"Grandma, look!" the dark-haired girl exclaimed. "A bell!"
Bridget and her grandmother were taking their weekly walk in the woods. The bell was sitting in the crook of a tree branch well within Bridget's reach.
"Don't touch it, Bridget!" her grandmother yelled with an urgency in her voice that Bridget had never heard before. Bridget froze, not knowing what was wrong.
"Come here, my dear," Grandmother said in a kindly voice, opening her sun-darkened arms to the startled and confused girl.
"Why can't I play with the bell?" the brown-eyed six-year-old asked.
"Sweetheart, it is a widely-known piece of wisdom that I am about to pass on to you. If ever you find a bell in the woods, you should never ring it! Your great-aunt Hildegard did, and she was cursed for it."
"What happened?" Bridget gasped.
"She came home screaming that she had rung a bell and caused the dead to rise."
"She woke the dead?" Bridget asked fearfully.
"She lost her mind, child. She was seeing things that weren't there. Then, a few days later, she disappeared. She was never heard from again..."
YOU ARE READING
Queen of the Dead
ParanormalSixteen-year-old Bridget has always been warned that if she ever found a bell in the woods not to ring it. But, accidents happen, and, one beautiful spring day, she literally stumbles over a bell, awakening the dead and changing her life forever.
