Knell

You are the last bellkeeper of a plague-dead parish. Each night you climb the tower and ring the passing bell for the dead, as the office demands. But the bell has begun calling something back. Now every night is a vigil: survive from the first toll until the matins bell at dawn — twenty minutes of dark, and everything in it wants your candle out. The plague took the parish. Not slowly, and not in any order that let the dead be buried properly — there were pits, and there were pyres, and afterwards there was nobody left to ring for anyone. Only the bell remembers them now, and the bell must be kept. A passing bell is rung as a soul leaves the body, to say: pray now. This one has begun calling something back instead. Every night the dead rise to silence it, and every night one keeper stands in the churchyard between them and the rope. A keeper's life is a lit candle; the dead do not wound you, they gutter you. When the wick fails, the vigil ends. The slain give up the lights that were lit for them. Gather those, lay them to rest, and grow strong enough to last the hour — because the night sends its officers in turn. At the tenth toll the Verger comes, who kept order in processions in life and keeps it still. At the twentieth, the Congregation: a golem pressed together out of the ash of everyone who ever prayed here. Survive until matins, the first prayer of dawn, and the bell has been kept one more night. Sweep up the ash at the end and the parish is restored by a little. Then the sun goes down again.