The bell at Grace Methodist hadn't rung in eleven years. So when it rang at midnight on a Wednesday, half of Pine Hollow sat straight up in bed.
Pastor Sam Greer was one of them.
He lived in the little parsonage next door to the church. He was out the door in his slippers and his old Marine Corps sweatshirt before the third ring. By the time he got the side door unlocked and climbed the narrow stairs to the bell tower, the ringing had stopped.
The rope was still swinging.
Nobody was there.
Everyone in Pine Hollow knew the story of the bell. They learned it in third grade from Ruth Ann Mercer.
In January of 1937, after weeks of rain, Hollow Creek came over its banks in the middle of the night. The water rose so fast that families on Creek Road didn't have time to get out. So the pastor's son and the sexton took turns on the bell rope, and they rang it for six hours straight. Every family on Creek Road made it to high ground. Every single one.
After that, they called it the flood bell.
Eleven years ago, an engineer from Columbus had climbed the tower and said the old beams were too weak. One more good swing of that bell, he said, and it might come right down through the roof. The church had been raising money to fix it ever since. They were about halfway there. Bake sales take a long time.
Since then, nobody had touched the rope. It was tied off to a hook on the wall with a sign that said DO NOT RING.
When Sam shined his flashlight on the hook, the knot had been untied.
Neatly. Carefully. The way you untie something you've untied a hundred times before.
By breakfast, it was all anybody at Dot's could talk about.
Teenagers, said the men at the counter. Some prank for social media.
The wind, said someone else, though there hadn't been any wind.
"It's the ghost of old Reverend Combs," said one of the glass works men, and winked, and two ladies in the corner booth did not think that was funny at all.
Earl Whitaker drove by the church and checked the doors. No sign anybody had broken in. The side door had a lock that was older than Earl, but it still worked.
Sam tied the rope off again, double knot this time, and went to bed.
On Saturday, at midnight, the bell rang again.
Sam was faster this time. He'd been sleeping in his clothes. He was on the stairs before the fifth ring. He heard the rope creak. He heard the bell swing overhead, heavy and slow, and the old beams groaned under it in a way that made his stomach drop.
Then the ringing stopped. Just as he reached the top of the stairs.
Empty. The rope still swinging. The knot untied again.
And this time, at the bottom of the tower, the side door was standing wide open to the night.
Sam stood in the doorway and looked out at the empty street. The streetlight buzzed. It had started to rain, a cold, steady November rain.
He'd been a Marine for eight years before he ever became a pastor. He didn't believe in ghosts.
But he believed in that groan in the beams. One more night of this, and somebody was going to get hurt.
So on Sunday night, after the last light went out in town, Sam Greer sat down in the dark at the top of the bell tower, with his back against the wall and a flashlight in his lap, and he waited.
At 11:56, he heard the side door open below.
Then slow footsteps on the stairs. Coming up.