Do it, said the voice.

The doors gave with a loud, wood-cracking bust and swung open with a gothic creak. The demon laughed. Horace stepped into the vestibule and was greeted by the familiar musty scent of dust and pews and hymnals and cobwebs. To his left hung the rope for the church bell, and he remembered as a child the glee he felt each Sunday morning after Sunday school when his grandfather let him ring it to announce service.

Ring the bell.

Ring the bell? But it’s late.

I don’t give a shit, said the demon. Ring it.

As Horace approached the cord it began to sway ever so slightly, then to undulate in a serpentine fashion, and the end rose up, the knot opening to reveal long yellow fangs. Horace jumped back and gasped.

The voice chuckled. You’re such a fucking pussy. Ring the Goddamned bell!

When Horace grasped the rope he felt no animation there, just the old familiar touch of frayed cord that had hung from this roof, this church, this bell, for over fifty years.

He tugged and heard the telltale rumble from the belfry, the creak and groan of seemingly ancient wheels, gears, hitched poles, and he couldn’t imagine what else—who had ever seen up there? The bell sounded, true and clear. He tugged again. And again. It rocked of its own weight, the tone pealing and rippling high above him, the great wrought ornament rocking, rocking, making such a ruckus, making the whole church quake, making Horace think, as it always did, that it might fall at any minute.

Stop. Stop. Enough.

Horace released the rope that swung back and forth, slower and slower as the clanging overhead diminished, its echo reverberating in his head, and he suddenly remembered that people in the community, those who were not lost in dreams of labor or lust or long-lost loves, might have been awakened and perhaps wondered, Who’s that ringing that bell at this hour of the night?

Go in.

Horace pushed through the doors to the sanctuary and walked inside. The sanctuary of Tims Creek was grafted to Horace’s memory as strongly as his home or the look of his face in the mirror, but he just could not remember the walls gleaming quite so white, or the carpet that led down the aisle to the pulpit being quite so red, or the oak pews for the congregation to be polished with quite that glossy a finish—and the pews were full, all of them, crammed with more people than Horace had memory of ever seeing. They were singing:

Lead me, guide me

along the way

Lord if you lead me,

I will not stray

Lord let me walk

each day with thee

Lead me, O Lord

Lead me.