The Bargain
219 Words
They found the groundskeeper, Mr. Finch, an old man who'd worked at Ashwood longer than anyone could remember, and who — it turned out — had been waiting for someone to finally ask him the right question.
"The bell doesn't take students," he told them, seated in his cluttered shed with a kettle whistling on a hot plate that seemed decades older than the building itself. "The bell takes a debt. Ashwood was built on land that wasn't given freely. Every forty years, the old agreement needs renewing, or the whole hill remembers what it's owed."
"Renewing how?" Mira demanded.
Finch's eyes, milky with age, moved between the two of them. "Two who see clearly. Two who choose to stay when the clock reaches zero, instead of running. That's all it's ever taken. Not a sacrifice. A choice."
"And if we run?" Theo asked.
"Then it takes what it's owed anyway. Just not from someone who agreed to it." Finch's voice dropped. "In '46, one boy ran. His younger sister didn't graduate that year. In '86, nobody ran — the two who saw it through are still alive, still send this old fool a Christmas card every year."
Outside, the wind picked up, and the bell tolled once more, closer now, more insistent, like something impatient.
Five days left.
- Writer
