Jacob can’t see anything outside the boat, beyond the soft yellow glow from his shuttered lamp. The smoke-thick fog wafts around him, obscuring the lights from the shore and the stars from the sky. He pauses his slow, methodical rowing and listens.
Eventually, after a minute or two, he hears the clang of the bell on the buoy, shifting in the gentle swell to warn sailors of the nearby rocks. The bell, so recently installed by port authorities; the rocks, that so bounteously distribute riches to Jacob’s clan.
It had been Martha’s idea. If the bell was muffled then the rocks would still provide for them.
And so Jacob finds himself just offshore, rags and rope by his feet in the boat, listening for the buoy. On a second clang, he pulls on his oars and rows several long strokes and pauses, waiting for a third sounding. When it comes, he turns his head, confused. He must have passed it in the roiling darkness.
A bell’s clapper strikes in the invisible distance, but surely too far away to be the buoy?
Jacob ships his oars and calms his breathing. It’s just a matter of concentration and persistence. He closes his eyes and relies on his other senses, body feeling the bob and sway of the boat. He smells the familiar tang of salt and seaweed and listens for the bell.
He hears a faint scraping and tapping, like fingernails on wood.
Jacob opens his eyes wide and sees a skeletal hand gripping the starboard gunwale. A rag-wrapped shoulder and then a skull appears. Jacob springs up and backwards in fright only to topple over the port side, pulled down into the sea by the bony fingers of vengeful victims of the rocks.
The bell tolls once more.
I’m very pleased to have won First place with this piece in the Fosseway Writers Flash Fiction competition on the theme of “The Bell”. Huge thanks again to Anne Howkins for her work with the group and also to my wife, Sue, for coming up with the setting for this story.
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