We Found a Bell in the Floorboards

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.

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Nimra Khan — original fiction published on RapidTale.