deep water. That sight brought Holly to a stumbling halt; she almost
went to her knees as gravel rolled under her feet.
When the bells fell silent, the crimson light in the pond was
immediately snuffed out. The water was much darker now than when she
had first seen it in mid-afternoon. It no longer had all the somber
hues of slate, but was as black as a polished slab of obsidian.
The bells rang again, and the crimson light pulsed from the heart of the
pond, radiating outward. She could see that each new bright blossom was
not born on the surface of the water but in its depths, dim at first but
swiftly rising, almost bursting like an overheated incandescent bulb
when it neared the surface, casting waves of light toward the shore.
The ringing ceased.
The water darkened.
The toads along the shoreline were not croaking any more. The
evermurmuring world of nature had fallen as silent as the interior of
the Ironheart farmhouse. No coyote howl, no insect cry, no owl hoot, no
bat shriek or flap of wing, no rustling in the grass.
The bells sounded again, and the light returned, but this time it was
not as red as gore, more of an orange-red, though it was brighter than
before.
At the water’s edge, the feathery white panicles of the pampas grass
caught the curious radiance and glowed like plumes of iridescent gas.
Something was rising from the bottom of the pond.
As the throbbing luminescence faded with the next cessation of the
bells, Holly stood in the grip of awe and fear, knowing she should run
but unable to move.
Ringing.
. brighter Light. Muddy-orange this time. No red tint at all more
than ever.
Holly broke the chains of fear and sprinted toward the windmill.
On all sides, the palpitant light enlivened the dreary dusk.
Shadows leapt rhythmically like Apaches dancing around a war fire.
Beyond the fence, dead cornstalks bristled as repulsively as the spiny
legs and plated torsos of praying mantises. The windmill appeared to be
in the process of changing magically from stone to copper or even to
gold.
The ringing stopped and the light went out as she reached the open door
of the mill.
She raced across the threshold, then skidded to a stop in the darkness,
on the brink of the lower chamber. No light at all came through the
windows now. The blackness was tarry, cloying. As she fumbled for the
switch on the flashlight, she found it hard to draw breath, as if the
darkness itself had begun flowing into her lungs, suffocating her.
The flashlight came on just as the bells began to ring again. She
slashed the beam across the room and back, to be sure nothing was there
in the gloom, reaching for her. Then she found the stairs to her left
and rushed toward the high room.
When she reached the window at the halfway point, she put her face to
the pane of glass that she had wiped clean with her hand earlier in the
day.
In the pond below, the rippling bull’s-eye of light was brighter still,
now amber instead of orange.
Calling for Jim, Holly ran up the remaining stairs.
As she went, lines of Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry, studied an age ago in
junior high school and thought forgotten, rang crazily through her mind:
Keeping time, time time, In a sort ofRunic rhyme, To the
tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells bells bells,
bells, Bells, bells. bells She burst into the high room, where Jim
stood in the soft winter-white glow of the Coleman gas lantern. He was
smiling, turning in a circle and looking expectantly at the walls around
him.
As the bells died away, she said, “Jim, come look, come quick,
something’s in the lake.”
She dashed to the nearest window, but it was just far enough around the
wall from the pond to prevent her seeing the water. The other two
windows were even more out of line with the desired view, so she did not
even try them.
“The ringing in the stone,” Jim said dreamily.
Holly returned to the head of the stairs as the bells began to ring