We Found a Bell in the Floorboards

Chapter 1: Srange Music

The first strange thing I found in the apartment was a small silver bell wedged beneath the floorboards.

It happened three days after my daughter and I moved in. I was carrying a box into the master bedroom when one of the floorboards shifted beneath my heel. The building was old, and I had already learned to ignore its noises—the sigh of the pipes, the soft cracking of wood after sunset, the windows rattling when trucks passed on the road.

Still, I knelt and pressed the loose board.

Something beneath it gave a faint, delicate ring.

I used a butter knife to lift the edge. Under the board lay a bell no bigger than the end of my thumb. It was black with age except for a thin silver line around its middle. There was no handle, only a loop of dark wire.

When I shook it, it made no sound.

My daughter, Lucy, was five then. She stood in the doorway wearing one red sock and one yellow one, watching me with serious eyes.

“What is it?”

“Nothing important,” I said.

“Is it from Christmas?”