“Get him an aspirin.”
“Do something!”
Morty crashed into a pew and went down to his knees. “Heart attack!” he said, crawling to the middle of the church. “I’m dying. Somebody help me. I see the tunnel with the light at the end.”
Everyone, including Glo, was crouched around Morty.
“Loosen his clothes,” someone said.
“Let the cutie do it,” Morty said.
I was staring, open-mouthed, at the scene in the middle of the church, and Diesel slung an arm around me.
“He isn’t really having a heart attack, is he?” Diesel asked.
“No. They were about to take a tour group into the crypt. This was the best we could come up with on short notice.”
Diesel had his bulging backpack hung on one shoulder. “I have the bell. You need to rescue Morty before the paramedics show up and take him for a ride.”
I inserted myself into the crowd and stared down at Morty. “You look a lot better now,” I said to him. “You’ve got good color back in your face. I think the heart attack must have passed. I’ve got Dr. Diesel waiting to check you out.”
“Dr. Diesel’s here?” Morty asked.
“Yep.”
Morty got to his feet. “I don’t see the tunnel no more. I must be all healed. In fact, now that I’m thinking about it, I might have had gas.”
“Appreciate your concern,” I said to the tour group, grabbing Morty by the arm. “Thanks so much for your help. I’ll take it from here.”
“I’ll help get him to Dr. Diesel,” Glo said, on Morty’s other arm. “Thanks a bunch,” she called over her shoulder. “Have fun on your tour.”
Diesel was already on the sidewalk when we whisked Morty out the door. A Boston Police car turned onto the street, lights flashing, and we put our heads down and marched off in the opposite direction.
“I should get an Academy Award for that,” Morty said. “It’s a shame we didn’t get to record it. I should be on one of them doctor shows where people die every week. I was an accountant for forty-five years. What was I thinking? I should have been a movie star.”
We walked down Salem Street, turned onto a side street, and happened upon a small deserted park. We sat on a bench and looked around. No police. No one paying any attention to us.
“What was it like down there?” I asked Diesel.
“Cramped. Nothing fancy. Mostly brick walls with burial chambers sealed behind cement and small metal doors. Cement floor freshly painted. Fortunately, Duane’s tomb wasn’t completely cemented over, and the bell was right up front behind the door.”
“Was there anything written on the bell?”
“I didn’t see anything when I grabbed it.”
Diesel pulled the bell out of his pack and held it out for us to see.
“Are you sure you want to bring the bell out in the open like this?” I asked him.
“There’s no reason why anyone would suspect this bell came from the church. I put the door back in place, and it should be okay unless someone knocks up against it. With the exception of a little dust on the floor, there’s no reason to suspect anything weird happened.”
We all studied the bell inside and out, but we didn’t see any message. Diesel swished the bell back and forth.
“Touch it,” Diesel said to me. “See if it’s holding energy.”
I put my hand to the bell. “It’s warm,” I said. “And it vibrates under my touch. I can’t say if it’s imprinted with a message, but I can tell you it has abnormal energy.”
“Maybe you have to play all nine of the bells for the message to surface,” Glo said.
Glo was totally into this. Morty was along for the ride. And it was hard to tell what Diesel was thinking. On the one hand, I was having a hard time believing that ringing nine bells would produce a magical message. But then on the other hand, it didn’t seem so far removed from television, the Internet, and microwave cooking. Technology and magic were closely aligned in my brain.
“Okay,” Diesel said. “Let’s go back to the church. I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around a message magically appearing on this bell, but I haven’t anything better to contribute.”
We went back to Salem Street and walked several blocks to the church. I went in first and looked around. The church seemed to be empty. No tour group. No docent. I motioned for everyone else to come in.
“Now what?” I said.
“There’s a bell-ringing room,” Glo said. “Upstairs somewhere.”
“I’m game,” Morty said. “Let’s ring some bells.”
I looked up at the balcony and beyond. “I hate to be the voice of reason, but I’m sure the bell-ringing room is in the bell tower. There’s going to be a long staircase up, and once we ring the bells, that staircase will be crawling with people coming to investigate.”
“I know you can bend a spoon,” Diesel said to Morty. “How are you with heavy metal? Can you get the bells to ring?”
“Not my gig,” Morty said. “I’m strictly a bender. You need someone who could throw a Volkswagen.”
The sounds of footsteps and conversation drifted out from the side of the church and the tour group emerged. The docent spotted Morty and gave a gasp of surprise. She left the group and walked over to us.
“Is he all right?” she asked.
“He’s fine,” I said. “He just needed his medication.”
“That was a fright,” she said. “I’m surprised to see you back here.”
“The truth is, we’re fascinated by the bells,” I said. “We were hoping there was a way we could hear them ring.”
“They rang during practice yesterday,” she said, “but they won’t ring again until Sunday.”
“We’ll be gone by then,” I told her. “Isn’t there some way we could hear them today?”
“You can hear them electronically. We have an interactive display in the gift shop, and you can also hear them online if you go to the bellringers’ website.”
“Thanks,” I said. “We’ll try the gift shop.”
“So happy to hear you’re feeling better,” she said to Morty. And she returned to her group.
We left the church and walked next door to the gift shop. The interactive display was next to shelves of miniature bells, books about the bells, and CDs. The display on the touch screen showed eight bells and gave a description of each one. I touched bell number one and it played a bell tone. The tone for number two was slightly different. There were several people browsing in the store. No one looked our way.
Diesel took the bell out of his pack and held it in front of the display. “Play all eight of the bells,” he said to me.
I played the bells on the screen, and we watched Duane’s bell.
“Anybody see anything?” I asked.
Everyone shook their heads no.
Diesel made the bell
I had Glo’s drawing with me. I pulled it out of my pocket and looked at it. “The bells aren’t numbered consecutively,” I said. “The number three bell gets played first.”
I played the bells according to the napkin, Diesel clanged Duane’s bell, and we all held our breath as words appeared on the bell.
Glo pulled a pen out of her tote bag, copied the message onto the back of a gift shop brochure, and gave it to me.
“That was weird,” Morty said.
Not so much, I thought. Weird was my new normal.
