A bell that speaks too soon. An undertaker who keeps the count. A town that listens for its own name.
Samuel Hargreaves has tended Whitethorn's dead for thirty years, laying out the bodies, signing the register, and tolling the bell that marks a life's last measure. But the bell has begun to speak without his hand-ringing in the small hours, calling names that belong to the living. The town whispers of debts unpaid and coffins that feel too light. Samuel swears he keeps an honest count... yet each toll draws him closer to the mistake he cannot admit.
As the burials mount and the numbers refuse to balance, Samuel must choose whether to silence the bell-or answer it. In the final reckoning, some accounts can only be settled at the edge of the grave.
The Undertaker's Bell is a Blackthorn Chapbook (longer novella) by Edwin Blackthorn-Gothic, atmospheric, and steeped in the spirit of the Victorian penny dreadful.
