Another gothic tale

          I enjoy writing in the gothic genre. This story, 327 words, was published on a site that calls itself 330words and is devoted to flash fiction.

Edinkillie Churchyard. (I can't find a tomb with a bell in this area.)

                                                          The Bell

Emily rubbed her belly gently, smiling as she thought of the child growing in her. Somewhere in the night a bell tolled twice. Comfortable in her silken sheets she slept again.

In his lonely mansion on the edge of the moor Sir Edward lay sleepless thinking of his wife. He heard a small bell toll in the distance.

Emily roused once more from fitful slumber. She tried to refrain from fidgeting for fear of disturbing her dear husband but her mouth was dry and her head full of feathers. She raised a hand to reach for the carafe of water by her bed and heard the bell toll again. Her hand felt heavy. Something dragged at her wrist. Exhausted she dropped it back to her side. 

‘It is as though I have taken a sleeping draught,’ she thought drowsily, ‘Perhaps I did, but I do not remember doing so.’ She slept again.

Edward heard the bell and leapt out of bed dragging on his quilted dressing gown. His heart raced and his palms were wet. He threw back the curtains and stared into the night. The church spire rose above the village, a blacker blade piercing the black of the moonless night, touching the stars. Was she now amongst them?

‘I am maddened by grief,’ he thought and, sighing heavily, lay back on his bed.

After his collapse at the graveside the doctor had given him a powder to take to bring sleep, but he would not allow himself such comfort when his beloved lay cold in her grave. He tossed fretfully, the images chasing him from oblivion. Emily in her satin-lined casket. The child inside her already making a roundness to her loved form. Her face had been peaceful, but no longer that of his mischievous, teasing darling. 

Finally he succumbed. He added the powder to the water in the flask by the bed. This pain was unbearable. He must have respite for a few hours. Whilst he waited for the opiate to take effect he tried to comfort himself with the excellence of the oaken coffin he had chosen for her, fully sealed against the depredation of worms and the corrupting air. The next time the bell tolled he could no longer hear it.