in half-filled cups, growing cold. One boiled egg per plate, still intact. Warinya felt hers and made a face. "Still warm." "As if I just left," Vanessa said.

They got dressed silently, gathered their things, and stepped out into Ossendrecht's damp morning stillness. The square was empty once more. No one even half-glimpsed behind lace curtains. Nobody was sweeping her stoop. No dogs barking. Just the bell tower looming, its shadow thrown like a sword through the mist.

The church doors stood open this time.

It smelled like wax and old paper inside, mildew heavy under incense. Pews marched off into the darkness in rows. The altar was bare, no crucifix, no saints, no stained glass. In its place, a stone arch loomed on the rear wall, carved in symbols from the bones under the farmhouse. Circles within circles. Crossed lines. The spiral.

From either end of the arch hung iron sconces bearing candles that were already lit, the flames impossibly still. As they approached, the light grew colder, blue-ish, quivering not with wind but something unseen. Venessa ran her fingers along the back of a pew ash ash-gritty on the wood. When she pulled back, it stuck to her skin like soot. She rubbed it into her jeans.

There was a half-opened secret door behind the altar. Low, narrow. They passed through.

The path through was cut into bedrock. Damp, cold. Claustrophobic. At the far end was a chamber, a round room with rotting tapestries hung all around, all showing the same thing: a shadowy figure, haloed in fire, standing over kneeling villagers. In every one, the villagers presented something: bones, blood, candles, keys. And in every one, the figure was faceless.

Venessa spun slowly, examining each tapestry. "They've been doing this for generations." "Or more," Warinya said, holding up her phone. "This symbol here it pre-dates modern Christianity. Way older." Venessa moved to a stone pedestal in the center of the room. On it was a rusty key beside a small pile of charred photographs. She picked one up. Distorted faces. Kids. Structures. All charred beyond recognition. Beneath them, carved deep into the pedestal, was a single word: Ephod. "What does it mean?" Warinya whispered.

Venessa shook her head. "A priest's old clothing. But it's more than that. Some people say it was a medium, a bridge between God and humanity. Perhaps. perhaps between something else."

Before they might speak once more, a noise moved behind them. Not footfalls. Not a door opening. Breathing. Deep. Wet. Animals. Warinya spun around, camera held up. Flash. Nothing. They stood still, pressed against the plinth, shallowly holding their breath. Then, and from the very wall itself, a voice never spoken, only written in sound. A one-word phrase, not in Dutch, 

nor English. But somehow, they recognized what it stated nonetheless. "The bells do not warn. They remember." Then silence. No whisper. No breath. Even the candles stilled. They fled the room in silence, boots clanging too loudly in the hallway. By the time they emerged into the main church once more, the pews were filled. Men. Women. Children. All in gray. All silent. The man in the robe, arms spread wide, medallion flashing in the candlelight, stood at the front. His eyes met Vanessa's. He smiled. And at the altar, the bell started ringing out. Not twice. Nor thirteen times. Just once. No, thirteen.