The Bell

A quiet street with a red metal roof, with wooden siding and rotting. Who could live here but the pink dressed girl who suddenly disappeared a decade ago.

A boy now eight, the same age she was now occupies a house just down the street. He's a quiet little boy with no friends to speak of except Barry, a freckled child with no sense of boundaries.

Petter, let's go out and play!" He calls but the boy's only focus is the house down the street as he adjusts his binoculars. His problem only being, Barry knows how to climb trees as he reaches his second floor window and a thud later, Peter's focus has been distracted.
Barry's now disheveled and smiling with a window now open and Peter takes a pillow from his bed, dragging it over before he smacks him upside his head.

"Ow."

Peter almost cracks a smile as Barry can see the binoculars in his hand. "You were spying again, weren't you?"
Peter says nothing with a shrug as he sits on his bed. Barry is to blame for his fascination, telling him of the missing girl, a year ago when he first moved here, now he thinks of nothing else but the mystery still left unsolved.

"You know we could always try to sneak in." Barry suggests, being the daredevil he's always been. Peter, though he's never broken a rule in his life, found this idea intriguing. "How?" He asks as Barry is surprised but finally having Peter interested in being friends with him was too good of an opportunity to pass up.

"Give me some time." Barry says with a smirk before leaving out the window, leaving Peter for the first time curious to see Barry again.
It takes another week before Peter hears him climbing that same tree but this time the window is open, inviting him in as he comes with a bag in tow.

"I have what we need from flashlights, food and water, to weapons and a map of the house." Peter simply nods before opening his bedroom door and walking downstairs.
Barry quickly follows after him as Peter's mother shakes her head at her son. Her relief at him finding a friend is immense as she stirs a big pot of stew.

"Be back for dinner." She calls but Peter and Barry are making their way to the house, completely abandoned though it's said lights flicker on and off from time to time.

Once they're close enough, they hear a bell, loud and unmistakable as they look around but no one comes outside to see what's going on, only the boys hear it or so it seems.

It chimes again, louder and suddenly the street lights are on and a mist clouds the roads. "What are you silly boys doing?" A giggling girl asks and they turn around to see a girl in a pink dress.

It's the same girl from the flyers all those years ago. "How?" "What?" "Why?" Peter speaks up as Barry remembers as Peter's mother comes out of the house.

"I told you to be back for dinner."
She informs her son but suddenly her blue dress is like a mist, her skin sickly pale and her eyes void of color. "I remember." Barry says as he looks at the girl.

"Suzie, my sister!" He hugs her tight and Peter looks at Barry who's now fading just like his mother. "Sweetie, are you playing alive again?"
Peter looks down at his hands that are now misty like all of them. "I..." "Peter, our memories are erased again." Barry exclaims and that's when Peter remembers the fire.

It started in the forest, all around their town and quickly engulfed everything, including them, only Suzie died after a break in and was strangled by a father that never should have had children, especially his own.

Time went on and no one knew what happened to her as he buried the body, yet everyone searched for sweet Suzie and ten years later Peter moved to town. Her brother, though haunted by his missing sister, tried to befriend Peter, the boy who also became as obsessed as the town was to what happened to her.

Barry didn't mind because it kept her spirit alive until the fire, where the whole town died. They now repeat the same cycle, a year until the death bell rings on the anniversary, every year.