The Hollow Beneath the Bell

A dead aunt's bequest draws a grieving archivist into a crumbling village where the bell tolls for the living, and something beneath the church has been listening for decades. Maren Ashworth hasn't set foot in Carrwood since childhood, but when a letter from the solicitior Eustace Pelling arrives bearing news of her aunt Edris's death and an unexpected inheritance, she has little choice but to return. The cottage is damp, the villagers watchful, and the church bell at Saint Ulric's rings at odd hours, always alone, never rung. Nell Trask, the sharp-tongued schoolteacher, warns her to ask no questions. Father Caius Merton, hollow-eyed and gaunt, mutters prayers in a language no one living remembers. Buried in Edris's belongings, Maren finds journals spanning forty years, entries that grow increasingly frantic as her aunt documents something that wears the faces of the dead, her own mother, the vanished Widow Crewe, children who left the village and never arrived. With each page, Maren realizes Edris wasn't mad; she was keeping watch. The bargain that sustained Carrwood for generations is unraveling, and the entity beneath the bell, patient, hungry, learning to mimic the voices of the loved ones it's consumed, has noticed the new keeper of the house. To save the village children, to honor her aunt's sacrifice, and to survive what Edris could not, Maren must descend into the hollow and confront the thing that has been wearing her family for far too long.