They were whispering over Madge.
Mimi felt Madge’s body grow rigid; heard her voice, hoarse and half choked.
“Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty——”
“If she thinks she hears a bell ringing, she’s goofy,” Betsy whispered. She tapped her forehead as she finished and made a spinning gesture with her hands.
Madge sat up as suddenly as she had flopped down. She clutched Mimi’s wrist on one side and Betsy’s on the other.
“They’ve stopped!” she announced dramatically, but in the same breath added piteously, “but they’ll come back. They always do. Once they start, I always hear them—until somebody dies.”
Betsy was dumbfounded. Mimi was speechless.
“What do they sound like?” Betsy asked, moving closer to Madge. She wriggled around in front of her and the disturbed look on Madge’s face convinced her that whatever death bells were, Madge believed in them heart and soul.
“They don’t ring. I don’t know why they’re called bells at all unless they started calling them that way back when people used to toll the bell on the tower of the church when someone died. They’re mournful like that but more like a dull thud. When I first used to hear them, before Granny and Mama told me what they were, I thought someone was under the floor thumping with the end of a broomstick or tapping with a hammer which had a piece of cloth tied over the hammer head. They go thump, thump, thump, just as regular as that.”
Neither Mimi nor Betsy could utter a word by now. Mimi felt that if she moved as much as an inch things would crack and pop or icy hands would seize her from behind. She tried to tell herself this was tommyrot, but look at Madge. She was holding her head and counting again.